Offensive mistakes writers make

[tinkerdan]

This discussion brings to mind Fahrenheit 451.

I would guess that any apparent blunder that occurred within a character's character development might actually belong there as a portion of that characters attributes and only holds in discussion of whether they appear believable or realistic and whether that has some impact on the story and how they develop within the story.

When it leaks into the narrative I might become suspicious that the author might be trying to squeeze in some message and still that would be up for discussion, but I'm not sure I'd be ready to burn the book.

But to worry about hair color eye color and skin color I'd begin to worry more about the person objecting; though I think that I'd also enjoy sitting with them for a long discussion because they'd make an excellent template for a character.

I'm not sure I understand any of the discussion about sex and race and occupation or position etc. Again excellent templates are those who have some odd notions in this type of thing. I have worked with engineers who are all male and believe that females don't make good engineers. They really believe that stuff and they would make some rather interesting flawed characters. (Oops that last might cause problems because some of them will be reading this.) How using any of this in your writing could be perceived as disastrous offensive mistakes has my mind boggled.(There again is another interesting character template for your fiction.)

The point is that writing in many cases is not necessarily meant to be politically correct. It often is meant to elicit the reaction that you see here. That would be the healthy part of the discussion. (Did I mention that forum post flamers are also an interesting template for characters in a book.)

I recent read most of Anne Wilson's work; that I could find. She attempts to use the gender neutral term quite a bit and it's almost annoying until you understand it and get used to it. But her characters within her stories do not always adhere to a moral standard that reflected the author's use of gender neutral terms. (Which is good because writing is about having characters that don't adhere to those silly rules that don't agree with the character's POV.)

Still there are some really important mistakes or blunders that could be discussed that actually make sense.

I recently read an authors work that had a character who was OCD and was studying psychology both as a professional option and a path to understanding herself. She had a friend with MS and in a wheelchair and she had an insensitive boyfriend who made a horrible slur about this person being retarded. (Up to this point I was fine because there are still some people who do this.)

The problem was that the educated person with OCD tried defending her friend with MS by making a horrible comparison saying pretty much that her boyfriend was being mean and that it wasn't like her friend had Downs Syndrome. <-Now that pulled me out of the story both because it was Politically incorrect and insensitive and I didn't for any moment believe this character would have said that even though she did.)

Those are the kind of things we should be looking for if we look at all for offensive mistakes.

 

[Hex]

And regardless, in the end it's saying "go back, look at your WIP, think about these issues and see if you are doing any of these things, then decide if you want to keep or alter them now that you've thought about how people other than yourself may look at them."

I don't think it is saying that. Perhaps that's what is intended, though, and I'm happy to accept that that's a sensible suggestion.

I'd feel happier with sources for the statements -- some evidence that they're based in something substantive, but perhaps that simply reflects my own lack of knowledge of the area.

 

[Kissmequick]

I don't normally visit those dark places.

What I meant was that there was no campaign on Amazon to have the author tarred and feathered. I'm sure I've seen that before in reviews.

No, it was on Goodreads instead (At least that was one section of it)

The point is that writing in many cases is not necessarily meant to be politically correct. It often is meant to elicit the reaction that you see here. That would be the healthy part of the discussion. (Did I mention that forum post flamers are also an interesting template for characters in a book.)

Oh there are times you want to go there, and people I wouldn't mind offending in the slightest (I'd quite happily offend say the Westboro Baptist church into a group apoplexy. Or the BNP.) but those groups are pretty small and offensive in themselves. (ETA: By "offend" I mean, I'd portray people they hate, LGBQT or POC, as nice, real people. Which would offend the heck out of them) I think he difference being that some people would be offended by good writing, by portraying realistically a group of people they are bigoted against, whereas in blogs such as the OP they are protesting against bad writing, that doesn't show them or people like them in any way but stereotypically, and those stereotypes can and do bleed into real life. Stereotypes cause people problems IRL. Me offending Westboro by writing a real and believable gay person won't hurt them. Me writing a stereotypical and lazy type of gay man would/could hurt a gay man (directly and indeirectly)

But the groups of readers who are, if not offended, fed up with the constant stream of Problem X* in books is far, far larger. And good manners (if nothing else) says that I should do my best not to be unintentionally rude to them.

*For instance, many female readers are fed up with women characters used as nothing more than plot tokens, or are only there to be raped/murdered purely to motivate the hero rather than have any actual character of their own and so on and so forth. It used to be very common in fantasy, and is now less so, and I think that's probably because a lot of women finally stood up and said, you know what? I don't like this, and here is why. When a large group of people are all saying the same thing (and I've seen the same sentiments expressed in the OP in very many different places) then I think it behooves me as a writer to listen. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, mind, but it bears some serious contemplation before I decide that I personally won't worry about it. Maybe because I have those issues with say some female characters, I can see where a lot of the ones regarding POC are coming from. "We're tired of this, it's bad writing, please make us real people". Just because it's not a problem for me, personally, doesn't make it not a problem for a lot of other people.

 

[tinkerdan]

So in my own work my main character is female.
Blond hair blue eyes skinny as a rail and at least once she was fixated on her own breasts, but there was a plot reason for this.

Everyone's out to kill her and at least once someone makes overt sexual attempts against her.

In the second installment everyone is still out to kill her and one person seriously tries to rape her.

Each time no one else saves her; but she has to get out of these predicaments by herself and the events help define some of her growth. She also has a problem with accepting other peoples help and since any friends she has have been prone to getting hurt she tries not to make friends.

Yet all of this is stacking against me because as you say it's that same old tired trope that is apparently also inappropriate to some people's way of thinking. I'm not saying that the rape and murder are defining the plot. But they are there and many times they get in the way of where she has to be next and so she has to avoid them or walk through them and come out the other end so in that way they do become part of the plot because how she handles them helps define her growth.

The question is where do we draw the line? Because I'm pretty sure for every place I can justify myself; someone might be able to point out that it's all there just to add those elemental tropes that writers think readers want.

I put a picture of the main character on the cover and one of my own family said; you are taking a chance with a cover like that. Thankfully one other who had read the book looked at him and said 'you haven't read the book yet have you?'

So I can see how this stuff works-I'm just not sure that it can easily be avoided no matter what the writers intentions might me.

*For instance, many female readers are fed up with women characters used as nothing more than plot tokens, or are only there to be raped/murdered purely to motivate the hero rather than have any actual character of their own and so on and so forth. It used to be very common in fantasy, and is now less so, and I think that's probably because a lot of women finally stood up and said, you know what? I don't like this, and here is why. When a large group of people are all saying the same thing (and I've seen the same sentiments expressed in the OP in very many different places) then I think it behooves me as a writer to listen. I don't necessarily agree with all of it, mind, but it bears some serious contemplation before I decide that I personally won't worry about it. Maybe because I have those issues with say some female characters, I can see where a lot of the ones regarding POC are coming from. "We're tired of this, it's bad writing, please make us real people". Just because it's not a problem for me, personally, doesn't make it not a problem for a lot of other people.

 

[Hex]

I might be wrong, but I think kmq means the sort of situation in which the woman isn't the mc like yours is, but exists as a sort of excuse for a male mc to do something wild and outrageous (aka take on the bad guys) when she is raped/ murdered. She exists as nothing more than the excuse for his action. Alternatively, she might be "the reward" for his bravery.

I seem to remember encountering it more in the past (which is a very good thing).

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Change "offensive" to "annoying" and I can agree with quite a bit of that list, but by God I hate artificially created attempts at gender neutral pronouns.

The trouble is in real life we could actually use an accepted gender neutral pronoun. Maybe it is because I am surrounded by intersex and trans people.

One in fifteen hundred people is born with something that makes them not entirely male nor female?

 

[Kissmequick]

I might be wrong, but I think kmq means the sort of situation in which the woman isn't the mc like yours is, but exists as a sort of excuse for a male mc to do something wild and outrageous (aka take on the bad guys) when she is raped/ murdered. She exists as nothing more than the excuse for his action. Alternatively, she might be "the reward" for his bravery.

I seem to remember encountering it more in the past (which is a very good thing).

You are not wrong -- that's exactly what I meant

While rape is a bit of a go-to for "How do I make things worse for my female MC" it's not like it's a forbidden subject. As with a lot of things, it's in the execution.

 

[tinkerdan]

I am aware of this: I'm also aware that there is a measure of blindness in many writers to some of what they are doing.

You are not wrong -- that's exactly what I meant

While rape is a bit of a go-to for "How do I make things worse for my female MC" it's not like it's a forbidden subject. As with a lot of things, it's in the execution.

Which is what some of this discussion is about in trying to make people aware of it.

What I'm concerned about is that we don't even talk about the male who is always strong and never gets beaten and raped and then saved by the woman and could we do this now or would we just be reversing the trope and be dragged bloodied over the carpet for the whole thing.

In reality there are women who get raped and there are men who can't defend themselves and how far do we have to go to avoid these tropes in our story? And when we do find a place in the plot where it works how sure will be be that someone won't overlook the reasons and still complain that we did it again the man's motive is to save the poor raped girl and her honor. Or vise versa.

I think that the problem is that in most cases the story really goes that the bad guy does bad things but nothing that has crossed the line and the good guy might push back but not chase. The bad guy continues to do bad things and the good guy continues to mostly block with no pursuit. Then the Bad guy steps into the personal area and the good guy reacts- because this is the real trope going on here. The fact that its 90% of the time a male protagonist protecting his female is unfortunate.

What I'm not getting is exactly that we're portraying the woman as weak or otherwise demeaning her because it's done this way. The idea is to portray the bad person as evil for going after someone near to this character rather than directly at the main character.

I could see reason to complain if all of his male friends had already been targeted and he didn't lift a finger and then the female gets targeted and it's Rambo time. That would be a reason to complain.

So if he responds immediately when a male friend is in danger is that the same or is that different? Same response every time for every person in danger or should we just avoid putting his friends in danger at all?

 

[Kissmequick]

Someone will always complain.

Always

Your best bet is to be thoughtful in what you do, accept that sometimes you will muck it up (and be prepared to hold your hands up if this is the case) and just try to write the best damned book you can. And while you (probably!) want to be thoughtful about your audience, you cannot control their reaction except by good writing (and not always then. If you write about, I dunnow, a murderous chicken, and someone reads the book whose father was murdered by a chicken, well their reaction is valid, and still does not make you chickenist)

And remember, your work is not you, and the more someone is engaged with the story, the more they will often forgive.

What I'm not getting is exactly that we're portraying the woman as weak or

otherwise demeaning her because it's done this way. The idea is to portray the bad person as evil for going after someone near to this character rather than directly at the main character.

It's not just because he saves her, often. It's because she could have saved (or at least helped) herself, but doesn't so the hero gets to be all heroic. If a heroine fights tooth and nail to help herself, but the hero arrives in the nick of time, then you should be fine or most reasonable people (if it is executed well, natch) The problem is when the woman is portrayed as helpless, passive just waiting around for Good Dude to turn up. If she's proactive then you should be fine (again for most people. But you can have her save the hero, and yet if she sheds a single tear, OMG!! DAMSEL IN DISTRESS! This you just have to suck up tbh, or accept that you should have made things clearer or...or perhaps this particular reader has a bee in their bonnet)

I like to write with my reader in mind, and not put in things that will make them froth with rage, or roll their eyes in exasperation. But I like to fondly imagine my readers are reasonable people who won't froth over things that aren't even in the book, or because they misread a sentence or apparently skimmed a para that would have allayed their frothage (I've had that...). But I also try to remember that others may have a really good perspective I'd not considered, and to listen to it.

It's a really fine line, but every author has to find their own line really. I think as long as you are open to other perspectives, it'll come good in the end. (I really hope so anyway!)


PS: This is a really interesting take on the author's role after a story comes out. Once it's out there it has to stand or fall on the words in the book, not your intent. So try to make them the best words you can.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

If you were the author receiving these criticisms, would you wish you could have addressed them?

Yes, absolutely. You can't undo what you've already published (even if you revise it and put out a new edition, there will still be people who have the old one), but I would want to know about these things so that I could think about what I was doing when writing the next book.

Fairly recently, someone pointed out the way I address physical deformity in my books. Well, I know why I do it, and it's not due to any prejudice (I sincerely hope!), but when I looked back I was shocked to see how often I had done the same sort of thing in previous books, and I could see how people might well be offended by the frequency with which I do this (though no one has ever written to me to say that they were offended, maybe I'm a little offended with myself). It's too late to do anything about it for the WIP, which is a trilogy, and I can't just suddenly remove people from book three who have been vital to the story in books one and two, but it is something I would hesitate to do in future books.

What I'm concerned about is that we don't even talk about the male who is always strong and never gets beaten and raped and then saved by the woman and could we do this now

We actually did have this conversation in another thread about a year ago, so it isn't something we've ignored.

But actually, tinkerdan, as you describe it your book is the very opposite of the kind of book where the female is raped to provide the hero with motivation. Your female character seems to be fighting back, saving herself, and that, I think, is exactly what readers who have been offended by the old clichéd plot of woman as victim, would like to see more of.

 

[svalbard]

I am of the firm belief that if authors become obsessed with minding their P's and Q's then more and more work will become sterile and boring. Imagine if Harriet Beecher Stowe was worried about offending all the 'white folks' we would never have had Uncle Tom's Cabin.

 

[Kissmequick]

I think that was probably more intentional than a mistake tbh....

If you are setting out to have a go at Section A of the world, then sure. Sometimes say the KKK need a kick up the butt. I'll happily offend bigots by writing their worst nightmare as a sympathetic character

But offending a bigoted viewpoint on purpose by writing a person they think is a non person as human, is very different from accidentally offending/annoying completely normal people who you had no intention of offending by using a lazy stereotype.

Good writing is good writing, and makes (normal, not knowingly bigoted people) people think.

Bad writing is bad writing and makes (normal, not bigoted) people angry.

Ofc the trick is telling the difference, and maybe a modicum of knowing your own failings in this regard.

But there is a vast difference between a book that exposes bigotry to one that endorses it

ETA: what's that saying? Always punch up, not down. Hit at people above you on the privilege scale, not below.

 

[svalbard]

She correctly saw the injustice of slavery, but for a lot of people back then they saw no problem with it. It was a societal norm, although it is a bad example for the discussion in hand

 

[Kissmequick]

She correctly saw the injustice of slavery, but for a lot of people back then they saw no problem with it. It was a societal norm, although it is a bad example for the discussion in hand

And she was hitting out at that bigotry

As I said, (maybe in an edit before you posted?) there is a vast difference between a book that exposes bigotry to one that endorses it.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It is, indeed, a bad example, since it was written for the express purpose of shaking people up. If she offended people it wasn't a "mistake," which is what this thread is supposed to be about.

There is a big difference between books where a writer intentionally stirs up strong reactions and books where the writer (rightly or wrongly) looks bigoted because of lazy habits of thought. Or because of careless writing.

And I can't agree with the idea I seem to see here that if we, as writers, take deeper thought about what we are writing and how we write it -- for the impact of our words -- it is going to make our writing sterile and boring. I believe it will make our writing better. We are supposed to think. We are supposed to choose our words carefully. Words have power.

The writer of that article used extreme language (and there we see the power of language) and suggested extreme solutions to some very real problems. To my mind, the worst thing about that article (apart from the fact that it upset a lot of people who are already aware of the issues and would otherwise have been in sympathy with some of what the blogger had to say) is that it gives ammunition to people who would rather ignore those issues altogether. For those who agreed with it completely it was preaching to the choir, so that was no gain.

I believe that article was offensive in ways that were counterproductive to what I believe the writer ultimately wanted to accomplish. And that was an offensive mistake.

 

[Nerds_feather]

What "extreme solutions" is she advocating? I'm not seeing any.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Describing the color of everyone's skin struck me as an extreme solution.

A story would be tedious if every single time a new character appeared the author were to describe the color of their skin, just as it is tedious when an author tells the color of every single character's hair and eyes (it can look quite amateurish when I writer does this).

 

[Mirannan]

Describing the color of everyone's skin struck me as an extreme solution.

A story would be tedious if every single time a new character appeared the author were to describe the color of their skin, just as it is tedious when an author tells the color of every single character's hair and eyes (it can look quite amateurish when I writer does this).

Which doesn't mean that describing a character's appearance in detail is never a good idea. Sometimes it's vital. As a minor example, my current WIP describes the protagonist (sort of, but that's another matter entirely) in detail early on - and her appearance is very definitely relevant to the plot; it's a clue to both the reader and to other characters in the story about what's going on, for a start.

 

[barrett1987]

I might be wrong, but I think kmq means the sort of situation in which the woman isn't the mc like yours is, but exists as a sort of excuse for a male mc to do something wild and outrageous (aka take on the bad guys) when she is raped/ murdered. She exists as nothing more than the excuse for his action. Alternatively, she might be "the reward" for his bravery.

.

This was one of the things that stood out in my initial outline. That the women the mc was striving for was just a prize. I've combated it( i hope) by inserting scenes in her pov and giving her a journey of her own. If she develops and over comes stuff on her own im hoping i will avoid this 2d/prize kinda vibe. Though i do use rape, i've had it happen off camera because i just couldn't write it properly. If im honest it creeped me out getting in deep on that so i pulled away.

 

[Hex]

I guess it's one of those things to think about. I had a scene in a dungeon-y type place where my 16 year old mc was being threatened by three big, scary men, and my instant go-to threat was sexual.

Maybe partly because there's a fair bit of sexual threat (or rape) in fiction, and maybe because it's a kind of social default in situations where women feel threatened by men?

Whatever the reason, it took a bit of thinking, and help from Teresa, before I came up with something else. I'm much happier with what I did, and I think it's a lot scarier, but my point (I know I left it around here somewhere) was that it took thought to see that I hadn't considered what I was doing in that scene, and before I realised there was another way to go.