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Original post by Logodae
So is there a shortage of logical places for minority characters, in most plots?
No, that''s not what I said. What I said was, "what story the author is trying to tell and if those type of characters have an actual logical place in said plot." That means it is plot dependent based on what setting, circumstance and story the original author is trying to tell. That means you can''t generalize about very specific contexts.
But, nice try at inflammatory. In addition, it might just as well be said that there is not a shortage of logical places for minority characters in fiction just as there is no overwhelming opportunity for them to be proliferate. To write somebody in just because they are underrepresented means that as a mass media literary artist, you just upped your sales levels with the underrepresented person''s compatriots, and alienated the vast majority of your other readers who are not the same demographic. Doesn''t make a lot of business sense does it? Probably why it doesn''t happen that often.
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Frankly, I think it has less to do with logic, and more to do with comfort level.
No, I''m pretty confident that it''s again, contextual logic. If a story is being told where minorities had little to do with the outcome of the story, by what reason would you include them? To create irrational content? How does that serve quality manuscript professional practice?
Wouldn''t you risk ruining the suspension of disbelief, and hurting your quality of story when the reader of the story realized all of a sudden, "Hey, what are those characters doing there? They weren''t in that part of the the world at that time. This is illogical, and my entertainment value has just been decreased. Screw this author, they don''t know what they are doing as entertainers, they are just somebody with a political agenda. I read to escape, I can turn on the news if I want political agenda."
As far as comfort levels, a good writer tries to tell it like it is, but as a fiction artist, they are not bound by any set of contstraints that are not their own. Any writer who writes totally with the audience in mind is not writing for themselves and the work is not very good or they are a caterer with words, and make money pandering to people who lap that up, rather pathetically. People who lap that kind of drivel up are not the kind of people I want benefitting from my talent.
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I''m sure there are many non-minority writers who don''t feel able to write about people who are (or whom they perceive to be) too different from themselves.
What about one of the oldest literary axioms in existance, "Write what you know?" Why run the risk of screwing years worth of work that could set you up for life financially if you do it right based on trying to work with material you are a, not familiar with, b, not experienced in representing well, and c, not a reasonable aspect to the story to begin with? Unless you have a political agenda, and then you should not be in literary entertainment arts, you should be in politics. That''s the proper place for that sort of thing.
In my adventure mystery, I have several minority characters, but I am a seasoned enough professional writer to know that I can''t alliterate them in any other context that what I know about them well.
One guy is afro-american, and is an ex army ranger from Viet Nam. I''ve known him for years, but in not much greater context than his military experience, which defines much of what the man is and stands for. another guy is chinese-american, but I cannot write about this person well beyond their martial, philosophical and spiritual skills which I know well. To write about things other than that is not only professionally foolish, but a disservice to the person and your artistic choice to represent them as a literary fictional character.
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And that isn''t completely unreasonable... but I think writers should try to push themselves, too.
Writers push themselves all the time just getting the basics right and well enough to get a dollar for their work. After twenty or thirty years as a seasoned professional, then you can stretch yourself, but it is a truth it takes twenty years to get good at something. Most writers have to make a living, and thus they risk prudently, not on the basis of material they have no mastery over. The person who does so is a fool and an amateur.
I make money professionally with my talent, but there were long decades which I did not while I learned how to do the best I could with what I had. I''m not going to risk outside of that wildly for a advocacy reason when my interests for that advocacy are better served cutting a check to the political organization that fights my side of that issue. When I am as rich as Stephen King, and my family is well cared for first, then I will go on TV and complain about the Iraq war.
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When I make choices about characters to include/design in a plot, I don''t think in terms of oh, this character is gay or this character is black or chinese,
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But the very way you state that seems to indicate that you are making assumptions, if not precisely choices . It sounds very much like your characters are all straight and white by default -- isn''t that putting the cart before the horse, too?
Ok, now you are making projective assumptions by taking me out of context. There is nothing in the way "I state" my reason (which you chose to edit short of the full logical statement for obvious argumentative convenience, and clearly with no particular desire to address precisely what I said, only what you wanted to respond to) for making choices about a character and their biography that has anything to to with their lifestyle or biography, but more for the necessity of their place and purpose about being in the story at that place and time, the very basic of most assumptions you
are compelled to make if you are going to create plausible fiction to begin with.
You obviously haven''t had to do this writing function, otherwise you would immediately see how uninformed your rationale actually is. It is not the cart before the horse, you
have to make choices (yes, assumptions, albeit logical and contextual) about a character to ensure that they work in the fictional narrative or disrupt it.
To not do so is to not know what a horse and cart is, much less what they are for and in what order they belong. And, as I said, I write minorities all the time because I know that in reality, diversity is the reality, and, many writers can do this. Your remarks are simply inflammatory, and discriminatory to the very diverse ethnicities you portend to defend.
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That''s quite true. But why is it a problem for a character to be incidentally black,
It''s not a problem, you are making it one because it is clearly a devisive issue for you, while other of us more seasoned writers understand the issue a little more objectively, and thus can place ethnicity in the natural consideration order it belongs in, way down the list.
Not because it is something to rate as a low priority, as you would try to make other believe, but because other aspects of plot design and narrative construct are
far more important to get right or your work is of questionable quality. Making embellishements about a characters origin or lifestyle is a luxury afforded only after you get the time, place, circumstance, contrivance, cause, reasoning, pace, accent, style of speech, and a lot of other things handled first.
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Saying "race isn''t the point" doesn''t answer the question of "why aren''t there more non-white characters?"
It actually answers it quite well. Race is not the point, quality, realism and narrative necessity are the defining criteria for character creation, selection and use, not the color of their skin. You''d know that if you knew how to design a story by it''s defining elements, techniques and approaches.
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How exactly do you jump from "minorities in fiction" to "gangster on death row / person dying of AIDS"?
It''s called, "making an example." Something that obviously you missed on the first read. In the first example, I showed that a ganster on death row who wrote a book about their life before they were put to death sold the majority of the small run of copies to people whe embraced the gangster lifestyle and had a demonstrated interest in prisoners on death row. The tiniest amout of sales for that title went to people who had no interest in somebody who had chosen to lead that kind of life and then write about it autobiographically.
In the second example, the person dying of AIDS who wrote autobiographically at first, then it became a biographical work, sold the vast majority of their small run edition of printed copies to people who were interested in those issues, which is how publishers decide how the book will be sold, and how many copies they believe they will sell in order to order the right amounts in the printed edition.
Gangsters on death row is (oops!) "a minority". People dying of AIDS is (OMG!) "a minority". Several fictional characters appeared in other works after these first works were published, yet they shared almost identically the same characteristics, except these works were shown to a larger and more diverse demograhic of entertainment consumers. See the jump now?
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Like you just said, "there are certain things that are common to us all"... so what''s the problem with writing a black character conquering evil, or a gay character searching for love?
There is no problem, you just want there to be one, I think. For what reason I have no desire to explore; you can live with it if you choose. Like I said in the original post, the writer has the right to choose as they see fit in their work whom they write about, where they put them and what they have them do or say. It''s both an artistic right and artistic license.
Critics and readers don''t have to agree. They can always set the book down or not buy it or write to the author or write to the book editors at the local press and argue their reasons why it is not a good book.
Art does not have to be "nice" or "favorable" or "preferential" to be good. Death of a Salesman plays to all crowds no matter what ethnicity. The reverse is not true. Kind of gives you and indication of not only appeal, but reach and frequency, to use the marketing terms.
Telling the story the best way you know how is the defining standard. If you happen to leave one personality type or one archetypal type or one ethnicity type out, maybe it''s because you didn''t have the skill to write that character well, and did not want to disserve your reader or that ethnicity.
It rarely has anything to do with deliberate slighting or prejudice. If you want to get even with somebody, or try to tip the scales of social justice in that manner, you are better off cutting a check to support an advocacy group. You''ll do much better with that effort for the cause.
It''s like a supermodel I dated a few times, she used to go into fancy restaurants and order all the live lobsters they had and take them to the ocean and release them. She did not see the thousands of dollars she wasted on releasing them in non native waters that would probably kill them soon anyway would have been better spent funding a save the lobsters legal advocacy group who lobbied in Washington for laws to make the lobsters plight better.
FWIW,
Addy
