Do you write just to entertain your readers or do you deliver a message with your story?

 

I write to entertain myself and to get better, but mostly I just enjoy writing. I really wish I had more time for it. It's just really fun to write up backgrounds and key character traits for certain characters as well as imagine how they would react to certain things. I don't really think about if an audience will like it or not nor do I really care about having some profound meaning to it.

 

Yes. tencharacters

 

I write to tell a story. Nothing more, nothing less.

You have to be careful when trying to send a message or deliver a theme. If you try and force it into a narrative the plot suffers, and it turns the book ugly.

For example, there are a lot of YA books coming out recently to help teens deal with accepting their sexuality. Be it gay, straight, or lamp. Also a lot of books trying to be edgy with transgender stuff. Some of these books are fantastic because it's more about something happening to a person who happens to be gay/straight/transgender, than about their sexuality. The message the story sends is that it's okay to be who you are, even in a world that doesn't quite accept it.

That's just one example. My point is - write a compelling story and the message will seep in regardless. In some certain, brilliant books, the message is so subtly weaved that it might as well be screaming. Those are the ones that'll last.

 

I write because I have a story in my head that I want to get out. The only message I would ever send is that I like to write something that is credible and that people can somewhat relate to.

I agree with Joe when he says that the message will seep in regardless as long as the story you're trying to tell is compelling. Most inexperienced authors who set out to write a story that sells a message, soon become even a little condescending. In short, the message they want to convey takes priority over the story they are trying to tell. That usually doesn't work out well.

 

Presenting a message is a fine thing, but if people aren't entertained by the book then they won't remember it afterwards, to my mind. If you can do both then you're probably destined for greatness, but it's a tough thing to pull off - Terry Pratchett, for example, was very good at it with the Disc world series, but his novel Nation was staggeringly on the nose, to the point that it made me a little wary of reading his other non-Disc books.

 

Quoted for truth. Though another reason why I write is the crushing weight of knowing I'll never be as awesome as my characters, but at least I can write about them.

Also, I think there's something very cool about the fact that I've actually learned a foreign language well enough that I can manipulate it to such an extent that I can write a story with some degree of competence and holy shit Batman that sentence got out of control. Sometimes it just hits me: I know something and I can do something with that skill. I'm not a person who enjoys studying but I very much enjoy knowing things once I've already done the studying part. I take great satisfaction from the fact that memorizing irregular verbs in third grade got me where I am now. This was kind of off-topic, but whatever.

I like writing stories when I have a good idea for one.

 

I don't think writing can be without message? That is, a message doesn't have to be some high-concept, preachy theme about the inevitability of death etcetc. Writing, and art in general, is about expression. So when a person writes time traveling Harry, the message that he's sending there can be a simple as...hey, I think time traveling is cool! And the people that tend to read it also think...hey, time traveling is cool! That's how the entire process goes. We try to find something we can relate to, that we're interested in, and if we can't find it, sometimes we pick up the energy to write it ourselves.

Basically, entertainment and "message" isn't an either-or, zero sum game. The extent of these two qualities can really only be determined by the reader.

 

I write because I have a story I want to play with and it entertains me. Anything that's gets published I also want to entertain y'all. I enjoy knowing that people read what I write and get some pleasure from it.

I'd say any message that may exist is a result of writing inevitably having themes and perhaps a bias to particular things I find interesting and want to explore. But never, I think, a message for message's sake.

But it's never something actively on my mind that I want to force upon the readership. We all came here fur teh lulz, not for a lecture.

 

Wanting to tell a story, satisfying god complex and maybe just maybe... immortality

 

As Stephen King once had Bill Denbrough say, "Can't a story just be a story?"

Hell yeah, it can.

It can be a piece of entertainment, written only for yourself, something private and small.

It can be a grand, epic masterpiece, destined to live forever in the minds of those who bear witness to it.

It can be a middling use of words and paper, or a total waste of electronic space full of errors and inconsistencies.

And sometimes, it can be a message, a means of telling your audience something important that you could never say directly.

In short, I write because I want to, because there is a story inside my mind that I think I'd like to tell. But that story was probably formed around an idea, a reaction to something, a belief or an understanding that I'm barely aware of.

As others have said, if you tell the story, the message will sort itself out. Maybe not everyone will hear the same message, and that's okay.

An 'author', to me, is really a two-person entity - the writer and the reader. The writer says something, the reader hears something, and somewhere in between, the story comes to life, message and all.

 

I generally write fics that I'd want to read.

 

Goddamn right, LC. King knew it way back when. You bet your fur.

Though when it comes to writing stories, the turtle can't help us.

 

Yep, exactly this.

 

I write to tell a story, usually. I like thinking of a story like a magic show, you have to entertain your reader and put on a good show for him/her.

An exception is the current story I'm working on that is just a very selfish "This is what I'd want to read" story. I say selfish because I know I have somewhat weird tastes that won't necessarily match with my readers, so normally I try to avoid writing what I like to read too much. That story though? I'm just in full-on "this is what I want to read" mode. Which is a really fun experience at the cost of knowing not many people are going to enjoy it haha.

But yeah, normally I write to entertain--messages don't really come into it, unless we're talking in the sense of "I think a story about conflict X would be entertaining to tell" and a story about conflict X inherently has to make a point about something. Like if a character's main conflict is his self-worth, the story will probably end up with a message regarding going through those issues, intentionally or not.

But I don't try to write a story around a message, it's usually that the latter kind of latches on to the former.

 

I write a story first and foremost that I would enjoy myself. If other people happen to enjoy it, that's fine as well. I'm not one for hidden meanings within - what you see is what you get.

 

For fun and to stay sane-ish

 

I can't speak for anyone else, but I write because:

1) It makes me happy, and

2) there's nothing stopping me from doing it.

I wish I felt as strongly about it five years ago, but self-esteem is a skill in itself.