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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37589
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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.

Original score: 5