Feb18
So work is taking over my life at the moment as we prepare for an epic campaign (all will be revealed in a month – watch this space), and I haven’t done a comic for the week yet! So I’m putting up another story from my masters… ever wonder when I first discovered I was a boy? Or where I first met Joe – read on…
i think the most important thing is to just remember to give agency, do your research, and just do your best. i wonder about this too, because i also tend to be biased away from content produced by white, middle class, straight cis-males, even though i can certainly count myself into a couple of those categories. i guess the lesson is that anyone can produce something meaningful!
oh it’s good to know i’m not the only one. giving agency is key i reckon, but it’s always tricky to frame other people’s stuff up, i guess you just gotta own up to people knowing it’s through your own lens
Its not who you are, its that you create enjoyable characters, in amazing settings with comprehendable (to someone) actions.
Gender, preference, religion (or lack of), social status all mean JACK unless you centre the view you’re writing from from there. If you look yourself in the eye and go “I’m not going to stand in the way of the story I want to tell” …. then anything’s possible.
Or maybe I’m just taking too many steps back.
I think original intention is definitely important – and if you don’t enjoy or respect the characters you’re making then you’ll probably wind up in a bit of trouble. But, still, people mess up, even if they love the characters. It’s like Speilberg’s interpretation of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple… he left all the queerness out š
Heh, I’m in the exact same situation and have been thinking the exact same thing. My advice to myself has been to follow all the advice I gave to men back before I admitted I was one of them, as well as following the advice all the other marginalized groups give to the less marginalized.
what’s some of the advice??
Read up on stereotypes that have plagued particular communities, so you don’t accidentally end up adding to the legion of albino villains. Do lots of research, and focus on sources that will give you insight as to personal experiences. Instead of developing your characters by reading a white person’s treatise on India or the diagnostic criteria of cerebral palsy, read the memoirs of an Indian or the blog of someone with cerebral palsy. Save the other resources for fact-checking on the rewrite, or whenever you tend to do your fact-checking. Use what you learn to flavor your character as an individual. Above all, look for human connections, experiences that happen to all types of people, that we can all recognize and relate to. Don’t try to make The Statement On What Its Like To Be A Woman, even women screw that up because they aren’t all the same. Write about (to borrow an example from my current story) Dalinga, the person who loves her father, who can’t stand to see someone innocent suffer, who was heartbroken to have to leave her country and who has a slightly mischievous sense of humor.
Oh, and when possible have alpha readers who can provide you some appropriate perspective.
You can still create stories about the things where you are not privileged (cis/trans-wise, gay/straight-wise). Of course your class and other categories will be reflected in these stories, and it’s good to think about that, but in the end you can’t leave all the storytelling for the “most discriminated”.
Feeling like a smart ass now, it’s just my two cents though.
Yep, but I feel like even if I’m writing about other people my writing becomes inherently combined with my own experiences/identities – and I’m not sure about the ethical implications of that. Is just acknowledging my own flawed perspective enough?
Just look at fiction writing, we write about people in all different times and places, with some research and a lot of imagination it works. One of my favorite female characters is written by a man. (Arya in George RR Martin’s A Song Of Fire and Ice series).
Sure people writing about characters who fit in the same demographic might be more realistic but isn’t it more interesting to see how someone in one demographic sees those in another.
yes – definitely, I guess I just feel worried that my limited perspective of the world ends up undermining/oppressing the identities of others. That’s mostly why I just write about myself, because I’m scared of messing up other people’s stories.
I think you’re doing a pretty good job being diverse and unoffensive already! ^_^ Whether it’s about race, gender or anything else, you’ll be able to pull it off. Just my opinion there but I’m a comic critic since I used to only read manga.
thanks! Glad to know i’m doing ok so far… still scary being the creator of media, as opposed to the critic of it (as I have been for many years before now)
Sam, you and I are so similar in this. I have these thoughts all the time when writing–my protagonists are invariably women much like me- similar in age, white, middle class. I’ve become more comfortable writing characters of all genders, races, abilities and ages as secondary characters, but I’m afraid to try to get into their heads lest my privilege overwhelm my attempts not to give offense.
Can I recommend to you the Realm of the Elderlings nonology by Robin Hobb? It’s a fantasy series, but she deals with issues of race, gender and ability with such absolutely flawless skill. Reading those books really helped me expand my horizons as a writer.
Yes, exactly this. I just feel like I’m going to unknowingly offend everyone with my privilege. I haven’t read those – but I will! And will recommend them to Joe too, ’cause he looooooooooves fantasy books
I know how you feel. When my feelings about what I’m “allowed to write/draw/paint” and sometimes even read because I am a trans-identified person (not a binary female, not quite male either) begin to feel warped and sectionalized by the opinions of others… I like to think of the creator, author, and illustrator of one of my favorite series of graphic novels… “Terry Moore”. A male artist and feminist who portrays women better than I could myself. Gender is just a word. Sex is just a label. Although gender has deep impact on my life and I myself feel more male than female, our experiences are what shape and define us.
Draw and write however you feel! And about whatever you feel! Sincerity is an enviable quality in an artist. There will always be critics.
Terry Moooooooore – yes, true this is a good example to hold onto.
Just a friendly little note: most of us do not actually like the term “differently abled” very much. The opinions on “disabled” vary, but “people with disabilities” should be the safest bet. š
I think anything can be done well with enough research and you’ll be alright as long as you keep an open mind and show that you’re receptive to criticism. Nobody expects you to do perfectly all the time, what matters is that you’re trying and don’t react like an ass to being informed that you’ve made a mistake. That generally tends to upset people a lot more than the mistake itself! If we were all limited to our own experiences only, then there would be a lot less great fiction in the world …
oh shit – cheers for letting me know!
Hi Sam!
Hana been telling me about a good article by bell hooks, havna read it yet, about different ways of knowing. bell hooks points out that experience as a way of knowing is generally undermined/undervalued by dominant culture and a reaction to that has been for subordinate groups to say that experience is the *only* way of knowing about something. Which it isn’t. So yeah, I reckon its about sharing what you do know and making space for people who’ve experienced something to talk about the bits you can’t know.
Or as Ani says “there’s somethings you can’t know unless you’ve been there, but oh how far we could go if we started to share.”
Nice to see your work on my news feed. Love it.
pip! i miss you! That article sounds cool, if you know the title can you let me know, and i will see if i can get a hold of it.
I think a trans life has so much experience in multiple states of gender and sex that it’s stupid to say someone can’t continue to tell stories of one gender or another. Tell the stories that need to be told.
I’m a female writer, and I still find it insanely hard to actually write female characters that don’t come across as stereotyped! When almost every book you read (and I tend to read a lot of scifi/fantasy stuff) is pushing one kind of worldview on you, it can be difficult to break away from that. In a typical “sci-fi” piece it’s so difficult to stick in a female character without her falling into a pre-made stereotyped space that already exists for her.
Having said that, I love writing characters with flexible genders and sexualities. And I find straight characters mindbogglingly difficult to write because I find it really hard to imagine *gender* being a turn-off.
Personally I tend to think that it doesn’t really matter. The assumption that writing should always be about things you know, and that nobody can write about anything but what they know, is completely fallacious. Of course, research is good, but then again research is always good, even (and especially!) about subject you think you know all about.
(Interestingly enough, I’ve heard of qualifying that type of writing as “male writing” whereas “female writing” would be writing about things you don’t know. I’m not sure whether I agree with that classification, but it’s interesting enough…)
Besides, just because you’re part of a minority does not mean you have an objective and unbiased view of the minority in question. Internalised racism/classism/homophobia/etc is very frequent; just because you’re a minority writer doesn’t mean you’re going to write minorities in an accurate light. And just because you’re a privileged writer doesn’t mean you’re gonna fuck it all up.
Finally, to answer your “am I allowed to write about minorities” question: …Obviously, yes? Otherwise, you’d end up only ever writing stories focused on white, middle-class, able-bodied males. Wouldn’t that be boring?
Gah, I really hope this doesn’t sound too aggressive, I’m tired and it’s difficult to think properly. But my point is that you should really not feel bad about yourself. To conclude on a very basic note, you avoid “othering” people by remembering that they’re people. Not a combination of minorities and privileges.
Your perspective isn’t ‘flawed’, its a partial perspective (Donna Harraway’s thing). Everyone’s is. And yes, its important to acknowledge it…as to the question is it enough? I think it’s a good start. You have to keep telling your story as you see it, just making sure that your readers know they can give you feedback, space to express their views, which you do! You won’t know what it is you’re doing wrong or how to improve something unless you’re doing something in the first place (if that even makes sense :S ) so keep going. Especially because many people do relate to your views and are comforted from reading your comics š
Just remember that if you have thought out your characters well enough and have planned out who they are, what they’ve dealt with, who they have interacted with and have flushed out their lives?
Even if they end up being a stereotype slightly, that is the life they have been given. That is who they are as a character. No, it’s not an excuse for everyone to be the same stereotype, just an acknowledgement that some people are. It happens. So if you plan out your characters and your stories and one of your characters happens to end up, after all the planning is done, just a little bit more stereotype than you like… well they developed that way. And then you can go back and tweak if it really bothers you. But honestly, if you really have fleshed them out, there should be more to them than that.
I know some really stereotypical people on the outside… but they’re so much more on the inside. A lot of stereotypes are only as deep as a casual observer. Once you actually get to know someone, they fall apart. That’s primarily because stereotypes are made so that people DON’T have to interact seriously with the sterotyped individual. If all of X people are Y, then why do you have to get to know them? You know what they’re already like. :3
I mean, look at it this way. There is a difference between writing a story about a man in a wheelchair and writing the story of the wheelchair. To avoid othering, you just have to make the story about MORE than just their othering factor… unless that’s the point in which case… I dunno. @.@
Anyway, keep at it. You can only learn through experience. š