What is your story's message?

[GumshoeComix]

there's a lot of messages in my story tbh but they're always hard for me to explain (which is why I draw it) so one of the more simple ones is overcoming your demons

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[Ordinaryaverageguy]

I suspect that notion can be over-thought and over-done. Is the story a vehicle to promote the message? Or is the message just something that comes along with the story?

Life is full of little lessons & truths, so I suppose if we write about life & characters living their lives, then there will be little messages in it, too, without the writer even trying hard. The messages won't necessarily be profound but life is like that, too.

[ursachaotic]

I got a couple of themes for mine!

• Being in control of your own story: Basically a lot of characters struggle with having agency over their narratives in the story and they do get that agency in the end.
• Being brave means doing something even if you're scared: A big part of the story focuses on Max's anxiety, which is almost exactly the same as my experiences with anxiety when I first developed it. I believed that I couldn't be brave because I was scared all the time, but realized that I'm actually a lot braver than I thought I was. Max believes he'll never be brave and that he's going to be a scared kid all the time, but he's actually already a very brave kid but it takes him a long time to realize that he is.

There's a couple of other themes that I'm working in, mainly relating to grief, letting go of the past, and forgiveness.

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[YS_og]

Privilege can be a tricky thing.

Sometimes it's impossible to tell what side of any major issue is right if you don't get to know both sides.

When is your perceived determination actually nothing more than foolhardiness?

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[TheLemmaLlama]

I basically agree with Bearkorps:

a better philosophy is to intend your work to evoke something, whether a feeling, a message, whatever.

A story doesn't have to have a deep message or even theme to be great; but imo it does need to have direction. You need to have a clear vision for what your creation is going to be; you can set out to just make a cool story without trying to say anything in particular, but it needs to be cool in some particular way that you're striving towards.

If your work has a clear identity, people will probably end up projecting messages onto it anyways

---

So for bitwam, it's about a guy who's homeless by choice so the message was "you can escape the rat race if you're ruthlessly strategic about your life like it's a game, even if it means the most optimal 'play' defies social norms/'common sense'."

But these days I try to explore an idea moreso than preaching a message from one side. I try not to tone down or hide a message just to avoid being preachy, but rather I try my best to portray the opposing side as convincingly as possible as well. So for instance an opposing message to the above the I'm trying to fairly portray is "not everyone can just up and be homeless or do whatever they want; there are very real barriers holding them back and just because you can't see them doesn't mean they're 'not really interested in improving their lives' or have a 'victim mentality'."

My actual opinion would probably still leak out in my work, but I try to avoid strawmanning or having any obvious blind spots in my portrayal of views I don't agree with ^^; If a reader were to inform me I misrepresented their views, I'd like to learn something new rather than be informed of a nuance I already knew about but decided not to portray faithfully to make my own opinion seem stronger :'D

[AnonymousHouseCat]

At first, I didn't intend for there to be any kind of deeper message or theme for Sapphire Bay Reaper Company. I just doodled some characters in my college notebooks during class, and decided that some of them belonged to the same world and thought "hmm yes, now I will write about their adventures and struggles hunting ghosts on a budget in a small run-down beach town."

But as I developed the story more some themes that surfaced were: 1) characters struggling between others' expectations and being true to themselves 2) regret and what different people might do if given a second chance at life 3) learning to ask for help when you need it 4) death is supposed to be something everyone faces equally, but it really isn't.

Although, these themes don't appear too much yet since I haven't gotten very far in terms of writing/publishing my story.

[Iris-Grimoire]

Dunno about art not having to mean something. Meaning nothing... Is still meaning. The STALKER example is exactly that: by having no message, its message became reflecting like a mirror and the viewer's own experiences dictating how they project.
It's the art argument. There's no minimum requirement, it's art if you want it to be, good, bad, ugly, beautiful... Nothing and yet everything? yeah, that counts.

Personally though, I'm super direct, and Splitting Image is about atonement. Isn't it messed up that people look for scapegoats instead of solving a problem? Who gets to pick the exact time and amount of punishment - will they know when to stop? If you wish death and suffering on someone out of imagined slights that could happen(eg; people thinking a dangerous fellow is gonna break into their house and they'll be brave and kill them and everyone claps), don't we have two bad people instead of one? Something something the Paarthumax quote

[irresponsiblepics]

Loads.
Though not outwardly obvious mine is about how one person's issues affect others around them. Having the courage to defeat their insecurities through challenges and experience.
Other aspects are greed, abandoning loved ones enticed by their ambitions and becoming prisoners to their aspirations even when they do it for good reasons.
Some things that I personally mull about/experienced.
Love comes with sacrifices.
But it's a gag comedy too. Like life! XD

[DokiDokiTsuna]

I agree with what @TheLemmaLlama said about direction. Because of all the types of artists out there, I think it's the easiest to tell when a writer does not know what they want. ^^; Stories are meant to communicate something, whether it's a moral or a message or an emotion or just an experience. A great story knows what that is and conveys it well.

Personally, I usually have to have some kind of message in mind when I write a story...I need a guiding objective to prevent me from derailing the entire project into a showcase of whoever my favorite character happens to be. ⊙u⊙;
Besides, I never really get anywhere until I have something I want to say. For me, that's the difference between having a collection of cute character designs in a setting, and an actual STORY.

Take two recent fantasy novels I have in the works: One of them started out as just that, a collection of cute character designs in a setting. Only, at the time I came up with the idea, I had already matured enough as a writer to understand that I needed a goal to work towards if I wanted to have a story.
I decided on one pretty early on, and I keep it tacked up on top of the Word doc as a reminder: "I think that Monastery! is a story about how people can be saved by love and acceptance, at any age and at any time."

Seeing that every time I open it up to work really helps to keep me focused...it was my first time writing a coming-of-age/slice-of-life story in prose, and I honestly expected to make a mess of it. On the contrary, I'm happy to announce that I finished its first Volume last night. ^^

Now, the other story I've been working on recently is actually a reboot of a very, very, VERY old idea that I've failed at a few times already. I did a couple new character designs, fleshed out the worldbuilding, polished up the lore a little bit, and I was feeling very excited...only to suddenly realize that the story did not have a plot. ._.

Worse than that, it never did have one...I'd spent so much time working on this fantasy story as a kid, struggling to get it started without realizing there was no destination in sight. The characters had no development, their adventure had no real purpose...all I had was the vague idea of an epic fantasy and some cute character designs. I did have thousands of words' worth of lore, yes, but there was nothing I wanted to say.

...It was really demoralizing, realizing that. ^^; I felt like such an idiot for not seeing it sooner...I'm still a little mad at myself, tbh. But now I'm working on finding a message for this story, and for each of its characters, and I think that someday when I am actually able to write it, it'll turn out great.

[system]

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