: 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

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Don't lecture; Make it natural, not forced; Teach Characters lessons, not the audience
An example of lecturing:
In the middle of a desperate mission to save the Resistance, Rose takes the time to deliver a little speech to Finn about the seedy side of the opulent city they're visiting. The speech has no bearing on their mission. It does nothing to move the mission forward. It's jarring and came off as 'preachy' to me. Don't have characters stop what they're doing to deliver paragraphs of message. That doesn't really happen in natural conversation.
An example of forced character growth:
In TLJ, again, Po has a character arc where he learns to be less hotheaded. The trouble is, the movie clearly shows us that Po is learning this lesson through dialog but the actions that lead him down this path don't really seem to correlate with the lessons hes "learning".
Po's initial action is ignoring Leia to take out the Dreadnought. He succeeds. Destroying billions of credits of material, time, and killing over 200,000 trained enemy combatants at the cost of several bombers. This can only be a good thing, but he's reprimanded by Leia for being hotheaded, starting his character arc. The next thing is his mutiny, which again, seems perfectly reasonable since the only reason Holdo could have to withhold a plan is if she didn't have one, or it was too awful to share. Finally, showing us that Po has completed his arc, Po calls off the speeder attack to save the speeder pilots' lives. But this is unreasonable. They will all die if they can't stop the Space Battering Ram.
You can tell the writers wanted Po to learn a lesson (and by extension, the audience) and have an arc, but they did so in a way that didn't really make much sense (to me, at least) and in a way that required contrivances like Holdo's silence.
A Good Example Spiderman 1 (Toby Mcguire)
At the cage fight, Peter is shorted the money he was promised for winning. A short time later, he sees the guy who shorted him getting robbed and decides not to intervene as a way of getting payback. This is a perfectly reasonable reaction. But, (spoilers, I guess?) it leads to the robber killing Uncle Ben. This is also a perfectly reasonable extension of events. The message communicated is clear: "Take responsibility and do what's right, even if they person you're helping is a jerk".
That message, or theme, is something Peter learns, but as we see the story unfold, we learn that message as well.
If you don't agree with my assessment of TLJ, please just take it as the way I perceived the movie.
Which brings me to a final point, know your audience. If you try to convey a message to people that "Murder is ok", it's probably not going to resonate with average people, regardless of how that message is delivered, and it'll probably come off as preachy, but if you're selling to serial killers on death row, they might not think so.

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