The World Doesn't Need Your Story
A few weeks ago I woke up to a reply to one of my Tweets where I talked about how it’s fine to write outside your lane, just do your research and hire a sensitivity reader. The reply was from a YA author with a book coming out sometime this year—at least according to his Twitter profile. I did a little digging, and he found his editor on YouTube, and there’s no evidence that he actually has a publisher. Anyway, his response to my exhortation to hire a sensitivity reader was, “No. No I will not. I know why I’m writing this story. I’m writing it because it’s in my head and I want to share it with the world. Writers don’t have to justify themselves to you or anyone else.”
Like. My dude. I don’t even know who you are. A bit of digging shows this dude makes liberal use of the #ownvoices hashtag even though, as far as I can tell, he’s not marginalized in any way, and he absolutely despises sensitivity readers. So it seems that he was searching Twitter for one of those terms, came across my tweet, and felt the need to defend himself as though the tweet was aimed at him and him alone. Good job on calling yourself out, I guess.
He went on to say, “The world needs everyone’s story. I don’t want to write this story. I need to write this story. I’m not going to put my ideas on the shelf because they might offend. And nobody else should either! Stand up for your art!”
Clearly, this guy’s artistic integrity is more important than the marginalized people he might harm in the telling. I told him to stay in his damn lane, since by that point it was obvious he wasn’t going to listen to feedback from a sensitivity reader even if he could find one to give it. His response was, “No. I’m not going to stay in my lane. I’m going to swerve all around the road until all the young writers know it’s ok to write about anything. My books aren’t going to harm anyone. Your hand wringing will have no effect on me.”
Alright. Look. I’m not the writing police. I can’t actually keep you from writing whatever you damn well please. You have over 1700 followers; I have fewer than 400. But here’s the thing. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Remember Jurassic Park?
What I can do is call you out on your bullshit. Because no, not every story needs to be told. If you’re a Young Earth Creationist writing a propaganda adventure where the protagonists discover that dinosaur bones were put there by Satan to trick us into sin, the rest of us don’t need to be reading that crap. If you want to write a Twilight BDSM fanfic and then change the character names to sell it as original fiction, maybe take a second to consider the actual harm it will cause. Because it did. Fifty Shades glorified abusive relationships and led to people experimenting with BDSM without understanding consent, and real people actually got hurt. You know what might have prevented that? A sensitivity reader who understood how BDSM actually works.
The world doesn’t need your story. I know you’ve been assured since before you started writing that every story deserves to be told, but that’s not true. Your teachers lied to you to make you feel better about yourself. The drawing on your parents’ fridge isn’t evidence that you’ll one day be a better artist than Michelangelo, and your writing doesn’t rival George R. R. Martin. You’re not entitled to an audience, or an agent, or a publisher.
“Every story deserves to be told” is advice that’s meant for a specific context, just like “Never give up.” If you’re fighting a losing battle and the only options are surrender or die, then by all means, give up. Live to fight another day. The writing advice is aimed at people who are worried that their story won’t have an audience, that nobody is going to want to read their sappy romance between a vegetarian vampire and a humanoid robot. It’s not meant to be an excuse to ignore historical or present reality because that doesn’t agree with the vision you have for your book. You might want to write about how your thinly-veiled self-insert character single-handedly saved the Allies in World War II, but that doesn’t mean that the story is going to sell. And perhaps you really loved the cowboys versus Indians trope when you were growing up, but in the meantime most people have realized that those stories are extremely harmful to Native Americans and maybe we shouldn’t be writing them anymore.
The world doesn’t need more stories about marginalized people told from the perspective of those who have historically oppressed them. It needs more #ownvoices stories about acceptance and hope. It needs stories about black vampires and gay Jewish kids who go on adventures. It needs books set in fantasy worlds based on the Middle East where everyone speaks a version of Arabic.
I know your story is your baby, and you can’t bear to hear criticism of it, but you need to realize that the child you’ve raised has turned into a bigoted piece of shit, and you’re the one to blame. It’s spewing racist bullshit and perpetuating misinformation, and we’re not offended, we’re angry. You’ve chosen to exploit us, our stories and our pain, for your own personal gain, without a care for the damage you might cause. And the bigger your fanbase, the greater your responsibility.
With your privilege, you’ve never had your basic humanity denied based on your gender, race, or sexual orientation. You probably can’t imagine what that’s like. You don’t silently suffer microaggressions day in and day out, because to protest every one would take up all your time and energy, and label you as “easily offended” and “problematic.”
Making mistakes in representation isn’t the same as getting historical details wrong—although I’d bet you actually put some effort into researching your setting, unlike the people you write about, assuming that your goal is getting published rather than languishing in obscurity.
Really, what are you afraid of? That you’ll be told you’re wrong? Wouldn’t you rather learn that before you publish, rather than showing your ass to millions of people? You might believe that “creativity dies in committee” (actual quote that dudebro re-tweeted), but if you employ an editor, you’ve already acknowledged that no one can write a story entirely on their own. Imagine if writers decided to stop using editors because they “stifle creativity.” Only you don’t have to imagine it; all you have to do is go read one of Anne Rice’s later books.
You don’t have to take your sensitivity reader’s advice, any more than you have to listen to everything your editor has to say. I hired a sensitivity reader for one of my books that has a black heroine, and she objected to my method of acknowledging asexual people, not realizing that I am myself #ownvoices for the asexual spectrum. She also wanted me to be more detailed in my descriptions of black skin tones, when I tend not to be detailed at all in my descriptions of anything. I did read up on the resources she provided, but I don’t feel comfortable describing black skin tones in more detail than white skin tones, because I feel that would serve to exoticize non-white people.
In my case, it also helped that I read several #ownvoices black romances before writing the second draft of the story, which I knew going in would be a complete re-write. That sort of research is certainly beneficial, and it can help you avoid obvious pitfalls, but there are going to be things that you as a white writer just don’t notice. Like when my black heroine talked about race issues at a dinner with her white boyfriend’s two sisters and their white husbands. I’m used to reading black women talking about issues online, but in-person they tend to be more reticent, since there’s no easy escape.
Sensitivity readers aren’t there to stifle creativity. They exist to help your story be the best it can be. If your story’s only value is in insulting other cultures, then there’s no reason to impose it upon your audience. Plenty of stories do that already; your story is in no way unique. But if you actually care about depicting marginalized people in an accurate and respectful manner, then sensitivity readers can help you accomplish that goal.
Just remember, random cishet white dude #792, as you go to write your adventure about a gay trans Muslim woman—the world. Doesn’t. Need. Your. Story.
Like. My dude. I don’t even know who you are. A bit of digging shows this dude makes liberal use of the #ownvoices hashtag even though, as far as I can tell, he’s not marginalized in any way, and he absolutely despises sensitivity readers. So it seems that he was searching Twitter for one of those terms, came across my tweet, and felt the need to defend himself as though the tweet was aimed at him and him alone. Good job on calling yourself out, I guess.
He went on to say, “The world needs everyone’s story. I don’t want to write this story. I need to write this story. I’m not going to put my ideas on the shelf because they might offend. And nobody else should either! Stand up for your art!”
Clearly, this guy’s artistic integrity is more important than the marginalized people he might harm in the telling. I told him to stay in his damn lane, since by that point it was obvious he wasn’t going to listen to feedback from a sensitivity reader even if he could find one to give it. His response was, “No. I’m not going to stay in my lane. I’m going to swerve all around the road until all the young writers know it’s ok to write about anything. My books aren’t going to harm anyone. Your hand wringing will have no effect on me.”
Alright. Look. I’m not the writing police. I can’t actually keep you from writing whatever you damn well please. You have over 1700 followers; I have fewer than 400. But here’s the thing. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should. Remember Jurassic Park?
What I can do is call you out on your bullshit. Because no, not every story needs to be told. If you’re a Young Earth Creationist writing a propaganda adventure where the protagonists discover that dinosaur bones were put there by Satan to trick us into sin, the rest of us don’t need to be reading that crap. If you want to write a Twilight BDSM fanfic and then change the character names to sell it as original fiction, maybe take a second to consider the actual harm it will cause. Because it did. Fifty Shades glorified abusive relationships and led to people experimenting with BDSM without understanding consent, and real people actually got hurt. You know what might have prevented that? A sensitivity reader who understood how BDSM actually works.
The world doesn’t need your story. I know you’ve been assured since before you started writing that every story deserves to be told, but that’s not true. Your teachers lied to you to make you feel better about yourself. The drawing on your parents’ fridge isn’t evidence that you’ll one day be a better artist than Michelangelo, and your writing doesn’t rival George R. R. Martin. You’re not entitled to an audience, or an agent, or a publisher.
“Every story deserves to be told” is advice that’s meant for a specific context, just like “Never give up.” If you’re fighting a losing battle and the only options are surrender or die, then by all means, give up. Live to fight another day. The writing advice is aimed at people who are worried that their story won’t have an audience, that nobody is going to want to read their sappy romance between a vegetarian vampire and a humanoid robot. It’s not meant to be an excuse to ignore historical or present reality because that doesn’t agree with the vision you have for your book. You might want to write about how your thinly-veiled self-insert character single-handedly saved the Allies in World War II, but that doesn’t mean that the story is going to sell. And perhaps you really loved the cowboys versus Indians trope when you were growing up, but in the meantime most people have realized that those stories are extremely harmful to Native Americans and maybe we shouldn’t be writing them anymore.
The world doesn’t need more stories about marginalized people told from the perspective of those who have historically oppressed them. It needs more #ownvoices stories about acceptance and hope. It needs stories about black vampires and gay Jewish kids who go on adventures. It needs books set in fantasy worlds based on the Middle East where everyone speaks a version of Arabic.
I know your story is your baby, and you can’t bear to hear criticism of it, but you need to realize that the child you’ve raised has turned into a bigoted piece of shit, and you’re the one to blame. It’s spewing racist bullshit and perpetuating misinformation, and we’re not offended, we’re angry. You’ve chosen to exploit us, our stories and our pain, for your own personal gain, without a care for the damage you might cause. And the bigger your fanbase, the greater your responsibility.
With your privilege, you’ve never had your basic humanity denied based on your gender, race, or sexual orientation. You probably can’t imagine what that’s like. You don’t silently suffer microaggressions day in and day out, because to protest every one would take up all your time and energy, and label you as “easily offended” and “problematic.”
Making mistakes in representation isn’t the same as getting historical details wrong—although I’d bet you actually put some effort into researching your setting, unlike the people you write about, assuming that your goal is getting published rather than languishing in obscurity.
Really, what are you afraid of? That you’ll be told you’re wrong? Wouldn’t you rather learn that before you publish, rather than showing your ass to millions of people? You might believe that “creativity dies in committee” (actual quote that dudebro re-tweeted), but if you employ an editor, you’ve already acknowledged that no one can write a story entirely on their own. Imagine if writers decided to stop using editors because they “stifle creativity.” Only you don’t have to imagine it; all you have to do is go read one of Anne Rice’s later books.
You don’t have to take your sensitivity reader’s advice, any more than you have to listen to everything your editor has to say. I hired a sensitivity reader for one of my books that has a black heroine, and she objected to my method of acknowledging asexual people, not realizing that I am myself #ownvoices for the asexual spectrum. She also wanted me to be more detailed in my descriptions of black skin tones, when I tend not to be detailed at all in my descriptions of anything. I did read up on the resources she provided, but I don’t feel comfortable describing black skin tones in more detail than white skin tones, because I feel that would serve to exoticize non-white people.
In my case, it also helped that I read several #ownvoices black romances before writing the second draft of the story, which I knew going in would be a complete re-write. That sort of research is certainly beneficial, and it can help you avoid obvious pitfalls, but there are going to be things that you as a white writer just don’t notice. Like when my black heroine talked about race issues at a dinner with her white boyfriend’s two sisters and their white husbands. I’m used to reading black women talking about issues online, but in-person they tend to be more reticent, since there’s no easy escape.
Sensitivity readers aren’t there to stifle creativity. They exist to help your story be the best it can be. If your story’s only value is in insulting other cultures, then there’s no reason to impose it upon your audience. Plenty of stories do that already; your story is in no way unique. But if you actually care about depicting marginalized people in an accurate and respectful manner, then sensitivity readers can help you accomplish that goal.
Just remember, random cishet white dude #792, as you go to write your adventure about a gay trans Muslim woman—the world. Doesn’t. Need. Your. Story.
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