What do you do when your message could be dangerous?
I've long believed that for a novel (or any kind of fiction) to have a certain weight or power behind it, there must be a message. I've been writing this why for many years, and it's lent my fiction direction and purpose.
However, I am now faced with a quandary: I've come across a message I really believe in, but if taken the wrong way by enough people, it could have horrible consequences. Chances are that nothing would ever happen, but there is always the slight possibility that it would be the push enough people need to send them into action.
I obviously don't want to use my actual message as an example, so I'll use one which seems popular today instead. There are a lot of dystopian movies these days, and while the focus on it varies, there's always some level of 'the people' striking down the 'evil government' which has 'enslaved' them.
Now if I'm an author who feels that government is something which needs to be kept in check before it becomes corrupt, and I choose to write a novel saying as much, there's a problem. Do I want something to change? Obviously. But that doesn't mean I want rioting in the streets and anarchy in the nation. More than likely, I just want a solution reached peaceably. Ideally, heads of government would realize 'where they're headed' and take measures to prevent it.
That might be what I want, but - always assuming that my novel influences a large percentage of the people - is that what's going to happen? Probably not. There probably will be rioting in the streets, if not worse.
So what can I do? I feel like people need to know this message, but I'm afraid that if taken the wrong way or in the wrong context, I might be the cause of some truly horrible actions. It isn't likely, but there's still a chance, no matter how small.
The obvious solution is to preach directly against those horrible actions. In theory this would work. But in practice, people are fully capable of latching onto something they believe in and ignoring all else.
So that's my question: what do you do when your message could be dangerous? Do you just give up writing it altogether? Or is there a way to ensure that it isn't taken the wrong way? (Obviously you can't 100% guarantee anything, but you can certainly come as close as possible.)
This question is NOT:
- Asking for opinions on whether or not the opening paragraph is true or false. I'd be happy to hear your thoughts in a comment, but please, do not open an answer with 'I think your underlying assumption is flawed...'
- Asking for you to show how UNLIKELY it is that enough people read my novel, identify with the message, and then act in a way I would never wish. I know it's incredibly unlikely. My concern is with the smallest of chances that such an event occurs.
- A disguised anti-government message. The whole dystopian example is theoretical, and this is a legitimate question and concern of mine.
4 answers
Working within your premise of "novel as message", very few messages are black-and-white. Most will bring problems if ignored and also if taken too far, or too literally. Humans (and maybe any other species likely to evolve in the real universe) are likely to have difficult and sometimes conflicting motives, including selfish and contradictory motives.
So a message in the sense you mean, may be best done, by showing the worst outcomes of both extremes, so the reader can figure it themselves.
A superb example of this in an acclaimed novel, is Ursula LeGuin's "The Dispossessed". In this book, the author posits a protagonist within a world where there are no possessions/private property, who seeks to work with scientists in other worlds that have economies based on possession/property. By the end of the book, she shows (but doesn't tell) how in the first world, jealousy and power games play out even without property to fight over, and in the second world how unequal distribution causes harm and power cliques to arise. The reader is left in an unsettling position of being shown the harm both extremes can do, without any hint from the author which side they should end up supporting. The author adds to this by leaving it to the reader to encounter the tension seen through her protagonist's eyes, while doing nothing at all to resolve it for them.
In your case it's worth a read, because it sounds like you want to do is convey a message that something is bad (or must be done), but also, done too much or the wrong way, harm will also result. You want to convince your readers of both of these things, and leave them to take on board the message(s?).
That's exactly what LeGuin did in her book, and is very rarely done. It might help to show how it's possible.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37624. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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Secespitus's answer of showing them the negative possibilities of the 'wrong' interpretation is a good idea.
I know writers are meant to "Show not tell". Sometimes it might be useful to straight out tell the readers that the possible intrepretation you are worried about is not what you are advocating. Especially if your show techniques are also open to their own misintreptations. A combination of both techniques could also be used.
For instance I've been working on a story where to become a magic-user you literally have to die. Dead dead... and then you get magic! See why I am a bit worried?
I could potentially see one or two wretched souls potentially deciding that what they were reading was a plausible?/real?/escape-from-reality-good-idea and try and take their own life. That is not what I want!
I have planned to have my protagonist have a confusing time adjusting to their new situation. During a very early training/lecture/small info-dumpey session etc the sceptical and confused protaganist will straight out ask their mentor figure what would have happened if they had purposely taken their own life. And the mentor is going to say something along the lines of:
Don't be stupid, that idea won't ever work out. Completely not what I said.
Possibly not in those exact words :)
And this early "preventative disclaimer" message may be reinforced multiple times throughout the story in both show and further tell scenes with other curious characters. Hopefully unobtrusively.
Obviously, if a few readers are determined to misintrepretate my story premise or underlying message (as in your case), there is nothing that you or I can do. As Amadeus wrote:
...we cannot anticipate complete insanity.
But we can and should do what we can, for what we can predict.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37589. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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From my POV, if I strive to make myself clear and unambiguous, and people take that the wrong way, that's on them. Not me.
Virtually every revolution for the good has involved "illegal" acts, including lethal violence, in one way or another. The founding fathers of the USA fired upon the duly constituted authority of the Crown, killing people. Real revolutionary rebels are always outlaws, otherwise there is no revolution. The French Revolution was a bloody mess.
If you are advocating for something that would change the world for the better, be assured there are many powerful and rich people benefiting from the current world order that are willing to corrupt government (probably already have) to use their force to outlaw it, prevent it, and keep the subjugated, subjugated.
So my advice is to do your best, put your idea out there in fiction, and see what happens. IRL one must always weigh the cost of change against the benefit of change; when talking politics that includes, for example, the price of change is often grief and lives and fortunes lost, but this must be weighed against the lives saved and grief prevented by making the change anyway.
There is always the risk of unintended consequences; you are not guilty of creating them by telling a fictional story. There will always be readers that just cannot tell the difference between reality and a fiction with an engineered outcome, because the author always has a thumb on the scale and always cannot anticipate every real-life response to various character actions (or did but chose an alternative more conducive to the plot).
Catering to the mentally ill is a recipe for never publishing anything, because we cannot anticipate complete insanity.
Write for reasonable people that use fiction to escape the real world, but still know the difference between fiction and the real world. If you have a good idea, write it. Make it clear. Make it exciting, even if that takes violence. Darth Vader destroyed the planet Alderaan, killing two billion people! It would be silly to accuse George Lucas of advocating for genocide.
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If you don't want people rioting in the streets you should show how people are rioting in the streets in your novel - and how that way utterly fails to achieve what the people wanted to achieve.
Discourage the obvious, easy ways that you already see, the horrible and dangerous paths that people may think they should walk on when reading your novel. They need to realize that you believe it will end very, very badly for them if they follow that path. They need to see with their own eyes what horrors await those that follow the wrong path.
But the path that for example your protagonist takes: that way actually works! Show your readers that they can achieve their goal in a peaceful way or whatever way you choose to show. Don't view your message merely as "The government is evil!" - start viewing your message as "The government is evil and I will show the population how they can make it better!"
In the end your readers some readers will misinterpret your text. And they will find new ways to interpret your work that you can't foresee. Your goal should be to get the message across to the majority by making it obvious how the dangerous ways that you already see are doomed to fail and how the peaceful way will help achieve the ultimate goal of making life better for everyone. Or whatever way you choose and whatever goal you have in mind.
Your message consists not only of a statement about your current day society - it consists of a statement about the current state, a way to go forward from here and a statement about how the world could be if everyone follows that way. Every other way will fail.
The world is not black and white and so is your fictional world. Show a different side of the whole struggle and a different approach that you believe people could reasonably come up with while reading your work and demonstrate the consequences of walking that path.
You want the government to take action? Show the government person taking action and succeeding while the riot on the outside only meant emergency law.
You want the people to have more humane animal farming? Show how much money can be made with humane animal farming while the old-school competitors are left in the dirt.
You want people to value their privacy again? Show how much better your protagonist felt when they were off-grid while other people are losing their identity.
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