Books That Teach Life Lessons
Books that teach life lessons are fine...as long as you don't clobber readers over the head with your theme. So how do you weave a message into your story without being too obvious?
Ready to take your writing to the next level? Get access to a whole library of resources from the experts, including videos, workshops, handouts, tips, and exclusive content for writers like you.
Transcript for Books That Teach Life Lessons Video
Hi, I'm Mary Kole with Good Story Company. In this video, we are going to talk about books that teach life lessons.
Now, my career was started in children's books. I blogged or been blogging for 10 years now at kidlit.com, which is all about kid lit, children's literature. And one of the things I ran into a lot is this issue of books that teach life lessons because a lot of writers, they come to children's book to do a little light preaching. That's not necessarily a bad thing at its heart but there are ways to do it, and there are ways not to do it. And this changes with the age of the book. So, we have picture books, right, which are for the youngest readers, and a lot of the time, the writer really wants to get a point across with their picture books. So, they get into this thing where at the very end of the picture book, the character learns a lesson. And then, the character's like, "And I learned that sharing is caring." Or even better, actually worse, an adult comes along and the adult says, "Oh, don't you know? Sharing is caring." And they all lived happily ever after.
Well, I would highly, highly discourage you from ever, no matter what age group, but especially picture books, from ever going down that rabbit hole of either the character saying the lesson outright or an adult, heaven forbid, saying the lesson outright because it really does disrespect and condescend to the reader. And you definitely don't want to do that for these young readers. No matter their age, I really wanna see you trust the reader enough to really get the point of your story, without you having to clobber anybody over the head. This does not change as we grow up in age. There is not a single age group from board book all the way to 99-year old person reading a novel that likes to be told exactly what the theme of the novel is.
Now, when we do get into these older age groups, we start aging out of picture book a little bit. We get into communicating the point of the story through theme. For a novel, it may be the power of loss to bring devastation and beauty. But if you have a character sit there and be like," Oh, I understand now, the power of loss to bring devastation and great beauty." I mean, from the jokey tone of my voice, I think you can tell that I don't love it. I don't love it. I don't recommend it. I don't want you to do it. The character should never go out on a limb and say, "Hey, this is the point. This is the theme of the story."
How can you do it? Well, by taking your character through a compelling plot, and then at some point in the plot, they're forced to sort of confront the issue of loss, the issue of, you know, not necessarily getting what they want or whatever theme you're working on. And the plot should bring them into sort of indoor clash between them and this thing that you're trying to sort of communicate with your story. And let the character have these experiences and then think about them. And then, maybe come to some realizations of like, "That was wonderful while I had it. And now, I have to figure out a new way," for example. At no point did I talk about loss. At no point did the character sit there and kind of ponder loss. Yeah, this is something in almost every single picture book that I've worked on and very many novels, especially at the end, when pressure is the highest to sort of land with the message.
This is where I get out my red pen as an editor and I have to say, "Is there a more subtle character-based way that harnesses your story and the plot you've created and then sort of turns it into the takeaway, via the character rather than via the author coming in to say their piece about, you know, what they intended." So, it's one of the hardest pieces of advice to actually follow. It's very easy to give, which is trust the reader. Trust the reader to do their job. Trust the reader to pick up on what you are putting into the story. And if at all possible, especially in picture book, avoid saying, "The point of the story, the moral of the story, the theme of the story." Just leave that off the page and see if you can trust the reader to sort of get it for themselves. I think this is going to be a great improvement to any writing that currently has this in action inside of it. And I would highly recommend that you try it if you have a bit of a heavy-handed or sort of overt theme, or takeaway, or moral, or message operating in your story.
That is one thing that I wish I could communicate to pretty much every writer who has ever sort of brought a theme to the table. It's better to leave it out. Leave it out and let the reader piece it together. And I guarantee that that reader, no matter their age...because young readers are very, very capable of interpreting complex ideas if you just let them. No matter their age, everyone wants to discover a story instead of being spoonfed a story by an overeager author. So again, very much easier said than done, but this is something I really want you to try. I really want you to deploy today if you have a moral heavy element in your story.
This has been Mary Kole with Good Story Company and here is to a good story.
Get exclusive on-demand content from Mary Kole and the Good Story Company team about writing, revision, submission, marketing, and more, for writers of all skill levels, at Good Story Learning.
