Some stories shove their lessons down your throat, often with so much force that you're so busy choking down the moral of the story that you can't even care about the story itself.

Others simply portray a scenario, and let the lesson teach itself.

A few years ago, I re-watched one of childhood favorites, Once Upon a Forest. The rating on Rotten Tomatoes notwithstanding, I remembered it being good, except for the over-the-top swamp birds.

But as a child, I hadn't fully recognized the emphasis it placed on humanity's impact on animals and the environment.

Looking back, I attribute that largely to the fact that, instead of getting on a soapbox and explicitly lecturing its audience, it simply displayed the experiences that its cast endured as a result of humanity's mistakes.

The characters were likable, and they didn't take a backseat to the lesson that was being taught. The mood of each scene was convincingly set - I never felt like it was simply a vehicle for the writers to grind an ax.

To me, that commitment to maintaining the quality of the story, rather than allowing the tale to be drowned by its own moral like a baby bird in a swamp, was the difference between an enjoyable movie and a lecture with delusions of being a story.

Would I still enjoy Once Upon a Forest, if I watched it today? It's been a while, so it's hard to say, but I like to think I would.

Either way, I consider it a good example of a teaching story that kept its priorities in the right place, and a reminder to me to do the same whenever I want to communicate something through my writing.

Have you ever watched or read a story that you felt was trying too hard to teach its audience a lesson?

What do you think it could have done differently to keep being a good story, while still making its point?

I look forward to reading your comments.

Last week, I explored the classic writer's dilemma of whether or not to explain the more fantastical or high-tech elements of your story.

This week, I found a great article that points out the danger of well-researched and thoroughly explained fiction.

It's a mistake that even some of the world's most famous writers have managed to make - let's see if you can guess what it is before you read the article. ;)

Whether your story element is a character with superpowers, a high-tech sci-fi gadget, or a bizarre space phenomenon, there's one dilemma that always arises when your story includes something beyond what science can currently explain:

Do you offer a scientific-sounding explanation, knowing that you're going to get the crap debunked out of you if you don't research the matter thoroughly enough, or if future scientific discoveries counter your explanations for currently impossible technology?

Do you give a half-assed explanation that you KNOW is already pretty much debunked, like "radiation creates superpowers" or "genes let you control the weather"?

Or do you just include the element, forego specific explanations, and hope nobody asks too many questions?

I've seen examples across the spectrum, from stuff like Mass Effect that sounds plausible to a layperson like me, to the technobabble in Star Trek that sometimes induces face-palming in even the moderately knowledgeable, to superhero stories' obviously bogus belief that genes and radiation can do anything the plot demands.

Some stories, like Farscape, choose to avoid explaining technology for which science currently has no explanation, thereby escaping a descent into meaningless technobabble and inevitable scientific debunking.

And me?

I've struggled with that question several times lately.

When I was writing Heroic Lies, one of the dilemmas I encountered was, Do I try to explain Zorei's technology? Or do I just let him use it, without going into the details?

I ended up going with the second option. The way his tech worked wasn't important to the story, and I'm not mechanically savvy enough or interested enough in machines to go into the nitty-gritty details of how his gear operated.

Heaven help me if I ever write a story where the mechanical operations of a spaceship become important to the plot.

​I also encountered the Explanation Dilemma when I was writing Catgirl Roommate. Why does Nyla exist? How did a human-shaped person come to have the ears, tail and mindset of a cat?

And is there any explanation for such a being that wouldn't be total and obvious BS?

Once again, I ended up just letting the story element be what it is, without stretching the bounds of scientific plausibility any further than I already had. Explanations were unnecessary, and even if I did come up with one, it would probably be darker than the tone I was going for.