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Q&A Weaving VERY IMPORTANT OPINIONS into a story without murdering it

Lots of great authors had very important opinions. Dickens. Steinbeck. Solzhenitsyn. Dostoyevsky. What they all understood is that a story is not a vehicle to express an opinion, but a vehicle for ...

posted 6y ago by Mark Baker‭  ·  last activity 4y ago by System‭

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#4: Attribution notice removed by user avatar System‭ · 2020-01-03T20:41:55Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29802
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:54:38Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/29802
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision by user avatar System‭ · 2019-12-08T06:54:38Z (over 4 years ago)
Lots of great authors had very important opinions. Dickens. Steinbeck. Solzhenitsyn. Dostoyevsky. What they all understood is that a story is not a vehicle to express an opinion, but a vehicle for leading people to form the same opinion themselves by leading them through the experiences that would lead someone to form that opinion.

That does not mean, of course, that there cannot be any preaching in a story. People preach in real life. When Tom Joad gives his impassioned speech at the end of _Grapes of Wrath_, it does not feel like the author preaching, though of course it is, it feels like the character preaching because that is exactly the speech that that character would give in that situation (whether the author agreed with him or not).

#1: Imported from external source by user avatar System‭ · 2017-08-18T02:46:37Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 23