Real-life ideas in fiction?

[ljwrites]

What do you think about using political, social, religious and other ideas in fiction-writing? Do your beliefs find their way into your work, and if so how? Alternately, do you believe enjoyable fiction is free of ideology and partisanship?

These questions were touched off in me when members of another comm that I admin were quite open about expressing political and moral ideas through their works. I've given a lot of thought to this issue, too, for instance in a long rant about a post by Holly Lisle on her website, in my review of Changes by Jim Butcher, my review of Frozen, my review of Kingdom of Heaven and... oh, let's face it, everything I've ever written, including fiction. Especially fiction. As I noted in the Changes review, my political views are inextricable from the literary.

That's not to say my goal is to preach or proselytize, quite the opposite in fact. I believe the role of fiction is to tell a truth that lies beyond and below facts. Having an uncompromising agenda tends to distort the truth, and if a writer finds herself going into contortions to make her side look good then she has some issues to work out before she can write to her full potential. On the other hand, truth doesn't exist free of viewpoints, and every work of fiction has some moral standpoint no matter how well or poorly expressed. That's the way I see it, anyway. What do you think?

Comments

[inevitableentresol]

every work of fiction has some moral standpoint no matter how well or poorly expressed

Yes, I believe that also. I like it when writers are honest about the fact that they're partisan. There is no such thing as absolute morality.

I hate it when writers start a work of fiction deliberately intending to preach on an ethical/political/religious subject. That makes for really bad writing as the conclusion is already fixed. It's the opposite of honest writing which allows the characters to come to their own endings. Having to kowtow to a plot line too tightly either warps the characters, or makes them two-dimensional to start with.

Writers who do it well: Ursula K Le Guin in nearly everything.
Writers who did it badly: Jack Vance in "The Gray Prince".

[ljwrites]

That's a very insightful point about agenda-driven fiction being a particularly obnoxious type of plot-driven story.

I agree, the works of Le Guin (or Granny Le Guin as I call her, as a term of endearment and respect) are excellent examples of fiction with a point. I haven't read Jack Vance but I've always thought of Ayn Rand as Le Guin's evil counterpart, an ideological writer who let her agenda overrun her art. The Dispossessed and Atlas Shrugged are like textbook examples of how and how not to handle political philosophy in science fiction, or any fiction for that matter. I don't say that with reference to their placement on the left-right spectrum; In fact I've met leftists who are narrow-minded ideologues like Rand and conservatives who are as morally courageous and compassionate as Le Guin, and I consider the latter and not the former my people even though I'm a lifelong progressive myself.