Woke Writing Isn’t the Problem. Bad Writing Is

I’m sick of the woke writing argument, and the writers caught in the middle get bad advice from both camps. Bad writing that happens to include progressive themes gets blamed on the themes instead of on the writer who couldn’t execute them, and the result is a debate about politics when the problem is storytelling.

What Does Good Theme Integration Look Like?

The Murderbot series on Apple TV+ has a nonbinary protagonist, a polyamorous triad, same-sex relationships, and characters across the full spectrum of gender and identity. I noticed all of it, and none of it got in my way, because the writing was so good that every character felt like a real person with real motivations. The diversity was the world. For more, see TikTok as a Weaponized Echo Chamber, From Chinese Cyberweapon to American Problem.

It existed the same way gravity exists, as a background condition that doesn’t need to be explained or justified. That’s the standard I hold every story to, whatever it’s about.

The Expanse’s cast is among the most diverse in science fiction television. I’ve watched it six times. It’s diversity done right.

The crew of the Rocinante includes characters from different races, nationalities, and backgrounds, and none of it feels like a checklist because every character is defined by what they want, what they fear, and what they’re willing to do. Naomi Nagata is a brilliant engineer with a complicated past who makes choices that drive the plot.

Her identity informs her perspective without becoming her entire personality.

The Expanse came close to ending after three seasons. Syfy canceled it in May 2018, and fans answered with a loud social media campaign under the hashtag #SaveTheExpanse. Later that month, while accepting an award at the International Space Development Conference, Jeff Bezos announced that Amazon was picking the show up, as Space.com reported.

I think that campaign settles the argument better than any essay could. Fans went to war for Naomi Nagata and the Rocinante crew because the writers made those people worth missing, and the diverse cast came along as part of a world they loved. A show that had lectured its audience for three seasons wouldn’t have found anybody willing to fight for a fourth.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is about power, corruption, the cost of war, and the value of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Those are progressive themes by any definition. Tolkien never stops the story to lecture you about them. They emerge from the characters and their choices. The reader absorbs the themes by living through the story.

What does bad theme integration look like?

Rings of Power turned Galadriel, among the most powerful and complex characters in Tolkien’s legendarium, into a generic action hero who solos a troll in the first episode. The writers apparently thought “strong female character” means “woman who fights things.” It doesn’t. Galadriel was already stronger than almost every character Tolkien ever created. Her power was wisdom, foresight, and restraint earned across thousands of years. The show replaced all of that with sword choreography and called it progress.

The show had a writing problem, and diversity took the blame for it.

The writers mistook the look of a strong female character for the real thing and cared more about what she looked like doing than about who she was. The result is a Galadriel who’s less powerful, less interesting, and less feminist than the one Tolkien wrote decades ago. That’s a disservice to Tolkien, and to every writer who now gets accused of wokeness for writing a capable woman.

This is the pattern that gives “woke writing” a bad reputation. A writer wants to include progressive themes but doesn’t do the craft work to integrate them into the story. Instead, the themes sit on top of the narrative like a bumper sticker on a car. The audience can see the message, but it doesn’t change how the car drives. When the story fails, the blame lands on the themes instead of on the writer who couldn’t weave them into the fabric of the narrative.

Theme Serves Story, Not the Other Way Around

Every great book has themes. The Lord of the Rings. To Kill a Mockingbird. Beloved. The Color Purple. The Kite Runner. These are political works that tackle race, power, justice, and identity. None of them lead with the theme. They lead with characters the reader cares about, put those characters in situations that force difficult choices, and let the themes emerge from the consequences of those choices.

Toni Morrison wrote Beloved to tell the story of a woman haunted, literally and figuratively, by what slavery did to her, and the book’s meaning about slavery lives inside that story where nobody can pry it loose. That’s the difference between integration and imposition.

Start with a message and build a story around it, and the audience can feel the scaffolding every step of the way. Characters make choices that serve the theme instead of choices that make sense for who they are. Plot points exist to illustrate a point instead of to advance the narrative. Dialogue becomes a vehicle for the author’s opinions instead of an expression of the character’s voice. The story becomes a delivery mechanism for the message, and delivery mechanisms aren’t interesting to read.

I resent fiction written this way, whatever side its politics sit on. Preachy conservative novels are just as dead on the page as preachy progressive ones, and the writers who produce them hurt their own cause, because every reader they bore walks away a little more convinced the message itself was the problem.

How do you integrate a theme without preaching?

Start with character. Build people who have specific backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and flaws. Let their identity inform who they’re without defining the totality of who they are. A character whose entire purpose is to represent a demographic is a symbol, and readers don’t connect with symbols.

Let conflict arise from the characters’ situations naturally.

If you’re writing a character who faces discrimination, the discrimination should create specific, concrete problems that drive the plot. Abstract commentary that pauses the story does nothing for the character or the reader. Show the reader what the character experiences, and leave what to think about it up to them.

Earn your themes through story. If your book is about the cost of systemic injustice, the reader should feel that cost through what happens to characters they care about. If your book is about the strength of community across difference, the reader should see that strength shown in action. The reader’s emotional response to the story IS the theme landing. If you have to explain the theme, it didn’t land.

Study writers who do this well. Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, Ursula K. Le Guin, N.K. Jemisin, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Sherman Alexie, Khaled Hosseini. These writers take on race, gender and power without ever letting the theme swallow the story, and I’d put them up against anybody. Their work is proof that progressive writing and excellent writing are the same thing when the craft is there.

Write the best story you can. Include the themes that matter to you. Do the research to portray experiences outside your own with accuracy and respect. Then trust your reader to find the meaning without being told where to look. That’s how themes work. That’s how they’ve always worked. The “woke” label is irrelevant. The craft is everything.