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Change the World? Entertain? Both?

HR Garcia

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I met a fellow writer recently that was extremely passionate about how she wanted her book (YA post-apocalyptic) to change the world, the mindsets of young women, opinions on abortion, etc. Great for her, really. I admire the passion.

But.

My book (currently editing draft 3 of an adult psychological thriler) isn't inspirational, I don't expect it to change anyone's life, and I have no ulterior motives or political ideologies I want to get across. It's bleak. It's supposed to be. It's real and dark and gritty, and it's the kind of book I would want to read. It purposely doesn't have a happy ending.

While driving home from the encounter, I wondered if I was doing something wrong, but then I realized it's okay to have both out there in the world. Some write to inspire, some write to entertain, and I suppose some are both.

I'm curious what the general consensus is on this...
 
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Harlequin

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I want to create an emotional connection and/or connect with people in a way I find impossible through verbal communication. In that sense I have done what I wanted, but onlyon a small scale.

I have to say, having ENORMOUS goals for your book sounds like a path to disappointment. A book being famous or impactful is mostly out of an author's control.

I would advise any writer to stick to goals which rely on them, and not other people.
 

MythMonger

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I wonder how many writers set out to change the world, only to find their work was misinterpreted.
 

lizmonster

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I want to entertain enough people that I can sell the next one.

That's it.

If I change the world? Hope it's in a good way. But I don't aspire to that. I like to tell stories; I just hope enough people like reading them.

ETA: All art is political. The author's attitudes will come through, intended or otherwise. But to MythMonger's point: every reader reads a book differently. The reader's attitudes will shape the story as well.
 
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BradCarsten

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I want people to escape all the heavy stuff that they face in the world on a daily basis, and enjoy themselves for a few hours. There's no deeper meaning, no lessons, nothing that looks like modern day politics, or life lessons disguised as a story.
There's nothing wrong with it, if you enjoy that kind of thing, but I read to be entertained, and that's all I want to give my readers. I really don't like it when I'm watching a film or reading a book and I suddenly feel like I'm being lectured to.

Funny enough, if I think about the people who had the greatest impact on my life, they were friends and not necessarily teachers. I believe that if you have compelling characters that people are drawn to, they can still have a great impact on your readers, even if that isn't your primary goal.
 

indianroads

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Martyrs seek to change the world, and it never seems to work out well for them in the end.

I do my best to tell the truth about the things I've seen and experienced, and try to be entertaining along the way.
 

Harlequin

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I do feel compelled to comment that fun versus meaningful is something of a false dichotomy. It implies that fun books can't have depth, and conversely that people who like depth must not like fun.

Depth adds to enjoyability for me. It isnt the only requirement for fun but they are not mutually exclusive by any means.
 

Shoeless

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I think there's a lot of value in in entertainment, especially for people that are in dark or unpleasant places in their lives that find a little bit of joy or hope or inspiration in escapism. If my stories can make people feel like they've been on a fun ride, and maybe picked up an idea or question or two along the way about the way technology affects society, or the way racism can color your perception of whether a society is Just Fine or Extremely Problematic, then I'd consider that mission accomplished. I'm not here to lecture, it's more important for them to think "I enjoyed that," than "I've got a new direction in life thanks to this book."
 

Marissa D

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^^ What Shoeless said. I write to give readers mini-vacations, to (hopefully) cheer them up if they're in a dark or dreary place and get a few endorphins flowing so that they're smiling when they read "the end." Of course, I like sneaking tidbits of history in as well, which fits in with my secret goal to brainwash the population into becoming history lovers. Don't tell anyone I told you that. :D

ETA: The best fan letter I ever got was from a woman who thanked me for my first book; reading it got her through the first week after her husband had been deployed to an active combat zone. And that's why I want to write for entertainment.
 
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PyriteFool

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I do feel compelled to comment that fun versus meaningful is something of a false dichotomy. It implies that fun books can't have depth, and conversely that people who like depth must not like fun.

Depth adds to enjoyability for me. It isnt the only requirement for fun but they are not mutually exclusive by any means.

Agreed. I'd actually argue that to be impactful a book *must* on some level be entertaining. No one likes being lectured. The story is the mechanism through which the meaning is conveyed, and if you don't like the story, how are you supposed to connect with the message? Even non fiction is fundamentally about crafting a narrative. You can have entertaining books without depth, but I'm not sure you can have the reverse. Which makes it especially important for people that do have a message to convey to really hone their story telling craft (because a good message on its own ain't gonna cut it).

I'm also on the "all art is political" train, since the writer is fully responsible for crafting their world. It will inevitably reflect how they see things. And that can be good, bad, or both. I do think it should make creators feel some sense of responsibility towards the worlds they create, though, regardless of whether or not they have a message.
 

BethS

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I'm curious what the general consensus is on this...

Quite often, when a writer starts out with a particular agenda, especially to change the world/people's mindsets, the result is unreadable fiction. The reach usually exceeds the grasp. This is a writer who wants to preach, not tell a story.

Themes that truly inspire or provoke thought and discussion generally emerge organically, even unconsciously (on the writer's part), from the story and the characters. If there are issues the writer deeply cares about and wants to illustrate, then the writer should illustrate them honestly, which means showing each side and all the consequences of both. And then stepping out of the way to let the reader draw his/her own conclusions. But throughout all, the story not the message should be paramount.
 
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rgroberts

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I'm in this to entertain, too. I read to escape to another world, to experience a story that can take me away from real life for a bit. I try to write what I'd like to read, which means that I want to write something entertaining. Yeah, maybe I'll sneak a message into stuff here and there, but I can't imagine future high school teachers making students read my stories, and I'm cool with that.
 

neandermagnon

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For the most part I write for my own enjoyment. I'd like to make money out of it, if at all possible. One of the motivations for writing prehistoric fiction is that most people's knowledge of the palaeolithic era is worse than pitiful, with prevalent ideas about it being completely wrong and not even plausible (like "cavemen" who are less intelligent than the average chimp... less intelligent than a below average chimp for that matter!) and also are ridiculous parodies of our society's own bad ideas and a grossly inaccurate and unfair representation of hunter-gatherer peoples... I would like at some level to address this issue and present a more accurate and fair picture of our very own ancestors who were intelligent, resourceful, articulate, compassionate and a whole bunch of other positive qualities that we modern humans have inherited from them (even if some of us appear to have lost some of them). So yeah I suppose educating people and changing opinions is in there in my list of motivations. But I wouldn't say it's my primary motivation for writing. My primary motivation for writing what I write is I'm sick to death of the lack of existence of up-to-date, scientifically plausible prehistoric fiction, and even more sick to death of all the horrible stereotypes of "cavemen" FFS if humans had really been like that we'd have gone extinct! Most of our ancestors didn't even live in caves for starters...

Okay I should probably stop ranting about that... :greenie mostly I write what I want to read.

ETA: on re-reading I think I didn't express what I meant well... I write what I want to read. I want to read prehistoric fiction that's at least somewhat plausible and not full of ridiculous stereotypes. There's not a lot of it about, therefore I'm motivated to write my own.
 
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beeauthor

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I write because I love writing. I want to publish because I want money so I have more time for writing and not working. My intentions for my books are to entertain and hopefully take someone out of their own mind for a while, to be able to do that is, in a lot ways, a changing the world type of thing. Changing the world happens one person at a time and is done through communication and the sharing of ideas. That's writing, great in'it? :)
 

Thomas Vail

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I wonder how many writers set out to change the world, only to find their work was misinterpreted.
Ambition is great, but it should be tempered with a certain amount of realism. I would question if anyone could actually write a book so accessible, so striking, so ground breaking, that it would literally change the world. Referring back to the Op's friend, what could I put on page that would be so empathetically piercing that it would change people's opinions on something like abortion?

The great visionary whose work changes everything is a common trope in fiction - I'm reminded of Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series where at one point, the protagonist makes a statue that is so visually emblematic of... something... that people who look at it are immediately struck by the revelation that communism is wrong, but that's not how the world works.

I would suspect that the Op's friend has something like being J.K. Rowling in mind, but Rowling certainly wasn't planning on being a titan of literary fame when she first started penning Harry Potter. That's really not something you can plan on, but what you will do with it, IF you ever get it, is something you can.
 

lizmonster

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Referring back to the Op's friend, what could I put on page that would be so empathetically piercing that it would change people's opinions on something like abortion?

I brush against this topic in my first book, and I knew as I was writing it that my intent could be interpreted in multiple ways.

The Kid is currently reading a YA that, to me, has a pretty heavy anti-death-penalty message, but I could easily see how someone could read it as exactly the opposite.

Unless you use a sledgehammer, people are going to weave their own biases into what you write. And as others have noted...it's an unusual writer who can wield a sledgehammer without producing something that's no fun to read.
 

bwebs

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To me The World/politics are a Cat 5 hurricane. Sometimes I like talking about where landfall is going to happen, and hoping it it's not my town, and maybe helping someone else with their loss, but effecting the direction of the hurricane...let's say I have doubts about that:)

I think I write because I like to read, and sometimes I like great writing so much that I think it would be an amazing thing to be able to do. Especially to share with others and make some kind of living at.

Also, now that I'm thinking about it, one of the most poignant things to me about the good lessons that have stuck with me from reading is how utterly they seem to be ignored.
 
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Harlequin

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True that :)

Honestly, though, I think the biggest way to change minds on abortion (or whatever) is to encourage imagination and empathy. With imagination, someone can project a hypothetical situation where they see themselves in another's shoes. With empathy, they can care what happens to other people. Reading boosts both of those things by default, because they put us into the shoes of other people by their nature. A book may not focus on any issue in particular, but caring about people other than ourselves in situations not experienced by ourselves can only ever be a good thing.
 

Taylor Harbin

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I would like to do both but I can only write honestly. Public reception isn’t my call. At this point I’d just like to be published.