Who's allowed to write what?

Honzo

I’d say that the moment you ask the question, you’ve got the wrong answer. If the problem is that people of a different ‘identity’ don’t write good characters that aren’t like themselves, they just aren’t great writers. If the problem is that they can’t write such characters because of their own identity, that’s the bigotry of the gatekeepers.

I think we also have to ask whether authors are obligated to support the narratives of groups of people about themselves. If people build their identity around a substantially false narrative about who they are and where they come from, it’s actually an important function of fiction to puncture their delusions. Saying who can or cannot puncture those delusions is an attempt to impose social conformity with the narrative.

As for making excuses for Twain, he needs none. He was one of the least bigoted public figures of his time, far ahead of most contemporary public figures, and anyone who has read beyond Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn knows this. Even people who actually read Huckleberry Finn know this. At least, they do if they don’t turn off their brains when they see the ‘n’ word.

… the solution is not to try and control which experiences authors are allowed to write about.

You got this part right, but then you wander off into the weeds justifying the would-be-censors with terms like ‘holding authors accountable.’ In normal English, that means punishing them.

A better question might be “Who’s allowed to read what?” Perhaps people shouldn’t be allowed to read things they are unable to understand. Then we could all write whatever we want to.

Clarissak

All I know is everyone should be given a chance… except @Honzo

{sprints away}

Clarissak

In all seriousness, and it will likely never get to this point, but book 5 (or could be book one of an unrelated series) will have a male MC. I wonder how that would go over coming from me. As in could I make him realistic.

Lisaard

You made several good points. Certainly this was a concern of mine as a debut author writing Brighter Than Her Fears. How could I write about the South after the Civil War without including Black characters? How could I write Black characters and not appropriate a POC’s experience? I chose to include several Black characters, all seen through the eyes of White characters - sometimes sympathetically and sometimes not. I believe it adds to the reader experience, providing for rich discussions around race. In addition, my publisher used a sensitivity reader.

I’m not saying this was the answer. Some may still consider my approach wrong. I agree with this blog post (in my words here) that writers need to be thoughtful about content when writing of groups they don’t belong to, AND we miss out on great stories if we restrict writers to writing only about people like them. Ultimately readers decide whether stories are true, real, with engaging characters.
Lisa Ard
Author of Brighter Than Her Fears

Honzo

Well, that’s the question, but that’s not really a matter of your gender if you’re a careful observer of people and not blinded by preconceptions. This is why I always harp on direct vs mediated experience, especially for young writers, because their opportunities for broad experience are more limited. What ‘everybody knows’ from books, tv, and movies is unlikely to equip a person for writing about people different than themselves.

Eldurub

Freedom of speech and of the press is one of the fundamental cornerstones of American thought and culture. If censorship and cancel culture prevail, we will soon return to the dark ages. Ideas should stand on their merits. History is replete with authors who were popular but not right. And so the highest goal should not be conformity to the latest thought trend. Rather it should be to put forth worthwhile information that is free from all fallacies and pretensions. It would be pretentious for me to assume I know what it’s like to be a woman, but logically errant to say that I could never understand one’s point of view. Empathy and understanding are skills that we cannot plot on a bell curve based on ethnicity race nationalities sexual orientation or gender. Individuals possess them to greater and lesser extents. Great authors have a great deal of empathy and understanding for people that are not like them. The problem comes in when authors who lack these skills resort to using broad generalizations and stereotypes when writing about people that are different from them. And again, all people can and have done this regardless of race or gender or sexual orientation or national origin or whatever else you want to use to define a person.

My mind often goes to the German author Karl May, who wrote many novels about the American West despite never having been there. I have never read any of his stuff, but the Germans seem to love him. Despite my belief that people should be able to write whatever they want about whomever they want, I do prefer an author to have had some experience with his subject matter. In addition to that, I prefer to see native Americans play native American characters in movies and television shows. It adds an element of authenticity and I find the movies made in the 1950s with white people playing Indians are pretty kitschy. In the same light, I would have never cast Robert Redford to play the role of Kunto Kinte in Alex Haley’s Roots. Lamar Burton did an excellent job, and yes a lot of the reason he was cast in that role had to do with the fact that he is black. And why the hell not?

In conclusion, people should be permitted to write whatever they want about whomever they want, free from political or social persecution and censorship.
However the further an author gets away from that with which he/she is familiar, the harder it is to achieve authenticity. We are all looking for the real deal and deserve to be treated with honesty by composers, authors, publishers and even actors.

Jeffmoore

I’ve enjoyed reading this well considered post and the replies. It’s the kind of post that makes me value this site.
I am currently working on historical fiction, specifically the Spanish Civil War. The fascist victory ushered in a brutal dictatorship under which a Spanish writer writing a true history of the war did so at the risk of his life.
If the British historians had been excluded based on their experience and nationality a great deal of history would have been lost.

Writestuff

A problem I see especially among a lot of younger writers is that many seem coached (through school and social media perhaps) into the idea that they need to use their writing to ‘make a change’ and to ‘promote representation’…Those things are mandates that come from the realm of academia and activism they aren’t the most useful foundations for story. And especially not a good place to operate from as a beginner.

Before you worry about things like ‘representation’ you need to develop a whole bunch of basic skills like how to compose a story how to structure it how to manage tenses and tones and genre expectations for your audience etc.

It is all already a complex enough high wire act, if you throw into that mix the insistence that you also make the whole story about some sort of member of some underrepresented minority group to which you don’t belong you are stacking the odds against yourself.

The same thing goes for periods of history or fantasy worlds. The basics of delivering a story are hard enough without setting the entire story in a period of history you also have to research exhaustively or a made up world you have to build from the bottom up.

On top of that you need to go out and learn about real people and the real world and real history. You can’t sit on forums asking for advice on if your black lesbian quadriplegic protagonist ‘sounds like’ an ‘authentic’ black lesbian quadriplegic.

If you insist on using your writing to ‘promote representation’ and draw attention to experiences and issues of which you have ZERO first hand experience you need be aware that you are looking at double/triple the work load to get even remotely close to sticking the landing.

And even THEN you are likely wading into issues and areas that are loaded with political and cultural baggage, meaning that you’ll get all kinds of reactions to your handling of certain themes or ideas that might have little or nothing to do with the quality of your writing.

That’ll make evaluating feedback and learning where and how to improve extra hard for yourself.

I see a great deal of Dunning Kruger effect around this whole topic.

Michiemap

It’s funny - there’s a lot of talk about what they say. The problem is that I’ve never heard them say it. (Tbf I keep off Twitter.) All I hear is that they say writers should only write about what they know and from posts above that they also say you have to write about what you don’t. It’s no wonder we’re confused I actually think we’re taking this all a bit too seriously. Write the book you want to write. Do your research. It’s actually pretty easy! Some people will hate it both for stylistic and thematic reasons. My best friend was a little triggered by the fact my first book has what can be construed to be some anti-religious messages in it. Am I going to change it? No! I’m not at all part of the “let’s try and offend everyone” brigade. There’s enough hate in the world without that, but I don’t think there’s much point trying to please everyone either.

Jacksavage

First question - is an author’s job to educate or entertain? I am too fuckeddy to be a moral preacher so I leave that to those who feel suited to it, but will be unlikely to ever read such work. I never consider theme or promoting any political standpoint with my work. Not interested. it is all about the characters.

For me, it’s entertainment all the way.

i am writing gay men, straight men, crossdressers, lesbians, straight women, white, black and asian.

Must I be a killer to write a killer? What about a drug dealer to write a drug dealer? That’d be pretty fucked up. Thats the crime genre closed.
Not to mention how screwed the fantasy genre will be… No elfs orcs dwarves flying unicorns…

Where does the censorship stop?

Not walking on eggshells for the sake of other’s delicate sensibilities - I write whatever the hell I want to write, and my characters will be true to who they are regardless of their predjudice, creed, gender or ethnictity.

First draft is written without research as close to what I know as possible. A plot skeleton basically.
Second draft the research comes into play. Details and specifics. Dive deep… I have never been a woman in a women’s prison, but I have read the bios and perspectives of over a hundred who have. I have never been an african child soldier, but you can bet your arse I will watch and read everything I can dig up on the topic.

Same applies to a shaolin warrior monk, an Irish Pikey, a gay Iranian psychopath, and whoever else I choose to write.

i have already had people question the racist attitudes of old school English mobsters. As if I am supposed to portray them as having politically correct opinions. wouldn’t be realistic, would it?

I dunno. Sometimes it feels like if there is anything in a novel that isn’t p.c., the lets-annihilate-the-author bandwagon goes berserk, because their characters must be a representation of the author. Dumb shits!

Jacksavage

What is wrong with an anti religious message?

you have a right to an opinion of your own. Why should it pander to those of a different opinion? They won’t be your audience.

Josielynn

…which is based on European thought and culture.

Agreed. But I think there is an authenticity of the heart that is universal, and as you say, we can’t plot empathy on a bell curve.

We are fundamentally and essentially the same, despite superficialities of skin tone or where or when you were born. 5,000 years of “culture” is nothing compared to the totality of human existence. It took hominids the best part of 5 million years to make the first tool, then another 2 million or so to found the first civilisation. Culture is a poor match for instinct.

Jcgreen

Yes, but that rule should work both ways, too. I hate the modern tendency, exemplified by Netflix’s Bridgerton, where black actors are given the role of the aristocracy in Georgian England in complete variance to the historical record. (Yes, there were a very few instances of black people in rich families, but they were never actually ennobled).

Agree. Of course, this applies to every part of a novel, not just race and gender. It applies to the occupations of your characters, the landscape, the social setup, historical language / customs etc.

I’ve seen an agent explicitly say that she only wanted books written about minorities to be written by that minority. I certainly don’t agree with her.

Michiemap

Yeah, seems a bit daft - where do you draw the line? In a book with multiple POVs set in a city, the likelihood is that some of the characters won’t be part of your ethnicity. Edited: also - in the books I’ve written so far there has been a male and female romantic lead where I swap POVs. Does this mean no one could ever have a couple who were of different ethnicities using this structure? It’s actually crazy!

I quite like this tbh - I see that it isn’t at all historically accurate but I think it brings something fresh to a genre that can at times feel a bit tired. It also might bring a new readership to Regency books. I like fusions though and somehow the casting gives the TV show that flavour. It’s not for everyone, though.

Jcgreen

If there is an open acknowledgement that they are being artistic rather than accurate, then I might be more lenient. Thus, for example, I would be more forgiving if it were fantasy in an historical setting.

But here’s a poser. What would be the reaction if we did it the opposite way round with a setting of slavery in the southern US states? Put white actors playing the slaves and black actors playing the slave owners. That would certainly bring something fresh to a tired genre!

Michiemap

It’s kind of what the book (and BBC series) Noughts and Crosses does though it’s a dystopian fantasy (though feels very real world). In that, the Noughts are white and the Crosses are black. In the alternative world (that definitely has echoes of Apartheid), the Crosses have power. It’s a powerful book. I suppose what you are suggesting is just one step from that.

Jacksavage

There would be uproar. You know it. I know it. I actually considered writing an alternative version of history like this.

It would be condemned as racist to begin with.

Michiemap

Unless as with Noughts and Crosses it was used as a way to highlight something that has become so normalised to us be seen with fresh eyes. It’s down to what our intentions are imo and how well it’s done! Would some people see racism differently if white people were the ones being enslaved? I’m afraid so.

Another example of this is when in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (SPOILER COMING) the non-Jewish boy narrator dies in the gas chamber. The whole point was to make something that we’ve heard a thousand times and seen in the history books to the point that we are somewhat (but hopefully not entirely) desensitised fresh. The writer wants the reader to be horrified. Having a Jewish boy die would not horrify in the same way - not because we are a bunch of anti-Semites but we were expecting Jewish people to die. We don’t get the level of shock that people living at the time had.

I suppose I’m just saying some writers have done some pretty interesting things with messing around with ethnicities to shock us and make us think. No one has ever said either Boyne or Blackman were racist as far as I know.

Flitten

I don’t mind what anyone chooses to write as long as they’re not lazy with it. There’s a US romance author I recently read who set her book in Hampshire and Essex in England 1877, and makes the effort with fashion, architecture, trains and farming of the era, and I don’t care that she’s American and doing this…there’s another American author, however, who is arguably more successful, and wrote something in which an English Lord talks like a barrow boy, saying things like “ain’t” and talking about an aristocratic woman as though he’s in some backstreet brothel. This author also uses obvious Americanisms like blocks instead of streets when she’s meant to be in the head of English people…it’s lazy. Stop it. I wouldn’t write as an American and say “mobile” instead of “cell phone”
These are minor things compared to ethnicity, sexuality and gender but they’re basic things that break immersion for me and demonstrate a lack of thought around the voice of the your character, their background and the era.