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Ziva and the Book of Job

larryyff

Scribe
Is it wrong to write graphic, gory, sexually explicit Christian dark fantasy that is Bible-based?
Excerpt:
When she goes in for another kiss, the sister puts a finger on Shawna’s puckered lips, says “No” and then whispers something in her ear. The sister follows up her whispered request with a kiss on the surprised, and turned on, Shawna’s cheek. Shawna turns with a smile on her face and disappears towards the back of the house.
Ziva follows Shawna.
Shawna goes into a room where a young girl is refusing to have sex with a paying customer and he is pissed! He is the man from earlier with the multi-colored beard and the young girl is the jet-black beauty he was fixated on.
Shawna smiles an evil smile.
He is trying to force himself on her, only stopping when he feels someone tap him on his shoulder. He angrily turns to challenge whoever it is who has the audacity to interrupt him and as he turns, he lays his eyes upon the beautiful Shawna.
His anger is instantly pacified, but he’s not exactly sure what to do. Does he invite her to join? Does he have to pay her? Should he force her to join?
Unaware, and unconcerned, of the thoughts going on inside the young man’s head, Shawna simply looks him up and down and smiles a seductive smile.
He maintains his aggressive stance only to soften up as she slips a hand inside his open robe and slowly slides it down to the contents in his undergarments. He begins to smile in pleasure as they share a long, seductive glance into each other’s eyes while she is gently rubbing and massaging his privates. They continue to look passionately at each other until her face begins to change.
Her once beautiful, seductive, light-brown eyes are now are a light-grey color with thin, black, vertical pupils like some sort of venomous viper would have and they do not blink. The passion that was once in them has been replaced with a look of contempt, borderline hatred.
Her beautiful skin now has snake scales, her nose has flattened into two slits and her mouth is slightly open revealing fangs and a forked tongue that is flicking up and down, in and out. He is now neither aggressive, turned-on or smiling.
She holds out her unoccupied hand to the young girl to help her up to her feet and in one, violent motion with her other hand, she digs her sharp nails into the young man’s groin then with one, swift pull, she completely tears off the man’s private parts. He screams in pain as she pulls her bloody hand out from under his robe with his penis and both of his balls in her palm.
Ziva covers her mouth to prevent herself from vomiting.
Shawna looks at the bloody, useless trio in her hand with disgust and throws it to the ground, wiping the warm blood from her hand onto his expensive robe and takes a couple of extra seconds to clean the blood off her long, razor-sharp fingernails that are painted black.
A pair of small, red eyes observes the bloody morsels from the darkness of a corner in the room…
The injured man is now bent over grabbing what is still considered his crotch while he’s screaming and shouting obscenities to her. She does not look amused. She had a feeling their paths would cross again. She turns around, puts the leash back on the young girl and prepares to exit the room.
The young girl has seen her handler’s transformation from sexxxy female to some sort of snake-like being and back to looking like a human. She is perplexed and leery to go with her at first; however, she is grateful for her assistance and she has also seen the handler’s power. This time she is happy to be led away, leash and all.
As the pair are in the doorway about to leave, Shawna turns back and points at the man. A thin, strand of smoke leaves her index finger and gracefully weaves and swirls its way towards its intended target.
She doesn’t stand around to watch what will happen next. She’s seen it many times before, plus, she has gotten her revenge and has what she came for. She and her young catch have people to see and places to be. They exit without looking back.
As the strand of smoke slowly approaches the injured man like a laser-guided missile, it splits off into two strands that circle his neck from both sides and form a noose. As the noose cloud begins to slowly apply more and more pressure around his neck and throat, he stops screaming and begins to choke.
Ziva is temporarily mesmerized by the motion and action of the smoke.
While he gasps for air, there is a look of confusion in his eyes. He knows he is being choked, but how and from who? As he grasps at the cloud that is gradually restricting his breathing, he fails to free himself from its grip. He is grabbing the noose, but the cloudy substance that is choking him simply slips through his bloody fingers as it maintains its hold.
He continues to violently gasp for air and swing wildly as if reaching for something, anything to help. He stumbles and manages to stand with his back against a wall. As he finally breathes his last breath, the noose fades away into the air.
His lifeless body begins to slide gracefully down the wall and then, without support from a functioning brain that once told the body how to hold itself upright, flops clumsily to the floor with a thud as though it were a puppet who has suddenly had all of its strings cut.
A pool of fresh, warm, sticky blood that was flowing from his groin has formed between his legs...
Ziva is unmoved by his death, but at the same time, she is surprisingly able to have compassion for him instead of anger or disgust. What is it about men that make them feel the need to pay for sex and want to rape and physically dominate women?
Suddenly the wind blows the curtain open. As it does, a small pack of vampire bats fly into the room and begin to crawl all over the dead body and the floor between his legs and begin feasting on all the fresh blood.
She is startled by the gust of wind and jumps back as the bats take over the scene. The sound of their blood-slurping makes her nauseous.
The red eyes in the corner belong to a large rat who had kept himself hidden during all the commotion who now makes its presence known as it boldly heads towards the discarded, bloody pile of muscle and flesh.
Without hesitation or bothering to see if any of the bats were thinking about claiming it, he bites into a chunk of the bloody matter and drags it back to the dark corner. In three quick trips, he has all he wants and can now begin to enjoy his meal in private.
He has nothing against bats per se. It’s just he personally sees no reason to eat alongside his fellow diners in the room tonight. To him, these winged, spooky-looking creatures have no table manners or etiquette as they don’t even stop their feasting long enough to lick some of the excess blood that drips from their mouths, bodies and wings.
Ziva is glad to leave this scene and follows Shawna and the young girl back through the party to the host table…
From “Ziva and the Book of Job”. This is from the scene where I fantasize about what Job’s kids parties are like. The Bible mentions he prayed every weekend for his kids after they partied to cover anything bad they might have done
Thoughts???
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
I would not expect such from a bible tale, but id not quite call it wrong. I would say if, if its purpose it to be a grittier retelling, it would be wrong to change the events or underlying messages of the bible. Otherwise… its just art in a different form.

Im not sure who the target audience would be though.
 
To my recollection The Bible contains a lot of violent content - so you would not be reinventing the wheel in that respect. If you’re approaching it in a Game of Thrones style of a retelling then you wouldn’t be looking to purposely offend anyone, but you might want to be careful, for your own sake, to avoid anything that is aiming at something damaging.

On the erotica element, if you are wanting to put this out in the erotica genre, then really anything goes. All you need to do is find your niche.

In the writing itself, I’d personally say it needs a lot of work.
 

larryyff

Scribe
I would not expect such from a bible tale, but id not quite call it wrong. I would say if, if its purpose it to be a grittier retelling, it would be wrong to change the events or underlying messages of the bible. Otherwise… its just art in a different form.

Im not sure who the target audience would be though.
As a grittier retelling, would you consider what I wrote safe from the perspective that the Bible doesn’t really say what Jobs kids do but it does say he made sacrifices every weekend after his kids frequent parties not knowing what went on. I took the artistic liberty to story something’s that could have possibly gone on. I added the demon element (earlier in the story Shawna has a demon enter her). Thanks for your response
 

larryyff

Scribe
To my recollection The Bible contains a lot of violent content - so you would not be reinventing the wheel in that respect. If you’re approaching it in a Game of Thrones style of a retelling then you wouldn’t be looking to purposely offend anyone, but you might want to be careful, for your own sake, to avoid anything that is aiming at something damaging.

On the erotica element, if you are wanting to put this out in the erotica genre, then really anything goes. All you need to do is find your niche.

In the writing itself, I’d personally say it needs a lot of work.
Could you elaborate on the dangerous area I’d potentially be entering? And yeah the writing does need work. I self published it to make sure I got all three books out and figured there wasn’t enough buzz about them yet so I’d have time to get them professionally edited without anyone noticing. Next week the professional editor starts. I’m glad you printed out a glaring point about the writing. That reinforces what people say who highly recommend paying for a professional editor.
 

larryyff

Scribe
As a grittier retelling, would you consider what I wrote safe from the perspective that the Bible doesn’t really say what Jobs kids do but it does say he made sacrifices every weekend after his kids frequent parties not knowing what went on. I took the artistic liberty to story something’s that could have possibly gone on. I added the demon element (earlier in the story Shawna has a demon enter her). Thanks for your response
Figuring out who the target audience has DEFINITELY been an area of struggle…
 
Could you elaborate on the dangerous area I’d potentially be entering? And yeah the writing does need work. I self published it to make sure I got all three books out and figured there wasn’t enough buzz about them yet so I’d have time to get them professionally edited without anyone noticing. Next week the professional editor starts. I’m glad you printed out a glaring point about the writing. That reinforces what people say who highly recommend paying for a professional editor.
I think I used the word damaging rather than dangerous, and damaging to you as the author, not so much damaging to a wider prospect. But if controversy is what you’re after then all I will say to that is - crack on.

If you’ve already published it all, listen to any and all feedback. There must be some smutty bible retellings out there, see what your competitors are doing and either innovate or die. Not literally.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Well....two pitfalls that come immediately to mind is a pissed off deity, and throngs of angry Christians picketing your house....

But, I will leave that to you to sort out.

Remaining objective about it, I'd have to wonder what is the intention behind this. Meaning that, are you trying to reach people who might not be exposed to the messages otherwise? or are you not interested in the messages of the bible, and would like to feed some other interest from the stories in it?

A target audience of those already tuned into the bible are probably going to find sinful reading erotica as a way of connecting to the messages. So...the pool of readers that might be reached by this, I would think, would be limited just by its content. But that is not to say, it could not have resonance with some.

I dont really care if you tell a grittier tale. I can handle it. Maybe many others can as well. But it wont be replacing my bible, and it wont be the thing we talk about at the kitchen table. God is pretty big. I am sure he can handle it too.

I'd be interested to know what the editor says, and what the process is for you.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Scratch that, because I am not steering you right.

I dont think your work is ready for an editor. I think you need to seek and gain feedback on your writing and work to improve it a bit before its worth sending $$$ to an editor. There are many peer review and critiques sites out there. Here at MS, you might get some reviews, but you would get a larger number of them on some other sites. Scribophile is one.
 

larryyff

Scribe
I think I used the word damaging rather than dangerous, and damaging to you as the author, not so much damaging to a wider prospect. But if controversy is what you’re after then all I will say to that is - crack on.

If you’ve already published it all, listen to any and all feedback. There must be some smutty bible retellings out there, see what your competitors are doing and either innovate or die. Not literally.
Okay. I see what you’re saying and when you open yourself up to some controversy you’d better be willing and ready to deal with it. I am looking to find competitors in this space. If any come to mind please let me know.
On a side note: all three books in this series have the same type format where it goes from 21st century to Bible dark fantasy and back again. I think I went down this path when I realized there are stories in the Bible lots of preaches want to pass over to keep the Bible clean…remember when Lot escaped Sodom? His two daughters got him drunk and took turns sleeping with him to get pregnant. David had a son who wanted to sleep with his half sister tamara so badly he got physically sick (in the end he raped her). Those examples aren’t meant to justify my fantasy story lines but more to make a point the Bible has some stories to share that most Christian’s would consider immoral and dirty and obscene…but for some reason they made the cut..
 

larryyff

Scribe
Well....two pitfalls that come immediately to mind is a pissed off deity, and throngs of angry Christians picketing your house....

But, I will leave that to you to sort out.

Remaining objective about it, I'd have to wonder what is the intention behind this. Meaning that, are you trying to reach people who might not be exposed to the messages otherwise? or are you not interested in the messages of the bible, and would like to feed some other interest from the stories in it?

A target audience of those already tuned into the bible are probably going to find sinful reading erotica as a way of connecting to the messages. So...the pool of readers that might be reached by this, I would think, would be limited just by its content. But that is not to say, it could not have resonance with some.

I dont really care if you tell a grittier tale. I can handle it. Maybe many others can as well. But it wont be replacing my bible, and it wont be the thing we talk about at the kitchen table. God is pretty big. I am sure he can handle it too.

I'd be interested to know what the editor says, and what the process is for you.
My intentions are a mix: reach some who aren’t familiar with the Bible possibly gain interest and yes I am interested in the stories in the Bible and that interest led me to take a dark fantasy to artistically filling in some of the blanks. As me and my wife dug into the lost books of the Bible it helped deepen our understanding of God and the Bible itself.

I’ll just give one example: in the first book of Adam and Eve I read Adam was so depressed and lost from being out of Eden he tried to kill himself a couple of times. One of those attempts was to throw himself off a mountaintop but Hod brought him back to life. Now, remember when Jesus was tempted by Satan? One of His temptations was to throw Himself off a mountaintop cause Satan said God wouldn’t let Him die. In my mind it made that temptation more of a temptation because it was as though Satan was planting the seed in Jesus mind that “I know the basis of your role on earth is that you need to die to legally forgive sins BUT what if you tried to die and it doesn’t work? What if God loves you too much to let you die and saves you? Maybe you should t even try at all”

That may be a stretch but that’s where I’m at spiritually…
 

larryyff

Scribe
Scratch that, because I am not steering you right.

I dont think your work is ready for an editor. I think you need to seek and gain feedback on your writing and work to improve it a bit before its worth sending $$$ to an editor. There are many peer review and critiques sites out there. Here at MS, you might get some reviews, but you would get a larger number of them on some other sites. Scribophile is one.
I’ll check scibophile out. Anymore come to mind shoot ‘em to me. I want to polish the series enough to Goto film 🤔
 

Queshire

Istar
Frankly feels like you're being a bit too ambitious with this one. My recommendation would be to let it cook for awhile, work on some original fantasy first and come back to it later.
 

larryyff

Scribe
Frankly feels like you're being a bit too ambitious with this one. My recommendation would be to let it cook for awhile, work on some original fantasy first and come back to it later.
You wouldn’t consider this an original fantasy? I took the Job story and kinda filled in what I thought happened at some of Jobs kids parties (Job recognized some shady activity routinely happened there). I don’t have the creativeness (or want it) to start my own from scratch I don’t think plus I’m only interested in it by trying to tie real life Bible stories with modern times in a creatively free way.
It’s already self published so I will be slowing down now and getting the editor started on it next week and getting it refined for good reading.
 
The best (and only) specifically Bible retelling that I’ve read is that of The Red Tent by Anita Diamont. It’s not a dark fantasy, more realistic, but a great example either way.
 

larryyff

Scribe
The best (and only) specifically Bible retelling that I’ve read is that of The Red Tent by Anita Diamont. It’s not a dark fantasy, more realistic, but a great example either way.
Bet. I’ll check out the one (and only 😜) retelling of the Bible and let you know what I think.
 

Fyri

Inkling
Is it wrong to write graphic, gory, sexually explicit Christian dark fantasy that is Bible-based?

From “Ziva and the Book of Job”. This is from the scene where I fantasize about what Job’s kids parties are like. The Bible mentions he prayed every weekend for his kids after they partied to cover anything bad they might have done
Thoughts???
Some things to consider!

"Is it wrong"

Wrong is subjective. If you feel uncomfortable with something that you are doing, than you need to define what you believe is right or wrong. From this conversation, I have deduced that you are part of the Christian faith. Therefore, I set this before you (tentatively, since I know religion is a sensitive topic and we shouldn't delve too deeply on personal beliefs on this forum): The Christian Bible says to live by faith. Do you feel that writing this story for public consumption is in line with your faith? That is the question I believe you should ask yourself here. Random people are going to say any written story is wrong or right for inconsistent reasons. What do you believe? If you are part of the faith, pray about it, study texts about it, talk with people of your faith about it. They will give you different answers too, but they may also help you figure out the right questions to ask yourself and discover the answers you really need. Here, it almost sounds like you are seeking approval or permission, which is not really ours to give. ;)

"to write graphic, gory, sexually explicit Christian dark fantasy that is Bible-based?"

I strongly believe this kind of thing already exists in the world. Christian Horror and Christian Erotica are very probably genres. Seek out these stories--books, movies, games. See what you think about them. You are correct in that the Christian Bible has these things in it. It doesn't get talk about often.

On that note, a useful part of a writer's journey is to define their purpose. For example, a while back I defined my purpose as "To create a sense of community among people and a light for someone to hold onto in their darkness." So then, I think you are at least beginning to hash out your purpose. Is it to "Bring to light things that are often forgotten [in the Christian bible]?" Or is there more to it?

Lastly!

From my studies, Job is a fictional character--never actually existed, but I think versions of the story existed before it was included in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh). It served as a lesson or warning more than history. In that sense, it is really up to you what you want to do with it! However, if you were to write a dark fantasy about, say, the Three Wise Men--I mean, you'd have it set as a fantasy so we are already taking into account that it may take deviations from the original text. But from there, you also need to define for yourself how close you want to be to the original text. In fantasy writing, it's kinda anything goes as long as there is magical/mythical essence.
 
Bet. I’ll check out the one (and only 😜) retelling of the Bible and let you know what I think.
Oh maybe you misconstrued what I was saying, it’s the only specifically Biblical retelling of sorts that I’ve personally read - there are plenty others around, take a look.

I’ve read lots of other retellings, more of the Greek mythology type.

I’ll also add that I am not of the Christian persuasion, and I still enjoyed reading it, if that’s of any use.
 

larryyff

Scribe
Bet. I’ll check out the one (and only 😜) retelling of the Bible and let you know what I think.
I glanced at it on Amazon just now. VERY interesting read from the sample. I love how the author filled in the blanks and took the Liberty to be an actual Bible character and weave true facts into what could easily pass as an autobiography.

Nice! When I talk to the lady who will be editing my Ziva series next week I’m going to ask her to check this book out. I already started book four but I’m really liking the way this looks and reads 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 Maybe adding an element of that story telling to book four and beyond. Thanks again for valuable info.
 

larryyff

Scribe
Oh maybe you misconstrued what I was saying, it’s the only specifically Biblical retelling of sorts that I’ve personally read - there are plenty others around, take a look.

I’ve read lots of other retellings, more of the Greek mythology type.

I’ll also add that I am not of the Christian persuasion, and I still enjoyed reading it, if that’s of any use.
Not a Christian and you still found it interesting? That’s notable. You would fit the category of a person I would like as part of my “target audience” but you’d have to be a non-Christian into dark fantasy maybe.
My wife wanted to see if somehow the main character, who has flashbacks that are based on true stories from my wife and my lives, could somehow have Ziva go from being an observer in her dark fantasy dreams to somehow being an “active player”. The style of writing in red tent seems like a good way to migrate from the current story telling technique to a more red tent styled one. Hmmmm
 
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