Posted by Dave Thewlis on March 09, 2002 at 16:55:05 from 148.78.249.10:
In Reply to: Re: Church Going and the Great Aunt posted by Andy Clayton on March 07, 2002 at 20:37:41:
I quite agree which whichever person it was (perhaps several) who observed that the intrusion of churchgoing wouldn't have furthered the story. At best it would have been irrelevant; at worst it would have derailed the progression of the storyline. (Well, the worst would have probably been if it had become important to the storyline...)
A good rule for any storywriting is to not insert things which are not relevant to the storyline unless they serve to establish or embellish the 'reality' of the circumstance (which I think explains why AR so often focuses on the details of the children's meals, which otherwise would seem to be unnecessary and over-specific).
As people have discovered in other contexts, such as historical recreation organizations, nobody can 'play' at religion -- or if they can they offend somebody else. So in the S&A books where the play of imagination was so intertwined with the reality of living (e.g. pirates versus sailing) it would have been difficult in the extreme to do anything but avoid the topic regardless of AR's own inclinations.