: Re: How do I include a powerful theme in my story without making it blatantly obvious? I want to have an underlying message in my writing but I really don't want it to come across as annoying

@Murray165

Vote Up Vote Down

You need to integrate this theme into your story.

Take children's stories as an example. They almost always have some morals to teach, but good ones do it very unobtrusively, and you, well, feeling good to be taught morals.

For example, if you look at most Pixar and many Disney animation features, like "Toy story", "Finding Nemo", "Wall-e" and "Zootopia", you can see a very obvious themes, which, if presented alone, would get children and adults only annoyed. But by intertwining these themes with storylines, creators produce a powerful message that resonates with their audience and doesn't cause any pushback.

Certainly, the difficulty of the task depends on what kind of message you want to send. For widely accepted moral principles this is easy. For religious themes this is more difficult, the author would need an extra effort to keep non-religious audience "on board". Or, conversely, like Philip Pullman, author may choose to antagonize religious audience.

If your theme is very controversial and not likely to be received well with any kind of story (ex. benefits of recreational drug use), I would recommend to drop the "theme" part at least partially and instead of creating a message like "This is the right thing", go with toned down message like "This also happens, and not necessarily leads to tragedy".

(0)

Login to post a comment!