Of course, we’d never endorse moralizing in your fiction and we’d never tell you what to think or feel. However, we assume you have morals and – whether you are aware of it or not – those beliefs find their way into your fiction. And they should. In an article for Writer’s Digest, Carole Lawrence discusses how moral fits into storytelling, and how our fiction reflects our morals.
“To some people who like to theorize about writing, ‘moral’ is a dirty word,” Lawrence writes. “Bullshit. Every child who begs for a bedtime story knows that the story will tell him something essential about life—not in a pat, preachy way, but in a much deeper, more important way: by example.”
In every story you write, you are creating a unique moral universe, through which you tell the writer what the world should be like. “You are sharing your vision of the world as it exists in your story, and the reader will come away knowing what that vision is—and what you value or don’t value,” Lawrence says. Readers can ignore your vision, but you shouldn’t.
Acceptable behavior changes over time. A hundred years ago, children regularly worked in factories; today they do not. Views on race, sexuality, privacy, and personal freedoms have evolved. The morals in your fiction will change based on the time of your setting or the country. “When you are writing, ask yourself: What are the moral poles in my story? Who represents the moral center?” Lawrence advises. “Every time you write, you are telling people your opinion of things, giving them your moral vision—whether you want to or not.”
Examine the moral center of novels by your favorite writers, particularly series writers. What morals can you identify beyond the obvious. In Agatha Christie, you might notice that the world moves on once a murder is resolved, Lawrence observes. In contrast, no one is left the same by the end of a John le Carré novel. In Christie, England is permanent and immutable, but le Carré says that England has not been England for some time.
Of course, this all connects to theme. “The issue of a story’s themes is directly related to the question of the moral universe,” Lawrence writes. “The moral universe is the fictional world in which themes revolve like planets around the major events of the story. To some extent, the depth of purpose in any story is linked to the extent to which a writer investigates his themes.”
