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This week: The Moral of the Story Edited by: Kit  
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Do you learn best from the One Man, or from someone more like you?
This week's Action/Adventure Newsletter is all about morals, and how to best get them across.
Kit |
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Imagine a story about a 30-something person suddenly ditching their career, because they’ve got it in their head that they should go back to school. Picture the adventures they get themselves into. The struggles they face along the way. The delight, the relief, the pride they experience when they’ve finally completed university... Yeah, that was me yesterday. And the moral of that little story is that you can do whatever you set your mind to doing, including getting yourself an education when you’re a little older than most other students. It’s never too late.
Many stories contain a moral lesson of some kind. The Harry Potter novels, for example, are about the power of love in the face of evil. About the value of friendship. About the choices you make in your life, that determine who and what you are. Everyone has a darkness lurking inside of them, but that does not mean that you have to act upon it.
A Song of Ice and Fire, probably better known these days as A Game of Thrones is a lesson about power. How it can corrupt. What people are willing to do in order to obtain it. It also contains lessons about loyalty and honour.
Sometimes, of course, if there are any lessons in a story, they are very subtle. Let’s consider the typical One Man stories. You know the ones. The world is in danger and there is only One Man who can save it! A million bullets fly at him. Dangerous machinery is about to swallow him whole. Luckily, he is the One Man, so apart from some dirt and some torn clothes, possibly some minor injury that can be dealt with with a strip of fabric, he’s well enough to save the day and kiss the obligatory woman-who-doesn’t-really-have-a-storyline.
Don’t get me wrong – I quite enjoy watching those kinds of movies from time to time. But they are rather predictable and they don’t exactly leave you with food for thought. I guess that’s the whole point of them. They’re light-hearted entertainment.
Not that I am that fond of books or movies that shove their moral lessons right in your face. That’s as bad as comedies that have laughter tracks to tell you that This Is Funny. You should laugh now. Really, you should. A little subtlety goes a long way. So does the assumption that people are, on the whole, reasonably intelligent and therefore quite capable of figuring things out for themselves.
Which, as is so often the case for writers, leaves us trying to find that special balance that will work for our target audience. Let’s say that you do have something that you want to get across to your readers. Something that’s important to you. How do you go about it?
“Show, not tell” is always good advice. Sometimes it’s easier said than done. But through your characters’ actions and interactions a lot can be revealed. How do they respond to one another? Can they depend upon one another when it comes to it? What are their flaws? What are their strengths? How do their experiences in life affect them and their decisions?
The best-loved characters are often those who aren’t perfect. So, trying to get a moral lesson across through a character who is everything nice and sweet and heroic and pure may not be that effective. Such a character is one people can easily tire from. Rather than feel inspired by them, they’re difficult, if not impossible to relate to. Add a dose of moral lessons on top of that and the reader can easily feel patronised, or even bored, and they may well close the book, never to pick it up again.
Regular people, then, or at least characters with regular, recognisable traits – superheroes don’t have to be perfect, either, after all – are probably your best bet. They may well have some lessons to learn. And not being perfect does not mean that you cannot inspire others. I get inspired by regular people all the time.
As always, have fun. Don’t force it. Go where the flow takes you. Good luck! 
Kit
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Wishing you a week filled with inspiration,
The Action/Adventure Newsletter Team
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Action/Adventure: May 31, 2017 Issue [#8315]
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