So what is the moral to your story? Or for what purpose other than to entertain are you writing?

I don't really see any point in a big long post other than what I just wrote so I'll post what I got:

My book's moral is likely going to be 'Do as you are told by your authorities, even if it doesn't make any sense at all to you.'

This is a good thread subject, Elanhil. I'm surprised it hasn't been made yet.

The moral of my main novel would be: Just because something seems to be your destiny, it doesn't mean it's what you have been called to do.

Nice topic, Caleb!

The moral of my story is sometimes people tell you wrong is right and right is wrong and how to find out which is which.

Kind of hard to paraphrase.

I kind of have two morals going on:
A girl needs the love of her father
and
Racism is wrong.

I'm not sure what my moral is. I think I'll write the first draft before I decide.

- Terra

The moral of my story:

Trust, in your closest friends and in the Creator, is crucial.

It can be summed up simply in the word: Trust

eruheran

I'm not big in to blatant morals in my stories. I think the best stories have themes, lessons, and morals in many different things and not necessarily an Aesop's fable.

I'm kinda picky about morals and themes. I use themes instead of morals, and generally don't try to write with a theme in mind. It's not that I want to merely entertain, it's that I believe that writing to a theme limits my creativity most of the time. Theme naturally is part of a story, any story, so I don't worry about being for 'entertainment only'.

Very interesting, Mel... That's how my first draft was, but when I looked for themes I couldn't really find any...

My themes/moral generally sum up to "It is the citizen's duty to be sure the government keeps the people's best interests in mind and be willing to stand up against the government when it oversteps its boundaries."

I have so many underlying plots it's hard to tell... Probably forgiveness is freeing is a major one though.

The project I'm working on now is along those lines.

My recent project has four main morals, I suppose.

1.) Love Conquers All
2.) Blood for Blood is Pointless
3.) Struggles Strengthen You
4.) Forgiveness Brings Peace

About four years ago, I used to write for entertainment purposes, then my mom asked my the exact same question: "What's the moral to your story? Is there a moral?"

Thanks for starting this!

~Calen

I think a moral or theme (they're the same, aren't they?) is crucial, but it certainly doesn't have to be blantant. Just... there. I find themes/morals grow naturally out of story characters and circumstances.

My 'moral'.... hmmm. Kind of hard to untwist it from the whole story, because it's kind of tangled up in it... basically the main character is selfish.... this tears his life to pieces and then he is freed by Christ. The moral is...

Self isn't worth living for.
and, in Frederick Faber's words...
They always win who side with God.

I like that theme/moral. It's something I would read.

I do not think a story should have only one moral. I think it should have at least one. And of course a story should be moral, but that is another topic.

What if the morals of a story are as countless as all of the morals there could be?
The Lord of the Rings is such a story.

No story is truly without a moral. It either has a good moral or a bad moral. Even if a story is written without a moral, the moral is amorality, which is immoral, and thus it has a bad moral.


Why does that not surprise me?

*reads several times to get head around that*


Takes a conspiracy theorist to know a conspiracy theorist.

I'm not sure yet, but one of my themes is probably something along the line of 'what happens when people shut off their brains, no matter how good the idea/movement might sound.

- Terra

So what's the difference between a moral and a theme? Right now it seems that it's simply a matter of wording.

I have several books, so I have several. One of my most common ones seems to be nothing is impossible (which could translate into themes of belief and hope). The Last wizard is a carefully crafted argument that the ends never justify the means, though I wish I could phrase it otherwise. It's also a story of hope.

With fantasy I would say you could use moral and theme interchangeably but also theme and cobha. My world has the concept of spiritual gifts having physical effects. That is a theme for the world and the story but you don't really learn much from it.

To me, if you make it all ice-cream, morals would be chunks of chocolate, and themes would be like veins that run through the whole thing...

Themes and cobha are not at all the same, at least to me...

Elanhil, that is a brilliant example. I love it.

That's fantastic Elanhil!

Whether the author is intentional about it or not, all books have morals, which are derived from the themes. In my definition, a theme is the plane you chose to explore with your story. You formulate a moral from that theme by how your characters act and suffer.

I love breaking down stories by theme. Having a cohesive theme can really help align your story and make sure all your characters coexist well. Breaking down a story by theme, whether your story or another's, is a wonderful exercise, and utterly fascinating! I have lots of theme-y lessons hiding in my brain, because I've learned a lot about theme from my screenwriting mentor, but that's not really the topic of this thread so I shall refrain.

As for my stories... the theme from Faded is, at the core, serving God in the present. One MC looks too far into the future and misses the opportunities that are right here and now; another MC lives too much in the present and ignores other's needs.

The theme for Alaidia (Peter's Angel) is something I need to refine... I think it will be something along the lines of responsibility. Peter seizes too much responsibility and tries to cover his sins rather than confess them. Nathan doesn't want to inherit the responsibility that belongs to him. Mark learns to follow his conscience even if others expect him to do differently.

*must indulge in sisterly pride for a moment, will repent later *

I agree with Philli, everything has morals, whether good or bad, and they all stem from your basic, fundamental beliefs about life, people, religion, and society.

Don't get me started on how dangerous this is...

Mind expounding on that?

I think I also have some smaller morals running through the sub-plots:

You shouldn't stuff past trauma into the closet---and if you have, that closet needs cleaning.

And:

You do not have to identify yourself with the country of your birth.

OK, so maybe I'm being a thread necromancer (can I say that here? ), but my main themes are loyalty and identity. My hero tries to run away from problems (including foreign oppression) in his country, but ultimately finds it futile. He has abandoned his family, his homeland, his people, and his Emperor, and he has built nothing, gotten nowhere. Eventually he realizes that nothing remains for him on the frontier, and he doesn't know who he is or who he's supposed to be any more. And he decides he has to go back.

Ever seen a glitter-porcupine? Pity. It's quite interesting.

Let me raise this thread from the dead again and say that the theme of my current story is basically redemption and trust. The central moral is that we can't know or understand everything, and we can't handle everything...but we can rely on God to use our weaknesses for His glory, and we can trust that there are ultimately answers to everything in His hands. Basically the last paragraph of my essay about moral dilemmas...and basically a response to the central themes of A Series of Unfortunate Events. I'd say how these themes tie into the actual plot of story, but I don't want to spoil anybody who just might end up reading it.


I want to read that book!


Yeah, I've heard successful writers advising that you should write your first draft first, then see what themes (and symbolism, incidentally) are showing up...and then when you revise, try to bring them out a bit more and make them more focused. I personally tend to ignore this advice, perhaps to my detriment, and start thinking about themes and morals that I could include as soon as I get a kernel of a story idea.


See, this is part of why I like to have a theme worked out before I write - I want to have a central idea that the whole story revolves around, so that I know what to include and what to leave out. It's like when you work out a thesis for an essay. You come up with your thesis, and then you can figure out what you need to include. Does this paragraph support the thesis? Then you should probably put it in. Does it not? You should take it out. It's certainly not as clear-cut with a story - it's hard to answer "Does this line of description support my main moral that God redeems and uses our weaknesses?" But I think it can help you figure out the bigger picture, like what characters and scenes and plot threads and so on to leave in...and so that's my excuse. We'll see how well my approach works for me.

Everything I hear about this book of yours is awesome. * grins * I like the directions you could go with an exploration of that 'moral'.

I do think it works just as well like this as it does the other way, it just depends on the author – or on the book.

My current book has a theme that's basically about death and killing and what all that means, good and bad and indifferent (well, not indifferent – not death). I didn't know it would be that when I began the book, I just found out after working on it off and on for some years. The book is very centralized around that theme, despite the fact that I didn't have it in mind during the first stages of work on it. The way I found out it existed was by how centralized the story was around it. It was the point of the climax, it was the crux of the MCs problems, it was part of nearly every plot point – before I even knew about it. Kind of weird, if you think about it. But I think it's that whole 'your sub conscious is often smarter than you are' thing....

And I think the way it happened for 'Catcher' works a lot of the time. It works for things that are more like essays even... I don't write them very often, but when I wrote my post for the Imagine This blitz recently I had no idea when I began writing what the post would be about, I just had some sentence scraps. After awhile, I figured it out, and my further writing and revision and such was then directed to focus on the topic I had discovered.

But then on the other hand, I have a sci fi series I work on here and there which seems to need a different approach. When I began the first book, I figured out very early on that the 'point' (aka theme aka moral) of it was about what heaven is, and what it can't be. That was what drove all my further creativity and guided me in what to write and where to go. Which was awesome.

The second book didn't seem to be going anywhere, at first. I wasn't sure where it was headed, or who out of my cast would be the main character, or really what the thrust of the plot would be, though I had vague ideas for scenes and stuff to happen. It wasn't until I suddenly thought of the idea of flipping the theme from the first book and using that for the second book that I suddenly figured it out – all of it, main character, her arc, the plot, etcetera. So the point of the second book is what hell is, and what it can't be. And everything built itself off of that.

So it's worked for me both ways.... And the third book of the series sort of has a combination of techniques. I kind of know what the theme is, and that's what started me off, but I'm figuring it out more solidly as I work out the story.

So yeah. I really think it depends. * grins * And I believe your way is perfectly valid, sheesania. At least I hope it is.

Good to hear how multiple approaches to themes have worked for you! Your themes sound really interesting, too. I don't have nearly so much experience with writing myself to draw on, but I do have years of overanalyzing books and lurking on writing forums.


Yes! So many parts of writing can vary so much between authors and books. Yet things can be incredibly the same, too... So many times I've gone on a writing forum and seen some really solid and helpful advice from someone, only to discover later that they write romance novels, or thrillers, or something else utterly removed from my own subjects of interest. They probably write books I'd never want to read! Yet our writing process is similar. Anyways, back to the topic. I know I tend to be a logical person who likes to work things out beforehand (even if I don't outline extensively) and who will end up with everybody related and everything symbolic if I'm not careful, just because I love order and connection so much. So I think figuring a theme out ahead of time fits well with the way I approach things...but I'll still need to be careful, naturally...

I also feel like with my novel, because the central conflict involves the main character dealing with that part of his worldview, I can perhaps be excused for having a more blatant theme. In other words, his goal is to find out the theme of his own story! If my MC was instead, say, going on a more normal fantasy-type quest for an Artifact of Doom, then such a blatant theme would probably be rather out of place. Could be done, but I don't want to be the author who attempts to pull it off.


Thanks. I'm looking forward to exploring it, too...I just hope I do it justice!


Lol, me too.

Well, with world building, there are endless amount of themes running through everything you create.

They way I was taught "theme" in my story class was that it was the moral of the story, and gives you a notion of what actions lead to what consequences. But the same often happens with cobha. Magic will have certain consequences. There may be certain actions that lead to the contraction of a disease that turns you into a monster. These things happen in the story, but are a part of the world and its cobha, yet you create the actions and consequences to line up with a certain set of values or a way of thinking. That runs along the same veins as theme to me.

In my experience (in English literature classes), "theme" includes the notion of "moral," but is not quite the same thing:

• A (normal) story can have at most one moral, but nearly every story has more than one theme;
• A story's moral is usually deliberately chosen, or at least (if it grew organically from the concept of the story in the author's mind) consciously placed; in contrast, many of the "themes" that critics identify are not consciously chosen or placed. (And while some things that critics say, like the idea that The Lord of the Rings is an allegory about World War II, are complete nonsense, it is well-established that fiction often contains themes that the author did not consciously intend.)
• A "moral" can usually be summarized in a single sentence, but many themes can be distilled to a single word: "redemption", "freedom", and so on.

Worldbuilding, especially "cobha", is a potent and powerful tool in the author's toolbox that adds another dimension to his or her ability to portray a theme. But they are clearly distinct.

By the way, "theme" comes from (Google's infobox when you search for "etymology of (word)" tells me) the Greek for (logical) "proposition"; the "theme" of a story is the Truth that it is about, its "matter" (in an orthogonal rather than parallel way to how the Arthurian myth is "the Matter of Britain").

Ooooh. I love this thread.

The theme in my latest short story (which I discovered after I wrote it, btw), is that you cannot base your life off of what you're subjectively feeling, but rather off of what is objectively true. It's a psychological thriller.

The theme that I want to work into my superhero story (part of the CF superhero universe) is that we cannot make a failing or temptation our identifier. (It's actually against gay ideology...because they make their specific temptations a central part of their identity, saying that it's just the way they are). My superhero takes his power and uses it to identify himself and excuse a lot of bad things about himself.
I'm hoping to work in a lot of other themes as well, but that's one I consciously want to develop.

The theme in the first novel in my fantasy series (which is not written yet) is that God is real. He is there. MC has faith struggles, and I really want to work through that aspect of worldview in that one.

'sall for now.

Areth,

ka

Oo sounds like an interesting one...

Right now I'm working on a short story (may end up being novella size, though...) about moral principles and love and how they conflict...and if they should conflict in the first place! Once again I came up with a story idea, figured out a theme that would fit with it, and then applied the theme to the story as I wrote instead of just letting something naturally develop. But so far I think it's going okay. Though there is going to be a big monologue at the end...The monologue really does fit within the context of the story, but still...

The main moral of Egnitheos (meaning the one that the entire story bloomed from) is this: With God on your side, there is nothing to fear.

Some sub-plot morals include the sanctity of human life, and how you've never fallen so far that God cannot save or change you. :3

That sounds really interesting, Karthmin.

I don't have any clear themes for the short story I wrote, but I think honor, integrity, and noblesse oblige are very strong themes.