Here’s How You Write A Story With A Moral: Storytelling basics

Movies, novels and other formats of storytelling fail when they offer no moral realization by the end. A moral of the story is something that is the result of the protagonist’s struggles, the thing that helps him excel against the antagonist. This moral realization is the crux of the protagonist’s character arc. The moral helps him win, but it also solves his initial weaknesses at the start of the story, even before the catalyst, main event, and call to adventure. Without a moral, the story lands flat, leaving you with the bitter taste of unsatisfaction in the end.

So, how do you write a story with a moral?

Begin the story with your protagonist struggling with some kind of insecurity, fear, weakness, challenge. This issue he has even before the story’s catalyst, main event and call to adventure beats.

During the end showdown, when he has to face the antagonist (or the culmination of his problems), he must make a moral realization in order to emerge victorious, which also helps him grow beyond his initial insecurity, fear, weakness, challenge. Not only does the moral realization help the protagonist defeat the antagonist of the story, but it also grows him (and you) as a person.

For example, the Odyssey is one of the greatest stories ever. At the beginning, Odysseus struggles with hubris. He is arrogant, overconfident, and defies even the gods. Who could blame him? His wits won the Trojan war for the Achaeans.

In his epic story that begins right after the Trojan war, he angers the gods with his haughtiness, and so they mess with him (except the goddess, Athena who helps him as much as she can). It’s worth noting that, in the Ancient Greek world, no sin was considered greater than hubris, which truly angered the gods.

At the end showdown of his story, he has to face the challenge of him losing his kingdom to a bunch usurpers, since he was away from his kingdom for 20 years. Without any allies, the only way to defeat them is to be temporarily transformed into a weak old man, with the help of divine intervention, get close to them with their guard down, and kill them at an opportune moment. He had to be taught humility, if the gods would help him out. This realization empowered him to win. And it solved his initial weakness, which was also the reason behind his 20-year long painful adventure.

The moral of the story is humility and grounded self-esteem, instead of arrogance and deluded pride.

In Back To The Future 2 & 3, Marty’s initial problem is that he’s easily goaded into doing stupid things whenever someone pretended to think he was a coward, or a “chicken”. We see this multiple times; for example, when he loses his job in the future after a dare by Spider, or when in the past, he accepts a challenge by Mad Dog Tannen, simply because he was too afraid of being shamed as a coward.

By the end of the movies, in the present, he is so mature and grown after his adventures, that he declines Spider’s dare to drag race. He is now secure and confident in himself, so he doesn’t care if Spider pretends to deem him as a coward. And ironically, this indifference is what earns him true respect, instead of submitting to dare after dare in a desperate attempt to prove his insecure self. We also find out that the drag race he declines was the one that, in the original timeline, caused the accident that ended Marty’s music momentum.

The moral of the story is the ‘why’ of the story. It’s what leaves you satisfied after the conclusion. It’s what makes you remember the story. It’s what intellectually stimulates you enough to think and grow as a result of exposing yourself to the story.

The true value of a story lies in its moral.

Every memorable story you’ve heard of has a moral. Every forgettable one doesn’t.