Preaching Well

Last week, I talked about being "preachy" in fiction and why it's maybe not as bad as people think it is. In particular, there are lots of examples of fiction that are not only super popular but arguably so because of their message.

So, the problem is not messaging in fiction. Fiction is messaging, and (whether you are aware of it or not) all fiction is political. People generally don't have a problem with preaching in fiction unless the message is something they disagree with.

Like I've said before, you aren't writing for those people.

But you do want your message to be written well and received well by those who are open to it. Here are a few tips to help with that:

1) Portray All Sides with Empathy

A common problem in fiction is when one group of people are portrayed as intelligent and sympathetic while another comes across as cardboard cut-out villains.

Religion is a common victim of this. The atheist and non-Christian analogues in Chronicles of Narnia—the folks who don't believe Aslan is real or who work against him—are often insufferable. Edmund and Eustace, for example, are simply the worst characters (until they believe).

Secular sci-fi isn't much better. I've lost track of how many stories I've read in which the protagonists are open-minded and intelligent while the villains are pompous religious jerks.

Even if you don't agree with a character's point of view, they do. Nobody thinks of themselves as evil, and as the author, it is your job to figure out why not and portray that sympathetically.

2) Leave Your Message Open-Ended

When you think of your story's theme or message, is it a moral to be prescribed or a question to be explored? Life is nuance and uncertainty, but if your story has easy answers, it can ring false. Exploring that uncertainty, however, is what makes good fiction great.

Take the X-Men. These stories explore themes of racial discrimination, and while there is a repeated moral (e.g., accept those different from you), there are also always difficult questions raised. The conflict between Professor X and Magneto is a prime example. Magneto believes that mutants are the next step in human evolution and should rule the world. Professor X, on the other hand, believes humans and mutants can co-exist as equals. The latter is obviously the stories' message, since Professor X is the "good guy," but he is frequently faced with challenges that throw that message into question. Can humans and mutants ever truly get along?

Their struggle is never-ending, and that's the point of phrasing your message as a question. The struggles we face are open-ended. If you paint your message as black and white, it will feel false to anyone who—like Magneto—has seen that the world isn't so amenable to pat answers.

3) Let the Reader Come to Their Own Conclusions

If you've ever tried to change someone's belief, you know it's practically impossible. A person can't be told what is true and simply believe it, not even if they are presented with irrefutable evidence. They will refute it! However, people can and do change their own beliefs by coming to their own conclusions over time.

Don't tell the reader what to think or believe, but show them different viewpoints. Explore different answers to very difficult questions. And then... do nothing. Let them think for themselves.

It's the most frustrating and rewarding part of being an author (or a parent, or a teacher, or a therapist, or...). As my mom tried to teach me my whole life, you have to let them be wrong.

The Bottom Line is Empathy

The gift of fiction—and a requirement to create it—is to be able to put ourselves in someone else's shoes, to see the world from another's perspective. Reading increases empathy. A reader without empathy will bounce of most stories altogether, and a writer who lacks it will struggle to connect with any reader unlike themselves.

So, say what you want to say. Explore difficult questions and even present your own answers through your characters. But be fair. Be open-minded. Be empathic.

You'll be surprised how many more people you can impact.

On "Preachy" Fiction

I think I learned a bad lesson when I was a brand new writer—or maybe it was a good lesson that I just took too far. The lesson was this: Don't use fiction to preach.

What people generally mean by that is they don't want authors to write fiction with the express goal of teaching a lesson. They want a good story. They don't want to be moralized to.

Or so they say... 

But when the lesson is something the reader doesn't notice, it's not considered preachy at all. X-Men stories, for example, are hella preachy, but many fans either don't connect the themes of mutant discrimination to the real world or else identify with those themes in less controversial ways (e.g., some fans interpret X-Men's themes as discrimination against "misfits" or "outsiders," rather than racial prejudice).

And when the lesson is something the reader wants to hear, the audience often loves it! For example, the Chronicles of Narnia are a straight-up Christian allegory, beloved by Christians of all flavors. Andor is widely considered one of the best-written Star Wars stories to date, partially for being a straight-up anti-fascist manifesto.

It seems like it's not that people don't want messages in their fiction. It's that they don't want to be aware of messages they don't like. (You know, just like in real life.)

I started this post saying I learned a bad lesson. See, I spent a lot of my writing career trying to "say something without saying something"—trying to be subtle with my messages, trying not to piss anyone off or be accused of heavy-handed preaching. I ended up writing "fun" fiction but not necessarily the meaningful fiction I wanted to write.

My stories are fine, of course. Good, even. I've been published a few times. People have found meaning in my stories, and I'm thankful for that. Heck, I even have fans of stories that have never been published. But I was scared.

And I don't want to be.

And I don't need to be.

So, this is my encouragement to you: Write what you want to say. There will always be people who don't like what that is, and that's okay. You're not writing for them.

Will leaning into your message get you published and famous? Not by itself, no. It might even work against you at first as you figure out how to do it well. But it means that when someone does read your work, they are at least reading something that you want to say—and what you want to say matters.

So you do you, friends. Go ahead and...

Low on Creative Energy?

Sometimes, you're just doing so much creative stuff in a day or a week (or more!) that you don't have the creative resources you need to write something you might never be paid for.

And that's okay. Give yourself permission to not write for a bit...

...or to write something very short.

Talking Yourself through Drafting

Some of you know that I hate drafting—which is weird for a writer to say, I know, but that's the way it is... or at least the way it was.

I've learned (through time and work and lots of counseling) that it's not drafting I hated. I hated the fear of imperfection and getting it wrong. I hated the pressure that I put on myself to write well or write a lot (or both!). Most of all, I hated that I hated myself for not meeting my own expectations.

Drafting is still hard, but I've been learning how to have compassion on myself—not just the part of me that's writing but also the part that puts so much pressure on me. That part just wants me to achieve my goals! It just wasn't aware that some of the ways it did that were harming me.

I've been easing my way back into writing consistently, and I've found myself approaching it differently. The tips below are some of what I've been learning. Maybe they can help you too.

Focus on the current words/sentence/paragraph. Don't think about everything you have to do—how many words you've written, how much revision you'll have to do, what you need to do later that day... All of that is overwhelming and makes it impossible to write. When those thoughts come, hear them then let them go, and focus on the next words again.

When you feel stuck or scared, take a break. I don't mean a long break like I've suggested before. Take just a minute or two, or maybe even just one long, deep breath. The sentence you're stuck on will look different. The emotion that's sticking you will pass, often much faster than you think.

Trust your past self. You've written before. You've revised before. You can do it again. (Even if this is your first novel, you wrote the paragraphs and sentences that came before. You wrote stories in school. You've told stories about yourself to friends.) Trust that you write for a reason.

Trust your present self. Thoughts will come that what you're writing isn't very good or that it isn't working how you'd like. But your present self can't know what's working and what isn't—not until you see the whole picture together. Trust that what you're writing now is good enough for now.

Trust your future self. Even if what you're writing were bad, trust that you will be able to make it better later. More than that: you can't actually know how to make it better until later. Your future self will handle that, and they'll be just fine.

Give yourself grace. Writing goals are good if they help motivate you, but they can backfire just as easily. When you find yourself afraid of meeting your goals, give yourself permission to turn them off. Whatever you accomplish today is fine. Five words are more than zero. There will always be days that you struggle to write, but there will be days later that you don't as well. Whatever you can do is good.

You write for a reason, and there are people out there who want to know what that reason is. We're rooting for you.

Make sure you root for yourself, too.

Human Editing vs. AI

I have my own issues with generative AI, but it is good at some tasks—tasks that (if it weren't for the copyright theft, plagiarism, labor theft, and climate-destroying energy needs) would actually be worth talking about in terms of how they can improve our lives.

One thing generative AI is genuinely good at is producing English sentences that sound intelligent. Among other things, this means it can be good at basic editing—making your words sound correct and smart—and it can even provide a kind of blind, meaning-agnostic textual analysis and recommendations for improvement.

That's editing, right? You can get it for free?!

Well, sort of. As with most things in our world, you get what you pay for. The Washington Post tested five generative AIs on their ability to perform this kind of editing. None of them did better than a D+, and only one of them didn't "hallucinate."

Free? Yes (for now).

Good?

If you have no money or critique partners, and you have the time and patience to investigate the accuracy of every suggestion, then AI can provide you with a kind of editing. It can make you sound intelligible... but not great or unique—literally the average of what the internet has to offer.

What can a human editor do, then, that the AI can't? Well, at their best, a human editor can provide the following:

• A-level corrections, recommendations, and analysis
• Insightful comments from a human who understands your intention and meaning
• Experience that comes from being an editor, a writer, and a human
• Suggestions that maintain your unique voice and vision as an author
• Harsh truths to help you improve
• Revisions that don't make up facts out of nowhere
• Connection with a human who's rooting for you

That's not to say all human editors are always amazing or do all these things, but an LLM never will. Finding a good editor is hard, but there are many out there who are worth the price.

The danger of generative AI is not that it's bad at things; it's that AI's intelligent-sounding answers fool us into thinking it's good at things, so we trust it with more than we should. We believe it knows more than it actually does.

I'm not gonna say don't use AI, and I'm not gonna say human editors are perfect. But if you choose AI, know what you're settling for, and if you hire a human editor, find one who provides value that's worth it to you.

(Am I one of those editors? Well, you can always try me out and see! A sample edit costs nothing but time.)

World-Building 105: Putting It on the Page

To recap the last few posts, we've talked about the following:

• What world-building is and how to get started
• How to keep your world-building organized
• The helpfulness of maps (yay!)
• How to make a setting compelling

So far, 100% of the info created through these tips is for you, the author—notes, maps, lists, Q&As. These are aids in writing your story, not the information you actually show the reader.

Because the goal of world-building is not to show the reader all the cool stuff you thought up but to immerse them in another place and time, to make them feel like there's more to the world than what they see, to help them believe this is a real place that could exist.

So, how do we do that with *waves hands around* all those notes and maps and junk?

Using World-Building in Your Draft

As you write, you will naturally drop hints about your world. Sometimes you have to explain things for the plot. Other times, you're just describing what's in the scene. Either way, something comes up that you can't assume the reader knows. Like...

The protagonist will be looking at the stars, and you mention the setting's two moons. The protagonist steps on a teleporter and thinks about how the technology works. Or they learn that they are part of an ancient prophecy that you now need to explain to the reader.

Or a thousand other tiny details that come up as you draft. Wherever it happens, you'll want to keep two things in mind:

1. Let the reader believe there is more to the world than what you're telling them.
2. Let the reader experience the world rather than be told about it.

These are guidelines, of course, and you'll have to find a balance. But the goal is to maintain the illusion that there is always more to discover.

"Part of the attraction of the Lord of the Rings is, I think, due to the glimpses of a large history in the background: an attraction like that of viewing a far off an unvisited island, or seeing the towers of a distant city gleaming in a sunlit mist. To go there is to destroy the magic, unless new unattainable vistas are again revealed."

                                                                                           —J. R. R. Tolkien

Right, But... How?

Well, for example, as you describe the setting's two moons, do so through the protagonist's perspective. How do the moons make them feel? Maybe they're lost in a forest but thankful for the light of the two moons to guide them. Maybe they used to look at the moons as a child and felt safe under one and uncomfortable under the other. In this way, we experience what the protagonist is experiencing, and the world-building is deepened at the same time.

Or maybe in your world bible, you know that the moons were set there by the gods or that one of the moons houses a magical prison. Or maybe you know nothing more about them at all—that's fine too! But as you describe them in your draft, you don't say what you know them to be, but you might say what people believe them to be. Like, maybe the protagonist's grandmother used to tell them a story about the moons that they now think is silly (but that maybe has a grain of truth to it—or not!).

Or maybe they're just moons. That's fine too.

What about the teleporter?

You probably don't want to go into the whole history and function of the technology unless that's a thing the protagonist would be thinking about (maybe they built them!). But again, how does the protagonist feel about teleporters? How do they think they work? Maybe they don't know at all, and that worries them every time even though they've used them their entire life. Maybe they heard a story about someone who got messed up by one, and they wonder if it's scientifically accurate. Maybe they have full confidence in them and quietly judge the folks who fear them.

Little extra thoughts like these help us experience the teleporter while also suggesting that there might be more to it than we know—there's more to discover.

And the prophecy? Don't exposit the prophecy like a history textbook. Reveal it through the lens of the character who explains it and of the protagonist themselves. How do these two characters feel about it? What does it mean to them? Do either of them doubt the prophecy? Fear it? Zealously believe it?

Again, now we're experiencing the world-building. It matters to us because it matters to characters that we care about.

And also, we're never getting the whole story (that's in your world bible) but rather what the characters know or believe about it. This way, the world always remains bigger than anything the reader can experience.

Avoiding(?) Infodumps

We're often told to avoid the dreaded infodump. As with most things, this is more what you'd call a guideline than an actual rule, but the reason infodumps are dangerous is because (1) they tend to be telling rather than allowing the reader to experience the world, and (2) they tend to tell everything the author has ever thought.

But that doesn't mean you can't use them. An infodump from an in-world narrator's perspective, that also leaves some things mysterious, can be just as compelling as any bit of action.

Leaving some mystery can help a world feel real and lived in, like there's always more to discover just around the next corner. It's a type of mystery that can pull your reader into the world.

And letting the reader experience the world through your characters keeps them invested. They want to learn about the prophecy because their favorite character's goals depend on it. They want to know how the teleporter works because Captain Dan wants to know (or because he already does know, and who doesn't want to be cool like Captain Dan?).

All those notes you took answering questions and organizing your thoughts give you a deep well to draw from as you guide your protagonist and your reader through the world. You'll think of new things as you draft, and you can add those to your notes, too. Every bit of it makes your world deeper, more immersive, and more real.

Just remember to keep some of those bits for yourself.

World-Building 104: Making a World That's Compelling

This is part of a series on fictional world-building. We've talked about how to get started, how to organize your thoughts, and how you can use maps for inspiration and internal consistency.

We've noted several times that world-building can be a huge endeavor. Even if your setting is mostly true-to-life, you're still creating a whole made-up world to immerse the reader in. It can be overwhelming to think of everything that is—or even just could be!—true within your setting.

On top of it all, you want your world to be compelling, to draw the reader in so that they want—no, need!—to know more about its mysteries and what happens next to the characters in it.

How do you do that?

To make a world that's compelling requires two of the same things that make your plot and characters compelling: conflict and theme.

Let me explain.

Conflict

A good plot has conflict—usually grown out of the conflicting goals of the characters within it. Luke Skywalker wants to save the princess from the evil Darth Vader. Eleanor Shellstrop wants to stay in the Good Place even though she doesn't belong there. The Baudelaire orphans want to escape the evil Count Olaf.

These conflicts are what make these stories compelling. We root for these characters and want them to succeed. But the worlds of each of these stories have their own inherent conflicts as well (major spoilers deliberately avoided below):

• In Star Wars, the Galactic Empire oppresses the entire galaxy, while the Rebel Alliance struggles to resist their fascist rule.
• In The Good Place, humans face a universal point system that determines whether they live in paradise or are tortured for eternity.
• In A Series of Unfortunate Events, a mysterious organization secretly helps people and thwarts those who would do harm.

These conflicts are all part of the world-building of their respective settings. They exist whether or not the characters are aware of them or even engage in them.

Though, as you may have noticed, characters are frequently involved in their world's conflict. That's part of what makes their stories so compelling. You certainly can tell stories in these settings that don't engage with the world's conflict (the Star Wars universe does all the time!), but those stories are often seen as side stories—fun but maybe not as compelling as the stories that change the setting itself.

Conflict in world-building provides a deep well of ideas and plots to draw from as you tell your characters' stories. It helps the reader become even more invested in your story.

Theme

Related to conflict is your world's theme. This element often remains under the surface, rarely stated outright and sometimes even ambiguous. Readers may not know or even care what the theme is, but your theme can help you make decisions about what is in the world while also making everything feel more connected.

Again, the world's theme might not be the same as the theme of your story. Star Wars is about a farm boy learning that he is capable of so much more. In The Good Place, a selfish woman learns to live ethically. The orphans of Unfortunate Events learn to navigate a world that is more dangerous than they knew. But each of these worlds also has themes independent of the characters and plots within them:

• The world of Star Wars explores themes of fascism, freedom, and resistance.
• The world of The Good Place explores ethics and morality.
• The world of Unfortunate Events revolves around education vs. ignorance and what it means to do the right thing.

Your world's theme is usually tied to the world's conflict. And yes, your plot's theme will often touch on the world's theme, but it doesn't have to.

Theme aids world-building as a means of making decisions. Say you were creating a new planet in Star Wars, and you're trying to decide its history and characteristics. These could be literally anything—a world within a world! How do you decide?

Well, think about the world's larger theme and conflict. What does this new planet have to do with the rebellion against the Empire? Maybe it's on one side or the other. Maybe it has tried to stay deliberately neutral and uninvolved. These decisions can help guide you as you detail the planet.

Even if the planet has nothing to do with the Empire, the world's theme can guide decisions about the people and culture. How have these people wrestled with fascism, freedom, and resistance? Maybe a local ruler oppresses the local farmers in some way. How? Are the farmers resisting, have they given up, or do they believe the ruler to be beneficent? Or maybe the planet has devised a form of government to prevent fascist rule. What does that look like? How did they arrive at that?

By using the world's theme, we've gone from "This planet can be literally anything! HELP!" to a smaller set of questions that not only focus our ideas but also complement the larger conflicts within the world. The world's theme helps us arrive at decisions while simultaneously making the entire setting deeper, more connected, and more compelling.

Putting It All Together

The best part of world-building is that you can come at these elements from any direction and it still works. Themes might emerge from a conflict you already have in mind. Conflict might be defined by themes you already want to explore. Either might arise from a character or plotline that you've already thought up in your head.

And when you become aware of the conflicts and themes in your plot, characters, and world—and when all those conflicts and themes begin to inform each other—you end up with a world and, more importantly, a story that is even more compelling than the random, cool ideas you scratched down at the start.

Now, you just gotta use that information in an actual draft. We'll talk about that next time.