Anyone write 'morals' or 'messages' into their novels?

I don't introduce morals or lessons on purpose, but my characters have morals and reasons for what they do. One of my MCs has a very "we shouldn't do this" point of view, while another is torn. I guess it helps having balance, but that balance wasn't intentional. It was how they decided to act.

I have one major moral in my novel, and it is that guns are bad. Guns are evil. This is hammered home by the fact that the main character fires his gun once, and he hits the love of his life by accident.

I do have thematic statements in my novels, but I try not to make them obvious.

Go look at Baen's catalog. I think you'll find that the issues you think might turn people off pale in comparison to what certain SF authors are putting out there.

Just avoid long speeches that state your point. That's kind of a turn-off.

A lot of my writing has underlying meanings that I try to relay in one way or another. Others I'm not so subtle about. As far as religion, studying world religions has been a hobby of mine since I was in middle school (so a little over a decade now). In the large project I'm working on at the moment, I actually took several of the major religions, and some older more obscure ones and meshed them to form a completely new religious "reality" that is central to my story. I also stuck a few popular religious names in the mix, so that said characters begin in the traditional stereotype and later break the mold.

Write what you feel like writing, and if it's publishable, so be it. If not, at least you'll be happy knowing you did that thing you always wanted to do. Writing that is preachy can make for a bad read, but you don't have to be preachy to get a point across. Subtlety in writing is part of the craft.

Just my opinion. Good luck!

Zoombie said:

I have one major moral in my novel, and it is that guns are bad. Guns are evil. This is hammered home by the fact that the main character fires his gun once, and he hits the love of his life by accident.

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His beer fridge?

JJ

No...a girl, same age as he, that he had grown up with. And he's not a red-neck, damn it! Jimmy has a very good reason for having a gun. He's being chased by a nine foot tall, three eyed space lizard assassin.

You'd be jumpy too if that were after you.

I don't mean to have morals in my stories, but they kind of happen. To do them on purpose I imagine is pretty tricky, but possible. Just be very very careful with the preachiness etc. It's usually better if the reader reads what happens and from that makes a judgment call, as opposed to an author telling us outright that "this is bad!!!!"

Oh dear, I guess what I am trying to say is . . . show don't tell.

Sorry.

Zoombie said:

No...a girl, same age as he, that he had grown up with. And he's not a red-neck, damn it! Jimmy has a very good reason for having a gun. He's being chased by a nine foot tall, three eyed space lizard assassin.

You'd be jumpy too if that were after you.

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I'd just hide behind my beer fridge.

JJ

Another word for "morals" in this context might be "themes". Yes, my writing has themes. I don't think they're preachy...I'm not writing Anthem, here A major theme of my WIP is that you can't change your nature. So it's major, yeah, but I don't have twenty pages at the end of the MC's revelation.

(I liked Anthem, btw)

JJ Cooper said:

I'd just hide behind my beer fridge.

JJ

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They don't have a beer fridge! They don't even drink anything more than water, lemonaid and some soda.

Zoombie said:

They don't have a beer fridge! They don't even drink anything more than water, lemonaid and some soda.

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You're going to have to re-write that story. Beer and a beer fridge is a key element here IMHO.

JJ

Silence you!

I'm going to have to agree with JJ on this one. If I was being chased by a three-eyed space lizard I'd sure as hell need a beer fridge!

I don't go in with a message in mind, but my characters usually discover things that could be construed as such.

I tend not to judge my characters, though. So even if one decides that killing is wrong and she's quitting the war, for example, I'll have another who is determined to see the war through to the end. And from an overall "story" view, I don't try to cast either character as "right" or "wrong." They simply make the choices that seem right for them, and the reader can draw their own conclusions.

I think "theme" is better than "moral." To me, a moral implies a direct statement, such as "guns are bad," while a theme might explore something along the lines of "what makes guns bad, and in what context?" I like asking the questions. I don't like being handed answers, so I try not to do the handing either. I think I do end up "nudging," though, just because of what I believe. But as long as you're not totally obvious about it, and it's thoughtful, I think it's fine.

My WIP is about a group of former assassins (who used to kill drug lords, etc.) The question that I toy with throughout the book is whether it is wrong to kill evil people. What if killing an evil person gives a good person a better chance at life? What if the act of killing that "evil person" destroys the life of the one who did the killing? Does the act of killing make you an evil person?

I like the idea of having a novel explore all of the ramifications of a single theme. I mean, that's not the ONLY thing the book is about, but it gives you something to chew on. I hope.

It's almost impossible for a writer to avoid selling some "message" or other. Speaking as a mercenary, it makes for a more engaging plot than some limply even-handed tale.

But setting out to "put a Message into the story" tends easily to turn into polemic or propaganda -- yes, I do mean L Neil Schulman, among others. You can find yourself chugging along nicely... then are brought up short by the fact your carefully crafted cast simply would never take the next step necessary for you to continue on your Message.

So you can ditch the Big Message.

Or you can mangle all your careful work & cram in "then a Miracle happened!" event so that your Message doesn't get discarded.

JoNightshade describes something far safer: look at it from as many sides as you dare (or reflecting your proposed ms length).

I think it was Sam Goldwyn who said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union."

I'd like to see more writers tell me the motivations of utterly hateful characters doing terrible things, because there's so much BS in the world & a bright reader is always interested in getting input as to why bad stuff happens. One of my all-time fave characters is Batty, in Blade Runner, because he's not a nice person, he never miraculously becomes a nice person, yet you come away understanding why he's become the way he did, & because of that empathise with his plight without defending his actions.

Like Marcone in the Dresden Files?

(has a minor crush on Jim Butcher, but if y'all tell anyone she'll deny it to her dying breath).

As far as didacticism and "morals" are concerned, I point you to Barthes. What you INTEND your novel to say may not be what the reader gets from it. Even if you include no moral message your reader may see it there. And if you do, they might not.

Take LOTR for example. It does have a moral message, and yet was easily misread and reinterpreted by several contemporaries to be saying things it wasn't. (Like the master-race would be victorious?)

You can't control the reaction your readers will have to your novels, so just write what you want and worry about all of that when you get the hate/fanmail.

Or you can head up your book with this:

"This book is a representation of the struggle of the proletariat against the endless tides of mono-chivalrous uno-sloven oppression at the hands of our cabalistic allied government."

That leaves none of it to chance.

Anthony Ravenscroft said:

JoNightshade describes something far safer: look at it from as many sides as you dare (or reflecting your proposed ms length).

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Actually, I don't think this course of action is "safe" at all. I think in the end, the "general public" wants to have a solid moral. They want good guys to win and bad guys to lose. They don't want it shoved at them, but they want it to be there in some shape or form.

Also, it's safe for me to stick an accepted moral into the story. In my WIP, I could easily illustrate that "Killing people is bad regardless of why you do it." It's more risky for me to toy with the idea that maybe sometimes killing people is a good thing. Maybe sometimes death is not the worst thing that could happen. Simply ASKING those questions leads a lot of people to conclude things that you didn't necessarily set out to "prove."

As usual I cite Million Dollar Baby as a good example of this. This movie is great because it asks a ton of questions. And yet you have right-to-life people saying it's a Bad Movie, and assisted-suicide people saying it's awesome because it supports "their" point of view. I don't think either side is right. It's a movie that explores the tough questions that arise in such a situation.

My best professor in college was a man who did almost nothing but a) tell stories and b) ask questions. He never told us what we ought to think about anything, but he did ask some very interesting questions. And his stories never had "morals," they were just incidents that had happened to him and people he knew that he collected over time. I see that as our role in writing a novel... to tell an interesting story, and to ask the right questions. Let the reader decide.

Zoombie said:

I have one major moral in my novel, and it is that guns are bad. Guns are evil. This is hammered home by the fact that the main character fires his gun once, and he hits the love of his life by accident.

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Guns don't kill people. people with moustaches kill people.

Is it a sentient gun?

There are a lot of messages in my books. From ones as timeless as bad things happening to good people to ones as modern as gay rights and abortion. There are some aspects of my fantasy world that were specifically engineered to showcase a certain message more starkly than it's shown on this world. But do I try to shove my beliefs on readers or characters? Absolutely not. I disagree with my characters on a lot of issues, but I don't try to change them. In the end I'm simply showing the consequences of actions. It's not my place to judge whether said action was 'right' or 'wrong'. My characters frequently do 'bad' things and aren't even sorry. Several of them are professional killers! Uh, no, I'm not trying to say killing for money is OK, but don't expect me to play god-author and interrupt my characters. Being true to my characters and world is a thousand times more important than silly things like politics and religion.

I try to avoid moralising at any readers I may be lucky enough to have. I think I'm pretty good at being metaphorical but I avoid straight moralising.

Nothing makes me drop a book faster than preaching by the author. I've done it many times.

Let your characters have morals, ethics and opinions, but keep it in that context.

I would advise against putting an obvious moral message into your story. It's true that a lot of SF authors do this; that's also why I hardly ever read SF anymore. But I don't see a problem with weaving in a theme, as long as the reader doesn't feel like they're being beaten over the head with it. I think the trick is to make the book about the story, not the message; then it has more of a chance of coming across like a story with a subtle message, rather than an author wielding a sledgehammer.

I like to put lots of moral ambiguity into my stories, myself. And I like to read stories that have the same. But that's just my personal preference.

anodyne said:

What you INTEND your novel to say may not be what the reader gets from it. Even if you include no moral message your reader may see it there. And if you do, they might not.

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Holly Lisle wrote an interesting blog post about this awhile ago. She said she weaves allegorical messages into her books, but weaves them in so deeply that readers often see different messages than the ones that are actually there.

I'm kind of afraid people will see my current WIP as having a blatant message, actually; I'm worried they'll interpret it as being a thinly-disguised political rant, when really it's not intended to be that way at all.