Don’t Preach or Lecture

If you want to be a successful novelist write dialogue and not monologues. No one wants to read a long-winded dissertation delivered by either the protagonist or an omnipotent narrator.

The way I dealt with some very weighty issues in The Fourth Awakening was to let two characters with very different viewpoints go at each other. The give and take between Penelope and Walker allowed me to make all the points I wanted to make and convey a great deal of information to the reader. By forcing Walker to defend his beliefs instead of letting him preach from the pulpit made the dialogue interesting. It also allowed the readers to learn a few things about the lead characters.    

Often the first thing an aspiring novelist wants to do is seize the microphone and jump up on a soapbox.  You must resist this urge with all of your might.