I keep this image in the rotation for my laptop background to remind me that I just have to keep writing.
Image retrieved from PinterestFor this “Writers on Writing”, I want to discuss Dominican American writer and MacArthur Fellow Junot Diaz. Diaz is best known for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, the novel for which he won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I know him for his humorous story “How to Date a Brown Girl (Black Girl, White Girl, or Halfie)” and his strong political voice on Facebook. Based on what I’ve read, I think he’s a talented, hilarious, and very opinionated man. I’ve also found his writing advice and discussions on his writing, editing, and teaching experiences to be incredibly valuable, especially for struggling writers.
The advice I’m going to focus on is more about uplifting fellow writers than approaches to writing and its difficulties:
You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.
–Junot Diaz, Becoming a Writer/ The List, O Magazine, November 2009, retrieved from Goodreads
This quote, as an image I found somewhere on Google, serves as part of the rotating background on my laptop. I keep it to remind myself that it’s OK that not everything I do is perfect. I’ve especially needed these words recently. It may sound obvious–no one’s perfect, after all–but artists overall don’t typically remember that the world won’t end if they make a mistake. Writers are no exception.
It’s no secret that writers are perfectionists. One of the most common reasons for writer’s block is a paralyzing fear of not creating anything worthwhile. I know that my writer’s block, no matter what the superficial reasons seem to be, always boils down to being afraid that my work is going to be utter crud. It’s the barrier that separates aspiring writers from actual writers.
It doesn’t matter a lick that you’re the most talented writer in the world if you don’t let yourself write something horrible. Conversely, you could think that that 90% of your work is the worst thing ever produced. However, if you keep writing through this 90%, you will reach the 10% that’s gold. You will hit roadblocks, you will feel discouraged, but you will find your masterpiece because you don’t stop. That’s when you stop aspiring to be a writer and start being one.
In addition to sifting through the muck, we have to keep writing when we have no hope because we’re the worst judges of our own work. We may think something is horrific but our readers eat it up, or we think something is genius but it falls flat once it’s out of our hands. There are plenty of examples from famous writers, including Edgar Allen Poe and Herman Melville. Our views are biased either for or against our work, so we’ll never know what’s actually worth the effort until after the effort has been made.
Yes, it can do you and your work a load of good to step away for a while. Sometimes our batteries need to recharge. Nevertheless, that doesn’t mean that we should give up entirely when things get tough. In my opinion, writing is about 10% talent, 10% luck, and 80% effort. The more we create, the more likely we are to succeed. That’s why, even when nothing we do shows any promise, we can’t give up. All we can do is continue to write. Remember, this career–this lifestyle–isn’t about publication and success; it’s about doing what we all love, writing.
Any thoughts on Diaz’s words? Have quotes and/or writing advice from famous writers that you think I should discuss? Leave your thoughts in the comments below or contact me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com.
Happy Tuesday, everyone. I’m still busy with schoolwork and other obligations but I needed a distraction from the heat. (Our AC broke last summer and we live in a part of California where it can reach 100+ degrees Fahrenheit, so I’m not a happy writer…) For that reason, I’ve decided to post a poll asking my readers how their stories start.
I want to know which part of your story usually comes to you first. A rough plot/plot idea? A character? Setting? You can answer all or answer “other” and provide your own option. And please, feel free to discuss the answers in the comments section while you’re at it. You’d be surprised at how helpful it can be to discuss your process–or lack thereof–with fellow writers.
I’m experimenting with a new poll plugin I’ve added to my blog, so I decided to start with a poll on issues facing the modern writing world. Please pardon me if anything is clunky or if there are any issues. The visual appeal of the poll is also not the best. I’m a writer, not a website designer, so this is all very new to me.
Anyway, please take the time to vote on this poll and feel free to discuss the results (civilly) in the comments section.
Well, it’s the weekend again. I’ve been in a mood since yesterday, so today’s writing prompt is going to deal with the darkness in our minds. From Edgar Allen Poe to Stephen King, darkness clearly sells. Even fiction that is not necessarily a commercial success can be considered better-written because it is so dark; for me, “The Half-Skinned Steer” by Annie Proulx comes to mind. In this writing prompt, I want to challenge you to dip into your dark side and make something productive out of it.
The prompt itself is rather simple. Think of your most twisted nightmare OR the darkest thought you’ve ever had. Now use this nightmare or dark thought to write a scene, flash story, short story, poem, whatever you want.
I know this sounds vague and overly simple but it’s a lot harder than you’d think. I can’t speak for anyone else but I don’t like to explore the darker corners of my mind too often because I’m scared of what I’ll find there. Unfortunately for me, that’s what would make it good fiction–if I’m startled just thinking about it, imagine how it could effect readers!
Well, good luck diving into the darkness and returning with your sanity intact.
Trigger Warning: Today’s topic is the “bury your gays” trope. The following post and any resulting conversations may contain triggers for members of the LGBTQIA+ community, particularly those who have suffered any abuse for their identities and/or are survivors of attempted suicide or whose loved ones have been affected by such trauma. Please proceed with caution.
Theatrical release poster for the movie Brokeback Mountain, which is much different from the short story, retrieved from the Wikipedia entry
A discussion of Annie Proulx’s “Brokeback Mountain” has caused some…heated debate within my Master’s Literary Studies program. Unfortunately, such conflict is inevitable when discussing hot-button issues like the treatment of LGBTQIA+ characters in modern literature. It’s certainly given me something to think about, namely the “bury your gays” trope and its effects.
The debate in my class’s discussion forum is mainly over whether writers should take the opinions and sensitivities of certain communities into account when writing a story. The “kill your gays” trope and its persisting prevalence in Western culture emerged during this discussion as an example of why writers should take at least some care in considering how you will represent a specific community. Admittedly, I faded in and out after the initial posts by these people because I feared things could take a bad turn. I also feel, after stupidly repeating myself multiple times in the post, that I made no real contribution and that I just put my foot in my mouth. Still, I have some very strong opinions on this matter.
Before I continue, I want to define the “bury your gays” trope as I have come to understand it. In popular culture there’s a tendency for LGBTQIA+ characters to be killed unnecessarily and/or unnecessarily cruelly. Another prevalent trend is for LGBTQIA+ characters to be given tragic story lines overall, not just being killed off. For more information on this issue and the LGBTQIA+ community’s problems stemming from it, please follow this link.
I’ve said repeatedly that writers shouldn’t care what other people think and just write what they’re going to write. I still believe that. However, many writers, myself included, forget the sort of effect that their works can have.
Writers shape culture, social dynamics, and politics as much as we reflect them. One prominent modern example is the study that suggests that readers of Harry Potter are more empathetic towards stigmatized groups because they read Harry Potter. What we say in our books, short stories, and poetry have a much greater effect on people, on the world, than we could ever imagine.
I know what you’re thinking at this point: if writers have such sway, shouldn’t we use that influence to show people the horrific conditions under which the LGBTQIA+ community often suffers? Yes and no.
We need to use our writing to bring attention to the problem. Sometimes that involves depicting the disastrous outcomes of prejudice, whether there’s a sad ending or a happy ending after the dust has settled. Nevertheless, these traumas should not be the only way in which we represent the LGBTQIA+ community.
Imagine depicting people of color, Jewish people, Muslims, and other minorities only with tragic plots and/or stories in which they die, or that the majority of stories with these communities turned out that way. Could we say it’s to bring to light the injustice, prejudice, and abuse to which they are subjected? It would be racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia. Mind you, all minorities are still severely underrepresented and misrepresented in Western literature. However, if we were to treat them with a parallel of the “bury your gays” trope, would we be able to justify it by saying “characters die” or “tragedy makes for interesting stories”?
Here’s another way to look at it. You know how heterosexual (particularly white heterosexual) people have come to the realization that so many “love stories” end tragically and encourage their children to not follow those examples? Well, take that feeling and apply it not just to love stories but a vast majority of books, TV, and movies in which heterosexual people are main or secondary characters. It’s not something we’d want our children or other people with similar sexual identities to aspire to, huh? Doesn’t really fill you with hope for your own life, does it?
Lexa was a very popular and complex character from The 100. Her relationship with Clarke significantly impacted the LGBTQIA+ community. When she was tragically killed off, there was not only outrage; many in the LGBTQIA+ community were traumatically effected and several were even suicidal. Not every character’s death is justifiable.
I’m not saying that all LGBTQIA+ characters are treated this way. There is, however, a disproportionate number of them that are in comparison with hetero-normative characters. The 100 TV show killed off Lexa, who had a relationship with the main character Clarke; The Originals killed off Josh’s boyfriend, Aiden; some people even consider Dumbledore as an example because he dies, his relationship with Grindewald was tragic, and he is not openly depicted as gay in the Harry Potter books. These are just three of the examples that I’m aware of.
I hate admitting it but I’m not innocent of this trope, either. In a story I submitted for my Master program’s first writing forum, my main character–whose sexual identity is put into question–is killed and, for the reader, seems to be in an ambiguous in-between state, a limbo of sorts. I often thrust my main characters into horrific situations, sometimes even killing them, and especially so in fantasy pieces like this story. That’s why I didn’t even think about the possibility of harming the LGBTQIA+ community with this particular ending.
I can justify it all I want by saying that I was trying to illustrate the poor treatment of the LGBTQIA+ community and the scapegoating that they are subjected to, but there’s a thin line between conveying a message about a negative stereotype and perpetuating it. Before realizing I played into that issue, I had already decided to expand it into a novel (three, actually) that follows the main character after the supposed death. That’s no excuse but my plans do include a better, if bumpy, plot for the main character, so I’m trying to not perpetuate anything negative as I continue my stories.
That brings us to an important question: what if the story is best the way it is, with something bad happening to an LGBTQIA+ character?
The answer is complex. If, after an extensive review and self-reflection, we decide that that’s how the story needs to be, we have to leave the story that way. I was told by the person who helped me realize the social implications of my story that it was a good story; I just shouldn’t publish it yet, given the current socio-political climate. With this story, that’s probably the right path. The fact that I’m trying to make it the first chapter of a novel made that decision easy.
But what about those who need to publish the story exactly as it is in order for it to be its best? Well, you could wait until this trope has been disposed, has itself been buried. You could also write and publish other works which have LGBTQIA+ characters but do not put them through the “bury your gays” trope, instead finding a way to write a great story in which they are content. My strongest recommendation, however, is to not have your first published piece contain a “bury your gays” situation. You wouldn’t publish a story involving racism which ends badly for the person of color as your first published piece, would you?
Ultimately, writers must be the masters of their work. We can’t let the possibility of offending people make us question every one of our choices, but that doesn’t give us free license to offend people without caring at all. If we write negative stereotypes (gender, race, sexual identity, religion, etc.) or constantly kill off minority characters/give them tragic plots more often than our non-minority characters, we perpetuate negative stereotypes and attitudes towards minorities. We can even push people with these identities over the edge. Besides, if we don’t explore alternate endings, we may miss out on a story we’re more proud of. We can’t be policed by other people’s beliefs and sensitivities but we would do well to consider them as we revise our work.
Thoughts? Concerns? Examples of the “bury your gays” trope you wish to discuss? Counter-examples? Remember, we welcome all perspectives but the discussion must remain civil and intellectual. Anything less wouldn’t be productive (and any trolling/bullying could result in your suspension or banning from the comments section; please remember to check the comments policy before posting).
In the last webinar for the year, my Master’s Elements of Fiction class discussed images, metaphors, and symbols. We discussed their roles in writing, how we approach them in our works, their relation to literary theory, and much more. I plan to (eventually) talk about everything that came up in this webinar in one form or another. For today I want to focus on a particular quote on imagery that we debated:
There are images made with eyes open and images made with eyes closed. One is about clear sight and the other about similitude.
–Charles Simic
Our main debate was over which images were made with eyes open–the ones about clear sight or the ones about similitude–and which were made with eyes closed. Part of the class thought that images made with eyes open were about clear sight and that images about similitude were made with eyes closed. The other part, myself included, thought that clear sight images were actually made with your eyes closed and that the images made with your eyes open are similitude.
Before I explain both sides, I should give you the definition of “similitude” (I honestly had to look it up myself). Basically, a similitude is a likeness or a resemblance. (For the full definition, check out Dictionary.com.)
Now, I can see why some people think that Simic means for the clear sight to be the images made with your eyes open. First of all, it makes sense semantically. Images made with eyes wide open comes first in the first sentence and clear sight comes first in the second sentence; it would only make sense if Simic meant for them to correlate. Of course, Simic is a writer, a poet in particular, and so what seems obvious in that sense may not actually be the truth.
I can also see people thinking this way because one would assume that you have to have your eyes open in order to have clear sight. However, this is a literal interpretation of Simic’s words. “Clear sight” could mean seeing things as they truly are, not just as they appear to be in the physical world.
This possibility for “clear sight” is what leads me to believe that images made with your eyes closed are about clear sight. Let’s add to this definition of clear sight the definition of “similitude”. “Similitude” is a likeness or resemblance, something which looks like something else. These sorts of images writers must make with their eyes open in order to see that which the image is a similitude of. The example I gave in class is that I see a flower in front of me, I write “there is a flower”, and that image is a similitude.
Clear sight, then, is something beyond what we see in everyday life. It’s the parts which we can’t see, for which we have to expand our sight and our mind in order to steal a glimpse.
The people trapped at the wall can only witness the shadows in front of them, but we can see that there’s much more to the cave and the world beyond it than what they see.
Let’s take, as an example, Plato’s allegory “The Cave”. I don’t want to mislead anyone with my summary, so here’s a link to a summary of the allegory on Wikipedia. Essentially, there’s a cave in which people are forced to look only ahead of them. Behind them are people with a fire and puppets, which they use to cast shadows on the wall in front of the observers. The people who are forced to look forward only see the shadows on the wall. It’s not until they’re freed that they can see everything: the shadows, what makes the shadows, and the world outside the cave.
Images in literature work in a similar way. When you only look at what’s in front of you, you only see the shadow–the semblance–of the image. However, if you look around, look in unconventional ways, you can see the shadows and the truth behind them. Seeing with your eyes open is the traditional way to see an image. You only see the “shadows” of physical appearance. Seeing with your eyes closed, on the other hand, involves looking beyond the shadows to reach their essence.
I know that, from a common sense point of view, this comparison seems like a stretch. How can you see something clearly if your eyes are closed? I want you to consider for a moment meditation and imagination. When you meditate, your eyes are closed. I can’t speak for anyone else but when I meditate, I see images. They aren’t the objects that are in front of me. Rather, they can be anything from inverted images of the objects around me to a replay of a memory to some flash of cosmic insight that I can’t even explain. Similarly, the images you see in your imagination are not the objects right in front of you. They are distant world, a plant you’ve only seen in passing once or twice in your life, a person you’ve never even laid eyes on. Sometimes your eyes have to close in order for those images to come into focus, like how dreaming brings images into sharp focus but trying to replicate those images when you’re awake and your eyes are open makes them fuzzy.
When your eyes are “closed,” you experience more than just the appearance of an image. You experience the smells, the sounds, the emotions, the moods, and the significance behind them. If you draw on these sensations, rather than just the similitude, you create for your reader an image beyond the physical world. You show them the rest of the cave and, perhaps, a way out to the world beyond it.
For my end-of-year essay, I’m writing about flawed characters in Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories. I decided that discussing flawed characters on this blog would both help me think for my essay and help my readers think about character development in their own work. Two birds, one stone.
I’m going to start with a quote our program director gave us:
We want to be taught to feel, not for the heroic artisan or the sentimental peasant, but for the peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan in all his suspicious selfishness.
–George Eliot, The Natural History of German Life
Eliot hits the mark on this matter. Readers don’t care about perfectly heroic or sympathetic characters. Frankly, they’re boring. There’s a reason why writers cringe when a character is labelled a “Mary Sue” or a “Gary Stu.” I personally feel less sympathetic/empathetic for such characters, let alone feel any sort of connection to them.
That being said, not all flawed characters work well, either. Some of them can be too mean or their traits so incongruous with each other that the characters don’t seem to be human at all. How, then, can flawed characters work in a writer’s favor? What does it take to make us feel “for the peasant in all his coarse apathy, and the artisan in all his suspicious selfishness”?
Let’s dip into a little Freudian psychology for this answer. In particular I want to turn to his concept of the id, ego, and super ego.
It’s helpful to think of the subconscious as an iceberg. Most of what shows in the conscious mind is the ego with some of the super ego; the id lies beneath, in the unconscious, along with most of the super ego.
Now, I’ll admit that I don’t understand everything about Freud’s theories. Nevertheless, here’s my best explanation of the id, ego, and super ego:
The id, ego, and super ego are the three levels of our subconscious. The id houses our primal instincts; it’s essentially our impulses and basic needs and desires unfiltered. Our super ego criticizes and moralizes our actions, stopping us from doing what the id wants. Finally, the ego is our organized, rational side; it acts as a mediator between our id and our super ego. (For more information, here’s the Wikipedia article.)
Each level of the subconscious can represent a different kind of character: entirely good, entirely bad, or flawed. Entirely good characters are like the super ego. They are overly-righteous and crying too hard for the reader’s sympathy. Just as we would get annoyed with real-life people who are too moral and push those morals on others, so would we get bored of characters who are too good, not flawed at all. Entirely bad characters are the id. They do whatever they want without caring about the consequences, have no conscience or guilt, and are just mean. An unrestrained id would be chaotic, hard to stop, and destructive with no real purpose; we’d have no sympathy for that person because they’ll get what’s coming to them if they act with no thought. Similarly, we can’t really feel for a character with no redeeming qualities.
Finally, the ego represents flawed characters. We see a mixture of the beastly id and the saintly super ego, resulting in a complex character with whom we can relate. We can see bad traits we hate, good traits to which we aspire, and everything in between. We feel for when they fail or something else bad happens to them because we recognize them as someone like us who makes mistakes and at least has the potential to regret them.
I’m going to turn to an example from one of the stories I’m studying for my essay, Clemencia from “Never Marry a Mexican”.
As I said in my review of the collection, I don’t typically read stories about adultery. They conflict with my morals too much. “Never Marry a Mexican”, however, keeps my attention from start until end and I believe it’s due solely to Clemencia’s character development.
Clemencia is far from the perfect heroine: she sleeps with a married man, actively seeks control over him and his family through even the most minute actions, and is pretty crazy. However, Cisneros also shows us her background and her troublesome relationship with her dead father and her remarried mother. Despite her willingly and knowingly having an affair with a married man, I understand and feel for Clemencia. I don’t approve of her actions but I understand that she’s trying to gain some control in her life, have power over a marriage and a family when she didn’t have any power in how her mother acted during and after her father’s death. Her admittance that she doesn’t want to marry and that she knows that she can be vindictive and cruel, by the end of the story, are not solely flaws to me; they’re signs of a woman who knows who she is, accepts who she is, and draws power from this knowledge and acceptance. Were she the “perfect” woman aside from her affair, I would’ve hated her and been too perplexed by her actions to read the entire story. Were she an entirely malicious character with the haunting sadness of her background, I would’ve thought without a doubt that she deserved whatever bad thing happened to her and wouldn’t have been able to stomach her long enough to reach the end. Her flawed character is what made me interested in a kind of story that usually repulses me.
Flawed characters draw our sympathy because humans are, at their core, flawed characters themselves. We are neither entirely super ego nor entirely id. We make mistakes, we regret them, and we fix them; we fall in love and we break hearts; we are kind and we are cruel; we restrain our desires and we indulge in them. We want to see characters like us. We’d rather be reminded of the good and bad together, rather than one or the other.
Do you have any opinions on flawed characters? Have any good examples of flawed characters that you feel for? Leave your thoughts in the comments. To keep up with all our support, advice, and distractions, remember to sign up for email updates in the lower left-hand corner.
Image retrieved from PinterestI’d like to welcome you to a new feature on The Writer’s Scrap Bin that is simply called “Book Reviews”. Here I’ll review a wide range of books, both well-established and little-known. I’m going to start this series with Sandra Cisneros’s Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories.
This collection is divided into three sections: “My Friend Lucy Who Smells Like Corn”, “One Holy Night”, and “There Was a Man, There Was a Woman”. Overall, Cisneros’s stories are gripping, fast-paced, and an engaging read. I worried at first that the heavy influence of the Latinx culture would cause me, being as ignorant as I can be, to become lost. However, I found that this influence made the stories even more intriguing and added a special flair which homogeneously white American stories can’t achieve.
The first section was not my favorite. The seven stories in this section focus on children, are very short–only a few pages long–and are very quick reads. Still, I had to re-read some of these stories multiple times in order to understand them, particularly “My Friend Lucy Who Smells Like Corn”. That fact in and of itself does not detract from their quality. I just didn’t feel as emotionally connected with these stories as I did with the others.
The three stories from the other sections which most piqued my interest are “One Holy Night”, “Never Marry a Mexican”, and “Woman Hollering Creek”.
Trigger Warning: The story I am about to discuss may contain triggers for victims of child molestation.
The collection caught my attention fully with the story “One Holy Night”. The content is rather sensitive and may be a trigger for some of my readers, and so I will not go into too many details about it. I will say that Cisneros takes an often uncomfortable topic and explores the psychological and emotional complexities experienced by the young girl at the center of the events. This character, rather than being a typical damsel-in-distress suffering from trauma, finds new wisdom inside her because of these experiences, wisdom which she is quick to point out that the other young girls don’t yet have. She is simultaneously an adult and a child–much like her love interest’s name, “Boy Baby”–living events and hardships that should be reserved for adults and yet showing that she’s so young that she thinks herself more of an adult than she truly is. I found myself sympathizing with her not only because of the loss of her innocence and the rough road ahead but also because she felt “love,” what she called “love,” with a man who deceived her and had her heart shattered long before she should have. She was young and naive but Cisneros still made me feel for her as a woman.
“Never Marry a Mexican” follows the story of a Mexican woman and her affair with a married white man. I usually dislike stories about cheating spouses, even when told from the “other woman’s” perspective. Cisneros, however, managed to shape Clemencia into a sympathetic, albeit somewhat crazy, character. Following strained relationships with her own parents, Clemencia finds ways to gain control in her relationship not just with Drew but with his wife (who seems oblivious to the affair) and their son. She’s certainly not your traditional woman nor the traditional “other woman,” which is what allows me to enjoy this story. It’s not about a woman falling in love with a married man; it’s about a woman trying to regain control of her life, to feel powerful for once.
Trigger Warning: The story I am about to discuss may contain triggers for victims of domestic violence.
The title story for this collection, “Woman Hollering Creek”, has stuck with me long after my Master’s program finished discussing Cisneros. One reason may be the topic. This story, once again, addresses a sensitive topic. Unfortunately, unlike “One Holy Night”, I don’t think I can review this story properly without mentioning the topic. The main character, Cleofilas, comes from Mexico to Seguin, Texas, as a new bride. Cisneros quickly picks apart the patriarchal fantasies of marriage which Cleofilas is exposed to in her telenovelas and reveals the gritty reality of living with an abusive husband. Cisneros paints a clear image of Cleofilas’s suffering but, at the same time, the violence itself does not hijack the narrative. Instead, Cleofilas’s struggle with her marriage and escaping it are the heart of this narrative.
The most interesting aspect of the story, surprisingly, is the woman who drives Cleofilas to the bus depot, Felice. Felice is crude, strong, and independent; some critics have argued that she’s a stereotypical butch lesbian, but I see her as an unconventional woman who knows what she wants and what will empower her. Her scream over the bridge, called “La Gritona”, leads to Cleofilas’s own empowering laugh, “a long ribbon of laughter, like water” (Cisneros 56). Felice shows Cleofilas a side of womanhood separate from what society has forced her into all her life. Felice’s brief appearance in this story gives it a real punch, turning a story about an abused wife running back to her father into one about female solidarity and regaining control from men who wish to oppress them.
Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories contains a wide range of plots, narrative voices, narrative structures, and characters (although most are female). At the center of it all, though, is a Latinx pulse, a feeling of strength, and a complex understanding of human interactions. I was only able to thoroughly review three stories here but I highly recommend reading all of the stories to discover a new view of the world.
Warning: Due to the discussion topic (swearing in fiction), profanity may be used within the post and comments. Do not proceed if you do not wish to risk encountering vulgarity.
Swearing is a part of life. You swear. Your neighbor swears. Your mom swears. The eighty-year-old Walmart greeter swears. I swear, too. I swear a lot. You may not believe it when you first meet me but give me some time and I’ll be cussing like a sailor. I’ve never had any problems with swearing in fiction. Vulgarity often slips into my writing without a second thought. It’s not until the editing stage that I go back and question the use of cussing because it’s second nature for me.
This tendency raises a couple very important questions: should there be swearing in fiction? If so, how much is too much?
For me, the first answer is pretty clear. Yes, there should be swearing in fiction when appropriate. Obviously you’ll want to avoid vulgarity in your children’s picture book about a rabbit learning the alphabet. Swearing may be a part of life but it wouldn’t be wise to expose children that young to this reality. Some things require baby steps.
However, the criteria for the appropriateness extends beyond the target audience’s age group. Does the book’s contents call for swearing? If it’s in the narration, does the narrative voice justify it? If a character is swearing, does his/her established personality align with this action? If not, is the change at an appropriate time and justified?
You shouldn’t avoid cussing because someday somebody might read it and become offended. You’re a writer. Frankly, everything you’ve done to this point has already offended someone and everything you write from now until the apocalypse will offend at least one person. What you need to worry about is if the vulgarity is not only appropriate for your piece but adds to it. If the story/novel/whatever needs the swearing, write it. Prudes be damned.
On to the second question, how much swearing is too much?
The answer isn’t that different from the first. If it’s a detective novel with a P.I. who has no filter and doesn’t give a rat’s behind about people’s opinions, a lot of cussing may be called for. However, saturating the work with swear words can become tedious and, counter-productively, boring. As with everything in fiction and in life, moderation is key. Sometimes you want a lot of salt on your food, sometimes none, and sometimes something in between. You just have to use your best judgment. When in doubt, ask your beta readers to focus on that aspect while they’re giving you feedback.
Personally, I think anything for people who are 16+ years old should contain some cussing. It’s just unrealistic to exclude it. Writers even create new swears for fantasy and science fiction worlds. Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer and The Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey contain some particularly amusing examples. If you’re a fantasy/science fiction writer, I suggest getting creative like they did. Not only will it help your readers immerse into your worlds but it’s fun to make up your own swear words.
Now, I only have an opinion on swearing in fiction. I have no clue as to what role cussing should play in poetry or even nonfiction. Any thoughts? Leave them in the comments below.
We all have a tendency to write characters that are like us. Whether we use our personalities, our political and religious views, our appearances, or our social relationships, some part of us weaves into each of our characters. That’s why I’m presenting you with a particularly hard challenge today: writing opposite characters.
What do I mean by “opposite characters”? I’m talking about characters that are completely the opposite of ourselves. Gender, sexual identity, political views, religious views, personality, attitude, appearance, the character is entirely what we would consider to be our opposites.
The prompt is to write a story or scene using an opposite character as your main character. It can be a flash story, short story, scene from a novel, whatever you like so long as the main character is completely opposite from you. Let your imagination run wild and have fun with it.
I tried a less drastic version of this exercise as an undergrad; we only wrote stories about characters who were opposite from us in personality. Looking back, that exercise did not go well for me. The character had an opposite personality from me but her actions and attitude felt very disingenuous and unnatural. It was all forced. That’s where the difficult lies: making the characters convincing as people when we start out not having anything in common.
It’s a real challenge to write a character so different from ourselves. However, the challenge can help us grow as writers. It makes us think in ways that we don’t normally think and imagine perspectives and obstacles that we’ve never considered before. As a human being it can also increase our empathy and allow us to see everyday arguments from all angles.
Did this exercise teach you anything interesting about yourself? About how you write? Did it change your perspective or how you approach your writing? Leave a comment and tell us about your experiences.
