Is Your Story Standing on a Soapbox?
In college I was a great fan of the writer Ayn Rand. Do you remember her, if you’re of a certain age? I have very worn-out copies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, her two most famous novels, which I read and reread mostly for the female characters, who were stern cultivators of their personal freedom and never took no for an answer.
Rand is a controversial author, with a background you may not want to look into. Kind of like Claire Dederer talks about in her book, Monsters, Rand is someone whose work we may admire while not quite admiring the artist behind it. (Check out this interesting piece on the Ayn Rand controversy from PBS, if you want to know more details.) Rand’s a quirky read, no doubt.
The real reason I’m bringing her into this week’s post is that she loved a soapbox. Without fail, one of her main characters launched into a soapbox rant towards the end of each story. If you’ve read Atlas Shrugged, you may remember the mysterious John Galt who takes a dozen pages to describe why he thinks the world is a misery and why he has taken control to create something else. Although it fits Galt’s character in the story and his mission, the rant takes us totally away from the story, in my view.
I always skipped those pages in the dozens of times I’ve reread Atlas Shrugged. I never once read the rant. Not even out of curiosity. Maybe because I don’t like being talked to, when I’d rather be enthralled.
Granted, it served Rand’s mission as a writer to preach her philosophy to readers who were already captivated by the story. Her reason for writing the books may well have been delivering this message.
When you have an agenda
Readers are often suspicious when a soapbox speech interrupts our regularly scheduled programming—the story itself. Agendas become a commercial break from the story, where the author takes the platform, sets the story itself aside, and promotes a cause.
Some readers may love these—if that’s you, don’t read on.
And surprisingly, more than just a few writers I encountered as a teacher and editor believe that their stories are simply platforms for their message. Yes, that works in some genres. But having an agenda is death to others. And learning how to deliver your message without breaking the reader’s engagement with the story—that’s the real magic act.
It’s not wrong to enter a writing project with a purpose. Many of us write to prove something, to share some truth, to encourage a reaction. Choosing your genre and weaving in the agenda, in a way appropriate to that genre, shows your skill and understanding of your reader’s needs.
Let’s look at the different genres and how this works.
Nonfiction
I’ve published a good handful of nonfiction books in my career. All of them had an agenda. That was the point.
In nonfiction, the purpose needs to be clear. We read the book because of the specific flag the author waves. Maybe it’s a flag of their expertise. Maybe of their experience. I’m talking about prescriptive nonfiction now, like that last how-to book you read. Do you recall how it presented a certain idea or method to fix or figure out some question you were exploring? Or that book of information you keep referring to. There’s a clear desire to share certain information.
That’s what the reader comes for. Nonfiction is the genre for agendas.
To qualify, the author must either be the knowledgeable one or present others who are. There’s a weight to nonfiction agendas; they must be backed up by expertise we can trust.
Memoir
Memoir is less about expertise, more about experience, as the truth it’s sharing.
Memoir, certainly, can have a mission to show some truth the author has discovered, but memoir by definition is more than just standing up and delivering that truth. It tells a story, it takes us on a kind of journey where we readers share in the discovery as it unfolds. We learn as you learn, in a way.
I personally feel memoir can still be outspoken about its agenda. The author’s beliefs can be clear on the page. But not in the soapbox format, if you want to keep your reader, because in memoir the story is paramount. You have to keep us in the “dream” of the story.
Often, too, in memoir (and in fiction) the agenda will change. Some of my favorite memoirs start with one authorial belief in life and end up with another. It’s the natural trajectory of growth.
So agendas can definitely be part of memoir as long as the agenda is a natural part of the story.
Fiction
In fiction, agendas are tricky, unless you’re an author who cares more about the message than the story. Rand, in my view, tells a marvelous tale until the point where she channels her book’s agenda through a character we’ve come to admire, and the agenda becomes what’s called soapbox writing.
Soapbox writing has certain elements which are all present in Rand’s work. I’m listing them here, so you can check if they are present in yours.
It usually speaks directly to the reader.
It’s often passionate, opinionated, persuasive.
It interrupts the flow of the story—it feels like a commercial break.
In early drafts of a novel or story, you may find yourself speaking from a soapbox—the reason you’re writing is front and center. The story itself hasn’t become alive on its own yet, perhaps. You’re still directing the show.
I say: go for it. Get it all out on paper, all the persuasive arguments of what you believe. Tell it through a character, if you want, like John Galt’s dozen pages of treatise. That’s the nature of early drafts—we get to rant freely.
As the story evolves, fiction writers have some work to do, to get down off the soapbox.
How to step down from the soapbox
My biggest learning around soapbox writing tendencies is to let them happen, as I said above, and get them out of the author’s system. Then—and here’s the most important clue—expect that you’ll need to go in and revise them into story.
Here’s how I step off my soapbox during revision and check my agenda at the door.
Figure out what my message might be, direct or subtle, and where it might lurk in the story. Am I revenging for someone in my past by creating a stereotyped character that meets a terrible end? Do I feel author rage or preaching in the dialogue? Are any of the characters a facsimile of John Galt, where they rant for paragraphs or pages?
Read for any direct address where author is talking to reader—this is always a clue of soapbox writing.
Check the interiority of characters (their thoughts and feelings) and ask if it really fits the character or if it’s the author (me) inserting my opinion and agenda.
Try making a case for something I am opposed to. Create a character who believes the opposite of my beliefs, test how they might fit into the story. Opposing views, presented realistically, often take a soapbox moment away.
Your Weekly Writing Exercise
For more ideas on how to comb your writing for soapbox tendencies this week, check out this interesting discussion on Reddit about authors and their agendas. Test some of their ideas, or the ones above, and see if they help you balance your need to make a point with your desire to make a story.
Then share below:
What are your thoughts about this?
Have you struggled with soapbox writing now or in your past, as a writer?
What do you think of it, as a reader?
Photo by Tyler Callahan on Unsplash