How to write a deep and meaningful tale?

Tips plz.

By not being lazy, first and foremost.

And yes, I do probably sound rude. But considering the attitude that can be seen in what you wrote, I feel it an appropriate response.

First, you work yourself. Then, you ask others for help and add that onto your work. But if you show yourself as not having desire to work, regardless of whether that's true or merely how it looks, expecting help is kind of ... I won't even say what lest I say something too harsh.

Write about things you care about. And write well. Write so well that you'd read it if you hadn't been the one to write it. Write it like telling that story is the most important thing you will ever do for yourself (even if it isn't).

Study the mechanics of fiction, "good" fiction in particular. Look for the themes of your story (what the conflicts are and how they're solved). Get a feel for what makes characters so interesting that readers will invest their love, their hate, even their fear. Learn how to make the plot flow out of the characters' motivations and actions.

Learn to SHOW what needs to be shown and only tell what needs to be told. Learn to make your characters well-rounded, dynamic individuals rather than flat, static props. Learn the difference between writing IN a genre and writing FOR a genre. Then, throw half of that out the window and write what you want to write because at the end of the day nothing should matter more than the story YOU want to tell (whether it sells a single copy or not).

I scoff at the words "deep and meaningful". Those are subjective opinions not objective facts. Learn to look at the art for what it is. The worst thing you can do as an artist is to let capitalistic thinking corrupt your unique vision.

Uhhhhhh...how in any way, shape, or form was I being rude and impolite? I even said please.

Nekomoon, what precisely do you mean by "capitalistic"? For the record, I have little to no interest in politics.

Profit-driven. Profit-driven "art" like all the Twilight knockoffs you'll find in any given book section. Like stories so dumbed-down that it hurts to read them because there's no real plot and the characters are boring or just so badly written that you can't care about them. And you should definitely have an "interest" in politics if you live on this planet because the people who DO have an "interest" in politics are the same kinds of people who want to control what you can and can't read, write, blah blah.

edited 25th Sep '15 9:22:40 PM by nekomoon14

In other words, write a story that you would enjoy reading, and write that kind of story well.

Any "deepness" and "meaningfulness" that might or might not be there is secondary anyway, for as long as the story is enjoyable.

And I didn't say you were rude or impolite, if that is what you are referring to; I said that I probably sound rude in my act of pointing out that you are presenting yourself as lazy (due to the way too short length of the message, combined with half the words being misspelled; though I find that half-way amusing, to be honest). I might not have been clear about what exactly I was referring to, and for that I apologise as I do have the tendency to get more cryptic than intended.

Anyway, getting back to the point before I derail myself yet again, unless there's a reason why you need what you write to actually be deep and meaningful, in which case it would do you well to actually state this reason, there's no need to aim for it because it's all mostly subjective and thus something that, for the most part, simply happens or not.

edited 26th Sep '15 3:19:43 AM by Kazeto

Well, you sit down and open a vein and words come out.

More realistically, there's a scene in the movie Finding Forester that explains how deep and meaningful usually happens.

IMO if you deliberately try to make something "deep and meaningful", you run the risk of purple prose and possibly being seen as pretentious and overly dramatic.

Basically it is a Centipede's Dilemma.

EDIT: Ok more accurately, if you attempt to deliberately make something profound you will run the risk of Magnum Opus Dissonance.

edited 26th Sep '15 11:54:25 AM by Worlder

Stories are only meaningful because people are emotionally invested in them.

To get people invested in a story, they have to be invested in its characters.

To get people invested in a story's characters, they have to empathise with the characters' struggles.

To get people to empathise with a character's struggles, they have to understand what the character wants - their motives, desires and goals.

If you make sure your characters' goals are clear, and always keep them in mind when writing your story, you will likely produce something "meaningful" without even trying.

edited 28th Sep '15 4:20:10 AM by Tungsten74

You can't. There is no way to deliberately write a "deep, meaningful" story. If you try, you'll just wind up with a pretentious mess. Write the story you want to write. Write it well. And then afterwards people will come along and convince themselves it has lots of deep hidden meanings in it.

Finding the answer to that question is why everyone writes.

I'd say it's not that hard, so long as you avoid a few pitfalls that unfortunately are endemic in company-published fiction. As a basic exercise, simply have two or more conflicting viewpoints, represented by a respective number of characters, wherein:

They sincerely and consciously hold their views, and have adopted them for reasons more far-reaching than emotional trauma.

They go to no further extremes to promote their views than what the views themselves directly concern, nor are their stances disarmed by unrelated actions.

The story isn't deliberately set up to "prove" any view is "right" while any other is "wrong", especially not through events not logically stemming from the expression and acting on these views.

Basically, have some people argue, and treat neither as a hero or villain, stupid or smart, sane or deranged. And build the story around the conclusions each character may draw from the views of the others. For all intents and purposes, depth is merely the amount of honesty and rational reasoning a writer can conceive of regarding a given character's viewpoint, and meaning comes from the logical consequences of said character expressing and acting on said viewpoint. It's not complicated to write, but simply difficult to promote in a market built around affirming pre-designed conclusions based on particular audience preferences.

For me, writing an intentionally deep story depends on the motivation.

• If you want your story to be deep because you want to tell a good story, you're going to have to put a lot of research, writing, and personal thought into the story.

• If you want other people to think your story is deep, then you're just going to fall into a Cliché Storm because you're essentially Pandering to the Base.

• Pouring yourself into your story does not make you immune to people still thinking your work is pretentious, Purple Prose, or So Okay, It's Average. You're never going to get 100% approval.

General consensus on my Glee fanfic is that it's very well-written and soul-crushing, but there's still one person who thinks my style is obnoxious and weird. Luckily that review weirded me out too much to be mad because she went on about how "THE STORY HAS NO POINT" and I'm like, "...What point? The story's only point is a meta one, because this is a deconstruction."

No doubt there's a crapton more people over the years who didn't think my fic was face-meltingly good—they either thought it was good but not enough to leave a review, or they just clicked the back button because they weren't a fan of my style and forgot about it.

edited 28th Sep '15 8:49:14 PM by Sharysa

All stories argue for a certain position. Just because a story isn't explicit in its arguments doesn't mean the arguments aren't there.

A story may display a certain position coming from a particular character, and present logically plausible consequences thereof, but beyond that, deliberately setting out to prove a position as right is the stuff of polemics and sermons - and those are only as deep as one agrees with them, if not less.

Except what ultimately happens to those characters over the course of the narrative is wholly in the hands of the author. If a character presents racist viewpoints, and later suffers some kind of loss, that's not the ineffable whims of fate at work - that's the calculated contrivance of the author, deciding that said character needs to be punished. Likewise, if a character puts forward a progressive viewpoint, and later suffers, that's still the work of artistic intention.

This shit happens everywhere, not just in obviously didactic works. Pretending that it doesn't is willful blindness.

edited 2nd Oct '15 2:02:10 AM by Tungsten74

The author has control of the story, but it still has to follow some sort of logic in order to be considered a good story, at least by people not immediately gearing up to bobble-head any expected message. If you have a racist character, it's one thing for their stance to, say, strain their relationship with a relative in a mixed-race romance; or for it to be explored as arising from genuinely bad experiences. It's something completely different if they're bigoted for the sake of being bigoted, and then get arbitrarily hit by a bus.

The question here isn't how to write a story that's completely morally agnostic, but to simply have the morals within speak for themselves, and to at least look like they're coming from the characters, rather than the author.

You're making a lot of assumptions to get from point a to point b, and most of them don't follow. Not everything in a story is, or even should be, related.

But they're always coming from the author. Jesus Christ how are you not getting this? Nothing in a story is there by accident. Everything is there because the author put it there. The author is God of their own little world, and since they're God, they have control over who lives, who dies, who suceeds, who fails, who gains, who loses. How they choose to wield the karma of their world spells out the message of their work.

Yeah? And how does that situation end? How is it resolved? The racist character isn't just going to have a strained relationship with their relative forever. How does that strain finally get released, and what happens afterwards? How does the universe of the story ultimately treat said racist (and their relative) for their behaviour?

Therein lies the message of the piece. Does the racist shun said relative, and get praise from all the other likeable main characters? Then the message is "shunning people who get into mixed marriages is good". Do the racist and their relative sit down and talk out their differences, with the racist character eventually changing their mind? Then the message is "if bigots would just sit down and talk to the objects of their hatred, they would soon change their mind". Does the relative try to change the racist's mind but fail, and decide to cut off contact with the racist, to their own lasting happiness? Then the message is "trying to change bigots' minds is a waste of time. You're better off just shunning them".

A story is like a logical argument - you establish base premises at the start, and then follow those premises through a series of logical steps until you reach a conclusion. Two of those premises might be "the main character is poor but wants wealth" and "hard work pays off in the end". Thus, the main character staying poor or getting rich would depend entirely on whether they worked hard, as would the message of the story. As a smarter man than I once said, the ending is the conceit.

Yes it should, because it's all part and parcel of the same thematic message. Why the hell would I drop something into my story if it didn't have anything to do with the main characters or their struggles? That's terrible writing.

edited 2nd Oct '15 12:30:03 PM by Tungsten74

Four words: Willing Suspension of Disbelief. As real life isn't exactly known for dealing laser-guided karmic punishment, a fictional story is thus more believable for avoiding it as well. The inverse is the province of Fantastic Space Whale Aesops, wherein it's clear what the message is, but it's so ham-fisted that any potential for depth and meaning is rendered null.

Or to expand on G. K. Chesterton: A deep and meaningful story reveals the views and stances of its characters; a bad story reveals only those of its author. The moment you start only thinking in terms of what the author says and not the character in particular, then you might as well not get into fiction at all, and stick to blatant sermons.

Or, in other words, the author may deliberately choose not to argue for any position and simply let the readers decide what they see in it.

There are stories of this sort, too. I'm not saying every story is like that, but some are, and that means you can't (or at least shouldn't) claim that every story argues for some kind of position. Some of them do, possibly many, mayhap even most; but not all.

A challenge or obstacle that faces the characters is not required to be of their own making. It in no way follows that the author is necessarily seeking to punish the characters with such things, either. Simply because bad things happen to people you've chosen to perceive as bad it does not follow the author held the same belief. Protagonists are usually afflicted with troubles merely because they are protagonists. Otherwise the story would be boring. Bad things may happen not to punish the character but to allow them to overcome them. Bad things may happen to direct the character down a different path. Bad things may happen to illuminate the character's self. Bad things may happen as a result of other characters' reactions. "Bad things as karmic retribution" is pretty rare and almost universally a sign of a poor writer. The Evil Overlord is evil, sure, but he's taken down because somebody got mad at him, and it wasn't the author.

The craft of writing is learning to prevent your prejudice from impacting your story. Your argument for its embrace is unconvincing.

edited 2nd Oct '15 6:55:57 PM by Night

Yea, there's a whole lot of back-and-forth going on up there, but where's the advise this creator is asking for? This is not a soapbox. We are not here to argue and debate like critics. A creator asked for advice, practically advice, usable advice. If you can't offer that, then your opinions are worth shyt.

So, if you think it's possible to write a deep and meaningful story on purpose, then TELL THEM HOW.

It's not enough for you to SAY that there are stories like that, give us examples. What deep and meaningful story have YOU READ that was purposefully meant to be deep and meaningful? How did it accomplish that goal? Details are needed, not generalizations.

edited 2nd Oct '15 7:23:58 PM by nekomoon14

Okay, how about Watchmen then? All characters are sincere about their beliefs; whatever extreme lengths some go to stem logically from the circumstances of the setting; and these circumstances themselves arise from the basic premise - the existence of an all-powerful superhero. Whatever fate befalls each character stems from their clashes with one another, physically and morally. And in the end, the story doesn't go out of its way to paint any given character as right, nor is it clear whether or not anything to support either stance has been accomplished in the long run. Whoever "wins" is ultimately left open. And given the story is considered among the touchstones of an entire genre, I'd say it's a good place to start.

Watchmen is absolutely arguing for a specific position, though. Namely, "superheroes would be a terrible idea in reality". Like, that's its entire raison d'etre. Or rather, its raison d'etre is to be an investigation of what a realistic world with actual superheroes would look like, with the above message being its conclusion. The story is not subtle about that fact. How do you miss that?

You keep going back to this notion of only characters being able to spout messages, which I've already pointed out is nonsense. When looking for the themes and messages in a work, you don't just judge individual elements in a vacuum - you judge the work as a whole, how the situation at the start differs from the end, how the characters change over the course of the narrative, and which character's position is ultimately proven right.

That last bit is especially important, actually. If, say, I have a character who's entered the lottery, and another character warns them, "don't get your hopes up, you're not likely to win", and then the lottery-character gets upset when they don't win, then the message of the piece is "don't get too invested in random chances", and/or "people rarely listen to wisdom; they have to learn it for themselves" depending on whether the lottery-character ultimately realised that their skeptic friend was right.

To bring this back to Watchmen, along with the main message there's also the secondary message that "the real world is not like comic-books; in the real world, the "villians" usually win". This is made explicit by Ozymandias' classic line "what do you take me for, a comic book villain? I did it fifteen minutes ago". He implicitly argues that comic book villains are stupid and unrealistic, and he is vindicated by the story's universe when he avoids the usual cliches, and suceeds in achieving his goals.

I'm not arguing that all stories need to be painfully, obviously contrived - I'm merely pointing out that all stories are contrived, to fit whatever vision the author had in their head. Stuff doesn't just "happen" in stories. There is always a motive behind it, even if it's only a thoughtless motive like "explosions are cool, let's have more of them". And because of this, a character's ultimate fate says a lot about how their creator views them and their beliefs, and by extension what the creator themselves believes in.

And I'm arguing for this so vehemently because it's when people think stories don't have messages that the messaging becomes downright insidious. When audiences think it's just "common sense" for a character to act a certain way, or for their actions to have certain consequences, instead of both being deliberate choices by an unavoidably biased author, that some of the most awful messages in the world are allowed to flourish.

edited 3rd Oct '15 3:47:41 AM by Tungsten74