: 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

@LarsenBagley300

I'd like to add some thoughts here even though the existing answers are valuable, and one has been chosen, and I'll be incorporating them within my own work. Nonetheless:



(1) Consider your specific goal - the why of why you want to give the message. Do you wish the reader to know up front what the message is, discover the message as they read, or never be aware of the message? Do you wish to persuade the reader, or are you simply hoping to state your case with no concern for the reader's response? Do you wish your readership to be those already in the 'choir' or do you wish to have broad appeal? Do you wish your story to be successful quickly, or are you content if it becomes prescient after you are dead?

I'm a scientist and we are often implored to 'make the science accessible' so that people may understand it more easily. Take opioid abuse, a topic I've begun developing for a story. Heroin and morphine are opioids, and oxycodone is as well. Approximately twenty years ago in the US, regulations were changed so that drug manufacturers could market directly to consumers (commercials on the television; think, Viagra.) Pharmaceutical reps go to the doctors and give them free samples of all sorts of drugs (acid reduction, skin medication, you name it, pain relievers.) The US is litigious, we'll sue easily. Doctors, enough of them, truly want their patients to be 'well.' Feel better.

Within this mix it is easy to understand how corporate interests ('Big Pharma') can maneuver to a position of greater profit. This comes at a cost of more patients on opioids, and when their prescription runs out or they abuse and take too much or the doctor ends his practice or or or... They can get a similar compound on the street, which is unregulated, like dirty heroin.

Addiction is a demon.

So right there are a lot of ideas, and I can write a story about a person going through this, maybe a roofer who fell and broke their back, becomes addicted, can't get work, and things spiral out of control.

Plenty of celebrities have been found dead from heroin overdose, and some may have started with a prescription painkiller.



(2) Imagine it from the reader's perspective. Perhaps the reader is taking oxycodone. Becoming addicted. If they pick up this story, should they know at the outset that it will be a damning commentary on the events that led to the current opioid crisis in the US? They might not buy it, or they might, if they know up front.

I've read plenty of books though, where halfway through I figure out that the author is really saying something else and become angry that the author is trying to tell me what to think. I throw the book across the room or throw it clean away.

Dickens is an excellent example of cleanly executed straight-up stories about social ills, +1 for that. I wonder if the stories were successful in their time?



(3) You can't please everybody. Approximately half of the IRL people I discuss my book with tell me they won't read it precisely because it sounds like it will be preachy. I'd personally rather tell the science (of, for example, addiction) (and history, and capitalism) in the form of a story: for those who have no idea but might want to know what opioids are, and the reason people think they want it is because of the marketing campaigns, and by the way here are the side effects you don't hear about, and here are the numbers on the deaths and effects to the economy. I could do this in a spread sheet, instead, but I guarantee no one will read that.

So if it's clear up front that this is the intent, to make the science 'accessible,' then sure, a can of worms might open up, but my motivation is served and no one who would be put off has to buy it to begin with.

My answer: Determine your goals for writing what you're writing. Ask yourself which readers you are trying to reach. What would those people like to see, in your story? A direct message, stated explicitly? Or something more subtle that might be lost and even misunderstood?

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