Writer's Block Daily

I've become so frustrated behind the concept of answering "Help! I don't know how to write this person of a different race/gender/ethnicity/etc. other than my own! How do?" questions with the worst possible response: "Write them as people"

Like, people of different races, genders and etc. have VERY different experiences and that kind of response feels like the person is saying, "Write these characters without listening to what these groups the characters are part of go through on a daily basis as if they only experience what you have gone through."

Beside a lot of social problems, I feel that this leads to really bland and boring characters.

To be quite frank, its much better to ask that question and to listen to other people talking about their experience. Sure, it'll take longer to write, but you'll probably have better characters in the end.

I disagree. Emphasizing difference is exactly what gives us the ideas of normativity that make people not only struggle to write characters different from them, but often lead them to defaulting to characters of the "normal" group whenever possible.

I mean, I do say that coming from a background in science fiction as opposed to works set in the present day - but I think it really is a matter of emphasis more than anything else, and emphasizing that someone should think more about writing (say) "black people" than "people" is problematic.

Generally, the answer is more research and more thought. If someone's coming from a different background that's real life, read stuff by people from that background. If it's a speculative-fiction thing, think about similarities to human cultures we know about, and think about what it would be like growing up as that person, how they'd see the world.

I can work hard if I'm ambitious enough, which I am, so I guess I'm in it for the long haul. I'm mostly worried of how I break into the industry other than publishing a novel. Like put my work out there.

Eh, I'll just keep at it and see what happens.

For all intents and purposes, everyone has different experiences. Some people's parents supported their orientation or gender identity, some biracial people are more 'white-passing' than others so they get treated differently. Same thing about the kind of area they grew up in. Just saying.

edited 18th Dec '14 8:20:37 AM by electronic-tragedy

Basically that, being a big part of the greater issue.

I find it helps a lot to read works by the type of person in question, bearing in mind that no one author can fully represent an entire population.

It doesn't help that writing different ethnicities/sexualities is a lot more complicated than just "do your research" or "write them as people". A lot of people within an ethnicity/sexuality/whatever will actually GIVE the answer "write them as people" because we're sick of being seen as "THE BLACK/GAY/ASIAN PERSON" and not "the person (who is black/gay/Asian)."

It's like the problem of "strong female character." Women don't want "STRONG FEMALE CHARACTERS," we want "strong characters who happen to be female."

For me, if an Asian character is intriguing and has at least a little hint of their ethnicities, I'm good. I want to see more Filipino-Americans eating sinigaang or diniguan while they pull all-nighters. There's a middle ground between "person who looks ethnic but has no cultural traits" and "LOOK THIS PERSON IS FRESH OFF THE BOAT" that a lot of white Americans don't seem to comprehend.

Similarly, I'm in theater and I know a lot of gay people, but just because they like theater doesn't mean they're necessarily Camp Gay. And guess what, a lot of my gay friends are also people of color.

edited 18th Dec '14 2:47:24 PM by Sharysa

One must also consider whether calling attention to something makes sense from the perspective of the characters and the world. Something that you've known for a time or see every day can very quickly change from strange to so mundane as to be unworthy of comment. There's a famous experiment where some psychologists parked a tank in a supermarket parking lot at night and set up cameras to observe how people reacted; it took only three days before people started parking next to it and otherwise acting like the tank was just another car.

If you have a setting where the characters have long known someone is lesbian or gay and they start wearing a wedding ring if/when gay marriage becomes legal, then any of the others thinking "Oh, they got married to someone of the same sex!" is less likely than "Oh, they got married! Why didn't they tell me they were that close to that lawyer they've been seeing?". Unless the character doing the thinking is explicitly opposed to that sort of thing, I guess.

May or may not be a coincidence, but in regards to video games (so the lessons may not apply here), Gamasutra recently published an article about a study that had the crazy idea of actually asking women and minorities what they think about the issue of representation.

As to my own opinions... used to be very strongly on the "if in doubt, emphasize commonality" side, and still mostly am. (Seems the default stance for sci-fi writers and those with the soul of such.) But it's a thing I'm possibly reconsidering. I honestly need to just get out of the house more and actually talk to people about this sort of shit, really.

Ooh, this I gotta see... [starts googling for experiment]

EDIT: I couldn't find the slightest whisper of it. Could be that my google-fu is weak, but... you sure this was actually a thing? I think this might be one for Snopes, unless somebody wants to prove themselves a better internet searcher than I.

edited 18th Dec '14 6:50:12 PM by KillerClowns

This is how I've always thought of it. In literally those exact words. I was once writing a story and looked at a male character; specifically, a sort of hermit hunter-gatherer. I thought, "I think this one should be a woman." I changed them from a man to a woman and absolutely nothing else. Then I looked at them and went, "Yeah. That's better." Why? I don't know. It just clicked.

Unrelated: for some reason, I'm trying to come up with "Miss Susie Had a Steamboat"-style obscene-word-swap playground songs. Like...

The story I'm writing abruptly got very dark on me. One moment it's about bonding and the next moment it's about being traumatized by listening to an enemy pilot choke to death on their own vomit.

I really don't feel comfortable with this scene anymore...

I need to nuke youtube from my computer if I'm going to get anywhere....

If you're not comfortable with the scene, and it doesn't mesh well with the story, then I would just rewrite it or cut it. Whichever is more effective.

I can't remember which article I got that phrase from, but these two articles are pretty close to what I quoted.

That's the thing: it really does work with the story.

Ah, hmmmm, always fun when a story pulls something like that on you.

DELETED Will figure it out myself

edited 21st Dec '14 4:39:01 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

When does something cross the line between Plot Twist and Ass Pull? I mean, if I repeatedly drop hints of something throughout the book, while intentionally leaving it ambiguous until the reveal, that's not cheating, right?

Yep. An Ass Pull is something that comes the right the hell out of nowhere, was never mentioned, or if it was, was mentioned so vaguely that it could have meant anything.

So, Shyamalan level stuff is okay, provided there was ample warning beforehand?

....Theoretically yes. I'm only hesitant because I generally want to bean Shamalayan for his twists. But even given that, the twist of the Sixth Sense, which is the only one I like, is done well, set up and once you see the hints, works well enough.

So yeah, so long as you aren't just pulling out random things from nowhere (oh, that one person who had two lines was super important), you're fine.

M. Night Shama-unspellable is criticized because he focuses on the twist to the detriment of all else in his storytelling. Big unexpected twists in plot are wonderful, if executed well. That second part is key.

My latest blog post. It's on dialogue. I'd start a new thread for it, but it would just sit in silence like my other project threads.

(Warning, if you choose to read it: it's long.)

Merry Christmas!

edited 25th Dec '14 10:47:58 AM by Dimentiosome

Merry Christmas to you too.

It's not that hard. I remember it as Shy + A + Malon from OOT, but with one letter changed.

edited 25th Dec '14 10:38:26 PM by Wheezy

I really can't think of a more accurate and quick way to describe my story other than "The magic doesn't just come back, it comes back in such force that even centuries later, humanity is still getting used to it all because God was worried about his chosen people."