So this is completely ripped off of John Truby's The Anatomy of a Story, but in general, if you're trying to tell a serious story with a beginning, middle and end, you should have a moral argument to make. Your message can be as simple as "selfless people live the happiest lives" or "money can corrupt a man" but there should be one nonetheless. That being said your story doesn't have to be about war, injustice, child marriage, mental health, etc. or anything "heavy" or serious like that. When your character is met with conflict, overcomes it, and becomes a new person, they (usually) improve in some sort of way. This improvement reflects what you think is how a human being SHOULD behave in society.
Again, this is how most conventional stories go

One's work could be any of the things you mentioned - however, it definitely helps to know what exactly you're aiming for your work to do.

A work can be whimsical and just meaning to entertain or get a few laughs, such as something like GamerCat. Other more serious works like Goodnight Punpun may aim to explore the psyche of troubled youth.

In spite of this, one of these works is not necessarily superior to the other just because they deal with serious themes, or because they incite more laughter from the reader.
There's value in any "meaning" a work is trying to express.

However, said "meaning" of a work is something you have to commit to--considering this, don't feel inclined to make your works involve serious themes only for the sake of them.
Overall, I think you're better off aiming to have your work be intellectually and emotionally honest. If there's an issue or a facet of life you want to comment on whole-heartedly, then do so.

I have a habit of tackling dark themes because I want to understand them more. In addition, I aim to not glorify such themes and do heavy research to avoid that. Writing for me is working with themes I want to confront personally and mixing them in a cauldron of creativity. c:

Gotta make a note to do something lighter next time xD

Ideally creation doesn't exist.
You can do whatever you want with your creation within its own rule.

My comic mentions to this topic a lot, if you're interested. This is my comic.

My opinion on it is, doesn't matter as long as you enjoy working on it.

My comic started as a way to improve my art. I've always enjoyed story telling too, and will admit that I've grown more involved in the story than originally planned, but it was first and foremost meant to just be floofy feel good wholesome romance. There are little messages scattered throughout, but this is in no ways some deep meaningful comic. it's more of an escapism device. I'm totally ok with that too. I am having fun, my readers are having fun. Not everything has to be a deep and meaningful work of art to have value in life. Not every story has to move your insides and make you question your being.

I don't think so. Just like beta said, it doesn't matter if your creations have meanings or not, as long as you enjoyed making them and can makes peoples happy by sharing them around.

I think you're all good.

I think it's difficult to tell a story that doesn't have any meaning.

I don't mean that you have to have meaning in order to tell a story, but that if you tell a story, it will end up with meaning whether you meant it to or not.

Break it down to its most simple -- let's say you have a character that faces a hardship, overcomes that hardship, and gets a happy ending. How does the character overcome the hardship? By getting stronger? By learning to be kinder? The choices you make here say something about how you think the world works. What does a happy ending look like to you? Is it friendship? Is it riches? Is it revenge? You end up with a message even if you never meant to.

And I think creators run into those meanings differently. Some folks set out to create a story to explain something that weighs heavily on their soul -- they have SOMETHING to say and they have to find a way to convey it. Some people invent stories that appeal to them and immediately realise "oh, this is me tapping into my experience with [x]" and start to form their story around that meaning. And then some people honestly don't find their meaning until they start actually putting the story together; they don't start to see the themes or the purpose of their story until they know where it's going. None of those is a more "right" way to do it than the others.

I ran a journal comic called Today Nothing Happened for four years. I had seen other journal comics that were sort of brutally honest, really raw looks at the creator's lives that I kind of admired, and envied a little, but didn't think I could make a comic like that. TNH was lighthearted, and I made a decision early on that I was going to try to never make people I knew look bad, and that I was going to avoid Drama -- if I got in a fight with someone, that would never go in the comic. Its goal was to stay sort of light and fun no matter what was going on, and in a way, that was the Purpose and Meaning of my comic, to find those light-hearted funny moments.

One of the emails I got from a reader that really meant a lot to me was actually from a soldier, overseas, someone I didn't know. He told me that my silly comic about my daily life and dumb nerdy jokes meant the world to him -- it was a small piece of something normal and happy while his surroundings were anything but. My comic wasn't full of Heavy Deep Meaning, but it meant something incredible to this person who needed it.

People need stories. My grandmother's told me often that, as a young person going through The War in Japan, the only really good thing that she had was reading sci-fi to escape and dream of something better. Some people need lighthearted stories, some people need heavy stories, some people desperately need stories that show them their own experience, some people desperately need to be challenged by the experience of others.

I think you have to tell the story that's in you, because that's the one that you can tell the most honestly. Finding the meaning that's in it can help you more clearly see what direction to go in when you're unsure, I think, so it's still useful! But I don't think you need an Impactful Real Life Allegory Of The World's Injustice in order to be deeply meaningful to someone.

I have actually no idea what the story should be, because different people have so different opinions about it (you could see right now different opinions about moral of the story, for example).
But I can tell how I'm creating my stories myself.

During my whole life, when I was in transport or walking or resting, my brain often started to produce different kind of stories and scenes spontaneously. I wrote down some of them - those which were short and had a completed small plot - and just forgot the rest. While my own personality was developing through life, the content of those stories was changing, too. Particularly, they became more NSFW, complicated and dark with time.
During the last year, while I've imagened different sort of situations, action of all kind and consequences of different sci-fi inventions, I've noticed that some characters started to recur in those games of mind. Moreover, they became more precise and alive from scene to scene. Thats how the characters and particular scenes of "the story how humanity blablabla" were formed (actually, there is already much much more stuff in my mind about this story than I can to implement in the reasonable time).
When I already had the bunch of characters and action scenes in my mind, I started to connect them. Thats how I've received the plot (there is a plot, actually, I've even written outline of it down in the notebook). Also I've often wondered how could they do this and that, and how this and that invention could appear and work etc. Thats how the world itself was formed and specified and become sort of small... setting, I dunno?
Eventually, I've started to draw comics about all of it. I don't know how it works, but when some critical mass of content was formed, I just felt the need to implement all of it somehow. It is just my own strange need, nothing more. I didn't even think about making an ideal creation and I'm sure that such a thing don't exist. But in the same time, I'm having fun when I share and discuss my story with others, because it is so interesting for me (if it wasn't, I wouldn't invented it).

In general, I think that when you do anything, the first thing which is reasonable to keep in mind about it is if it good for yourself or not. If the creation of the story is interesting for you and/or make you feel better or just relieved, that means it is good for you, it hit the spot in some way. So in this case it seems reasonable to continue.

P.S. Sorry for such a wall of slurred text ¯_(ツ)_/¯ I hope you was managed to understand at least something...

TL;DR: just create when you feel the need to do it

I think the act of creating is inherently quite meaningful.

It's great when people create stories that feel deep and meaningful, but it's also true that we need all kinds of stories at various levels. Sometimes an important message is communicated, and sometimes something is just fun or sweet or exciting, and sometimes you get a mix, and it's all valid. ^^

Ok, my hubby would claim that you talked to too many art professors right now.

Simply put art can be created for any reason and still be art. The big question is- did it give you something by making it. You the ARTIST... everyone else is secondary. It doesn't have to be planned or random. serious or light hearted. One style or another. The amazing thing about art is everyone gets different things from it.

You may draw something to work out frustration and it may make me laugh, bob think, and susan cry. You may make it contain a message and it may go over everyone's head but Billy- and it may inspire him to do something. You may make something with no intended message and it still inspires someone else.

The important question to ask is why do you want to make a particular bit of art. If it's for fun, then make sure you have fun doing it and forget the rest! If it's because you wanna try a new technique this time- then go for it and learn a new skill! If you want to create something with a message that's important to you- do it and know some people will probably not get/agree with it but that's OK. You just wanna make a picture to make a friend happy, then guess what it is still art. Heck if you just wanna doodle and see what comes out of it then do it! Amazing ideas and work comes from that and it may serve as inspiration for you another day!

In the end.... if you made it and are happy it came into existence then it is, in fact, art. Nothing else matters unless you were trying to do a specific thing.

I'm gonna put it like this. No work is above another! In regards to how it handles its themes, anyways! Somebody else can write a story relating to these heavy themes and still be garbage, you know? There's an important thing that needs to be understood about this. Heavy themes don't automatically make your story better. Include them if you want, but the idea's the same, your story's not gonna magically get a level-up just because you included that. The only thing that matters here is that you find a voice in your writing and that you deliver the story well enough with that same voice. Even if it's a relatively simple plot, you can still tell it in amazing ways.

Besides, I'd argue it's okay and borderline necessary, to have light-hearted stories. That variety in what we can read is fun, and frankly, I wouldn't want everything to have some deep underlying meaning.. that'd have to be exhausting after a while. You can write a story about a leaf blowing in the wind instead of the trials and errors of human society and the implications of it for the future generations- you see what I'm getting at? If you wanna be the person who wrote the former rather than the latter, I'm all for it! The world's dark enough as it is, let your story be a happy place for yourself and others if you want~

It can literally be any of those reasons, dude, that's what's beautiful about art and expressing yourself through it! It's not confined to these rules of what mindset you have to be in before you make anything, you can just go for it because you wanna. On the flip side of it, many people can interpret that art in different ways, and that's where stuff can get interesting.

We all know that one idea of modern art. You know, the type where someone can literally just paint a canvas blue and sell it for millions. There's people that can see it as an experimental piece of texture work, there's people that can see an expression of sadness through the way the brush ran across the canvas, and others.. just see a waste of blue paint. People can make up their own meaning for "meaningless" work and fill in the gaps themselves if needed. You don't need to justify everything you make with a purpose, and if you have to apply some valuable meaning to it, you can just make it the fact that it's your creation and that you're happy with it. You shouldn't need to overcomplicate it further than that or stress yourself out over it.

It goes back to what everyone's saying so far. If you're happy making a story and you're having fun with it. That's all the meaning it needs. Hey, let's make it simpler, if you just wanted to make something, that can be enough as well. Go further on it if you want, but I think that should be at the very base of everything we make. Hope that's a halfway decent answer for you~

I don't think there HAS to be a moral or a point to a work. I'm sure there are great stories out there that don't really have any morals or points but they're still great. For example, The Big Lebowski is pretty much just a comedy movie that doesn't exist to teach you any lessons; it just exists to make you laugh and it does a good job of it.

For my own stories, I tend to like to put things in it things that worry or bother me personally. I once wrote a character who was really terrified of the future because it's something that I worry about, too. At the end, he faced the thing that terrified him in his future and he got to move on with his life. I usually prefer stories like this where a writer communicates their own doubts or insecurities about something because it makes the story feel more genuine and real.

But not all stories have to be deep or have a message as I said earlier. Disney movies are usually pretty simple and in my opinion pretty flat, but they're still incredibly enjoyable despite their very simple messages and the viewer can still get something rich out of them.

My personal philosophy:

(I'm not religious though)

Ideally I am able to joyfully keep working even while knowing there is no real meaning behind it. But that's easier said than done, so sometimes I still struggle with the existential crisis thing.

At the same time, I do want to create things that genuinely benefit people. And I've thought about this a lot, to be honest. What kind of art or story can benefit people the most?

Is it enough for something to simply be beautiful? Frankly, art and stories are so cheap nowadays - by that I mean there is so much of it that I wonder if people have become somewhat desensitized due to sheer overexposure. As an artist, it's nice to believe that the thing I spend hours creating will really inspire someone, but most of the time someone will look at it for a few seconds, hopefully crack a smile, and then move along as if nothing happened. If that's the best that I can do, so be it, but I have to wonder if that's really it, you know?

I also don't want to tell stories just for the sake of entertainment or as a device for escapism. Firstly, because so much of that already exists that it seems redundant to make one more story like that when there are already millions of others that can fulfill basically the same need. Secondly, because I think escapism isn't the best way to deal with life. Rather than making something comfortable that helps people forget about their problems, I'd like to make something that inspires people to face their problems - that changes their actions in real life. But how to do that - I'm not sure at all...

TL;DR I want to make people's lives better beyond just providing entertainment but have no idea what I'm doing.

Meanwhile I just keep practicing so that if/whenever I figure it out, my lack of skill won't hold me back.

Thoughtfulness, meaningfullness and impact can manifest in many ways. Not only with serious or deep topics.

A lighthearted story can help a person to rest their mind after a long day. People can bond over watching a comedy. If a story wakes up the interest of people and fulfill its purpose (it could be many things, to entertain, to make people think, escapism, to teach a life lesson, etc...), then that story is meaningfull for them.

Thoughtfullness depend more on how deeply was thought. Even the most absurd and silly work can be brilliant master piece if it`s properly executed.

As many people already said, tell the story you want to tell, you have higher chances of being meaningfull if you follow the message from your heart.

This is a story with lots of fantastical elements and magic system and angels, but in the end its not about any of that. To put it as simply as I can; It's about flawed people trying to hold onto the better parts of themselves. Dunno if it comes across, not yet at least since I barely began to scratch the surface.

Well, of course it will depend of the lesson, but some lessons like "don`t steal" are a good thing to teach to kids. Even if it is considered common sense, because kids are learning about the world.

Well... as far as I know, in some cultures stealing considered like something which is ok.
For example, if I'm not mistaken, in ancient Sparta boys were kept on hungry ration. It was expected that they would supplement their diet by stealing food. If someone catch boy when he was stealing, he was punished, but not for stealing itself, rather for the fact that he was catched.
That's how they tried to teach them to support themself by all means or being stealthy or whatever.

Just imagine the hypothetical situation:
1. You have taught boy not to steal
2. He accidentally walk into the space-time anomaly and appeared in ancient Sparta!..
3. ..and died from starving because he was taught not to steal.

Was it good for him eventually to be taught that way?!! Poor boy!!!

"remember kids, stealing is bad, unless a space-time anomaly happens and you are transported to ancient Sparta, in that case stealing is neccesary because in ancient Sparta, only the ruthless survives"

I'm a death of the author kinda person. Whatever meaning I may or may not have put into it, it doesn't matter as much as what the reader takes from it. I didn't pick a meaning or theme, I just wanted to tell a story about interesting characters and interesting plots. But as the characters got their arcs, that's where some meaning turned up. If I had to say what themes I saw, it things like at one point does a sentient creation have rights over its own existence, overcoming guilt and some nature vs nurture. But it's not the sorta thing where a character is going to turn to the camera and go "remember to always be kind". People will take whatever they want from it.

And sometimes it's nice not to have a meaning too. Kids media often has a heavy handed moral, but just as often I watch/read something I could care less what the moral/meaning is, I'm enjoying it on its surface level. There's an anime called Selector WIXOSS, it was a great psychological piece, but certain areas of the fans will take great pleasure telling you how it's an analogy for God and Satan and the complexity of gambling and addiction as motives for the main character and tell me I obviously didn't understand a lot of the show if I missed these things.I enjoyed the show without having to find some deep metaphor and hidden layers to the narrative.

Personally I believe in creation for the sake of creation. It doesn’t have to have some big meaning behind it. I’ve found that even if you don’t have a meaning in mind, you’ll include something subconsciously anyway.

That and it’s the readers who find meaning in the work.

Sure you can have an intention behind it, but that doesn’t mean everyone will take it as intended. Some may even see the exact opposite of what you intended.

Instead of focusing on some grand meaning, I focus more on themes. For instance, tho this is spoilery for my comic, forgiveness is a theme but not in the way you might expect. The way I intend to show forgiveness is for the sake of the one doing the forgiving, not the one who gets forgiven.

Also friendship. Valuing life. Creativity. Individualism. Learning to rely on yourself. But meaning? Well I suppose it has sort of a meeting but saying it would ruin the whole thing.

I guess one thing is I negatively show those that think they have the authority to make absolute moral judgments. Or like thinking you know what’s best for everyone. Because that rejects the very idea of the individual. Everyone is different ergo they don’t need to be treated all the same.

If I had to boil it down to a single meaning it would be the value of Individualism and the evils of Collectiveism. But I’m certain some people will get the opposite meaning out of it somehow.

But is that the meaning? Idk. I mostly just want to tell an interesting story.

I also enjoy escapism but also works that encourages facing reality. There’s a time and place for escapism, it can help people learn to face their problems in ways that are not immediately obvious. You just never know what’s going to strike the right cord in people.

Which is exactly why I believe in creating for the sake of it. Insert a meaning or don’t, the sheer act of creation itself holds meaning. Make it meaningless, meaningless crap can be inspiring as well. Hell, one thing I found meaning is PASWG which was literally about raunchy angels and was created when completely drunk. It’s stupid, fun, has a good plot, but does it mean anything? Not really. It’s about a couple of slutty, bitchy, gluttonous fallen angels who ultimately don’t learn any lessons. But I found meaning in it.

So I wouldn’t stress to hard about meaning.

you can be didactic if you do it subtly and avoiding being preachy. But i agree that some messages can be handled better.

@DiegoPalacios Totally! I just feel that it's so easy to land on the preachy side. However, non-preachy messages are totally great. Especially if they're philosophical. (Ie. read anything by Vonnegut, Kobo Abe, Camus). Those listed authors have very pointed messages they are telling without being overtly preachy. For the most part, it comes off great

PS. I also sort of have a thing against the Narnia series for how blatantly it wears its message.

I don't really have a meaning to my work. I just make what I want because my brain does it and I think it's cool.

Some people have gotten super deep meanings out of my work that just baffles me. Like I made that up while I was in the shower not when I was discriminated against or felt sad.

I think it's cool that different meanings can be derived from the same work may it be writing or paintings or comics. I think it's helpful if people get offended that you don't have to reply in the sense that you can't control their opinion or interpretation so not to take it personally.

In terms of existential crisis, you can't control interpretation . . . you can try, but everyone is touched differently so it will backfire. Just make stuff as long as you enjoy it. In terms of impact some pieces will hit and others will be less popular but being an artist is riding those waves and knowing that will happen.

there is meaning to my comic but i would rather leave it up to be decoded by those interested,and i do intentionally leave hints to the bigger story

The question in the title was worded in second person, so yep, old Scott Zaboem is going to make this about himself again.

In my Alien Fiction, there is a degree of parody happening even though I haven't been clear enough about what subject I am satirizing. I borrow heavily from Voltaire who mercilessly tore into hos target with biting satire on each and every stinking page of his entire novel. I didn't go that hard core. Honestly, the plot of the books is not the reason for writing them...

I released my Alien Fiction stories with Creative Commons licenses. I set out to create a body of material that anyone else can use afterward their own purposes. Was I successful? I haven't seen evidence of anyone else using it, but that might happen one hundred years after I am gone.

In the meantime, I can spin a moderately entertaining story of goofy comedy for the enjoyment of a few suckers who are tricked into reading it.

My other book, Soulless Saint, was created to promote a certain lesser-known roleplaying game. For that purpose, it was a complete failure.

One out of two ain't terrible.

I believe both sides are perfectly valid. Some things exist just to be there, and other creations have a planed purpose. It is like people, some people just live the moment, they were "born to be alive" and they don't contemplate just are spontaneous. And other people want to find a meaning of everything and make a specific message clear. Both are meaningful in their own way.

The point of my work is to bring it to existence because it makes me happy and hopefully will make others happy. My current comic is actually very oriented towards questioning existence and how can you become meaningful to this world. If I had to define a goal it would be to cause emotions in the readers, I don't want to educate, or show them right from wrong, just want them to laugh, cry, worry, be emotional.

I think art about serious stuff is kinda bullshit:/
Do people really think about that stuff on the daily? Really? Well if so I don’t think I would really care to hang out with someone who’s only interest is sappy or political bullshit.
And sometimes people will make art just to seem “deep” when they actually put no real thought into it and just want the likes. Think about that the next time you see one of those pieces, because being “meaningful” sells.

The meaning of my work (well maybe not from most of my work up until this point since I don’t do many finished pieces:3 however I’m starting to move into doing some of the stuff I really want to do) the meaning of my work is to show what I think makes men beautiful, particularly American men. More specifically, I want to show how cute they are in a very comedic way. I want to mix Gil Elvgren (he’s the dude who did all the old-school pip-ups from the 40s and 50s) with Norman Rockwell (more spirit than in their style, though I think both their styles are absolutely gorgeous!), except with thick sexy dudes. I love the flare of comedy both artists have in their paintings; and you can tell they are both painting subjects they really like/admire. Btw both these artists were super commercial, and yet their paintings are teeming with life and you can see in their paintings just how much they enjoyed their work.

So yeah, in short. No art doesn’t have to have some big deep sappy meaning for it to have life and make people feel emotions. Just do what makes you happy, it could even just be happy little trees:3

I mean not every story has to has super deep or super important themes. Even an examination of a simple everyday life can be enthralling in it's own way.
Sometimes a theme just pops up accidentally as you go along your story just because that just happens sometimes.

There are some really interesting ideas here, I'm enjoying reading this!

As for the stuff I do, I usually draw and paint to remember something. Could be a place, an idea, or a feeling.

For example, the comic I'm drawing is an attempt to remember a roleplaying game me and some friends invented and played. It was a story we all enjoyed, with characters we did our best to interpret. Now we are all over the world and have a difficult time getting together, which makes it more valuable to have those memories turned into a comic, regardless of how amateurish it looks.

Growing up in a world that seems to be slipping past the precipice as we stare ever deeper into the abyss of reaction and apocalyptic climate change and the terrifying realisation that we were very wrong about history "ending" in the 90s and instead of neoliberal utopia forever, the real end of history might just be the end of us all. And yet, though the gloom grows ever darker and the end seems ever nearer; there is still a chance to contribute to the turning of the wheel of history and ensure that we don't merely right the failing gears, but replace them with something better. Not by holding out for saviours and great men with great ideas, but by coming together and saving ourselves by changing the conditions under which we toil. Or else our choice in the future will be between oblivion and hell.

All filtered through the lens of a science fantasy multiverse romp/apocalypse myth with kids, fun, and a whole lot of death and pain and the kind of weird, increasingly surreal and abstract jokes we who grew up in the current millenium like to make. Because growing up in a world your ancestors have already damned to the point that you have little chance of avoiding having it worse than they did despite being told how everything is getting better is hard, and fixing it is even harder. But god damn if we aren't going to make our train trip to hell a roller coaster of laughs and tears.

It's meant to be solidly in the Nobledark corner of the Noblebright/Grimdark quadrant compass, spliced in with comedy where felt appropriate. What I'm not interested in is directly preaching via authorial mouthpiece characters. Its much more effective to convey meaning subtly. Simply what choices are validated by the story and which ones aren't carry a message of their own.

Haha, oh. This is the exact thing my comic is about, this entire thread. My plot is about a sobbing philosopher who finds no meaning in anything, but just like this thread has been discussing, the moral of the story is that it's not that deep. You can have fun without applying reasoning behind every single action you make. So ironically, my comic is about a lot of themes some people here seem to dislike: a very heavy story trying to get a point across. But my point is that having a point isn't such a big deal. help

Regardless, this is the story I want to tell because I think it's fun as heck. I'm really fascinated by existentialism and I love to write about people being sad. Just another taste in storytelling, doesn't mean I'm a sad and serious person, it just makes me happy to write about! So @JakiraJurosawa, saying serious stories are bullshit is kind of... Rude? Because that's what makes some people happy (like me). Some people might need to write about it to get out of their system, and that doesn't make them a bad person. Your genre doesn't interest me, but that doesn't mean it's bad or "bullshit" at all, so please keep an open mind!