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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/9825
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I realized I tend to state directly the message/moral of the story in my stories (as dialogue in most of the cases). My plots are rather ambiguous, though. And I use a lot of metaphors/symbols so the connection is not always clear.

Few examples:

**Ghost Earthquake**

The story is about a girl who misses an earthquake that hits her city. She doesn't remember what she was doing at the time, and nothing seems to have moved a single inch in her apartment. As she tries to uncover the mystery, she comes face to face with her deepest fears, and realizes the world around her is very different to the one she once knew.

Around the middle, the protagonist's boyfriend says (while discussing about earthquakes):

> “Maybe what we see around us isn't as solid as we think. In fact, sometimes I think the concept of things being solid is just a human thought. Perhaps nothing is really solid in the universe. Instead, everything's constantly breaking apart, taking a new form.”

**The Kid with the Gigaku Mask**

About a girl who encounters a mysterious kid while on vacation at the beach. It's a story about ownership and belonging.

At the beginning of the story one of the protagonist's friend says (while discussing about his friend's runaway cat):

> “Anyway, those things happen.” Kazuo took a long drink of his beer. “Nothing can be taken for granted. In fact, sometimes I wonder if anything really belongs to us in this world.”

**Sushi Break**

The story is about a girl who travels every weekend to another city to see her boyfriend. But he cancels every time, so she ends up eating sushi alone in a sushi stand. It's about love, distance, and how happiness can come from the strangest places.

Near the end, the protagonist's friend says (after the protagonist has already stopped questioning the reasons her boyfriend is avoiding her):

> “You know,” Faye said, “sometimes I think the best thing to do is to stop trying to think about reasons. You have to stop trying to make sense of your pain, and actually do something to avoid it. If you don't, you'll find all kinds of ways to rationalize it, or find things to temporally fill the void they produce. I'm not saying it's bad. It's OK to find happiness in little things, little experiences. Just remember you gotta keep moving. No matter what. You gotta keep moving.”

Hope these examples helped to illustrate (of course, the characters don't bring the matter all of the sudden. The transition is smooth most of the time).

Some of my favorite writers do this, sometimes. But I'm wondering, is this an example of bad writing?

Original score: 6