Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46511
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Making political, moral or legal arguments in novels can always get you backlash, especially when it is obvious who or what you are criticizing. If it is a topic with particular passions/people behind it (e.g. gun laws in the USA, dictatorship in dictatorships, Tiananmen Square in China) that you do not want the attention of, I would recommend leaving it alone for your own safety and peace of mind.

That being said, it is always possible to remove the actual morality/legality of the situation by change the scenario in which it is presented. For example, if you are speeding through the desert at a speed limit of 30 mph due to some weird law, criticism of speed limits will appear valid.

You could also represent it as a characters opinion e.g. "Why are you going so slow?" "The speed limit says 30", "We are in the middle of nowhere!".

You could also create a proxy of the topic you want to address e.g. there is a special race of people who have weird religious traits and prone to attacking people who don't believe in the same thing as them (depending on the time frame, it could be almost any religion).

There is nothing wrong with a novel that uses a premise that is wrong or twisted in our real world and explores what happens.

Original score: 11