Are there any lessons in your stories?

[BlackSnake]

Have you though about writing a story that some value, teaches a lesson? Do you have a story the educates as well as entertain?

 

[Op_Cit]

At the risk of offending some, I think that's the best kind of story, and deep down my conscience says the only worth while kind.

But there's a lot of different ways of doing this beyond making an explicit/implicit point.

I've done a few that illustrated aspects of human nature and their effects without really driving home a lesson (just hoping that some might see the cause/effect).

Long term, this is why all the practice writing here anonymously: so that I can get good enough at stringing these words together so that the real stories I want to tell can get out.

And I'm guilty of writing more stroke/fluff than not.

 

[Kassiana]

Have you though about writing a story that some value, teaches a lesson? Do you have a story the educates as well as entertain?

"In the Rain" was my attempt to show how a marriage can fail and how someone feels when that happens, based on my own personal experience. I do have some point to make in most of my stories, even if it's only to show the way I think a character should be portrayed or to express my irritation with the way someone's held up for praise without deserving it (Great Goddess Jean Grey is an example of the latter).

 

[cantdog]

Sure.

Why bother, else? It's one of the biggest temptations of writing.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

You mean like a moral?

No. I stay away from messages and I try not to judge my characters. I'm more into describing what they do and figuring out why they do it than I am in drawing object lessons from their behavior. I think moral stories are silly and I'd be the last one to try and teach others how to live.

My idea of value in a story is when you can point something out to people that they've never noticed before, or put into words something they've never been able to say.

I think most of the porn stories on Lit do have morals attached to them though. The most common one is that good sex always leads to love. That's so common in Lit stories that I'll bet no one even notices it. We just assume that after a session of terrific sex the people are going to be together forever.

---dr.M.

 

[LadyJeanne]

Lessons? Only of the lick here, nibble there variety.

 

[cantdog]

You mean like a moral?


My idea of value in a story is when you can point something out to people that they've never noticed before, or put into words something they've never been able to say.

And that is teaching them something. Wisdom doesn't necessarily apply only to large questions, and the lesson in how to see something, the pointing out of something, the more universal the better, that people aren't generally noticing-- this is the fun of it, and the parts of stories that delight me, as a reader.

I just love being able to say, "That's exactly right! I never looked at it that way before!" And in new perspectives is wisdom. Aphorisms are often just a quirky generalization from a different point of view.

 

[curious2c]

I think that some if not most of mine have a message of sorts...but according to some of my feedback and public comments it is obvious I am not getting through to some people.

I get taken to task quite often on some of my work...yet even with the negative I seem to keep fair scores. Maybe more out there like the message's I try to put forth than actually 'talk' about it.

 

[scheherazade_79]

I'd never done it consciously. Looking back on it, the theme for a lot of my stories seems to be never to judge a book by its cover. I'm not sure if anyone else will have picked up on that, though - and to be honest, I didn't pick up on it until I saw this thread and I started thinking!

I've never been in to the kind of didactic stories that shove morals in your face, so maybe that's why, by and large, they're left out of my stories.

 

[Awful Arthur]

Have you though about writing a story that some value, teaches a lesson? Do you have a story the educates as well as entertain?

Everything that is written is someone's opinion, whether it be the Holy Bible or an article in the NE Journal of Medicine, and therefore teaches something.

I don't think you can write without teaching. I consciously try to at least examine some aspect of behavior.

Preaching on the other hand is a horse of a different color; he's one of those ugly shades of baby shit pretentious arrogance that make you want to puke.

I try to avoid preaching.

AA

 

[curious2c]

I should have said also that my lessons are just in the actions of the characters...actions and reactions. I don't preach...or I think I don't preach. I have always disliked being preached to, so I feel that most readers are the same way as well.

 

[impressive]

Absolutely. Most blatantly in "The Seven" and most recently in "Topping Love." As others have said, though -- even when we're not consciously TRYING to teach, we're conveying messages that might cause one of those "Ah ha!" moments in a reader or six.

 

[NoJo]

Lewis Carroll wrote the "Alice" books, which were, of course, incredibly popular.

As a devout Christian, Carroll then decided that having such a large readership gave him the moral duty to disseminate a more morally didactic children's work, which would hopefully educate as well as entertain.

The book, "Sylvie and Bruno", was an instant failure, and is of interest only to die-hard Carroll completist like me.

 

[oggbashan]

Yes.

My first was 'Donna'.

My 'Brigit' stories are the most obvious and then some of my Earth Day contest entries have encouraged respect for the planet.

'The Vinyl Dress' was an attempt to show that some fetishes can be ridiculous...

Finally: "The Worst Chain Story Ever Ch. 01." tried to live up to its name and show how not to write.

Og

 

[carsonshepherd]

My stories don't have morals, but they do have personal growth and even redemption. That's the only message that matters to me.

 

[BlackShanglan]

My stories don't have morals, but they do have personal growth and even redemption. That's the only message that matters to me.

I love that as well, and strive for it. That said ... I think there are also underlying comments on what's good, what's bad, what makes people lovable or passionate.

I also seem to have at least one "how-to" manual. I can't tell you how many women have written to me about "Sweetness and Servitude" and said "I wish my first time had been like that!" Evidently, gentlemen, I have something to teach

Shanglan

 

[Rhys]

Have you though about writing a story that some value, teaches a lesson? Do you have a story the educates as well as entertain?

Yes. My longer stories involve complex issues, like how far are you willing to go emotionally, spiritually, physically and sexually for a friend, and the aftermath of that decision.

I try to make my stories character driven even though I write most of the time in first person. (although elsewhere I don't...for some reason the sex seems to work better as first person)

The Silencing Machine covers a lot of issues, slavery, civil war, drugs, mental illness, abuse...I mean there is nearly everything but the kitchen sink in this one. Its also a love story which is interesting in and of itself...I mean what is it to be human? This is the question that both of the major characters are struggling with.

 

[rgraham666]

Always. But I try not to be preachy about it.

 

[matriarch]

Not that I'm aware of. I write for my pleasure and the reader's pleasure (I hope), and because I have words in my head that beg to be written.

If anyone has seen a moral, or learned something, I'm delighted to hear it, but it was purely unintentional.

Perhaps those people would let me in on what it was I said.

 

[KarenAM]

I regard a story as a conversation between the author and the reader. The author makes a point, expresses an idea, and the reader responds. In this way my work, especially my book-length work, tends toward the didactic. I don't want to preach in my work, though sometimes I do (and anyone who thinks that preaching has no place in a novel is encouraged to look at John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, particularly chapter 14). But even the preaching is intended to provoke a response from the reader, to make them think and defend or form their own ideas. The highest compliment I've ever recieved as a writer was in the Midwest Book Review's review of The Usahar, in which the reviewer focused on the exploration of the human psyche I was trying to do, not on the erotic aspects of the book.

In part this is deliberate, in part not. I've tried to write pure sex, but it never remains that way. Characters should grow, and both the author and the reader should grow with them. I'm in the last stages of my next novel, and I think I've grown as a person because I wrote it.

 

[cantdog]

If a character doesn't change, what's the point of having a story? You can describe a person as they are in a slice of time, but that is no novel.

Characters could just as easily devolve as grow. People on the way down instead of up, if you follow me. But unless one goes from one place to another, you can't possibly have a novel, I don't think.

 

[KarenAM]

If a character doesn't change, what's the point of having a story? You can describe a person as they are in a slice of time, but that is no novel.

Characters could just as easily devolve as grow. People on the way down instead of up, if you follow me. But unless one goes from one place to another, you can't possibly have a novel, I don't think.

Change is crucial; you're right about that. And that change in a character can be a change for the worse. For the author and reader, though, I'd rather see growth for the better, though it's certainly possible that someone could write a book which deliberately tried to hurt its reader.

Just not written by me.

 

[Boota]

Not in my smut, but I accidentally put a moral/life lesson in my novel. I seriously didn't mean to, it just worked out that way. All I wanted to do was make people laugh at some really off color humor. I'll try not to let it happen again.

 

[nushu2]

All my stories have had "lessons". That might not be the best word, though. If they didn't know it already, they wouldn't understand it. I might have gotten preachy on the last paragraph of some of them, sorry.

It's the only way I can write. I need to focus on an aspect of character and develop the story around that. It's not so much a "moral of the story", as much as a distorted way of thinking to be exposed. It's the same way I deal with life, searching for truth behind the illusion.

Writing this kind of story is tricky. Letting the reader discover the point instead of hitting them over the head with it requires subtlety and strong character development. I was beginning to think I was being too subtle because I never got any feedback that someone actually understood, until recently. Very rewarding.

 

[yui]

I think what I write is too much of the vignette variety to contain a "lesson." I am very much in moment and very much inside the protagonist's head, but it's a very insular world. It's more about emotions and feelings than about allegories.

Perhaps one day I will write an actual story with plot and all that other fun stuff.

Luck,

Yui