No, a story doesn't need some grand overreaching meaning or message. A story is just a story. Whatever meaning you have behind it doesn't matter as readers will come up with their own meanings. Some will read into it even deeper than you ever intended. A kind of famous example (that has been memed to death, so I'm not looking for the original) is where a teacher told their students that a writer made a door blue because of emotions and hidden messages. When the student met the writer, they flat out said the teacher was full of shit and that they picked blue because they liked the color.
Personally, I had it happen with a short story I wrote. "The Tavern" was based on the first three Dragon Age games. In the story, the heroes of each game meet up in the afterlife. Someone took this as "Good people get rewarded for self-sacrifice," which I was like... no, I'm not that deep, I just wanted to write a scene where my three dead Player Characters meet up.
No, a story doesn't need some grand overreaching meaning or message. A story is just a story. Whatever meaning you have behind it doesn't matter as readers will come up with their own meanings. Some will read into it even deeper than you ever intended. A kind of famous example (that has been memed to death, so I'm not looking for the original) is where a teacher told their students that a writer made a door blue because of emotions and hidden messages. When the student met the writer, they flat out said the teacher was full of shit and that they picked blue because they liked the color.
Personally, I had it happen with a short story I wrote. "The Tavern" was based on the first three Dragon Age games. In the story, the heroes of each game meet up in the afterlife. Someone took this as "Good people get rewarded for self-sacrifice," which I was like... no, I'm not that deep, I just wanted to write a scene where my three dead Player Characters meet up.
Heh. After about three weeks in a modern drama class (one of them focused on reading "Waiting for Godot"), I asked myself: "Why do we always ask 'should we believe in God'? What if God doesn't believe in US?" and, in about 15 minutes, wrote a very short story about it.
It wound up, somehow, in our college's quarterly literary magazine, and one of my friends was in the class that was the first to see it. Someone else brought up my story, and they wound up devoting more time than it took me to write the story in discussing it. Like 3x more than it took me to write it.
I don't think a story has to specifically convey a message. However, most stories, even written without an intention to do so, will have some emergent message that is not there because the author thought to put it in, but comes about as a common individual observation based on character behavior and events.
Yeah whatever you wants. I had questions, I asked them and I got some very interesting answers which gave me some insight into my way of doing things and which allowed me to better nuance my way of doing things. That's all, your answer was far too full of emotion for me to consider it seriously. Keep your "hate" for you.
People who think they aren't conveying a message or moral are still doing so implicitly. The space of "Moral Actions" as a human defined category is huge. The exception might be certain informational math and physics texts, though there the moral is still that learning stem is better than not learning stem.
Any character that has to make choices implies moral weight to the choices they've made for your story. People often don't realize they're merely baking their cultural morals into their story when they write. Do I think harem writers, largely from the east (at least initially), are explicitly making a statement about how harems are good? No, but they aren't as Taboo as they were in the west (where Christianity dominates), so the author was just writing. It still bakes in the morals with it.
If your characters have to make choices on what to do, and you as the author either reward or punish them, you're making a moral statement about a behavior, even if you don't realize it. For example, many authors reward the hero's idealistic behavior (such as not killing the weak), while other authors will punish it. This emphasizes a moral choice between idealism and realism philosophical choices.
You have to be an exceptional author to slip in active moralizing without others noticing. Usually, when someone tries to moralize, people catch on and drop the series. What I see more often is that readers from different nationalities often have clashing morals with the author. International websites tend to have these issues. For example, I wouldn't expect a Hindu reader from India to appreciate many western protagonist's moral perspectives because they're rooted in very different moral traditions.
Similar things can be said for Chinese/Malasia/Central African/Middle Eastern readers/authors. As more and more of the non-western world becomes consumers on the internet, western authors are going to become acutely aware that their stories are, in fact, moralizing, even if they aren't consciously aware of it.
Every story, almost definitionally, has moral statements baked in, because you are writing a fictional character in a fictional setting. Even if you imagine the character as real, you're inventing both their choices and the resolutions to those choices. You are deciding what actions are rewarded or punished, therefore you are making a moral judgement on a behavior.
A good example is that in Indian culture, there is a caste system. As a result, those higher up directly helping the poor would be considered a negative thing. They may choose to help indirectly, but don't have a moral obligation to do so. In the west, due to Christian morals, we consider someone who overlooks the poor when directly presented with them to be a negative thing. If you as an author ever present a situation where you have a protagonist help the poor, it is a moral statement.
In short, Christian morals aren't "The Default". Morals are baked into all decision making. If you are telling a story, you're moralizing in one way or another. At their base, that is what stories are. A way of giving people a framework for making moral judgements should hypothetical situations arise. This is why phrases like "sisyphean task", "herculean task", "achilles' heel", "narcissism", "David vs Goliath", "Writing on the wall", "catch-22", "Kryptonite", and so so so many more exist. Stories provide a moral framework to make future decisions with. Some stories may have grander implications than others, but they still make moral statements none-the-less.
Yes, this means that 50 shades of gray is a moralizing book. Yes, you shouldn't be surprised, as it introduced many people to BDSM, which necessarily has moral qualities.
Does that mean you need to think about your moral implications as you write? No. Just be aware that you are making them. More often than not, your story will simply re-emphasize the same morals that have been hashed out in your culture dozens of times already, and that is fine. There will be a few drops of insight from your own moral philosophy in there, even if you don't realize it.
I really don't know how to thank you, your answer really took a load off my shoulders. I don't regret making this post at all, I'll try to just focus on the story more. And be less obsessed with the substance or how it will be interpreted. Thank you very much!
Really thx to all the people who gave me a lot of answers. It really helps me ! And sorry if my writing is bad I'm French ?
Yeah whatever you wants. I had questions, I asked them and I got some very interesting answers which gave me some insight into my way of doing things and which allowed me to better nuance my way of doing things. That's all, your answer was far too full of emotion for me to consider it seriously. Keep your "hate" for you.
I'd argue, yes. As other people have said, morals will be invoked whether you indend for them to be or not. Every decision your character makes and it's subsequent consequences showcase morality from your stories' point of view.
Consider a bandit. Suppose this bandit attacks a civilian, kills him, runs away and never gets caught? That scenario has moral implications. Now suppose this bandit attacks a civilian, kills him, but then gets caught later. That has moral implications. What if The bandit runs away but then is betrayed by his comrades? What if the bandit gets killed by the civilian in self defense? All these have moral implications. So if your story has a bandit/thief in it, then the story must have some moral to it.
Now extend that argument to any point of conflict or decision in a story. Well, you need to write it somehow, and so you will be suggesting consequences of those decisions. Those are moral implications. And the patterns in cause and effect in your story will convey those implications whether you've actively thought about them or not.
Now, let's ask a follow up question:should you necessarily consider the morals/messages your story is trying to convey?
Because your story will have moral themes to it, I think it's common sense that you want to consider if those themes are any good or not, before you go on and write absolute trash.
Don't include others, u didn't exactly say "yes" ?, I have the right to question and disagree with some of the things u did say idk why u immediatly go with the "fishing for validation" thing but I really don't want to argue for something pointless like that, I swear I hope a lot of good things will happen to you and have good day bro ??
Uhh...yes, I literally did say that going into a story worrying more about pushing a message than telling the story was bad. And others did say the same thing. You're not doing a good job of convincing anyone that you aren't just blocking out the opinions you don't like.
I think yes. The story that doesn't tries to impart anything or to speak of something feels like a colossal waste of time, and there are enough ways to entertain oneself and alleviate boredom. I'm not a preschooler to read purely for escapism. Books were always a special form of media to me, and besides, those are slow, immersive... Don't you want to make every word count?
