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This was prompted by another thread and would have been a serious derail there, but the subject has been troubling me for some time.
It seems to me that every time the idea of meaning in a story is brought up, the story is promptly dismissed as a "Message Story." The implication is that it would be some heavy handed sermon or Aesopian fable. Accompanying this dismissal is some variation of the phrase "the story comes first" and the idea that stories exist primarily to entertain. Often there are hints and warnings of political agenda on the part of a writer who would dare put meaning first.
This idea has two problems, one on the writing side, the other on the reading.
For writing, some of us begin the creative process with the meaning of the story. Around that we create world, characters, and plot. As the story evolves the meaning grows and changes and becomes more sophisticated. It is true that if the meaning is a single simplistic sentence then the story is likely to look glaringly preachy.
But by the same token if a story is written to showcase a single character and the others are flat and two dimensional, the story will be bad, and if the story exists to showcase a single event with everything else only window dressing, the story will be uninteresting.
This is simply part of the process by which I and some other writers write. If we are told that we are wrong to start this way, that we need characters or plot first, we're stuck. We simply do not create our stories by those methods. If we are told that our stories will never be any good because they start this way we may become discouraged and never learn to make our stories work.
On the reading side, readers derive meaning from stories. They will attribute a sense of right and wrong to the events of the story. They will judge characters good or bad (or neither). They will formulate a view of the subject matter of the story out of the events and the descriptions. This is part of how humans think. We make the meaningless (like ink on a page or glowing squiggles on a screen) into the meaningful (stories, essays, and posts).
Looking through SYW, there are many critiques based on the meaning of stories. Readers will point out that a character's actions make him or her come across as evil or amoral when the writer was trying for good. They will point out that ideas or actions are fascinating or horrible. They will assert that something is unbelievable or impossible. These are as much moral or message judgments as any Aesop's Fable.
There's also meaning in each POV. Every point of view renders judgments of what it observes, whether it is a narrator decrying the way people live in a city or a character rhapsodizing over the perfection of a kind of coffee, that judgment comes across to the reader conveying meaning.
It is, as I said above, true that meanings can stick out like sore thumbs just as characters, scenery, special effects, and events can. Sometimes this can be made to work but it has fallen out of fashion, so it is more difficult nowadays.
I personally prefer to embed meaning deeper in worlds and stories and let it flow out in the course of the story by implication. But that's a stylistic choice more than anything else.
It seems to me that every time the idea of meaning in a story is brought up, the story is promptly dismissed as a "Message Story." The implication is that it would be some heavy handed sermon or Aesopian fable. Accompanying this dismissal is some variation of the phrase "the story comes first" and the idea that stories exist primarily to entertain. Often there are hints and warnings of political agenda on the part of a writer who would dare put meaning first.
This idea has two problems, one on the writing side, the other on the reading.
For writing, some of us begin the creative process with the meaning of the story. Around that we create world, characters, and plot. As the story evolves the meaning grows and changes and becomes more sophisticated. It is true that if the meaning is a single simplistic sentence then the story is likely to look glaringly preachy.
But by the same token if a story is written to showcase a single character and the others are flat and two dimensional, the story will be bad, and if the story exists to showcase a single event with everything else only window dressing, the story will be uninteresting.
This is simply part of the process by which I and some other writers write. If we are told that we are wrong to start this way, that we need characters or plot first, we're stuck. We simply do not create our stories by those methods. If we are told that our stories will never be any good because they start this way we may become discouraged and never learn to make our stories work.
On the reading side, readers derive meaning from stories. They will attribute a sense of right and wrong to the events of the story. They will judge characters good or bad (or neither). They will formulate a view of the subject matter of the story out of the events and the descriptions. This is part of how humans think. We make the meaningless (like ink on a page or glowing squiggles on a screen) into the meaningful (stories, essays, and posts).
Looking through SYW, there are many critiques based on the meaning of stories. Readers will point out that a character's actions make him or her come across as evil or amoral when the writer was trying for good. They will point out that ideas or actions are fascinating or horrible. They will assert that something is unbelievable or impossible. These are as much moral or message judgments as any Aesop's Fable.
There's also meaning in each POV. Every point of view renders judgments of what it observes, whether it is a narrator decrying the way people live in a city or a character rhapsodizing over the perfection of a kind of coffee, that judgment comes across to the reader conveying meaning.
It is, as I said above, true that meanings can stick out like sore thumbs just as characters, scenery, special effects, and events can. Sometimes this can be made to work but it has fallen out of fashion, so it is more difficult nowadays.
I personally prefer to embed meaning deeper in worlds and stories and let it flow out in the course of the story by implication. But that's a stylistic choice more than anything else.
