What I'm Saying Is, The Search For Equality Is Pretty Messy

[BWFoster78]

You could cut it all for a tighter book, but I don't think it would be a better book.

We disagree on this point. I'm not asking you to share my view, though, as much as I'm asking you to accept it as valid.

But one of the biggest complaints that story got was that there just wasn't enough detail.

I think you misunderstand "tight" (my understanding of it, anyway) if you feel that being tight is synonymous with lack of detail.

I don't care how tight your writing is. At some point, you'll need to make your world feel like more than just actors on a painted set.

I agree completely. You should be inside your character's heads and make their reactions real. I think we just disagree on what is necessary to achieve this goal.

 

[Devor]

Again, I'm not trying to choose extreme examples, but I really find your reasoning flawed here. You're saying, in essence, that diversity possesses special traits that make it something that has to be included. I reject that assumption.

You story should include what is needed for your story. If diversity is needed, include it. If not, don't.

I did switch to "accounted for," and I'm repeating it for the sake of added clarity. I think the level of diversity needs to be accounted for, whether high or low, it's an element at play in the development of your world.

I think a low level of diversity can be as much of a distraction and have as much an impact on readers as a high level of diversity does. It constitutes an observable trend as a part of your world.

You're probably think I'm choosing "extreme" examples again, but where does this concept stop? If diversity is an integral part of life, what about love? Should, then, every story include love unless you have a valid reason not to?

What about death? Who hasn't experienced the death of someone in their life? isn't that "a fundamental piece of reality?" Should, then, every story include the death of a loved one unless there is a valid reason not to.

You've named two examples with very different qualities. Love and death are factors in a character arc, and you only see the full perspectives of a handful of characters. Diversity is an element of your setting, which is going to be a key factor underlying the entirety of your story. On top of that, death at least is an event, and so is love, depending on how you're using the word. I think it's a false comparison.

However, my answer is that love and death are major factors in a person's life, and ignoring the way these two elements may have helped to shape your characters over time would be a mistake.

 

[Svrtnsse]

Because you're not confident in accurately portraying the nuances of another race/gender/sexual orientation. Before you argue this point, please interchange the subject with something that is not so "hot topic." If I had used ninjas instead, would you have the same reaction? Would it be the "write what you know" advice?

Honestly, at this stage, I probably wouldn't.
I'd happily write a mercenary ninja-paladin who shoots exploding bunnies out of his noose, but I wouldn't write a gay mercenary ninja-paladin who shoots exploding bunnies out of his noose.
Why?
Insecurities. It is something of a hot topic and while I don't really care about getting the social implications of having such a big noose right, I do care about getting the social implications of being a homosexual right.

Why?
I think it's in some way about self image. I like to think of myself as an open-minded guy who don't have any issues with homosexuality (or big nooses). I'd worry how it would reflect on me if I wrote a gay character and got it all wrong. I want to write "real" things and I want to avoid contributing to stereotyping.
I think I could probably do it, but at this stage I'm not experienced or confident enough in my abilities to make a serious attempt. I may get there at some point and I'll give it a go, or I might keep pushing it away and hiding behind my insecurities until the day my pen stops moving. We'll see how it goes.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I think you misunderstand "tight" (my understanding of it, anyway) if you feel that being tight is synonymous with lack of detail.

So tightness means you can't have a gay person in your story, but you can have . . . actually, what can you have? Can you explain in more detail what you mean by tightness, then? (It doesn't seem like anyone else understands, either.)

 

[Philip Overby]

But one of the biggest complaints that story got was that there just wasn't enough detail. My latest work is about seventeen thousand words, and I use those words to mention things--that the self-proclaimed superhero wears purple tights and a domino mask, that the magical girl has curly blond hair, and yes, that the werewolf, in his human form, is mixed race. Some of those are important. Some aren't. But they make the world feel bigger and more real.*

I don't care how tight your writing is. At some point, you'll need to make your world feel like more than just actors on a painted set. One of the key elements of that is your actors--which one has an eyepatch, which one is bizarrely well-read about advanced physics, and, maybe, which one moons over men more muscular than himself. If you don't want to use that last one, fine, but don't say you're not using description at all, because seriously, how could you not?

*This post would feel incomplete if I didn't mention that there are things I can say with those details. Much of my story is about people being wrong about what they think they are, but the magical girl is biologically male, and I consistently treat her as a real girl, not as some kind of fraud or fake. She's my counterbalance, and part of the key to my message. Still, that's not something you need to do, not in the same way you need to have details.

By mentioning these things, you've already garnered my interest in this story. Why? Because it sounds like something I've never read before. Those small details mean a lot, more than I think some people realize. If you were writing a blurb for this story, it would already catch my attention more than "a group of heroes go on a quest to stop the dark lord." I've read that book already. Several times. The minor details you mention in Abarat also make me interested in checking out that book.

I don't know, for me diversity of cast and setting=a different reading experience, if that makes sense? While I'll probably read another heroes go on a quest to stop the dark lord story (maybe several), I'm more selective of the ones that I will read from now on. However, if I'm presented with something that flies in the face of most genre conventions, I may be more attracted to pick that book up.

 

[Svrtnsse]

So tightness means you can't have a gay person in your story, but you can have . . . actually, what can you have? Can you explain in more detail what you mean by tightness, then? (It doesn't seem like anyone else understands, either.)

In this thread: http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/10285-voice-how-how-much.html#post143390
Devor asked:

How do you define tight?

The thread went on to thirteen pages. Some good definitions were suggested though. It's something of a big topic.

 

[glutton]

I define tight writing as not having a lot of irrelevant details or repeating things over and over again unnecessarily.

Eg. The main character being mentioned to be gay and black (even for 'no reason') wouldn't make a story non-tight.

A 5-paragraph description of pottery in somebody's house and the processes that go into making it, when said pottery doesn't affect anything else in the story, would make the writing non-tight.

Seeing the latter would make me want to skim every other description I notice in the book starting from that point on.

 

[BWFoster78]

I think a low level of diversity can be as much of a distraction and have as much an impact on readers as a high level of diversity does. It constitutes an observable trend as a part of your world.

But as far as your characters are concerned, it is what it is. If they don't know diversity, they wouldn't notice the lack, and, therefore, it would make no sense to note the lack.

I write from the POV of my character. I try to note only what they would note. I think that makes the world real.

Diversity is an element of your setting, which is going to be a key factor underlying the entirety of your story.

What about the weather? It's an integral part of your setting. Does it have to be included?

Some on this forum would say that it makes the world more "real" if you show the characters, for example, bundling up. I say, unless the cold has something to do with the story or you can use a reaction to the weather to reveal something about the character, there is nothing more useless than randomly mentioning the weather. In fact, I'd rather you not mention weather at all than to utilize it poorly, and weather, imo, is a much more fundamental part of the setting than diversity is.

What about money? That's a fundamental portion of the world, much more important than diversity in informing everything that happens for most societies. Would I blink if a story didn't mention money at all? Absolutely not. If the author didn't care about the economic system and didn't write about it, I'd never notice the lack if he wrote through the eyes of a character who realistically didn't notice such.

The point is that I completely reject your assertation that a writer has to account for diversity or anything else to make a world real. To make my world real, I try to show it as real through the eyes of my characters. If it's real to them, it should be real to the reader no matter what is included or left out.

To say any element simply has to be accounted for is, in my eyes, wrongheaded.

I'm not even sure that there is any element that makes things easier to make things real. If a character is born and raised in Hawaii, does he notice how beautiful the weather is? Not really; that's just the way it's always been - less than a 20deg difference between summer and winter. It would make things less real if he were to think, "Wow, it's a nice day that's the same as every other day."

 

[Mindfire]

Sorry, I don't quite understand what you mean?

The post of yours that I was responding to looked like a slippery slope argument. Slippery slope arguments typically go something like, "if we allow/do X, then Y will happen. And if Y happens, then Z will happen! And if Z happens, we'll run out of letters! Where does the madness end?!"

 

[Feo Takahari]

The point is that I completely reject your assertation that a writer has to account for diversity or anything else to make a world real. To make my world real, I try to show it as real through the eyes of my characters. If it's real to them, it should be real to the reader no matter what is included or left out.

So what do you show in terms of details? I'm still not sure I get it.

Actually, have you ever posted anything in the Showcase that you think displays how you use details?

 

[BWFoster78]

So tightness means you can't have a gay person in your story, but you can have . . . actually, what can you have? Can you explain in more detail what you mean by tightness, then? (It doesn't seem like anyone else understands, either.)

Tightness means that everything you have in a story serves the story.

You can have all the gay people you want as long as the story requires gay people. Maybe a hypothetical...

You meet Joe and follow him in his life. Things happen. Action. Conflict. Suspense. Along the way, you throw in that he's gay.

At the end of the story, you realize, "Wow, I never did anything with the whole gay thing. He doesn't have a crush on a guy. There was no conflict with anyone over it. It really didn't inform anything about who he was."

I would evaluate the whole part about him being gay as extraneous and delete it. If you can take something out and it not change the story, then get rid of it. That's what "tight" means to me.

If, on the other hand, you use his being gay as part of the story, then it's fine. He could have a conflict with his mom who fears never having grandkids. He can have a crush on a guy and there can be a question as to whether that other character is gay. Lots of possibilities for tension there.

Let's go back to the beginning. Here's the way that I recall this getting started:

1. Someone said, "Just throw diverse characters into your story. It doesn't harm anything."
2. I made the point, "Yes, it does."
3. I've been trying to explain myself ever since.

 

[Devor]

The point is that I completely reject your assertation that a writer has to account for diversity or anything else to make a world real. To make my world real, I try to show it as real through the eyes of my characters. If it's real to them, it should be real to the reader no matter what is included or left out.

You have picked up the word "accounted" but don't seem to see how it's different.

Your world already has a level of diversity. High or low. It is already an element of your story. White-white-white affects the readers just as much as white-black-hispanic. This means that no matter what your level of diversity is, it's a factor that needs to be accounted for. And a low level of diversity, if it's not properly accounted for, is just as much a distraction as a higher level. Given the realty of the world it's just as unbelievable.

 

[Feo Takahari]

If you can take something out and it not change the story, then get rid of it. That's what "tight" means to me.

But I tried that. I wrote stories where I took out everything that didn't change the story, and over and over, I was told that my stories lacked detail. That they lacked grounding. That it didn't feel like I was creating a complete world. It wasn't until I started adding things just to give a sense of the world that people started to like my worldbuilding.

 

[glutton]

Tightness means that everything you have in a story serves the story.

You can have all the gay people you want as long as the story requires gay people. Maybe a hypothetical...

You meet Joe and follow him in his life. Things happen. Action. Conflict. Suspense. Along the way, you throw in that he's gay.

At the end of the story, you realize, "Wow, I never did anything with the whole gay thing. He doesn't have a crush on a guy. There was no conflict with anyone over it. It really didn't inform anything about who he was."

I would evaluate the whole part about him being gay as extraneous and delete it. If you can take something out and it not change the story, then get rid of it. That's what "tight" means to me.

If, on the other hand, you use his being gay as part of the story, then it's fine. He could have a conflict with his mom who fears never having grandkids. He can have a crush on a guy and there can be a question as to whether that other character is gay. Lots of possibilities for tension there.

Let's go back to the beginning. Here's the way that I recall this getting started:

1. Someone said, "Just throw diverse characters into your story. It doesn't harm anything."
2. I made the point, "Yes, it does."
3. I've been trying to explain myself ever since.

Just wondering... would you have the same qualms about mentioning in passing that a character, say, has long hair, as opposed to them being gay?

 

[Devor]

Just wondering... would you have the same qualms about mentioning in passing that a character, say, has long hair, as opposed to them being gay?

I don't think the sex, race and orientation are really equivalent. Knowing that a person is gay isn't anything like noticing that they have long hair, or is a woman, or is black. So it's at least somewhat different.

 

[Steerpike]

I don't think the sex, race and orientation are really equivalent. Knowing that a person is gay isn't anything like noticing that they have long hair.

At the same time you don't have to make a production out of these characteristics. For the black character in my book, for example, apart from the initial mention, there's really no impact on the story. His race isn't a theme of the story. There are no subplots revolving around it. You could do the same thing with a gay character. To some extent, the idea that if you include a gay character or a black character that character somehow has to exist as social commentary is an indicator that we're not where we need to be in the genre.

 

[Svrtnsse]

The point is that I completely reject your assertation that a writer has to account for diversity or anything else to make a world real. To make my world real, I try to show it as real through the eyes of my characters. If it's real to them, it should be real to the reader no matter what is included or left out.

As the writer you're telling the reader what they need to pay attention to. I'm quite confident you can create a real and believable world without ever getting even close to topics like ethnicity or sexuality - or any other topic you don't feel like including. You just have to have a character that doesn't care for it, doesn't pay attention to it or have better things to focus on ("Why do stupid Laser-Ninja-Dragons of Doom always come for me?").
So yes, you don't have to have a diversity to create a believable world.

But, I think that the larger the world is and the more your character sees of it the more important diversity becomes. If your character travels to strange lands one way of showing this is by letting him notice the differences between his starting point and his endpoint. You could probably avoid it by showing more of his arduous journey and the struggles he goes through, but would that really be relevant to the story if the main point is he's getting to somewhere else?

If, like someone mentioned earlier, you have a story taking place in just a small village, then it's fine if everyone is pretty much the same (except maybe the village fool who's a bit weird, and the blacksmith who's really strong, and the witch who's really scary and old man flemming who's very wise). If you're writing a vast epic taking place over entire continents, you'll have an easier time communicating the scale and scope if you're showing people and places as different in different locations.

Again, obvious exceptions apply (interpret that as you feel like).

 

[Svrtnsse]

At the end of the story, you realize, "Wow, I never did anything with the whole gay thing. He doesn't have a crush on a guy. There was no conflict with anyone over it. It really didn't inform anything about who he was."

I would evaluate the whole part about him being gay as extraneous and delete it. If you can take something out and it not change the story, then get rid of it. That's what "tight" means to me.

Or you could leave it in as a statement along the lines of "okay, he's gay, so what, big deal"

To pull an extreme example - you wouldn't change a straight guy to a gay one because he doesn't get involved with any female in the story.
I can see where you're coming from though. If sexuality isn't important to the story, why bother with it?

 

[Philip Overby]

At the same time you don't have to make a production out of these characteristics. For the black character in my book, for example, apart from the initial mention, there's really no impact on the story. His race isn't a theme of the story. There are no subplots revolving around it. You could do the same thing with a gay character. To some extent, the idea that if you include a gay character or a black character that character somehow has to exist as social commentary is an indicator that we're not where we need to be in the genre.

I look at something like the movie version of I Am Legend. Will Smith is black, but that never plays into the movie in any way. In True Blood Lafayette is gay, but that doesn't really come into play in a romantic way until much later. I think what Steerpike is suggesting is that there doesn't always have to be some deeper meaning why a character is a certain race, gender, sexuality, religion, whatever. Sometimes just those extra details, as Feo mentioned, make the worlds seem more real and representative. Yes, we're reading/writing fantasy and yes, you can create whatever you want. But humans are reading these books. Humans from our world who may appreciate those extra details to distinguish characters.

If I'm to believe that every single character is white, straight, whatever in a story, it may feel like something is missing in some way. Maybe I won't notice it, but maybe I will. I guess it really depends on how good a writer is.

In A Song of Ice and Fire, the cast is primarily white, Anglo-Saxon kind of characters. However, without the other races that appear in the novel, the world might feel a little less interesting.

 

[glutton]

If you're writing a vast epic taking place over entire continents, you'll have an easier time communicating the scale and scope if you're showing people and places as different in different locations.

Again, obvious exceptions apply (interpret that as you feel like).

Continent 1 - The people of my homeland are weak, pale, scared of me. Though I was born here, I sometimes wonder if I would have been better off being born elsewhere.

Continent 2 - The people of this land are dark and fierce to the untrained eye, but I find that their coloration has nothing to do with what they are inside. Like the weak white people of my land, they fear and withdraw from me.

Continent 3 - The people of this land are small and yellow, but I see no difference in their true nature from other humans. Like the weak white and black people of other lands, they fear and withdraw from me.

Continent 4 - The red people of this land are incredibly tall and gaunt, but I see no difference in their true nature from other humans. Like the weak white, black, and yellow people of other lands, they fear and withdraw from me.

Planet 2 - The aliens of this world are green and have no gender, but I see no difference in their true nature from humans. Like the weak white, black, yellow, and red people of my own world, they fear and withdraw from me.

That's equality.

Sorry but I couldn't resist the temptation, XD.