Among the countless reasons people write stories, getting a moral across ranks near the top. Unfortunately, getting a moral across also ranks near the top of reason people write terrible stories. The danger lies in an incorrect balance of moral and other story elements (plot, pace, character development, voice, tension etc.) resulting in a preachy story.
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Follow these guidelines and you will end up with a story that entertains your readers and effectively communicates your moral and message without being preachy.
Story Is King:
This is the first and crucial understanding. No matter how important the moral is, no matter how intensely a writer feels about the moral, focusing on story elements always benefits the story (and moral) more than focusing on the moral. When the plot is entertaining and the characters are well developed, when the writing is crisp and eloquent, the reader cares more about the story world and is more likely to consider the moral.
Morals Are Output:
The desired effect is for a reader to finish your story, consider the story elements and arrive at a conclusion equal or similar to your moral. The moral itself is never an explicit part of the story elements, it is not spoken in dialog nor is it narrated by the narrator. Resist all urges to have one of your characters give a lengthy speech on the moral. Think of your moral as a completed jigsaw puzzle, only when all the pieces are considered does one see the picture.
Make Morals Sexy:
Readers can spot morals from a hundred pages away because most people are familiar with popular morals and don't want to read several thousand words just to find out something they already know. A writer can infuse morals with new life by using an unfamiliar variation of popular morals or by picking uncommon morals. Even if a moral is as familiar as "children should obey your parents," writers can still excite and surprise the reader by arriving at the moral in an unfamiliar way.
Morals Are Your Story Compass:
When a writer knows that the entire story (and not individual elements) leads the reader to the morals, it helps the writer make many decisions about the story elements. To continue our jigsaw puzzle analogy, if a writer knows what the completed jigsaw puzzle looks like, the writer can create the right pieces for the puzzle.
Good luck and remember to be subtle.
This is a time when anyone is sure to be amazed at the spectacle of tremendous changes occurring everywhere in human life and activities and also in the environment in which people have been living. Anyone may wonder if such changes are for the sake of changes only when devaluation of values is our everyday experiences. We observe painfully how morality standard of human community has been deteriorated all over the world. Hence time is not friendly for our kids.
What have we been offering our kids as regular food? They strangely include electronic gadgets of different kinds, access in the unrestricted television channels and even in the internet which force them to witness and test such things as are definitely not fair for their mental health. They include terrible demonstrations of man and woman relations and visual translations of events upholding sexual choices. Our kids are introduced with the most violent crime world and of devastation caused by terrorism and war. Which of the toys do we manufacture for the kids? Yes, they are guns and tanks and mostly such things that refer to violence only. Which of the films do we make in the greatest number? They are undoubtedly war films and films in which violence and sex are the subjects for consideration.
We forget that our kids will grow up to become movers and shakers of the future world. We do not find it necessary to count what kind of human beings they will become and how they will live with a mind which has not learned what morality stands for. Do we love them really?
Nevertheless, doors are not already closed on us and nor are we poor in traditional treasures, treasures which may be used to groom the loving kids in the most desirable way. We have thousands and thousands of morality stories, stories or real heritage bedtime story for kids of human civilizations, stories we have developed from the observations, lessons and experiences of our life and which we have been carrying forward with every sunrise and sunset and obviously in each segment of the hemispheres.
Kids are so nice by constitution that they love to hear stories from their dad or mom or from their grandpa or grandma and even from their teachers. Some of the stories go by the name of Aesop whose contribution is great and whose identity is shredded with mystery. Some stories are successfully set inside the great epics of India and Rome. Some are still alive in the folktales which people of different regions have managed to preserve naturally. The great stores of moral stories are the religious texts. Parables of the Bible and stories of the Bhagvadgita are wonderful and intriguing as they are very simple and simultaneously effective for ever.
Just remember the Parable of the Samaritan. The presentation is so straight and the words are so familiar and the frame, above all, is so friendly that one may automatically feel the breath of the person who has told such a story hundreds of years back. Yet what is the effect? We do not meet anyone who directs us to be responsible and still suddenly we love to bow down to the whole of suffering humanity. Kids may not find the philosophy behind the splendid spectrum. They just learn what man should do for man if occasions demands.
One more example is the story of the tortoise and the hare. Children always to support the cute little hare. The end of the story declaring that the tortoise has won makes them sad. Still the moral of the story is inserted in their growing mind in the most natural way. We do not find any reason to advise them to be slow and to be steady at the same time. They learn that they should be honest to their task and that they should stick to their task. In this story two known animals have been used who are examples of great contrast in respect of their movement. The story contains softness even in its twists and turns. Nothing happens under the sun as the tortoise moves slowly and as the hare takes some rest.
Morality stories penetrate into the character of the kids. It is not important to order them 'do this' and 'do not do that' with a voice of an authority. They learn to obey the seniors and the importance of being industrious. We want to teach them 'loyalty' 'punctuality' and at times we get exhausted as the result is not achieved. Morality stories have the inherent strength to assist the children identifying what is right and what is wrong or what one should do and what one should not.