The author (right) is wrong. Stories aren’t about “saying” anything at all. They’re about how you make people feel. The descriptions, events, and characters evoke emotions in the people reading/hearing them.
When a small child is in the path of a huge and rampaging beast, we react emotionally.
When a courageous man suffers unjustly, we react.
When a beautiful, innocent woman is captured by a brute, we react.
And when justice is done, when good triumphs against insuperable odds, when faith is rewarded, when hope is proven true, we react.
Writing is but the vessel, the means of conveyance. Art speaks to us on levels we are not fully aware of, and it influences us in ways we don’t even perceive.
And yeah, stories are told in words, written in words, and in most movies the characters speak words. But the words are mere tools to communicate the spirit of the thing.
A spirit of rebelliousness, hopelessness, vice, lust, greed. A spirit of peace, hope, love, courage, virtue. A spirit of noble struggle against the inevitable, of accepting one’s wyrd or fate, of accepting one’s limits and fighting to maximize one’s strengths.
Even when people are TRYING to communicate ideas and even succeeding, those ideas are mere vessels to communicate emotions. A spirit of resentment against their home country, or at capitalism, at generosity, the government, communism, men, women. Or of love and pride in their country, or of empathy for their fellow man, of nobility, of greatness.
All stories evoke emotions and all art is spiritual. And great and beautiful art evokes awe, which connects us directly to the infinite and divine.
The most effective art speaks to our spirit, our soul. In great art is God, and nothing is more stirring than that.
Geek Gab 