It will be hard to write a socially conscious book. Invariably, you will show your bias, and it will sound preachy. That gets old quick.

I've read books like this. The good guys are always right, the bad guys are too evil, and it's unrealistic.

You mean as opposed to just an entertaining story, ending up with the equivalent of a long speech droning on about one's opinion of the correct moral character?

The problem is that people don't want to be misunderstood about their moral values, about what they think are good and bad qualities to possess.

If the antagonist/s in a story are literally monsters like in a Stephen King novel, then it's a little bit more permissible to make them 2D cardboard cutouts without people finding it unrealistic and also far less do you have to worry about someone mistakenly thinking their actions are something to emulate. But without literal monsters, if you still want to have actual characters who are antagonists, you run into the problem of either making them simplistic, unrealistic 2D bad guys, or of people misunderstanding that such and such actions by said character, in your opinion, leads to harm generally in the world.

The latter can be less of a worry to the extent that you're openminded, and not so certain that such and such actions necessarily always lead to such negatives.

But still you can be left with a choice to err in the direction of being 'preachy' in some people's eyes or instead just being misunderstood.

Preachy or misunderstood?

Depends on why you want to write. Just an escape. To help you just think things out better in your own life. Because you just like to create. Because you want to contribute to making the world a better place. Some combination of all of the above and more...? If the final one plays a large role being misunderstood becomes more of an issue. If being entertaining is very important than of course worry more about being preachy.

And often all that is actually meant by 'preachy' is that the author happened to be saying things relevant to the real world that the reader didn't agree with. Some people indeed only want to read stories that are either totally irrelevant to the real world (Stephen King) or that support the idea that we are living in the best of all possible worlds. Anything else is in serious danger of being 'preachy'.


Preachy and boring versus amoral and entertaining...