Curious Questions..

Day 47: Meaningful Messages

Okay, so this one probably fits best in my other book, Writing Stuff (Contests blah blah blah whatever else I put in the parentheses of the title...) , but it seems like this one gets a tiny bit more attention and I want to reach more of you with this one. 

Okay, so people, what's your message?

Let me backtrack a little. 

As a writer, what message(s) and central theme(s) do you hope to convey through your stories? I'm not asking "What's your story about?" or "What happens?"

I want to know what you want the reader to take away from their reading experience. Tell me what it is that you want to say through the story (and hopefully you know to do more showing instead of direct telling). And for the Muslim writers, please don't give the broad and general answer of teaching about Islam or showing that Muslims are people too. Islam is broad in topics, there are endless aspects you could focus in on and subcategories in those. Case and point? Society and interpersonal relations. Dive further. A family unit. Dive further. Marriage. Dive further, rights and duties of the spouses. And it goes on and on and on. 

Now, I know like 90% of wattpad stories (especially in the Muslim community) are romance stories. But even in that, as long as we're not all telling the same cliche, there are differences. And calm down, I'm not turning this into another rant session where I bash the cliches. I'm biting my tongue and refraining from mentioning Mc-anyone. So keep reading and unroll your eyes before they get dusty.

Anyways, to answer that question, someone who is writing a romance story may have the genre as romance, but the theme of their story could for instance be love beyond borders (ie couples who are divided by land but overcome nationalism and tradition to be together in a halal way). So then the message would be to reject nationalism, tribalism, and/or racism. See?

Or perhaps someone else's story is still a marriage story, but it's not just the sugary falling in love and getting married tale, NOR the "BOOM! GLOOM! MARRIAGE IS DOOM" edgy-type stories that are popping up. It could just be a story that doesn't end at the wedding or birth of the first kid(s) but continues through the marriage. I have a book in mind right now that I won't name, but it was quite popular (and still pops up in the top 10's occasionally) and it started from before the couple was married and continued after they married, after they fell in love, and well, further continued into the mundane everyday life struggles a couple might face. It wasn't over the top, it wasn't craziness, and it wasn't boring either. Many of us were hooked on it. And I won't spoil the message in it because that author might read this and want to use it as her answer, but well, I'll just say it definitely had a message that was relevant to Islam without just being "hey....ISLAM!"

And yes, I dare say, even for the stories which feature....bad boys, rich CEOs, and abusive heehaws, there may still be a message. Now, this is not me giving the okay for everyone to go writing up abuse tales. Please don't. My rabbit ran away because of those horrible stories (#TuraabPleaseComeBack). 

But.. *cringes* maybe there can be a message in them. And you know, I think if someone writes an abuse story, they really shouldn't try to go for the whole "second chances" thing where somehow miss patient somehow wins the guy's heart until he realizes what everyone who's not a savage animal already knows, ABUSE IS BAD! PHYSICAL, MENTAL, EMOTIONAL, etc, ALL BAD!  But maybe don't focus too much on that side of "people can change." That's true, people can, but for these types of people, especially physical abuse, statistically speaking, they almost NEVER change. Once an abuser, always so. And by putting out so many of these "if you love him hard enough, he'll stop" stories, you're influencing impressionable young readers who might one day end up dead because they stuck around with Punchy the Pirate thinking she could cry some sense into him and then one day he went too far in the abuse and now she's in the grave, he's in the cage, and no one's innocent.