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this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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I think it's easy to forget that we are all biased and when jumping to one conclusion is easy for us, another may be easy for someone else.
My 2.5 year old sometimes watches this kid show "Bing", and it really just spells out the moral of the story at the end, maybe "grown up" media should do that more too? Don't expect your audience to just know what comes naturally to you, tell them.
I know this goes against the core "show, don't tell" principle of writing a good story, but maybe we can do show and tell?
(And I say we collectively while I've never created anything with a message 😅)
Honestly, I've been thinking about this... I'm an indie author and I've thought sometimes that maybe I should finish my books with a little author's note about my intention? "Thank you for reading my book about people working to save dragons from environmental devastation. The dragons are a metaphor for all species on Earth and we should save them from real life environmental devastation." Which sounds silly, but like... there's definitely a way to do it that isn't too on the nose, y'know, maybe for this example talk about all the research on real life species I did for the book, or how I hope readers will take this as inspiration to save the "dragons" of the world...
Or maybe it should be even more on the nose and go straight for "Donald Trump wants whales to die, don't let him"
I think taking an author's page for going more in-depth on your metaphors and opinions is a great way!
That said, if the protagonist literally says "I think we should save the dragons from our man-made pollution" or similar, I don't think that's too on the nose, though with flawed characters that's a risk of getting lumped in with the flaws. You'd still need the author's note.
The worst part is that's not even true, they just don't care. And Trump is just a symptom, try to avoid blaming just him as if he wasn't elected a second time, and as if getting rid of him would magically solve things. Big structural change is needed I'm afraid.
Tbh I don't think having the protag say something like that would be enough these days... definitely combine it with the author's note XD Let people who get it automatically complain that it's too on the nose or something if they want to.
You're so right about Trump being a symptom. All of these things were devastatingly huge problems under Biden, under Obama, going back literally to Washington. Thinking we just need to get rid of One Bad Guy is why we got a Biden presidency and then many people stopped being activists - status quo was never a good thing. I think hypothetically I would give some specific calls to action + a little bit of anarchist theory in the author's note to nudge people in the right direction? Maybe some people would say that I should let fiction be fiction, but it's my book ¯_(ツ)_/¯ And I'm thinking if I can catch people at their most open and thoughtful, ie right after that final page, maybe they'll intake the moral message a little more?