I've come to the realisation that quite a few of my novel ideas in development ask a Big Question. My WIP, for example, seems (and I've only noticed this after two drafts and some very helpful feedback) to be asking the question: What is life for? However, not all of the ideas seem to have this, and I'm wondering if that means the ones that don't aren't as good.
Do you find your novels ask questions? And do all of them ask questions or only some? And do you prefer a book that asks a question to one that doesn't?

I'm wondering if that means the ones that don't aren't as good.

No, I don't think so. The main thing is that the novel should express what you want it to in a way that will be appreciated by the reader, regardless of the presence or otherwise of any 'message'.

Still, I find it satisfying when a novel does deal with a big issue but, when it does, it's dangerous for the author to pose the question too obviously. Didacticism can be tedious and the author's attitude may in any case grate with the reader's. In the best example of 'big question' novels, the issue is dealt with indirectly and it is its effects on the characters that force the reader to think, not any explicit arguments. The question(s) will then be posed by the reader and they may be quite different from the one the author intended to pose. What I think I'm getting at is that it's OK for the author to pose a question, but dangerous to do so in a way that's prescribing the correct answer.

The reader of Doctor Zhivago is forced to confront the dilemma posed by the immediate consequences of the Russian revolution without being told what conclusion to arrive at. Never Let Me Go poses fundamental ethical questions, but Ishiguro lets the reader decide (amongst other matters) whether to be preoccupied by the consequences for the children or those who would otherwise fall victim to fatal afflictions.

Dealing with a big issue can make a novel much more powerful so that augurs well for your WIP.

Chris

I agree, Chris - didacticism to be avoided.

I agree that didacticism is fatal... you can ask the question, but as Chris suggests, it's answering it which is a bad idea - at most, the story leads the reader up to the end, where the .

I've realised that the one question that all my novels ask is: How can two people be together while still being themselves?

I think that a book which doesn't at least evoke, if not ask explicitly, a biggish question, is probably not ever going to be a really satisfying read.

A highly commercial police procedural story, say, can solve a murder in a neat, golden-age, "So that's all right then" way. But it's much more satisfying - a better book - if it solves the murder but along the way raises deeper (wider?) ideas about the world it's set in, the moral questions it raises.

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A really good example of the latter was Line of Duty, just recently on the TV.

It worked very well as a plot-driven, police-procedural (sort of) about a series of deaths and covers-up. Pacey, well-acted, compelling stuff.

But it was really about conscience. And doing right. And what you do if following your conscience, and doing right, causes more bad stuff to happen than if you hadn't...

A highly commercial police procedural story, say, can solve a murder in a neat, golden-age, "So that's all right then" way. But it's much more satisfying - a better book - if it solves the murder but along the way raises deeper (wider?) ideas about the world it's set in, the moral questions it raises.

Just what I was thinking. I think I have to bring out the questions in the story ideas that don't seem to have them. Maybe they do have questions, but smaller ones - like 'How can this character survive?'

I go round in circles about this one. Personally, I like novels that ask big questions - which was one of the reasons I liked Herman Hesse so much, and SF writers like Ursula Le Guin; and Doris Lessing's Shikasta series (more than her 'normal' books). But my two children's editors used to castigate me for putting in too much 'mystical' stuff, as they called it. So, for years I completely toned it down. But they didn't take those novels anyway! So I decided to move into SF/Fantasy where I thought there'd be more freedom to explore the big issues. Hmmm - not so sure.

SF/Fantasy magazine editors, for example, often seem a little wary of opening up issues that may, I suppose, alienate their readers. Then again, others don't. For instance, I sold a story called 'Godblocker' recently, after quite a lot of rejections. I knew it was potentially challenging (at least to people who follow fixed, dogmatic religions) so did all I could to build it around a relationship between a man and a woman. But the rejections indicated that editors found it too pointed. However, the editor who's bought it made the comment that he liked the fact it made him think differently about religion.

I guess, putting my crytal balls on the table, I see it as close to a mission to, at least some of the time, write about big issues, the challenge being to do it in such a way the reader is going to be entertained too, not just beaten over the head with my point of view.

Very good way of putting it, Terry.
Didn't someone once say something like 'I write to find out what I think about things'?

"How do I know what I think until I see what I say" is a quote attributed to E.M. Forster but I'm sure many people have said similar.

I prefer novels that ask questions or provoke the reader into questions - just so long as the story appears a genuine exploration of the questions raised (rather than a set notion or principle being the starting point and the story merely being a simplistic vehicle to fulfill the argument).

IMHO all novels ask the Big Questions, even if not all are as explicit in that as in Douglas Adam's 'Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'(the answer's 42, by the way, which explains a lot about what's wrong with life).

At least I can't think of one I have read that doesn't ask such questions of its readers. Mind you, I tend to avoid the Top 10 Bestsellers list in the supermarkets.