Theme vs Preaching

[A. E. Lowan]

Love this lady. She has great thinks and presents the information clearly and accurately.

 

[Mad Swede]

I guess the real message she is trying to convey is that to convey the theme (or themes) in a work they need to be developed and all sides or aspects about the point being made need to be presented without using strawman arguments.

I think my only objection to this is that she is arguing from the point of view of an author who is deliberately setting out to put a theme in a work. What she doesn't really develop is the idea that interpretation of the theme(s) is down to the reader, as Roland Barthes pointed out in La mort de l'auteur (The Death of the Author). That has a few consequences. We as authors may deliberately include and develop a theme and use all sorts of techniques to convey this theme, but other themes may also be present as a result of unconcious decisions and thoughts that influence our writing. That leaves our work open to other interpretations, some of which may not match our intentions. Dealing with that and the subsequent discussions isn't always easy.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I guess the real message she is trying to convey is that to convey the theme (or themes) in a work they need to be developed and all sides or aspects about the point being made need to be presented without using strawman arguments.

I think my only objection to this is that she is arguing from the point of view of an author who is deliberately setting out to put a theme in a work. What she doesn't really develop is the idea that interpretation of the theme(s) is down to the reader, as Roland Barthes pointed out in La mort de l'auteur (The Death of the Author). That has a few consequences. We as authors may deliberately include and develop a theme and use all sorts of techniques to convey this theme, but other themes may also be present as a result of unconcious decisions and thoughts that influence our writing. That leaves our work open to other interpretations, some of which may not match our intentions. Dealing with that and the subsequent discussions isn't always easy.

I'm not highlighting because I agree with all of this. There's such a long tradition of only considering fiction to be 'legitimate' if there is a lot of navel gazing involved. It's a spongy place to be.

 

[JBCrowson]

I'm not highlighting because I agree with all of this. There's such a long tradition of only considering fiction to be 'legitimate' if there is a lot of navel gazing involved. It's a spongy place to be.

Navel gazing your writing in a spongy place - are you writing in the bath again?
FWIW (the square root of zero) I think post modern literary analysis sucks. What people see in writing says as much about them and what they bring to
the reading, as it does about what is in the text.

 

[Queshire]

What people see in writing says as much about them and what they bring to
the reading, as it does about what is in the text.

Is that a bad thing? 0_o

EDIT: Haven't actually had a chance to watch the video at the time of typing this. Waiting to use it as background noise at work.

 

[pmmg]

I am going to say, I am not sure I accept that the dichotomy is truly theme vs being preachy. That does not feel like a vs thing to me, or that they are somehow polar opposites. And I would suggest that if one is writing a story which is meant to deliver a message, even if the message is subtlety delivered, it is still preachy. So, in that regard we are all preachy.

I suppose we can write a story that shows all sides and makes no judgement call, or just shows what the characters did, leaving it open to the reader as to whether they would have done the same, but I suspect, secretly, there is a message the author intends.

I further think, themes exist outside of the message of the story. For example, one of the themes of my story is that good men are doing nothing, and it causes great frustration to the MC. But it is not the main theme of the story, and when the story is over, there will still be large portions of the world who will continue doing nothing. Other than the MC showing frustration, it is not a real target of the messages of the story, its just one I noticed incidentally as I was writing it. I also have a dozen or so minor themes that play out, in fact, many characters kind of have their own themes, but none of them are meant to deliver any type of real message, other than, this was the problem and this was how the character handled it.

I think it might be more accurate to say, theme and message go together, and can be massaged in such a way to be delivered in strong but non-threatening way. Which brings us back to art... And what you really want to say.

I am also not sure that trying to deliver a message is to be avoided anyway. All stories have messages.

Presenting both sides is not a trick, its a way of showing by comparison two opposite philosophies, and how they might play out.

My advice, other then its always useful to have more tools in the tool bag, is to write it true. If your MC spouts off in preachy ways, spout off. Just know that everything has consequences, and they should show too.

 

[MSadiq]

What most people are referring to when they present this dichotomy is the connotations of preaching, that the messaging is forceful and gives you a clear cut between right and wrong. But is that even a bad thing? It's a criticism of Babel that I've heard here and there, but I never thought to myself that its "preaching" was negative. To me, it was the opposite. It didn't present anything new to me, but the forcefulness of its presentation forced me to think about what I already knew about colonialism and re-contextualize it in my mind.

 

[JBCrowson]

Is that a bad thing? 0_o

EDIT: Haven't actually had a chance to watch the video at the time of typing this. Waiting to use it as background noise at work.

No not at all, but neither does it mean what someone sees in a piece of writing should be given (too) much weight.