Leaving a Message

Does a story have to have a message? That’s another topic which can get people arguing a lot. Some say that a story is just entertainment (and it certainly should be entertaining, no doubt about that), others say that it needs to say something about life, too. At any rate, every story tells us what the author endorses or not. Or it doesn’t. It depends on whom you ask.

Real life rarely makes sense. It is not supposed to, either. Things happen. Some of them can be influenced by the people they happen to, some can’t. Real life has no structure, it doesn’t go for the big climax in which everything is resolved. It just is.
A written story, even one ‘based on real events,’ on the other hand, has to make sense to people. If we’re reading a newspaper article, we’re not expecting for it to have some kind of closure, some kind of proper ending, we’re not expecting that there will be something deeper to the story. If we’re reading something written as fiction, on the other hand, we expect for it to follow certain rules, to have a plot structure to it, even if it is ‘based on real events.’
An author using real events will still push certain aspects of those events to the forefront, those which the author feels are important to the situation, and they will also omit or play down other aspects of the events, feeling that those are less important to the story. In doing so, they give a sort of meaning to the story they’re telling, they focus the audience on the parts which they find important and direct attention away from the parts which they find unimportant.

There are some stories where the author clearly doesn’t endorse the actions of the main character. Those usually feature what is known as ‘unreliable narrators’ — the character tells us a story, but we’re made aware early on that they might be bending the truth to fit with their narrative and not everything they say can be taken at face value. One of the most well-known cases of this is “Lolita” which, unlike what some people might think, does not at all endorse the grooming of an underaged girl to become an adult man’s lover.
Apart from those stories, though, authors are usually thought to endorse the actions of their main characters. Whatever ‘Team Good’ does is usually considered something the author is okay with, unless there is a negative outcome that is meant as a punishment for the decision. When ‘Team Good’ gets away with burning down the Evil Corp. © headquarters, it is safe to assume that the author thinks they should, despite committing arson.

Likewise, the way a situation plays out, which approaches to solving a problem are rewarded with success or punished with failure, is normally connected to the way the author sees the world. The author’s morals and life philosophy usually have an influence on what kind of solution a main character tries and whether or not a certain type of solution succeeds.
If a character tries a violent approach to a problem, like standing up to a bully and hitting the other character, and is rewarded for it by reaching their goal of being left alone, it can be assumed that the author approves of the approach. If, on the other hand, that same approach only gets the character in question sent to the headmaster and given a lot of detention, it can be assumed that the author thinks it’s the wrong way to solve the bully problem.

Some people might pull the ‘Death of the Author’ card out of their pocket here — that we shouldn’t look at the author, only at the text.
Yet, when it comes to messages delivered by a story, ‘Death of the Author’ isn’t going to make a difference, even if you use the principle the right way, which is rarely done. Even without knowing anything about the author’s life or other books they’ve written or their Twitter account or anything else, the story itself displays its message.
The way a story handles violence, crime, bigotry, and other topics is a message in itself. If the good guys get away with violence, the message is that violence in that situation was the right choice. If the good guys steal from the bad guys and it works out for them in the end, then the message of the story clearly is that stealing from the bad guys was okay in this specific situation.
Note that I’ve said ‘the good guys.’ An author letting a villain get away with something for the time being doesn’t mean that the author endorses that action. The villain is a villain for a reason and is allowed to do bad stuff without immediate punishment. As a matter of fact, many stories depend on the villain doing bad stuff and getting away with it at least for quite a while.
Endorsement is bound to the actions of the main character/hero, not the actions of their antagonist/the villain. People usually don’t assume that the author endorses everything the antagonist does without being punished for it. As an antagonist needs to do bad things so that the protagonist can oppose them, an antagonist getting away with things is a necessity for many types of stories.

To put it all together again: a story is crafted, so every part of it is under the author’s control. This means that everything happening in the story is happening as it does and with the ramifications it has because of the author’s decision. This means that, willing or unwilling, every story an author crafts sends a message about the author’s view of the world, their morals, and their values. That doesn’t mean that every story has to be highly moral or ‘teach the reader a good lesson.’ It means, however, that you as a writer always leave a message for the readers in your stories, no matter whether you want to or not.