What does it mean when someone describes a story as “preachy”? It doesn’t mean the story is religious. Rather, it means the story’s themes are presented in a forceful or one-sided manner – an approach that often turns readers off. So, in today’s edition of Theme: A Story’s Soul at DIY MFA, I share three writing mistakes that can lead to preachy themes in a story, as well as solutions for each that can bring more subtlety, balance, and realism to how those themes are portrayed.
Click here to read “Three Ways of Revising (or Avoiding) Preachy Themes in Your Story.”
As always, if you have any comments on the DIY MFA post, or if you have suggestions on theme-related articles you’d like to see in the future, feel free to share them here or at DIY MFA.
Sara Letourneau 
Reblogged this on Where Genres Collide.
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Thanks for the reblog, Traci! 🙂
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You’re welcome, Sara!
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I’ve been thinking about preachy books recently! And I think part of my running theory is that people are more likely to think books are preachy when they’re preaching things the reader doesn’t necessarily agree with or ascribe to strongly themselves. :p Though I have definitely found books preachy that I DO fundamentally agree with.
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Maybe it’s an idea worth exploring in a future discussion post at Pages Unbound? 😉 And I do agree with you to an extent about your theory. The less a reader agrees with a story’s themes, the more likely the reader will find it preachy. But I do think how an author delivers those themes through their writing plays a huge role in that. Maybe that explains the times when you found a book preachy even though you agreed with its ideas on a fundamental level?
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