It’s not possible for writers to keep their personal opinions out of their work. The finished product is a manifestation of who the writer is; unless you're a boring little blank with no strong feelings or opinions about anything, people will come away from your novel, or short story, with some idea of your favorite foods, whether you like to fish, whether you’re left or right of center, and so on.
A story where no character ever said anything or stood for anything would be deadly dull. In my own work characters make points all the time; frequently they’re countered by other characters. Sometimes they reach agreement, and sometimes not. Any reader would expect this in a story about a galactic war that features people from different planets trying to get along. Since I just want to tell a story, I try to avoid preaching; thus far I haven’t had any complaints about it. When a book is written to Make a Point, it’s evident on every page. Characters tend to be one-dimensional, dialog is either cliched or sounds like a prepared speech, the situations are stock, and the reader knows fairly early on how this will end. The worst example of this in recent fiction is, of course, the Left Behind series. Messrs. Jenkins and LeHaye were so wrapped up in glorifying Christ and converting people that they forgot to tell a story. (Not that I buy for two seconds that anyone actually converted after reading this tripe).
Earlier this year I read a novel called Evolution’s Child, in which religious fanatics (Christians and Muslims, natch) are battling for control of the Earth. The moon is a religion-free, rational haven, with all the casual sex you could want. Of course all the fanatics want to destroy the place.
This book isn’t exactly bad, but it has all the classic features of a book written to Make a Point; I couldn’t remember the name of a single character from one day to the next, and it didn’t help that the dialog frequently sounded like a professor’s prepared lecture notes rather than spontaneous conversation. No religious people are moderates, or even happy in their faith. They’re all miserable, intolerant bigots. The atheist residents of the moon colony are just as bigoted and disrespectful of other people’s beliefs, but in the novel this is considered a good thing. It’s a shame, because there’s a compelling story here, but the author was so intent on Making a Point that he forgot about Telling a Story.
Not only can preaching turn people off, it’s also ineffective. I read a story once where the author felt compelled to include the breast-size in his description of every female character. I asked him about his breast-fetish; he explained that he wanted to show that small-breasted women can be beautiful, capable, smart, etc. Well, I already know that. Many people, even many men, know that. People who need to learn it aren’t going to learn it from any fiction. Everyone else will just wonder about the author’s fixation on breasts.
We can learn a lot from good fiction; the best, (works by Dickens, Robertson Davies, Ursula LeGuin, Umberto Eco, among hundreds) shows us new ways of looking at the world. We might even learn some interesting esoterica. But few people will drop their religious beliefs, or accept Christ as their personal savior, or appreciate small-breasted women just because some book says they should.
If you want to Make a Point or teach people something, write an essay, or offer to teach a class at the local community college. When you write fiction, stick to telling a story. If you do that well, any point you want to make will take care of itself.
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fiction, preaching, storytelling, writing
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