"One thing you really have to watch as a writer is getting on a soapbox or pulpit about anything. You don't want to alienate readers"
About this Quote
Grisham is offering craft advice that doubles as a business lesson: fiction is persuasion, but it can’t feel like a sermon. The “soapbox or pulpit” language is pointed because it frames moralizing as a kind of genre violation. Readers didn’t come for a lecture; they came for story velocity, character pressure, the satisfactions of plot. Once an author climbs above the narrative to instruct, the spell breaks and the reader remembers there’s a hand on the scales.
The intent is pragmatic, almost populist. Grisham built a career writing page-turners that circulate far beyond MFA bubbles, and he knows the broad audience is allergic to being told what to think. “Alienate” is the operative word: it’s not that writers shouldn’t have convictions; it’s that conviction must be embedded, not broadcast. You can indict a system by letting it grind a protagonist down, not by pausing the chase scene to deliver a manifesto.
Subtext: the writer’s ego is the real danger. The pulpit is tempting because it flatters the author as an authority rather than a storyteller. Grisham’s warning is also about trust. Readers will follow you into messy ethical territory if you respect their intelligence and let them do the last step of interpretation themselves.
Context matters, too. Legal thrillers are already adjacent to civic argument - corruption, justice, power - and his work often carries clear sympathies. His point isn’t neutrality; it’s technique: make the message ride shotgun, not take the wheel.
The intent is pragmatic, almost populist. Grisham built a career writing page-turners that circulate far beyond MFA bubbles, and he knows the broad audience is allergic to being told what to think. “Alienate” is the operative word: it’s not that writers shouldn’t have convictions; it’s that conviction must be embedded, not broadcast. You can indict a system by letting it grind a protagonist down, not by pausing the chase scene to deliver a manifesto.
Subtext: the writer’s ego is the real danger. The pulpit is tempting because it flatters the author as an authority rather than a storyteller. Grisham’s warning is also about trust. Readers will follow you into messy ethical territory if you respect their intelligence and let them do the last step of interpretation themselves.
Context matters, too. Legal thrillers are already adjacent to civic argument - corruption, justice, power - and his work often carries clear sympathies. His point isn’t neutrality; it’s technique: make the message ride shotgun, not take the wheel.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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