Do you need some plot ideas for your Christian fiction novel? The following 31 Christian fiction writing prompts will help!
General Christian Fiction
1. A sick loved one challenges faith.
Your main character’s loved one has suddenly come down with a fatal sickness (i.e., advanced cancer or genetic disease). Focus the conflict on the character taking care of their loved one while coming to terms with God’s plan them. They should waiver in their faith at some point but be brought back to God by the end.
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2. An atheist is brought back to God.
The reason or event that does this is less important than the lesson that the atheist learns. If using this for a longer novel piece, have the atheist be constantly reminded of God’s love and presence through bigger and grander events, and end with them being baptized (ultimately ending their life as an atheist).
3. A police officer struggles with faith after being introduced to a particularly bad case.
This could be a thriller novel where the police officer tries to solve the case, wavering and rediscovering their faith throughout. Start the story with the case they are trying to solve, and have God be the reason they solve the case in the end.
4. A Christian songwriter faces the lure of fame.
Start this story with the Christian musician’s struggle to get heard and the lures of money and power at the height of their eventual success. Use their own song/s to help them break free from these temptations and return to the real message of Christianity at the end.
5. Wrongfully jailed prisoner uses faith to find redemption.
Don’t focus this story on what got them in jail. Instead, start with the guilty verdict and show how a belief in the Bible (maybe discovered in prison) and a Christian lawyer help them prove their innocence. This story should be about faith, both in God and the justice system, rather than persecution.
6. A seriously injured sportsperson recovers through faith and determination.
Start with your up-and-coming main character injured in a severe car or plane accident, something that’s their fault through their own prideful sin. With a Christian trainer who pushes them using the Bible and the basic tenets of Christianity, your character recovers completely and even performs at the Paralympics. Whether they win a medal (and which one) is up to you.
7. A soldier is lost and finds their way home through God.
You can place this in any locale you want—desert, forest, mountains—but make it a parallel to Jesus’ 40 days and 40 nights in the desert with Lucifer. Have your soldier face visions and temptations but, through their belief in God and Christianity, fight against those temptations. End with them being rescued.
8. Jesus has returned!
This can be as realistic or fantastical as you want but write the story of Jesus’ return. Who would he appear to first? How would people respond? End with the world accepting it’s truly Him and what that means for life on Earth.
9. A scandal in the church brings the community closer together.
A sinful minister is found to be embezzling money from the church. The scandal rocks the little town it belongs to. Have the story be mostly about how, through the love of God and the teaching of the Bible, they come together to recover and form a new, more modern church.
10. New scrolls of the Bible are discovered.
The most important part of this conflict is the reaction of the rest of the world. You should definitely unpack where the scrolls are discovered, how, and who they were written by. You should mostly focus on the message it teaches and how it brings people closer to Christianity than ever before.
Christian Historical Fiction Prompts
11. Tell the story of the three wise men travelling to see Baby Jesus.
We know what they did when they got there but what happened along the way? How did they meet up? What did they overcome? Consider the events that made them worthy of being in the presence of the Baby Jesus.
12. Become a monk in a monastery in England who experiences a Viking raid.
The conflict for this story would come from your main character’s struggle with remaining passive or protecting the monastery. Does he take up a weapon and fight? Or does he submit as a prisoner and try to change the Vikings from within their own tribe?
13. What would it have been like to be a Christian missionary in pre-settled California?
For this story, begin with the priest arriving at the mission and facing immediate conflict from the locals. Have your missionary become slowly accepted by the people through his Godly actions before accepting God’s word. You want to show Christianity prevailing in the face of long-standing traditions and cultures but without dismissing them entirely.
14. You should always expect the Spanish Inquisition.
This is a thriller story in that your main character should be a victim of the Spanish Inquisition but through which God speaks directly. They are trying to escape persecution while remaining true to their faith. Will they be caught?
15. How big was the shakeup of the Great Reformation?
Your main character is a parishioner in the time of Martin Luther. Start with them watching Martin Luther nail the 95 theses to the church door. What happened next? How did the everyday person experience the Great Reformation?
16. A solider travels to fight in The Crusades.
This story would be more interesting if you kept the Templars out of it and just focused on a normal soldier traveling to fight in The Crusades for his lord. Have him question The Crusades and his faith while he’s there. Does he continue to fight?
17. Early Roman Christians were not readily accepted.
Take the point of view of one of the first Romans who followed Jesus’ teachings. What happened that made them believe? Were they persecuted? How did they respond to those who were?
18. Would God have allowed the Holocaust to happen?
Have a Christian soldier struggle with his faith after witnessing the atrocities of the Holocaust. Show how, through witnessing the faith of the surviving Jews, the soldier is brought back to God and faith in His plan.
19. Saints were real people once.
Choose a saint, any saint, and fictionalize their story. Use real historical facts but fill in the gaps with your own ideas about how and why they performed the miracles that eventually deify them.
Christian Romance Prompts
20. An ultrarich man discovers God through the love of an everyday woman.
Start with showing this ultrarich man living a Christ-less life but meeting an average, everyday woman (how doesn’t really matter). While he falls in love with her, he also finds God’s love through her words, works, and teachings. End with him using his money and power for good, in line with Christianity’s teachings.
21. A Christian girl falls for a non-Christian boy.
This is a classic tale of feuding families but with an additional layer of differing faith practices. Tell the story of how God helps their families overcome their blindness to see that love is good, no matter how they worship Him.
22. A man is led to his one true love.
For this one, have God help a man find his forever wife. Maybe He speaks to the man or just leaves him clues that help him along the way. For an added twist, have his love be someone he’s known for a long time but just never considered until God opened his eyes.
23. Two people discover love over an abandoned baby.
Start the story with these two strangers finding a baby abandoned at a church. The conflict is that they are trying to figure out what best to do with the baby and learn to love each other through that process. What makes this a Christian romance is that it is discovered that the baby was actually an angel sent down to ensure these two people met.
Christian Paranormal and Fantasy Prompts
24. Ghosts are just demons in disguise.
Christian tenets state ghosts or spirits aren’t possible as all souls pass into the afterlife. So, the conflict of this novel is whether the main character can accept that they aren’t actually seeing the ghost of their deceased loved one, but a demon instead. End with them finally banishing the demon through belief in the word of God.
25. The Four Horsemen have arrived.
It’s the Apocalypse! Take the point of view of a character experiencing the literal four horsemen’s actions. Do they try to work with God to stop them and save humanity? How do they survive?
26. An angel and a demon meet in a park.
Make the battle of Good and Evil physical by having an angel and demon fight it out. This could be a short story of the battle itself, or, if you want to make it a full-length novel, add some introductory chapters for context (What are they fighting to win?) and have it last throughout time and across world.
27. In a world of magic, God prevails.
Show the introduction of Christianity to the Pagan tribes of the British Isles. While historical in context, the fantasy element comes from magic being a real entity that Christianity phases out in a real, literal sense.
28. Becoming God for a month.
A non-so-Christian main character challenges God, who decides to give all His powers to the character for one month. The story should be about the character dealing with all that God has to while also navigating their own life obligations. End with the character acknowledging that we should just have faith in God’s plan rather than understand it.
29. An angel is sent to Earth to help a deserving soul.
The conflict of this story can be either that the angel doesn’t want to go to Earth or the person they’re sent to help doesn’t want to accept their help. End with the human accepting the angel’s help.
30. God comes to Earth.
Start with an everyday person saving another person from harm, only discover it’s God in human form. They become friends and the person follows God around, learning from them and helping Him find his way back to Heaven.
31. What if the angels mutinied again?
A new group of angels have become displeased by God’s preference for humans and decide to start another war in Heaven. You can have the war play out on Earth and the detrimental impacts the fight has. End with humans and the teachings of Christ stopping the war.