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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33193
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/33193
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Just as a technical matter, a theme is not a message. Love is a theme. Love sucks is a message.

When you say you want to get across a message in your writing, what you are saying is that you want to change people's minds about some issue: either change what they think about the issue or change how important they think the issue is.

There are two ways you can change people's minds about an issue. One is through argument. The other is through experience. Argument sets out a set of facts, then lays out a conclusion and a set of reasons why the facts lead to the conclusion. This is how you proceed with an essay.

When you set out to change people's minds via experience, you lead them through a set of events and leave them to draw their own conclusions. This can be a far more convincing approach, because people reach the conclusion for themselves. We tend to resist when people try to force a conclusion on us, but we are all in when we reach a conclusion for ourselves. The downside of persuasion by experience is that you run the risk that some readers will draw a different conclusion from the one you intended.

You can do persuasion by experience in both non-fiction and fiction. Journalism and documentaries sometimes persuade by experience by simply telling you real world stories with little or no commentary. (Selection is obviously part of the technique here, and persuasion by experience can be false, just as persuasion by argument can.)

When you do persuasion by experience in fiction, you tell a fictional story that highlights aspects of real experience in the hopes that it will change people's minds about the real world. Dickens and Steinbeck are notable examples of authors who took this route to advocating for social change.

What is striking about the examples of Dickens and Steinbeck is that there is no debate about the issues Dickens tackled and not much about those Steinbeck tacked anymore, and yet their books are still read and admired. They are still read and admired because both provide profound insight into the nature of the human experience in a way that transcends politics or any particular cause.

And that is how you deliver a powerful message in fiction: you write an story about human experience that is simply authentic to life as it is actually lived, without preaching or distorting the truth of lived life in order to push your agenda. Pull that off and people will read you book who have no interest in your cause and who would never take the time to read an essay of even a work of fiction that was a transparent argument for your position.

Original score: 20