Bisky's Twitterling's Scribbles! discussion

There have been calls for more diversity in books and I was wondering, are there themes you write about that you would prefer to see more frequently in traditionally published literature?

I agree, there seems to be a limited number of accepted genres, and a certain form within those genres. Publishers need to take a chance on more books that break the mold. My brain isn't being kind enough to give me specifics just now, but I wholeheartedly support more diversity in traditional publishing :3

I tend to consider myself a reasonably diverse writer and I definitely would love to see some of the things I try to do become more common (as well as diversity that I don't use much myself, obviously). My MCs tend to be, I think, a little older than the average for my genres (most of my heroines are in their 30s and 40s). I tend to have a fair mix in terms of sexuality, ethnicity etc because that's just the world as I see it. Writing a world where everyone's a white, straight 20-something would just feel off to me (unless the point was to write an unfamiliar, homogeneous world).

One big things I'd like to see more of is relationship diversity. I'm poly, so I'd love to see more characters in non-traditional relationships. And even when it comes to depicting mono relationships, I'd love to see more diversity, like couples that don't abide by traditional gender roles, couples who aren't aiming for the suburbia life or whatever else. A lot of times when I read about relationships, I look at people I know and I just don't see those sorts of "Hollywood romance" things happening in real life. So I try to do that in my books a bit too (although most my chars are still mono).

I don't think I'd ever intentional make a story more diverse just to be politically correct or whatever, but I try to be self aware too and sometimes ask myself "what if I made this character X instead of Y?". This is mainly because when I was younger all my MCs basically had the same appearance and personality, so I try to be extra mindful of not doing that now.

I'm doing a paranormal mystery/romance for Camp Nano in July. This is a bit out of my comfort zone and I'm doing it partially to see if I can, but also partially because I've been reading some paranormal romance lately and while there are some books in the genre I enjoy a lot of it follows the same norms very rigidly. It's like... mortal girl meets paranormal guy, he saves her life and she helps him rediscover his soul/heart/capacity for kindness/mercy/love. So there's an element of "why don't we mix it up a bit?" to the decisions I'm making about the book's plot and characters. No idea how it'll turn out yet, but it should be fun to see.


Edited to add: oh my god, I'm wordy sometimes! lol

Emma, you raise a good point about "politically correct" elements. Although this society is said to be "modern" and "tolerant", I think there's still a lot of taboo subjects, such as homosexuality, a woman for president, etc.

I admit that my themes are not that original. My heroic fantasy novel has elves, humans, magic, etc., so nothing really outstanding. However, I try to make characters who don't behave exactly like the reader would expect. (Notice that I did say, "I try" ^^)

Apart from diversity in themes, it would also be nice to see diversity in form. Most novels I read are either retrospective 1st person narrative, or (semi)omniscient 3rd person narrative, all written in past tense. I hardly ever come across prologues, or a non-chronological narrative, for instance
This is partly why I gave 5 stars to Sarah's "Who Is Evelyn Dae". I think her idea of not presenting the diary in a chronological order is what makes the novel interesting and original. That's something I rarely come across in traditionally published books.

@Sandrine, and a related thing is is that apart from societal taboos there also seems to be all kinds of genre taboos and unwritten rules within writing. A MC from such and such a genre is expected to be such and such a person, and a plot featuring such and such a feature is expected to end in a certain way. That's part of why I find the genre thing so hard, there are so many ways to "do it wrong", lol.

Interesting point about the diversity in form, too. I'll admit I hadn't thought of that as a matter of diversity in the past, but I do enjoy seeing less common ways of structuring novels and telling stories. If it's done well it can really make a novel go from being good, to really being something special.

Bisky wrote: "There have been calls for more diversity in books and I was wondering, are there themes you write about that you would prefer to see more frequently in traditionally published literature?"

I read mostly genre books (SF, fantasy) and there does seem to be a striking lack of diversity, almost all cis heteronormative white ppl. I have tried to fight that in my series with a cross section of characters of all different types.

I think it might be because history and fantasy are often based off of real events and people in medieval Europe. And that people are often scared of new things.

Like how kids fight about music genres in highschool people are kind of protective of things they know.

Diversity is great but you need to know what you're talking about. I'm white (surprise!) and writing a black character's story might now go well because I'm not "inside" that culture. I live around and know more Latinos so that might go better.

I'll stick closer to my own experience at this pt. But I'm pondering a story that pulls in different races. We'll see.

I have to agree with Carl. It's not that people don't want to but rather that they (we) might be afraid to make monumental mistakes, which would be thousands of times worse than keeping away from writing about it.

People are prompt to jump to conclusions. I've seen it in another discussion group. Someone was offering to review SP authors. When one ask if she would review a m/m story, she said she didn't mind gays and lesbians in real life but wasn't prepared to read about it and preferred not to. She immediately got called homophobic for refusing. I mean, when someone can't even choose what they want to read for fear of being branded names, I can't imagine how it would turn out for a writer who'd write about something and make a mistake while doing so. Nah, people rather stick with something safer and who can blame them?

@ J. David,
I always find it odd how homogenous sci-fi and fantasy tends to be. With more realistic fiction, the sort that takes place here and now, I have a greater understanding for writers who chose to stick to their own demographic groups, so to say, because there's the whole issue of "cultural competence". But when you've made your whole own world, with it's own history and religions and cultures and monsters and spaceships and god knows what else... and then the cast is more homogenous than your average American sitcom. I just don't get that...

I just found this commercial https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature..., but i believe the message could be applied to writing

I don't agree with Carl and G.G. I think it's possible to write about people without being them. You can put, for instance, a black community or a gay couple into your story without being one of them. It only takes a bit of observation and interest in the matter. I think writing about those "repressed minorities" so to speak even from an outside viewpoint is better than never writing about them at all. And then, you can even play with stereotypes. Introduce a very racist or homophobic character to ironically criticise society, for example.

Yet I agree that if you want to write 1st person, it's easier to have a character somewhat similar to your own social status. *says the 22-year-old woman who writes 1st person male characters in their 30s*

Sandrine, I'm not afraid of having either in my stories. There's a black woman in my book who holds her own, but I'm not sure if I could pull it off as the MC. Of course, like you, I write in first person pov of a man and I'm a woman so yes, maybe I could after all.

Yes G.G., I think it's just a matter of daring to try, take the risk of making mistakes, but still try to have a "different" MC. Because, you know, I make the nice speech, but more than half of my characters are white. Let's take a vow: my next MC will be a black lesbian.

Sandrine, you're right about the power of observation.

In the states, a long history of whites telling blacks' stories has gone on. In the 1960s, blacks began telling whites to stop; many black writers told their own stories, e.g., Toni Morrison. I have a degree in what we call multicultural literature, writing by non- whites, and who tells the story can get dicey. This is true even when whites write black or brown (Latino) characters. A person could write a book from a black man's POV. But good luck getting it published. If it comes out, be ready for a debate.

I don't really find the argument that "writing what you know" means limiting diversity to be a compelling argument. This is because, in general, I find "write what you know" to be poor advice, at least in the sense most people seem to mean it.

Most people seem to mean "write what you know" to be only writing that with which you are familiar and experienced, because that's the only thing you are capable of getting exactly right. Pretty limiting advice! You can't write about other races, other sexual preferences, okay... Make sure you don't write about other genders either, how could you get that right? You've never been a man/woman! Don't write about anyone of a different age, background, profession, level of education, etc. That's not what you know. Every character in every book you write should be just like you.

When you look at it like that, it doesn't really hold up, does it? It's like there's a different standard in play when it comes to most forms of diversity, which are okay to write even though you "don't know" them, and then all of a sudden when it comes to race and or sexual preference, bam...can't write that.

This is, IMO, because people are using "write what you know" as a blanket excuse to stay in their comfort zone, which for most of us is people in our own race/gender/sexual pref. For me, cis straight white guys. That's something I need to be aware of and combat when creating new worlds and characters.

A better way to interpret "write what you know" is to consider it to mean only write what you have considerably researched and vetted. Make sure your choices are rooted in reality and study, not just winged off the top of your head. Write as real a person as you can manage based on a LOT of careful planning and knowledge. Then, get yourself a trusted group of beta readers who can look at your work and are not afraid to tell you when a certain character doesn't ring true. Get people you trust to give you solid recommendations. Then you know by the time you're finished you will have a character carefully crafted and developed, and you won't have to worry that you haven't shared every daily experience since you were born with them.

And as @Emma pointed out, if you're creating your own fictional world and people, you can start at the very beginning with diversity as a part of your world building.

Just my 2c.

I agree with you J. David. You don't have to be a part of a group of freedom fighters to write about it. If everyone only wrote what they know then there wouldn't be much epic fantasy or speculative scifi. You have to do your homework. When you're writing about any other group of people, they are still people. Put yourself in their situation and think of different reactions that could come from their experiences. We've all fallen in love before. Just because they love a blonde girl or guy and you love a brown haired girl or guy doesn't make that feeling any less. They still experience the same normal human needs and wants.

In respect to writing style rather than subject matter, it'd be super cool to see more 'experimental' stuff! i.e. one word sentences, invented words, rhyming in the prose, all capped words...I can imagine, if a character was drunk, whether the POV be in 1st or not, the words beginning to be misspelled and misused as a unique way of using the physical word (rather than just the word's meaning,) to describe a scene.
I can understand many people finding this writing hard to read, because it can 'distract from the story.' But I think it would be very cool to involve the physical words, grammar, punctuation also as a way of telling the story :)

@AJ, I completely agree with you! Have you ever read Alasdair Gray's 1982 Janine? If not, you should try it. It's about a man who gets drunk in a hotel. At some point, when he's reaaaally drunk, the writing becomes "graphical" so to speak. I don't think there are any invented or misspelled words, though. But the sentences are not in neat and regular lines anymore.
Here's the pic of a page: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia...

Sandrine wrote: "@AJ, I completely agree with you! Have you ever read Alasdair Gray's 1982 Janine? If not, you should try it. It's about a man who gets drunk in a hotel. At some point, when he's reaaaally drunk, th..."

Ok...how the hell do you read a book like that though? :)

G.G. wrote: "Sandrine wrote: "@AJ, I completely agree with you! Have you ever read Alasdair Gray's 1982 Janine? If not, you should try it. It's about a man who gets drunk in a hotel. At some point, when he's re..."

Haha, don't worry, it's only a few pages, then it gets back to normal.

In the book that's out with CP's right now, I have a diverse mix of characters. I think I get what Carl and G.G. are saying--not that we don't want to write them, but we don't want to write them and get them wrong. I love my main character, who is a 40-something black lesbian. But if I think about it too hard, I break out in a sweat because there's so much I don't know about being a 40-something black lesbian that I could get wrong. So I don't think too hard about it.

And the important thing to me in diversity is not making it one of the huge themes of the book. It's not a book about a 40-something black lesbian. It's a book about a woman who is being harassed by a demon and needs help from an exorcist. Granted, one of the religious characters is prejudiced against her because of her sexual orientation, but that's just life. That guy is realistic because he actually comes from lots of people I've known in my life.

Anyway, that's what I wanted to say: Diversity is important, but not as the foundation or focal point. I want diverse people who aren't stereotypical in my fiction, where the fiction is about something other than their diversity.

I'm not saying its right, but I think one of the major reasons there isn't a lot more diversity in what's on the shelves at your local bookstore is because diversity doesn't typically sell well. I suggest, that if you want more books that are diverse, go to these stores and buy the ones that are. Change the status quo.

I sort of agree, but it's a Catch-22 situation. Publishers are big corporations. Big corporations want to make money. The easiest way to make money is to continue making money the same way you always made it. Until someone takes a risk on not getting their ROI back, they're just gonna do what they're doing. As soon as someone finally branches out and starts bringing diversity to the marketplace AND makes a profit, everyone will suddenly be all about diversity.

I think it's great for there to be diversity in writing, but not in the tokenism way it occurs a lot of the time. Don't add a diverse character if it doesn't make sense (however, if you are writing in a setting of the real world there might be more diversity than one expects if you dig a little bit). In a workshop I was in I recently had to point out to someone that their world they'd created essentially co-opted another person's experience. I think if you do your research and treat someone who is not like you with the proper respect you should certainly go for it. We won't change anything if we continue to just write what's safe.

The weird thing about writing stories is that we're part a business selling a product and part artist. The artist should take risks and challenge the status quo because that is what art does. The author also wants to be able to support themselves and thus wants to make something people will buy. Finding that middle ground is going to be important.

(I do think this is one benefit of the proliferation of self-publishing - people are more willing to take risks and no one can tell them not to, they just have to accept the consequences and risks - which is pretty scary I'll admit.)

I'm curious what co-opting another person's experience means. I'm not 100% sure what you're referring to ... if you don't mind telling us?

And I agree about self-pub being good for risks.

The problem with writing for another perspective is that you will get heat no matter what you actually write. If a white person writes about another race doing well (they'll be accusations that they don't grasp that races struggles) If they write about the other races issues, (they're accused of stereotyping) If they mention race once, they're accusing of tokenism and not looking deeper. Suzanne Collins was accused of racism for having Rue and Thresh in the Hunger Games be agricultural laborers and for killing them (the reasoning was 'they were only there for the pretty white girl's story').

If you're not that demographic it's a minefield to write for.

Sorry, it took me so long to reply. I have little opportunity to get on the internet.

S. wrote: "I'm curious what co-opting another person's experience means. I'm not 100% sure what you're referring to ... if you don't mind telling us?

And I agree about self-pub being good for risks."

The example I was referring to was a straight writer inverting the world to basically make heteronormative the oppressed class. So basically, this writer took the narratives of homosexual individuals and gave it to a heterosexual character. That's what I meant by co-opted. Why on earth couldn't the story just be about a homosexual character?

In reply to Claire, I can't remember the name of the author, but there was a white author who wrote under a pseudonym about Mexican-Americans because he was friends and family with them and lived in a part of LA that is diverse. He got heat when it came out that he was white, but the world now had more stories with Mexican-American characters. And I think if someone shows that they made a genuine effort to connect with the people they want to write about, it matters. The people who give others crap for trying to bridge the gap will never be satisfied anyway.

I think now that the barriers are lowered to entering the authorship world we might see more people telling their own stories and everything will diversify anyway. But if it's a story you want to tell and make a good faith effort to write it, people will know and hopefully respect that. Definitely don't resort to tokenism just to have diversity. Definitely just read a book like that and it made me cringe and was also disingenuous to the setting.

Hmmm, I actually think that's an interesting way to get a point across. I was in the religious right culture growing up, so I was taught that gay people are sinners going to hell. The argument is that they are "other" and not like "us." Flipping the experience and showing how it feels to be shamed by society simply for being yourself is theoretically effective. Of course, the people that need to read it won't. But it's a nice idea.

P.S. I'm no longer part of that culture.

I agree, there's a short film floating around on the internet that did exactly that. I think it would be fine for a short story, but an entire novel? And I agree with you that most people would miss the point (they certainly did in the short film - some people saw it as gays taking over the world and forcing straight people to become closeted *shakes head*).

I think it would be brilliant as an over the top satire.

Yeah *shrug* Its heart is in the right place but maybe not effective. :-)

I think diversity is needed. Publishers stick with what they know will sell. This causes over saturation in genres and in themes and it doesn't create enough diversity with book lengths. I mention that last one because I'm a fan of longer books (as long as they're done well). I like the feeling of investment and get a big sense of satisfaction from finishing a long book. But its rare for me to find a long book and even rarer for me to find it in the genres I like.

When I went searching for a publishers before deciding to self publish I was inevitably denied over and over. The length of my book was one reason, and the topic and mixed genre of it was the other. Nothing about my trilogy fit "the mold" so I wasn't considered worthwhile to them.

@Shannon - How long was the book and what topic/genres was it? I'm curious because I agree with you that book length isn't necessarily a sign of a solidly written book. However, it brings to mind a book review I did recently. The book was 180k word UF. When I accepted it, I commented on the length. He assured me the length was justified. However, I did not find it so--I felt as though he had included too much long, meandering descriptions that weren't necessary and re-hashed things that he'd already established earlier. the story itself was good, and if he'd chopped it in half, I would definitely given it more stars.

Maybe this is a topic for another thread, but I am genuinely interested in books that are tightly written but longer. How does one make sure that they're killing all their darlings in a longer book?

This is such an interesting and hard to deal with topic.

I was thinking about writing a teenage, female, Aboriginal goth character in a story, which I have put on hiatus to work on my novel.

As an exercise, try Googling black goths and see the amount of flack they cop from all quarters. I was shocked. To me a goth is a goth. Asian, white, black, indigenous, extra-terrestrial (now that would be rather cool) whatever. Don't even try to search for Aboriginal goths, I didn't find a thing.

I'm not a goth teenager and never have been. I'm a 37 y/o white male geek. So then, how does one conduct research?

My novel's MC is, like Emma above, in a poly relationship, female, 27, bi. I'm none of those things either. Why did I make her that way? Much like in this forum I saw someone post that that's what they were and the whole premise of the book is that the players are dragged into this world kicking and screaming, from all walks of life, all over the globe. Like dragnet fishing, you're not only going to get your mackerel or whatever when you haul it in and not everyone on the street is cookie cutter. So I thought why not, I'll give it a go.

What did I decide to do?

I wrote the crap out of that character as a person, and I'd like to think if I wanted to I could just as easily change a few small details and her name and she would work just the same as male, black, a robot, whatever.

Yes the MC is female, bi, etc. But they're also a person. Whether they're in love with one person or two, male female or both, regardless of their race/religion, they still think and feel, much as I.

If you prick them, do they not curse and kick you in the nads?

Just write it, I say, then stress the details later. That's what rewrites and betas and editing are for. Then you can speak to some actual people who live that, get their take, fix it if need be. Pretty sure if you avoid stereotypes all you will find you'll need is to ADD in stuff, not take it out.

So I first and foremost write them as a person.

That's an interesting point - I think fear is a big part of it. I wrote my book for me and I've surprised myself in some ways that I've published it. Writing for me first meant I could write about whatever I liked and I have to admit that my favourite characters to write have been a) a gay male vampire who has been rejected by what would be his great love, and b) a guy who is doesn't identify as bi but has had relationships with both men and women. Although the central character is a Hetero woman I'm not sure I thought about gender or sexual preferences, they're all just people to me. It would be interesting to write something without naming the characters or defining their gender until the very end - if it doesn't work perhaps that highlights their a a real diversity issue.

Helen wrote: "It would be interesting to write something without naming the characters or defining their gender until the very end - if it doesn't work perhaps that highlights their a a real diversity issue."

I was actually reading about a couple of books like that - romances where the genders of the characters were never identified - in just the last week. I think in one of the diversity in writing tumblrs. I think it would be difficult for me to do, just dealing with pronouns and keeping it sounding natural. It would be more like a display piece for me than a good read.

I often leave relationships somewhat open to the reader's imagination. Is it a friendship? An intimate relationship? Unrequited love? Just enough said to pique the reader's curiosity. I write YA, not erotica, so there is plenty of room for interpretation.

I have been thinking lately about gender identification and children born with ambiguous gender, and some of these issues may make it into some book in the future.

P.D., if you are interested in lit with gender-ambiguous main characters, may I suggest you look up Heaventide, a fantasy short story by KJ Kabza which deals with the topic in a very interesting way. I really enjoyed the story itself as well as how it was written!

P.D. wrote: "Helen wrote: "It would be interesting to write something without naming the characters or defining their gender until the very end - if it doesn't work perhaps that highlights their a a real divers..."

Me too, there are two relationships in my book which I've left deliberately vague. There is clearly something akin to sexual chemistry but I prefer to leave it unsaid and let the reader join the dots. I've also deliberately stayed away from explicit material, which probably makes me a bit of a prude in some peoples but I'm more interested in relationships and the dynamic between characters (spoken or not) than who does what with whose bits :)