ideas - How do I include a powerful theme in my story without making it blatantly obvious?

I want to have an underlying message in my writing but I really don't want it to come across as annoying or too preachy. Thanks!

Answer

No one can really answer that. Because what works for you may not work for me, and that may or may not work for the next one in line. It's personal, and different people need to go about it accordingly. Why? Because it depends on theme, on target audience, on author voice, on character voice, and on setting.

Having said that, let's look at a few tools people use to get it across. First is allegory. Take house elves in Harry Potter, or muggle-borns from the same franchise. This is a clear allegory for racism, classism, elitism, and when you toss in squibs you also get ableism. Notice how none of that was actually said in the books or in the movies?

The there's setting to help tell the tale better. How does this help? Well. Use slavery, whether physical or mental, to talk about freedom.

"But that's not..." Everything about the world going on around the characters, including laws being enforced, is setting. For example, in a world where killing a slave isn't illegal, is a murder mystery all that gripping? Not really, it might be relegated to a Scooby Do type group of kids.

You can also use theme to keep it subtle, or completely hide the intentions of your characters or you as an author. In the Tales of Huckleberry Finn, did you know that what's-his-face didn't care whether the man he'd come to tell his master set him free was freed?

Think about it for a second. A boy is told that a runaway slave is set free, and doesn't have to run any more. And instead of telling him, he pretends to help him run further and further away, coming up with ever-increasingly elaborate plans to keep him safe, making himself the hero. But it's never stated. In fact, most people don't ever realise that's what happened (be honest, can you tell me the name of the boy in question here?). So the theme of physical slavery turns into a theme of mental slavery (he thinks he's still a slave, and continues running from it), showing the the very concept of slavery is all in your mind.

All you have to do is write it into your story, and never expressly state it. Not you, as the author, not the characters, and not the narrator within. Just have it be there and let people figure it out for themselves.