A lot of my novel is centered on political conflicts and their results, but I find a lot of my own experiences from modern day issues (particularly social) are seeping into my story. I don’t want to sound preachy, but it seems there’s no way around it. At what point does it become too much? Especially since many real world issues have yet to be resolved. If I create an ending for them, especially one based on what I believe to be good, I’m worried it’ll take the emphasis away from the fantasy of it all (and probably piss off a lot of people, but I guess I don’t really care about that part.)
I think i would only start to worry if your story leaned one way or another politically. It's one of those things where you would want readers of all kinds of views to read and still have their personal say in whats better and whats worse without nudging to them which one you would consider better or worse. I feel like this would be a really touchy balancing act, but im sure people have pulled it off.
Sometimes I can't finish a book because it's trying to sound super -woke- like this one book that was pretty much no plot and kept talking about how all the people from this one planet were discriminated against and it was just a little too nope for me because they were trying to address racism but then they'd go and make generalizations about an entire planet's worth of people (humans are not a homogenous species, people. aliens shouldn't be either) like "people from this planet have a habit of speaking in negatives" and I'm like what? How can you say that about millions of people?
Okay I got a little off-topic….
The trilogy Rebel of the Sands does status of women really well. The book Black Witch was pretty good, other than the fact that its entire plot is the main character overcoming racial bias but it's not done very well because she's super prejudiced against certain races but then she's all like "I can't believe they're being so rude to this person just because they might have elf blood how can people be so cruel" and it made me want to bang my head against a wall.
Long story short, incorporate it into the story but don't try to focus on it or teach your readers a lesson. It's too cringy.
Yeah, I include racism against certain species, but despite how it changes my character's backstory and life experiences, I don't make it the focal point of my story. More the emotional development of my characters and how they develop into strong men and women rather than "Oh I'm always getting crap because of my species, my life is so hard, oh what a tragedy!" and more "Hi, my name is Carmen, I like art and potion making. Oh look, the world is in danger! Hey, how about my friends and I save it? Sounds lovely, I'll be back after the mortal peril has been fixed!" sort of thing.
