Ever feel torn between writing the stories on your heart and meeting everyone’s expectations—too “preachy” for some, not “evangelical” enough for others? I’m Dominic, founder of LegendFiction. If you’re struggling to balance faith, creativity, and the joy of good storytelling, you’re not alone. This isn’t about ‘stuffing doctrine’ into every page or apologizing for your imagination. It’s about finding freedom to write boldly, letting faith inspire without limiting your art. This mini-course Storyteller: How Faith-Inspired Authors Can Find the Freedom to Write the Coolest Fiction in the World shares what it really means to be an author, how to respect your audience, and why your faith is a lifeline to go anywhere and not get lost. Let’s drop the guilt, embrace what’s real, and write stories that matter.
This is the forever debate among creators: Do we create for the market, or for meaning?
Not every story has to be a Degas of spiritual meaning and depth. Sometimes stories are fun. Loads of fun. And sometimes you can make a bunch of money doing it, maybe even as a full time job.
But if storytelling matters to you, then let’s look at three kinds of storytellers:
1) Some writers write for themselves.
They are moved with an idea, and in love with telling the story. It’s not about publicity or publishing deals, even though it might be nice. They know the world is a better place because these stories exist. They may or may not share them with others.
These authors may create the most enduring art. Because they are dedicated to the craft, they are freer to take the stories where they need to go. But, they don’t make much income, because that’s not their priority.
A possible downside is that they can self-isolate. While they benefited from the experience, they don’t share for feedback and communion with others. It’s like very dramatic journaling, spending months and years to figure out what you think. Some authors are that, and it may be good for them.
But this course is for authors who want to be the coolest storytellers in the world. So I think its an important part of the storytelling process to share your stories.
2) Some writers write to market.
These authors figure out a readership and double down on the stories they’ll buy and enjoy. Writing to market builds a community with your readers, a way to share and learn together. The feedback can be quick: if they don’t like it, it doesn’t sell. You probably don’t write that any more, and do something else.
This can be smart, because you’re watching trends, keeping a finger on the pulse, you’ll create something that’s popular. But you feel you’re still in charge. Unless your publishing house is asking you to pull back on your bias or your messaging (or you’re handcuffed to their bias and messaging), you’re free to write what works for you.
The possible downside is that you stop doing what’s meaningful, and do what sells. But I don’t think that’s always bad. I think the point of learning to be a storyteller is you, not the stories. The stories are the byproduct of your journey. Every story is a training ground in your ascent, and you levelled up. Not every story carries the same weight. Some are fun, and maybe it’s important for you to have a lot of fun for a long time.
But the coolest storytellers in the world are cool because they know stories matter. Stories are how our souls survive. And sometimes we have to deal with deeper things.
3) Some writers write for the money.
It’s all about the book deal. The royalty checks. The fame. These authors will do whatever it takes to get the word count. They will tell any story, even if it doesn’t improve the world. They know what sells, but and that’s what matters.
90% of nonfiction is people trying to convince the world that they’re a good person, and they’re all saying the same thing.
When you’re a reader looking for storytelling to heal your soul, to build you up, to challenge you to grip reality more seriously, to thrill you with fun and games, a money-focused storyteller won’t have the good stuff. We end up with the Shrek-ification of story, where cynicism rules, and it it sells, who cares about hamfisted messaging and clumsy story mechanics.
The storytelling industry is a breeding ground of writers doing anything to sell a story.
Where does this leave a beginning storyteller who wants to write cool stories?
I wish I could tell you that storytellers with real promise could make it. That scholarships and grants for excellence could grease the wheels of success for those who deserve it.
But the reality is that very few make it in conventional, traditional ways.
The publishing industry is apparently broken, reluctant to take risks and biased toward bestsellers, so I’ve heard.
Self-publishing is a madhouse of conflicting advice as algorithms update daily, apparently.
Social publishing is an emerging phenomenon where authors can partner with popular social accounts and reach readers directly, but that comes with its own challenges, like crowd-funded kickstarters and collab marketing campaigns.
When I was 15, I was convinced that I was going to be a successful storyteller forever. I read voraciously, printed off two children’s novels, catalogued a myriad of stories and poetry I’m embarrassed to share, and brainstormed enough epics to retire on.
But the more I learned, the more I understood how hard it is to make a living off of storytelling. Unless you’re a runaway New York Times bestseller, or you’re self-publishing a new novel every three months. (*cough… which I want to do.)
“It is the authors of what publishers call “middle-market fiction” who struggle to make a living. With so many means of distraction and entertainment today—film, television, social media, etc.—the young writer of good novels is unlikely to make a living from his craft.”
Piers Paul Read, “Dangers to the Soul”
My answer is this:
Write because you love it. Write because it matters to you.
Maybe have a dream of being successful. Then sit down and get busy with the journey of one stepping-stone at a time. One story, one chapter, one new reader review at a time.
![Ratując pana Banksa - Saving Mr. Banks (2013) Film Blu-ray [Polski Portal Blu-ray i 4K Ultra HD]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Fu2s!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb9a11a7c-bf47-4399-8f90-0bffa29c8975_1920x1080.png "Ratując pana Banksa - Saving Mr. Banks (2013) Film Blu-ray [Polski Portal Blu-ray i 4K Ultra HD]")
The most successful authors I know go through the long process of conventional publication through a Catholic publisher. But they won’t reach the general public, because a Catholic publisher is a niche that most have never heard of.
New options are opening up though, like never before.
Storytellers are discovering and creating new options we’ve never had. New tools allow us to create our own print-on-demand resources. We can become our own publishing house. And with some schooling, we can learn to run our own ads. We can apply to get on podcasts and interviews, and reach new audiences.
We live in a new world of access to readers.
The problem is that it takes a lot of effort. Effort that probably pulls you away from storytelling.
That’s why LegendFiction is one community I’m building. I’m working to bring together the coolest storytellers in the world, so that we can talk about the best stories in the world.
Together, we can inspire each other with feedback and support. And we can teach each other what works and what doesn’t in real time.
And as we keep getting better and smarter, we can help launch new indie authors.
Readers out there want all kinds of new stories, all the time.
Storytelling is not slowing down, it is speeding up. And with options like AI or ghostwriting, it’s possible to keep creating an infinity of stories.
The real question is if readers will actually want that. I suspect that over time, AI-generated stories will become the bottom-shelf stuff for bottom-feeders, like the mountains of unbought dime-novels in bargain bins.
BookTok has revived a whole new generation of readers, because they’re helping us rediscover what’s hidden between the pages of these books. Turning them from books into worlds, into experiences.
That’s going to be the future: authors building worlds, not just writing books. Storytellers finding their own way to welcome people into the worlds without end.
I hope LegendFiction will be a path to help authors find success faster, because we’re sharing the journey.
“One of the most disheartening circumstances that the Catholic novelist has to contend with is that he has no large audience he can count on to understand his work. The general intelligent reader today is not a believer. He likes to read novels about priests and nuns because these persons are a curiosity to him, but he does not really understand the character motivated by faith. The Catholic reader, on the other hand, is so busy looking for something that fits his needs, and shows him in the best possible light, that he will find suspect anything that doesn’t serve such purposes.”
Flannery O’Connor ‘Confessions of a Catholic Novelist”
Tell the story you want to read, and write the story that inspires you.
Those are the stories that matter – because you’re free to tell them.
So be honest with yourself. You might change your mind, or your goals, about what to do with all the stories you create.
Don’t lose sight of why storytelling matters to you in the first place. The coolest storytellers understand the market and love their readers. But they don’t lose sight of why they create art in the first place.
Because they have a calling. And it’s not finished yet.
“The arts can come to our rescue, if they are true and beautiful and faithful to the moral order of the universe. In presenting human dramas in all their variety, a novelist, for example, can help reveal the actions of divine providence (very present but usually mysterious and hidden from our eyes). In this way a reader or a person listening to a symphony or gazing at a good painting can come to know that he is more than he thinks he is, more than the definitions of man given by ideologues and theorists. A true work of art helps him apprehend, by some interior sense, that while Man is damaged he is not destroyed; he is beautiful and beloved by his Father Creator.”
Michael O’Brien, “Catholic Writing Today”
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About me: Dominic de Souza
I’m a cradle-Catholic who’s been writing scifi and fantasy novels since I was 13, graduated from the Writer’s Institute for Children’s Literature, and found out I was living in a Catholic doomsday cult. This led to a decade careful rebuilding of what it means to be religious, a book and movie nerd, occasional gamer, and accidental world traveller. Today, I’m a dad, work fulltime in marketing, and build LegendFiction to bring together the coolest storytellers in the world.
