Main Entry: cyn•ic
Pronunciation: \ˈsi-nik\
Function:noun
1 : a faultfinding captious critic; especially: one who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self-interest
I hate it when Webster’s definition has me looking up another word to get the full meaning, but captious means “marked by an often ill-natured inclination to stress faults and raise objections.” Basically, a cynic is an unpleasant person to be around. People do not consider cynicism a good trait. These are not the people we seek out to eat lunch with or to babysit our children. They don’t inspire us to scale mountains or overcome obstacles. They are obstacles themselves.
Authors have, by and large, given cynicism to a character more as a vice, a personal thing for him or her to work through on an inward journey. I’m hoping to give some insight into how cynics get that way.
Most people are not born with this disposition, they become this way due to life circumstances. For this exposé on cynics, I want to examine a few key characteristics of cynics that need to be present in your manuscript to make their cynicism ring true...
Click here to read the rest of the article at Christian Fiction Online Magazine.
