And the Moral of the Story Is . . . Persuasion in Storytelling

The moral of the story.  I guess this is something that bothers me sometimes, well, maybe just the point someone is trying to put across bothers me.  I stumbled upon an old movie (I love old movies) while I was flipping around the channels a week or so ago and caught the end of a Bette Davis movie - no idea which as I haven't looked it up yet.  I saw the last ten to fifteen minutes and it struck me as a very propagandistic in the way it portrayed women in the 'emotional' ending.  Maybe it's not really fair of me to think this from the last few minutes of the film, and I'll be the first to keep an open mind about it.  I'll look it up sometime so I can see it start to finish - it is Bette Davis after all.

But in terms of writing it made me think about some books I've read, or in some cases only started to read, which were written with a purpose.  It's like those persuasive essays teachers and professors make you write in school, but for some reason someone has decided to make it a novel.

As a stand alone idea, it's not a bad one.  The problem lies in the execution of the idea.  It takes a skilled writer, a very skilled writer to do it well.  In less capable hands the reader may feel that the author’s point is too forced and distracts from the rest of the story.

One of my college professors wrote a novel about music.  The whole point of the book was to teach us (his students) about the basics of music without having us read an actual textbook.  It was a short, with questions at the end of each chapter and it was a bit on the corny side.  Maybe it wasn't the great American novel, but it served his purpose - it taught me about music.

Then there was a book I read several years ago which dealt with the supernatural.  It was really good.  I loved the storyline, the characters and the setting, but every once in a while the author would insert a sentence or a short paragraph that seemed to me to be trying to convince me that the story being told was really possible.  Isn't the story supposed to convince me on its own?  I'm sure that I read one of these sentences more that once in the book - the exact same wording.  I enjoyed the book so much that I rolled my eyes at the distractions and finished the book, but still felt annoyed by the extra persuasive efforts.

At the risk of sounding like I'm contradicting myself, there's a part of me that actually likes this kind of stuff.  I love to read the words people use to try to make us think or act one way instead of another.  I like the wording on letters from organizations that are looking for money that tells me that they'll "respect my intelligence" and give me the opportunity to donate to their cause or organization.  Or the salesman who tries to make a sale by telling me "most people like to save money."  They don't make a sale or get a donation when they use these words, even if it's a product I'd like or a cause I support.  I don't donate on principle.  They're being too obvious.

Most of us have had to write some kind of persuasive paper as part of our work at high school and/or college.  I used to love assignments where I got to write an entire paper about what a poet was saying with the elegant turn of phase used to signify death or lost love.  To write a paper on a novel I’d just read and show what it told of the society in which it was written.

When high school teachers would say, "Write a persuasive essay."  I got nervous.  I didn't think I could be persuasive, but what I didn't always realize at the time was that I was already doing it in my other papers.  Part of the each assignment was, after all, to offer enough information or proof to back my reasoning.  To be persuasive.

I loved persuasive materials so much that my senior paper in college looked at propaganda in film.  Then for graduate school I followed the same lines.  Analyzing what others had produced and pulling out all the elements of persuasion I could find, obvious or otherwise.  Some were very subtle, as with Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat or Leni Riefenstahl's Olympia.  Others, such as Jud Süß or Der Ewige Jude, were blatantly obvious.

We all do it, although hopefully for a much less harmful purpose than some of the examples in the preceding paragraph.  We use elements of persuasion in varying forms every day as we try to get someone to help with something around the house or to work on their homework.  When we try to pitch a new project or to get another thousand dollars knocked off the price of that new car.

We've all heard it and talked about it with our children.  Every time we talk about what we can learn from a story - the moral of the story - we make reference to the persuasive elements used.  Who doesn't think about this when they read or discuss "The Hare and the Tortoise" or another of Aesop's beloved fables.

But where does this have a place in most of the books we read every day?  As novelists, is it our job to make sure we are teaching as we tell our stories?  I don't think so, at least not actively.

We learn things from everything we expose ourselves to, so it's reasonable to assume that people will learn something from reading what each of us has written.  What an individual takes away from his/her experience with your writing is unique.  Someone may read my novel and only come away with the knowledge that they don't like my writing or maybe, if I'm lucky, they'll come away thinking they've gained something, felt something.

By living we run the risk of teaching, even a casual observer, by what we say or what we do.  When it comes to writing novels I think we need to choose.  Are we teaching or telling a story.  If your answer is both, then great.  The only time it's going to bother me is when I feel like someone's trying to change my way of thinking or acting when I'm really just looking for a novel that will totally envelop me in the folds and weaves of its telling.  Pull me out of my little story cocoon and I promise you, I won't be a happy reader.

Just as we teach by our thoughts and actions, our characters also teach by theirs.  By the words they speak and the way they describe their situation.  I was reading The Postmistress by Sarah Blake and was caught up in the way here characters, specifically one woman, Frankie, who was reporting the news from London described the events going on around her.  She brought me into the story, made me feel her urgency and uncertainty as bombs were falling around her.  Her worry and sadness as she witnessed a child learning of the loss of his parent.   I learned something there, because I felt what her character felt.  Experienced with Frankie and felt the tears begging for release as I sat split between the bombed out buildings in that London street and the steady hum from the treadmills and ellipticals and the chinks and thuds from weights that surrounded me while I peddled up my last incline on a stationary bike.

That’s the way I like to learn form a story.  By feeling and experiencing through the characters.  By becoming the characters and living the story with them.  Then what we learn is a natural part of the story, because it is the story.

Maya Angelou said, "A bird doesn't sing because it has and answer, it sings because it has a song."

As writers our stories are our songs.  We don't have to do any more then tell them – and, with a lot of work and a little luck, tell them well.

Most of the novels I love that might be considered one with a moral are books where the author hasn’t told me the answers, but lets me discover the answers that are unique to me as I read and think about the story.  They've just told the story.  One of the things I love about good writing, good music and good art is that it doesn't usually tell me the answers, at least not obviously.

Sometimes I think the thoughts of a moral get in the way of the telling a story.  It makes the task of writing the story down seem so much more daunting.  Have you ever felt the twisting in your gut as you sit there feeling unable to tell you're story exactly as you feel it?  You've got to get it on paper, you have, in fact, gotten a great deal written and then you stumble into a rough spot.  It's not happening as you'd like it to.  It's not pouring out from you as you'd hoped even though you can feel the waters backing up behind the dam inside you.

Angelou also said, "There is not greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

I think we need to break those dams and let the waters rush forward as we write.  Get the story out.  Put the words on paper with all the passion we feel.  There’s always plenty of time to prune the edges and consider meanings later when it’s time to edit.  And I find it easier to work with the story critically once it’s already safely on paper.  If the moral you hoped for doesn’t seem to come naturally, if it must be forced, then maybe it doesn’t belong to the story you’ve told.

I believe that the stories inside of us have lives of their own.  They want to live – to be told – just as we do.  So why not just tell them.