HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW?
Everyone likes to be liked, don't they? We all want to be popular. Accepted. Loved, even.
But as a writer, you have to accept that not everyone is going to like your characters, plots or writing style. Note everyone is going to like your tweets or your blog posts. Not everyone is going to like you. And on some level, that just comes with the territory. Once you decide to move your little creation off your hard drive and launch it into the world, you have to accept that not everyone is going to like your writing. All writers know this.
But what about deliberately creating characters that you know will be polarizing? What about allowing your characters to react to situations or express thoughts that are not acceptable under today’s standards. Should you allow your characters to have thoughts or take actions that could be seen as ignorant or not well-informed or even possibly crossing the line into offensive territory? What if one or more scenes in your novel either directly or obliquely could be seen as being insensitive in respect of a particular ethnic or socio-economic group? Should you go there if you decide the story demands it?
Are you brave enough to go there?
In this era of potential canceling, is it worth the risk? Or do we as artists owe it to our readers to produce the best work we can, even if that best work contains elements that could be seen as problematic? Can we trust our readers to see beyond a particular troubling passage to appreciate how it contributes to the whole? Can we trust our readers not to conflate our stories with ourselves? And can we trust ourselves as writers not to water down our stories out of fear of not being liked?
For me these are not academic questions. I have a critical scene in a novel I am submitting to agents that includes interior thoughts of a main character that I know may be seen as offensive. Do I tone it down? Or do I trust my readers to understand this is one piece of the mosaic of my character? How flawed should I allow my character to be? Is it realistic for the interior voice of an older characters to be as politically correct as a twenty-something? And if I keep this possibly problematic scene, am I willing to live with any potential consequences?
I’m not sure. Stay tuned.
Bernadette Walsh
But as a writer, you have to accept that not everyone is going to like your characters, plots or writing style. Note everyone is going to like your tweets or your blog posts. Not everyone is going to like you. And on some level, that just comes with the territory. Once you decide to move your little creation off your hard drive and launch it into the world, you have to accept that not everyone is going to like your writing. All writers know this.
But what about deliberately creating characters that you know will be polarizing? What about allowing your characters to react to situations or express thoughts that are not acceptable under today’s standards. Should you allow your characters to have thoughts or take actions that could be seen as ignorant or not well-informed or even possibly crossing the line into offensive territory? What if one or more scenes in your novel either directly or obliquely could be seen as being insensitive in respect of a particular ethnic or socio-economic group? Should you go there if you decide the story demands it?
Are you brave enough to go there?
In this era of potential canceling, is it worth the risk? Or do we as artists owe it to our readers to produce the best work we can, even if that best work contains elements that could be seen as problematic? Can we trust our readers to see beyond a particular troubling passage to appreciate how it contributes to the whole? Can we trust our readers not to conflate our stories with ourselves? And can we trust ourselves as writers not to water down our stories out of fear of not being liked?
For me these are not academic questions. I have a critical scene in a novel I am submitting to agents that includes interior thoughts of a main character that I know may be seen as offensive. Do I tone it down? Or do I trust my readers to understand this is one piece of the mosaic of my character? How flawed should I allow my character to be? Is it realistic for the interior voice of an older characters to be as politically correct as a twenty-something? And if I keep this possibly problematic scene, am I willing to live with any potential consequences?
I’m not sure. Stay tuned.
Bernadette Walsh
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