The second topic my letter-writer asked about is making a point in a story, not necessarily a moral but a point. She thinks a story should make one, but when she tries, she feels preachy, and she also wonders if she has enough experience at age twenty-two to go after a point at all.<\/p>\n
Probably by the time we\u2019re eight, or maybe even younger, we\u2019ve accumulated sufficient experience to tell many stories with points, even if we don\u2019t have the skill to tell them well. Some of my earliest memories are from the viewpoint of a grownup observer looking out through my three- or four-year-old eyes. For example, when I was about three, my mother sneaked me off to New York University to have my intelligence tested. On the way home she asked me not to tell my father. I remember consenting and also understanding why she wanted the test. I’m new, I thought. She doesn’t know what to make of me yet.<\/p>\n
Do you remember times when your understanding way exceeded your age? And certainly by twenty-two, we\u2019ve all reached many adult conclusions.<\/p>\n
So I think age is no obstacle. Deliberately making a point may be a problem, however.<\/p>\n
Consider the story of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf. We\u2019re told that the moral is to always do one\u2019s best. But suppose the moral weren\u2019t handed to us. What might we conclude on our own? One interpretation might have to do with kindness. If my brother pig\u2019s house falls down I should take him in. I shouldn\u2019t let him be eaten, even if he could have built a better house. Another moral might have to do with solidarity in the face of a common enemy. Or the moral might have to do with the wolf. He – and by extension we – shouldn\u2019t make empty threats. And on and on.<\/p>\n
In “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” I think the real moral is that children shouldn\u2019t be given responsibilities that they demonstrate are beyond them. I\u2019ve asked second graders who they think is the villain in the tale. Many say the boy, but a big minority blame the wolf. Some blame the sheep, for not running away fast enough. A few have blamed the parents of the boy for failing to teach him not to lie.<\/p>\n
The moral belongs in the mind of the reader. If you make your point too strongly, you may deprive her of the opportunity to find her own meaning. I\u2019ve heard more than once from readers that Ella Enchanted made them want to be more obedient!<\/p>\n
Your story will have a point, whether or not you are trying to develop one. It will be infused with your values and your take on the world. My book Fairest is about a young woman who is unsightly according to the standards of Ayortha, the kingdom she lives in. I wasn\u2019t trying to write a moralistic tale about beauty. I was only trying to tell the story of Snow White from a new angle. But my ideas about beauty crept in.<\/p>\n
Regarding another aspect of point-making, I\u2019ve been criticized for letting my villains off too easy. The villain in Fairest, for example, is merely exiled to a castle outside the capital. Her husband still loves her. She\u2019s still queen, still living in luxury. She certainly doesn\u2019t have to dance in red-hot iron shoes until she dies.<\/p>\n
There are real people in my life history, people who were cruel to me or to someone I loved, whom I can pleasurably imagine (imagination only) tangoing in burning shoes. But I don\u2019t hate my fictional villains. They\u2019re often the most fun to write. My strongest feeling toward them is gratitude. So in my books maybe evil isn\u2019t punished enough. Yet the bad acts of my villains always have consequences they don\u2019t want and haven\u2019t reckoned on. Most kids learn that their actions have consequences too, and sometimes mercy teaches them that lesson best of all.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a kind of prompt: Think about books you love and what their points were for you. Discuss them with pals who\u2019ve read them too. See if you all picked up the same meanings. Now think about or reread your own stories and decide what the point might be. Think of more than one possible point, four or five if you can. Go from story to story. Do your points have a family resemblance? Notice how the real you seeps in. Find out what other people see in your stories. I\u2019ll bet that what they take from a story is no surprise to you, based on what you know about them. Your readers melt into a story, just as the author does. It\u2019s one of the miracles of writing.<\/p>\n
Of course the point is, don\u2019t worry about making a point.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The second topic my letter-writer asked about is making a point in a story, not necessarily a moral but a point. She thinks a story should make one, but when she tries, she feels preachy, and she also wonders if she has enough experience at age twenty-two to go after a point at all. Probably […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[280],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":541,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263\/revisions\/541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}