[Welcome back to December Days. This year, thanks to a suggestion from ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]
I should say this to start: You can't. Regrettably, perfect beings that make no mistakes at all are only in our stories. At some point, at some time, we're going to screw something up.
It doesn't even have to be an intentional mistake. How many stories that were of the genre canon are now falling away because they used perfectly acceptable language, possibly even polite language, for the time, and it turns out that those of us in a different time find those words wholly offensive? We struggle with word choice in our own times -- how many people know someone who wants to reclaim a pejorative for a community so that it becomes a label of pride rather than shame or scorn? Who has N-word privileges, and is it okay for a writer who doesn't to write a character that does, and to have them use it?
Who lives, who dies, who gets to tell your story?
These days, there's a much bigger push in publishing and media to let people tell their own experiences, using their own voices, and casting people of the same color, background, sexuality, neurotypicality, and locale as the characters in those stories when they need actors and voices and animating forces. The traditions of those worlds were forged in profoundly -ist times with -ist ideas to prevent anyone the cis-het-WASP-men group found inferior or threatening to themselves from gaining any power, and after entrenching themselves as the gatekeepers, those ideas continue to hold more sway than they should, existing on their own inertia and trying to resist meaningful efforts at change.
Does that mean everyone is restricted to writing only what they have personally experienced and the identities they have for themselves? Not necessarily, but it does mean creators who don't have those lived experiences should understand the risks they undergo when writing outside themselves. The farther away from one's own experience the character is, the higher the probability of screwing things up. And, depending on where they sit on the privilege versus marginalization ax(e/i)s, there's also a consideration that their story might take up space that could have been given to a writer who is writing from their own voice. In theory, the space should be big enough that each lived experience, from the boring to the terrifying, has a place at the table and publishers get to choose the thing that matches what they want to sell...assuming the publisher is taking a look at the whole field of possibility and they're not consciously or unconsciously excluding people from the search. Which is a pipe dream in our current reality, but is hopefully getting better, contract by contract, Kickstarter by Kickstarter.
How do you avoid getting it terribly and offensively wrong, then? Research up front can help a lot. Read people who have the voice of the character you're thinking about writing. Support the work of people who are doing the job of educating the people around them about what it is like to be them. Read the fiction they write as well as nonfiction. Read broadly. Talk to people broadly, if they're willing to talk to you, and show your appreciation with support. After all of that, decide whether you want to go forward from there. In fanfiction, the characters and their backgrounds are set more definitively than when creating your own, but that doesn't mean it's clear sailing. Sometimes creators don't do the research themselves.
I enjoyed The Dragon Prince, but I might be hesitant to engage in fiction writing for it, because there are more than a few characters there with experiences vastly different than mine. What it's like to be brown-skinned and royal. How being deaf, a commander of military forces, and needing an interpreter changes the way you interact in a fantasy-type setting. And that's before you get to the elves, who have a justified grudge against the humans for an act of war that the humans perpetrated on them and several other of the species of the neighboring kingdoms. There's a lot in there that I have no experience with, and so I might have to pick my way carefully and do a significant amount of research before feeling like I might have a basic-and-still-not-necessarily-right understanding. Assuming I want to stick to the canonical portrayals and try to do something that thinks seriously about the consequences of those sorts of things. Yes, there's a culture of "Don't like? Don't read." in that area, but what happens in that situation is that someone who isn't doing well doesn't necessarily get any feedback on needing to do better. (It's not the job of the oppressed to educate their oppressors.)
So, there are things that can be done to reduce the risk involved in characters and their protrayals. Research beforehand is one of the big ones. Not stepping on the toes of someone whose experience is relevant is another. But there's also someone who can help on the back end of a work to make it better and hopefully avoid committing terrible faux pas. Professionally produced and published works go through an editor, who makes sure the plot makes sense, and also checks SPAG -- Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar, to make sure that the language parts aren't confusing or illegible. And, hopefully, spots all the typographical errors. Many fic authors (and a fair number of the professionals) have beta readers who help with these editorial functions, as well, as having a fresh set of eyes on your work can help expose things that you haven't addressed, or spot the one place in the story where you've used the wrong pronouns for a character. (I, thankfully, spotted that before I hit post on a recent work of mine.) Beta readers are valuable, like editors, and their contributions should be acknowledged and thanked, and if you can manage it, rewarded.
There's a specific class of beta reader now coming into prominence as authors take more care to not engage in gross stereotyping or ignorant character portrayals called sensitivity readers, and their job is essentially to go through the work as someone who has had the experiences of the character that you would like read to make sure they're accurate and true to actual experiences of an actual person. Sensitivity readers are very much worth their weight in experience, and deserve what they charge you for their services. (Pay people for their work.)
These things help reduce error rates, but they won't necessarily get rid of all of them. Unintended portrayals are still possible, even if you've had someone look it over to try and get rid of them. And sometimes, those things will go unnoticed for a while before someone takes the time to say that the portrayal is wrong and explains why. Those people should also be thanked, because there's a good chance that they're not the first person that came across the problem. They're the first person to actually say something about it in the hope that you'll change it, fix it, or erase it to make the story better. There's a simple script to follow when something like this happens: own, apologize, repair.
It is a sad fact of our lives that we will not be able to get through without mistakes. But that doesn't mean we don't have tools and expertise that we can tap into so that the risk is lowered, and methods we can apply when it turns out that we've made a mistake and need to take responsibility for it. We can't avoid screwing up, but we can control the damage that it causes.
alexseanchai, I'm writing about writing. Suggestions for topics are most definitely welcome! There's still a lot of space to cover.]I should say this to start: You can't. Regrettably, perfect beings that make no mistakes at all are only in our stories. At some point, at some time, we're going to screw something up.
It doesn't even have to be an intentional mistake. How many stories that were of the genre canon are now falling away because they used perfectly acceptable language, possibly even polite language, for the time, and it turns out that those of us in a different time find those words wholly offensive? We struggle with word choice in our own times -- how many people know someone who wants to reclaim a pejorative for a community so that it becomes a label of pride rather than shame or scorn? Who has N-word privileges, and is it okay for a writer who doesn't to write a character that does, and to have them use it?
Who lives, who dies, who gets to tell your story?
These days, there's a much bigger push in publishing and media to let people tell their own experiences, using their own voices, and casting people of the same color, background, sexuality, neurotypicality, and locale as the characters in those stories when they need actors and voices and animating forces. The traditions of those worlds were forged in profoundly -ist times with -ist ideas to prevent anyone the cis-het-WASP-men group found inferior or threatening to themselves from gaining any power, and after entrenching themselves as the gatekeepers, those ideas continue to hold more sway than they should, existing on their own inertia and trying to resist meaningful efforts at change.
Does that mean everyone is restricted to writing only what they have personally experienced and the identities they have for themselves? Not necessarily, but it does mean creators who don't have those lived experiences should understand the risks they undergo when writing outside themselves. The farther away from one's own experience the character is, the higher the probability of screwing things up. And, depending on where they sit on the privilege versus marginalization ax(e/i)s, there's also a consideration that their story might take up space that could have been given to a writer who is writing from their own voice. In theory, the space should be big enough that each lived experience, from the boring to the terrifying, has a place at the table and publishers get to choose the thing that matches what they want to sell...assuming the publisher is taking a look at the whole field of possibility and they're not consciously or unconsciously excluding people from the search. Which is a pipe dream in our current reality, but is hopefully getting better, contract by contract, Kickstarter by Kickstarter.
How do you avoid getting it terribly and offensively wrong, then? Research up front can help a lot. Read people who have the voice of the character you're thinking about writing. Support the work of people who are doing the job of educating the people around them about what it is like to be them. Read the fiction they write as well as nonfiction. Read broadly. Talk to people broadly, if they're willing to talk to you, and show your appreciation with support. After all of that, decide whether you want to go forward from there. In fanfiction, the characters and their backgrounds are set more definitively than when creating your own, but that doesn't mean it's clear sailing. Sometimes creators don't do the research themselves.
I enjoyed The Dragon Prince, but I might be hesitant to engage in fiction writing for it, because there are more than a few characters there with experiences vastly different than mine. What it's like to be brown-skinned and royal. How being deaf, a commander of military forces, and needing an interpreter changes the way you interact in a fantasy-type setting. And that's before you get to the elves, who have a justified grudge against the humans for an act of war that the humans perpetrated on them and several other of the species of the neighboring kingdoms. There's a lot in there that I have no experience with, and so I might have to pick my way carefully and do a significant amount of research before feeling like I might have a basic-and-still-not-necessarily-right understanding. Assuming I want to stick to the canonical portrayals and try to do something that thinks seriously about the consequences of those sorts of things. Yes, there's a culture of "Don't like? Don't read." in that area, but what happens in that situation is that someone who isn't doing well doesn't necessarily get any feedback on needing to do better. (It's not the job of the oppressed to educate their oppressors.)
So, there are things that can be done to reduce the risk involved in characters and their protrayals. Research beforehand is one of the big ones. Not stepping on the toes of someone whose experience is relevant is another. But there's also someone who can help on the back end of a work to make it better and hopefully avoid committing terrible faux pas. Professionally produced and published works go through an editor, who makes sure the plot makes sense, and also checks SPAG -- Spelling, Punctuation, and Grammar, to make sure that the language parts aren't confusing or illegible. And, hopefully, spots all the typographical errors. Many fic authors (and a fair number of the professionals) have beta readers who help with these editorial functions, as well, as having a fresh set of eyes on your work can help expose things that you haven't addressed, or spot the one place in the story where you've used the wrong pronouns for a character. (I, thankfully, spotted that before I hit post on a recent work of mine.) Beta readers are valuable, like editors, and their contributions should be acknowledged and thanked, and if you can manage it, rewarded.
There's a specific class of beta reader now coming into prominence as authors take more care to not engage in gross stereotyping or ignorant character portrayals called sensitivity readers, and their job is essentially to go through the work as someone who has had the experiences of the character that you would like read to make sure they're accurate and true to actual experiences of an actual person. Sensitivity readers are very much worth their weight in experience, and deserve what they charge you for their services. (Pay people for their work.)
These things help reduce error rates, but they won't necessarily get rid of all of them. Unintended portrayals are still possible, even if you've had someone look it over to try and get rid of them. And sometimes, those things will go unnoticed for a while before someone takes the time to say that the portrayal is wrong and explains why. Those people should also be thanked, because there's a good chance that they're not the first person that came across the problem. They're the first person to actually say something about it in the hope that you'll change it, fix it, or erase it to make the story better. There's a simple script to follow when something like this happens: own, apologize, repair.
- If the person telling you is doing so in good faith (because some people think it's hi-lar-ious to troll others about their portrayals of characters): Own up to the fact that you made a mistake. Getting defensive about it is going to make it less likely for someone to tell you about the next problem that shows up. Remember that intent isn't magic, and what you tried to do may not have been what actually happened.
- Apologize for the mistake. Do it sincerely and as swiftly as you can. That may mean having to get over the initial rush of emotions and feeling attacked, so if you have to wait, wait, instead of putting up something insincere or guided by anger. Readers have good eyes for spotting when an apology is sincere (because it tends to involve someone owning up and not saying phrases that place the blame for the issue on someone else getting offended rather than the person for making the mistake) and insincere apologies usually have the same result for someone not owning up to the mistake in the first place.
- Repair, where it's warranted and in the way that's asked. You're not the expert in how you can make this up to the community that you offended. They are. Repair is also not usually he place for grandstanding and being highly visible and drawing attention to yourself as you are repairing the damage. If that's what's asked of you, then pull the focus and do your repairs, but it's not a likely outcome. Repair is also not about you and your feelings on the matter, because if you make it all about you, you're often continuing to do the things that led to the mistake in the first place. Repair might mean removing the work entirely, which is hard, but if that's the best way to avoid continuing to cause harm, that's the thing to do. It goes in the pile of "practice" and hopefully something better comes out of the next attempt.
It is a sad fact of our lives that we will not be able to get through without mistakes. But that doesn't mean we don't have tools and expertise that we can tap into so that the risk is lowered, and methods we can apply when it turns out that we've made a mistake and need to take responsibility for it. We can't avoid screwing up, but we can control the damage that it causes.
