Malise
Scribe
Hiya there.
I'm currently in the process of writing a story about a team of city bureaucrats trying to systematically lower the crime rates in an ethnically diverse inner-city urban fantasy setting after one of the bureaucrats turned the area into a special economic zone with the intention of offering protection to informal businesses (hawkers, bootleg sellers, etc.) but with the consequence of allowing black markets to thrive there as well. If you read my response in Wondering Sword's Martial Arts thread, it's going to be a rewrite of the story I mentioned in there.
The central theme of the story is "The Broken Ladder" or the idea that the quickest way for impoverished immigrant groups to assimilate into mainstream society is for the first generation to earn wealth by literally any means possible, so that the second generation can use that wealth to climb up the social ladder and become 'clean professionals'. Then hopefully the third generation would live a life indistinguishable from another 'regular middle-class citizen' and have the privilege of looking down at the new immigrant groups currently at the bottom of the broken ladder up.
If I'm discussing "The Broken Ladder", that means I'm also going to have to discuss topics such as illegal immigration, labor trafficking, intergenerational trauma, xenophobia, minority-on-minority violence, the cycle of poverty, self-hatred of one's own culture ect. Most of the plot events relating to those themes are all based on stuff that I've either personally seen or heard about in LA, where the "Broken Ladder" is definitely a reality for some people. However, at the same time, I plan to make my story my usual character-focused drama-comedy, so I have to make space for some levity.
The content of the graphic subject matter I plan to write about will not be changed to make the story tone's "lighter", however, I still don't know how I should present it. Would it be more tasteful to take the PG-13 route and either 'imply' or tell than directly show graphic material to avoid gratuitousness, or would it be more appropriate for me to present the subject matter as raw as it is and not sugarcoat anything?
To give you an example, I have a character who's in a marriage of convenience for the sake of his child (that he tries his best not to resent) after being abandoned by his former crime boss's daughter whom he was forced to marry. In my current story notes it's going to be implied that this character was underaged when he had his kid, that the "traditional theater" that he used to work in was really just a front for a brothel and mail order bride business, and he was purposely kept illiterate so he couldn't escape. These backstory points were planned only to be mentioned in the dialog and offhand narration. However, at the same time, I'm thinking of rewriting those same notes into flashbacks, which means I have to depict the heavy abuse that most people are already imagining. I really don't know which one would be better.
I'm currently in the process of writing a story about a team of city bureaucrats trying to systematically lower the crime rates in an ethnically diverse inner-city urban fantasy setting after one of the bureaucrats turned the area into a special economic zone with the intention of offering protection to informal businesses (hawkers, bootleg sellers, etc.) but with the consequence of allowing black markets to thrive there as well. If you read my response in Wondering Sword's Martial Arts thread, it's going to be a rewrite of the story I mentioned in there.
The central theme of the story is "The Broken Ladder" or the idea that the quickest way for impoverished immigrant groups to assimilate into mainstream society is for the first generation to earn wealth by literally any means possible, so that the second generation can use that wealth to climb up the social ladder and become 'clean professionals'. Then hopefully the third generation would live a life indistinguishable from another 'regular middle-class citizen' and have the privilege of looking down at the new immigrant groups currently at the bottom of the broken ladder up.
If I'm discussing "The Broken Ladder", that means I'm also going to have to discuss topics such as illegal immigration, labor trafficking, intergenerational trauma, xenophobia, minority-on-minority violence, the cycle of poverty, self-hatred of one's own culture ect. Most of the plot events relating to those themes are all based on stuff that I've either personally seen or heard about in LA, where the "Broken Ladder" is definitely a reality for some people. However, at the same time, I plan to make my story my usual character-focused drama-comedy, so I have to make space for some levity.
The content of the graphic subject matter I plan to write about will not be changed to make the story tone's "lighter", however, I still don't know how I should present it. Would it be more tasteful to take the PG-13 route and either 'imply' or tell than directly show graphic material to avoid gratuitousness, or would it be more appropriate for me to present the subject matter as raw as it is and not sugarcoat anything?
To give you an example, I have a character who's in a marriage of convenience for the sake of his child (that he tries his best not to resent) after being abandoned by his former crime boss's daughter whom he was forced to marry. In my current story notes it's going to be implied that this character was underaged when he had his kid, that the "traditional theater" that he used to work in was really just a front for a brothel and mail order bride business, and he was purposely kept illiterate so he couldn't escape. These backstory points were planned only to be mentioned in the dialog and offhand narration. However, at the same time, I'm thinking of rewriting those same notes into flashbacks, which means I have to depict the heavy abuse that most people are already imagining. I really don't know which one would be better.