Do Novelists Have to Be Politically Correct?

[Paul Whybrow]

This article popped up on the Write Conversation blog, that I subscribe to:

http://thewriteconversation.blogspo...TheWriteConversation+(The+Write+Conversation)

The novelist's subject matter is certainly controversial, and it set me thinking about some of the problems that I'm facing with my current WIP.

Briefly, the plot includes a murder victim at the location of a nudist colony on a Cornish beach, used by mainly gay men. The likely suspect is also involved in drug smuggling and people trafficking. I have my own opinions on these subjects, but none of them are bigoted. My fictional characters however, definitely display hostility towards gays and illegal immigrants. People who are ill-educated or politically biased aren't likely to use politically correct language.

I wrote a short sentence recently, in the way that my right wing, hardline retired detective talks, having him say something about the gay nudists in a dismissive and inflammatory way. It's certainly how he would speak, but it's not how I think. It rings true, but has the potential to taint me—not that I'm that bothered, as I'm bulletproof!

All the same, it raises some interesting problems. We can't make all of our characters politically correct, otherwise the narrative will be bland, safe and boring. An out and out baddy can go berserk, saying and doing what he likes, but what about more ordinary people who casually express opinions that might stray from what is acceptable?

Have any Colonists faced similar problems?

 

[NickP]

I've come across this. The problem is even more tricky when you have a, shall we say, sophisticated use of point of view.

On Absoute Write I put a short piece up for reaction (you might have to join/log in to read)
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?290828-The-Gentlemen-of-Abaddon-Club-(610-words)

In it we have:

The boy-man was called Peter and he drank rose wine and chanted poetry and little songs, while the Oriental creature and the other man, introduced as the Professor, with his high domed forehead and his thoughtful eyes...
And it was true that the discourse took wing. These men, with their eyes dark, or burning, or curious or afire, they pontificated upon the nature of things, abstract things that at last made sense to Outiz...the nature of good and evil and how, when you thought about it, there was no such thing as the Greater Good, and that normal ideas of morality were fatally flawed, the product of weak thinking and weak minds...how the nature of growing up and becoming a man meant not giving up your dreams, unless you were a weak milksop, but holding on to them and bending reality and the very nature of things until reality fitted your dreams...so much better than fitting your dreams to the feeble shape of the Way Things Were.

Outiz felt inspired. He was in the company of great men talking about important things. “The fact is,” he announced, having not spoken for a while. “We can do anything we like.”

“More than that,” cried Lord Chandler. “We should! We should do those things we like and not those things we don’t!”

That seemed very wise indeed.

Somebody, it was Oriental Grotesque who really was proving to be a most erudite speaker, mentioned Rabelais and the boy-man Peter spoke of Magic and how what was the point of it if you use it just to make your crops grow or to give your neighbour’s cow the clap?

“Small dreams, weak nerves,” he sung, “You get what you deserve.”

I had this comment:

"I think it's odd that you use descriptions such as 'oriental creature' and 'oriental grotesque.'"

He later said:

"Respectfully, I think this is the height of insensitivity. Try to imagine how someone else would feel. I'm mortified how little everyone who has replied seems to care. I'm not trying to make a choice for the writer or encourage anything resembling censorship. This isn't the 19th or early 20th century, it is problematic in the 21st to refer to Asian peoples as 'grotesque creatures' whatever the setting of your story. There are hundreds of ways you can show the attitudes of the time without slurring anyone."

I'm not convinced I should care, but he (or she) had the hump and it was obviously a concern.

 

[Jennifer Stone]

Imo, points of view held by our characters are a matter of context; what era is the story set in? What type of society did they grow up in? How did people actually behave in that time?

You wouldn't expect a character who, for instance, was an 80's punk/skinhead to sip tea and arrange flowers with the local vicar. Not to say that couldn't happen, not to be stereotypical, but certain behaviour is expected from certain people.

You could always show the characters trying to change and embrace new ways of thinking, if you were worried. Or get a dressing down from more diverse thinking colleagues.

 

[Carol Rose]

IMHO, attempting to please absolutely everyone in any piece of writing is the surest and quickest way to kill creativity. It's all a matter of context. Like @Jennifer Stone alluded to, if a character behaves, speaks, etc. in a way that is appropriate for the time and place of the story, that's what readers would expect from that character. To write the character any other way would read odd to most people.

Am I saying you should feel free to have your characters shouting racial or ethnic slurs all over the place for no good reason? Of course not. PC behavior/speech is always going to be in the backs of our minds as we write. But I know for myself, anyway, to place that kind of a worry at the forefront - Oh dear… will this offend anyone in the world, somewhere??? - would kill my muse stone cold dead.

 

[NickP]

But I know for myself, anyway, to place that kind of a worry at the forefront - Oh dear… will this offend anyone in the world, somewhere??? - would kill my muse stone cold dead.

tee hee
You'd be better off taking the opposite approach...how can I offend as many people as possible as quickly as possible?

 

[Carol Rose]

tee hee
You'd be better off taking the opposite approach...how can I offend as many people as possible as quickly as possible?

Not in what I write. I'd have no readers.

 

[NickP]

You might have more, or different readers.

I read a Mills & Boon once where the hero got the heroine off drugs using imprisonment & cold turkey. I wondered about how it got through the editors!

 

[Nicole Wilson]

IMHO, attempting to please absolutely everyone in any piece of writing is the surest and quickest way to kill creativity. It's all a matter of context. Like @Jennifer Stone alluded to, if a character behaves, speaks, etc. in a way that is appropriate for the time and place of the story, that's what readers would expect from that character. To write the character any other way would read odd to most people.

Am I saying you should feel free to have your characters shouting racial or ethnic slurs all over the place for no good reason? Of course not. PC behavior/speech is always going to be in the backs of our minds as we write. But I know for myself, anyway, to place that kind of a worry at the forefront - Oh dear… will this offend anyone in the world, somewhere??? - would kill my muse stone cold dead.

Yup. Your characters don't have to be PC, but it is good to keep in mind that if the non-PCness (I'm making that a word now) isn't shut down quickly by another character, then you will have a harder time trying to sell it to someone. I gave advice to a friend of mine recently who was writing a piece about racial tensions in the US in the 50s or 60s, and she wanted to use the n-word because it was time appropriate, which she's right, people used that language back then. However, I almost guarantee it will be a hundred times harder to find an agent for it and they'll probably suggest she take it out anyway because that word is just not used anymore.

 

[Carol Rose]

You might have more, or different readers.

I read a Mills & Boon once where the hero got the heroine off drugs using imprisonment & cold turkey. I wondered about how it got through the editors!

It also has to do with the brand of that particular author. I've written enough books now that readers know what to expect from me, and of course I know my own comfort levels where the writing is concerned. There aren't many taboos left in erotic romance, but there are some things I simply don't care to write. There are some lines I will not cross because of my own personal feelings on the subject.

 

[Nicole Wilson]

You might have more, or different readers.

I read a Mills & Boon once where the hero got the heroine off drugs using imprisonment & cold turkey. I wondered about how it got through the editors!

To add to what Carol said, this also depends on the story and the hero they've created. I could easily see this in a dark thriller/mystery with a super screwed up hero. The questionable tactics could be that hero's character.

 

[NickP]

It's interesting how a writer will let their beliefs and culture into their storytelling.

Take Revenge. A popular enough story tent pole but there is an assumption that, no matter how deserving the rat is of being killed, a "hero" seeking revenge risks being eaten up by the hate and the quest itself. But where does this come from?

Same with Jealousy. Othello and Iago set the tone for what we think about sexual jealously. Not hard to come up with a story that combines Revenge AND sexual jealousy so that the protagonist either "lets it go" or becomes a monster. These things are in our story DNA. Do they come from stories or do stories warn us about these effects? Old fairy tales had plenty of revenge built in!

I think we need to be aware of our assumptions with not just language but also our use of stereotypes - all pimps don't have to be black with gold chains and teeth and southern US isn't full of Southern Gothic rednecks or pig-ignorant lawmen. If we use them are we just lazy, or insulting too? And what if we then subvert expectations? Does that excuse the use of the stereotype in the first place?

I think fear is our enemy and fear of giving offence isn't the same as awareness of our own assumptions.

 

[NickP]

It also has to do with the brand of that particular author. I've written enough books now that readers know what to expect from me, and of course I know my own comfort levels where the writing is concerned. There aren't many taboos left in erotic romance, but there are some things I simply don't care to write. There are some lines I will not cross because of my own personal feelings on the subject.

That's true. We all know what we expect from our favourite authors or characters (see many other threads). Would we really want Sherlock Holmes to weep or rage about injustice?

 

[Nicole Wilson]

It's interesting how a writer will let their beliefs and culture into their storytelling.

Take Revenge. A popular enough story tent pole but there is an assumption that, no matter how deserving the rat is of being killed, a "hero" seeking revenge risks being eaten up by the hate and the quest itself. But where does this come from?

Same with Jealousy. Othello and Iago set the tone for what we think about sexual jealously. Not hard to come up with a story that combines Revenge AND sexual jealousy so that the protagonist either "lets it go" or becomes a monster. These things are in our story DNA. Do they come from stories or do stories warn us about these effects? Old fairy tales had plenty of revenge built in!

I think we need to be aware of our assumptions with not just language but also our use of stereotypes - all pimps don't have to be black with gold chains and teeth and southern US isn't full of Southern Gothic rednecks or pig-ignorant lawmen. If we use them are we just lazy, or insulting too? And what if we then subvert expectations? Does that excuse the use of the stereotype in the first place?

I think fear is our enemy and fear of giving offence isn't the same as awareness of our own assumptions.

Well the three motives for murder (and most crimes underneath that) are revenge, love, and greed. Every other motive falls into one of these three categories. So it makes sense that most stories would follow a pattern because (most of the time) we also have to show that those *aren't* acceptable. There are a limited number of stories; it's the author's job to come up with an interesting way to tell it.

 

[NickP]

hmm
"...three motives for murder (and most crimes underneath that) are revenge, love, and greed. Every other motive falls into one of these three categories."

Does 'love' include sex and lust? And 'greed' does that cover being hungry, broke and/or desperate? What about boredom, pride, religious fervour, shame, "going postal", covering up, bullying, race hate etc etc?

 

[Nicole Wilson]

hmm
"...three motives for murder (and most crimes underneath that) are revenge, love, and greed. Every other motive falls into one of these three categories."

Does 'love' include sex and lust? And 'greed' does that cover being hungry, broke and/or desperate? What about boredom, pride, religious fervour, shame, "going postal", covering up, bullying, race hate etc etc?

Yes, love would include sex and lust. I'm not sure where the desperate ones would fit in; I was repeating what I'd always been told. I think a lot of the ones you listed after could fit in to greed or revenge, but obviously I don't have all the answers.

 

[NickP]

Well somebody once told me that all motivation is about procreation or survival. Certainly you can make the argument!

 

[Stephen Drake]

Imo, authors are not their characters. If you have a 'racist' character does that make you a racist? 'PC' is just a tool; a way of controlling the language of the debate to force others to have the 'pc' opinion or to shut down dissent. It removes a lot of the passion from debates and gives the person loosing the debate on the facts, a fall-back position ("if you don't support the President in all matters then you're a racist") and usually has nothing to do with the topic being debated. Add to that the sudden upsurge of the term 'micro-aggression' and the 'PC' person has won all arguments. They don't win the debate through facts, they win through shutting down the opposition because the opponents fear the 'PC' terms that are sure to come. If I ever read a book that was completely 'pc', I think it would about as exciting as watching grass grow and paint dry at the same time. It wouldn't provoke any feelings or thoughts and thus would make reading it pointless (which is possibly the point of being 'pc'). How boring would a 'pc' book on being 'pc' be?

Freedom of speech doesn't automatically mean 'freedom from offense'.

Imo, authors are to provoke feelings in others and provoke some thoughts about the subject. I'd always thought being an 'author' was a dangerous profession, especially for those seeking to control the 'masses'. Yes, we run the risk of not being published or being censored. Historically, authors have always been the dissenters and, for me, that is a good thing.

 

[Nicole Wilson]

hmm
"...three motives for murder (and most crimes underneath that) are revenge, love, and greed. Every other motive falls into one of these three categories."

Does 'love' include sex and lust? And 'greed' does that cover being hungry, broke and/or desperate? What about boredom, pride, religious fervour, shame, "going postal", covering up, bullying, race hate etc etc?

You know, in thinking about it, the desperation ones could be boiled down to love (either love of self or love of others). And I think almost all of your other examples could fall into greed or revenge (for example, hate crimes could be revenge at the other race/religion/etc for being who they are.) Granted, these are very general, but I think they could still work. My opinion.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Yup. Your characters don't have to be PC, but it is good to keep in mind that if the non-PCness (I'm making that a word now) isn't shut down quickly by another character, then you will have a harder time trying to sell it to someone. I gave advice to a friend of mine recently who was writing a piece about racial tensions in the US in the 50s or 60s, and she wanted to use the n-word because it was time appropriate, which she's right, people used that language back then. However, I almost guarantee it will be a hundred times harder to find an agent for it and they'll probably suggest she take it out anyway because that word is just not used anymore.

I almost transgressed with the n-word, entirely by mistake and owing to the B and N keys being next to one another. I thought that I'd typed "we're going to need a bigger tool to get this job done...." It was only after twenty read throughs, editing the short story, that I noticed my error. Whoops!

 

[Paul Whybrow]

hmm
"...three motives for murder (and most crimes underneath that) are revenge, love, and greed. Every other motive falls into one of these three categories."

Does 'love' include sex and lust? And 'greed' does that cover being hungry, broke and/or desperate? What about boredom, pride, religious fervour, shame, "going postal", covering up, bullying, race hate etc etc?

P.D. James stated in her novel The Murder Room that :

All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.

But where does madness fit in? Victims are murdered by people with unbalanced minds every day.

 

[Jay Aitch]

Imo, points of view held by our characters are a matter of context; what era is the story set in? What type of society did they grow up in? How did people actually behave in that time?

You wouldn't expect a character who, for instance, was an 80's punk/skinhead to sip tea and arrange flowers with the local vicar. Not to say that couldn't happen, not to be stereotypical, but certain behaviour is expected from certain people.

You could always show the characters trying to change and embrace new ways of thinking, if you were worried. Or get a dressing down from more diverse thinking colleagues.

Jennifer, I agree with much of what you have said. But I also know of tea-drinking punks, and (non-related) grandma-loving heavy metal legends ... and they are by far the most interesting people.

I digress. It is, I believe in the ability of the reader to acknowledge the depiction of antisocial behaviour and attitudes for story's sake without assuming that such thinking is actually representative of the author.

Of course this does happen, and when characters become mouthpieces for a writer's views, both positive and negative, I think it becomes apparent quite quickly. It is ultimately poor writing.

 

[Jay Aitch]

You might have more, or different readers.

I read a Mills & Boon once where the hero got the heroine off drugs using imprisonment & cold turkey. I wondered about how it got through the editors!

Presumably the ends justify the means?

 

[Carol Rose]

Imo, authors are not their characters. If you have a 'racist' character does that make you a racist? 'PC' is just a tool; a way of controlling the language of the debate to force others to have the 'pc' opinion or to shut down dissent. It removes a lot of the passion from debates and gives the person loosing the debate on the facts, a fall-back position ("if you don't support the President in all matters then you're a racist") and usually has nothing to do with the topic being debated. Add to that the sudden upsurge of the term 'micro-aggression' and the 'PC' person has won all arguments. They don't win the debate through facts, they win through shutting down the opposition because the opponents fear the 'PC' terms that are sure to come. If I ever read a book that was completely 'pc', I think it would about as exciting as watching grass grow and paint dry at the same time. It wouldn't provoke any feelings or thoughts and thus would make reading it pointless (which is possibly the point of being 'pc'). How boring would a 'pc' book on being 'pc' be?

Freedom of speech doesn't automatically mean 'freedom from offense'.

Imo, authors are to provoke feelings in others and provoke some thoughts about the subject. I'd always thought being an 'author' was a dangerous profession, especially for those seeking to control the 'masses'. Yes, we run the risk of not being published or being censored. Historically, authors have always been the dissenters and, for me, that is a good thing.

AMEN

 

[Nicole Wilson]

P.D. James stated in her novel The Murder Room that :

All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.

But where does madness fit in? Victims are murdered by people with unbalanced minds every day.

True, but they usually have a reason for it. They think someone wronged them, someone owes them, someone took away the person who loved them, etc.

 

[Jason Byrne]

P.D. James stated in her novel The Murder Room that :

All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.

But where does madness fit in? Victims are murdered by people with unbalanced minds every day.

Madness killings fit into these archetypes as well! Think of the stalker-murder, who believes his object belongs only to him — to be enjoyed, toyed with, and killed for his pleasure, or for the crime of having interest in someone other than himself (love/lust).
Think of the paranoid schizophrenic, who believes everyone is conspiring against him, planning to kill him, so he kills them before they can all get the drop on him (loathing).

 

[Jason Byrne]

I almost transgressed with the n-word, entirely by mistake and owing to the B and N keys being next to one another. I thought that I'd typed "we're going to need a bigger tool to get this job done...." It was only after twenty read throughs, editing the short story, that I noticed my error. Whoops!

This may come as a surprise to some of you... but I am oftentimes not a politically-correct person.

Gonna let that settle. Sorry for the startle.

In those obscenely-long books I wrote, where I invented languages, wrote songs in invented languages, made up a religion and wrote a bible... you will recall I also wrote a subset dictionary of curses, like the Russian Mat. I drew up a list of dozens of swears (and actually felt very dirty by the end), and made like five or six different regional variances for each one. Included were racial slurs for all of the different fantasy races of the world — the equivalent of THE N-WORD for High Elves, Orcs, Half-Breeds, etc, and the same High Elf might be slurred slightly differently in the Deep South as the distant North, with the isolation of the city-states and the divergence of regional slang.

I actually had an Orc throw a racial slur at a High Elf ("good morning, gorroki-hova," or some such), and the High Elf said these words:
"Don't you call me that! That is our word!"

I damn-ner pissed me-self!

 

[Karen Gray]

I kinda think all the PC nonsense is just that - nonsense. As long as you don't set out to offend people. At the end of the day to have no characters that were non-PC, then the story would suffer. People want to read something they can relate to and everyone knows the crazy cat lady, or the child hating school janny, or the womanising boss, or the attention seeking slut, or the accidently racist grandmother. All these characters have different stories behind them that shaped who they are. I think it would be an injustice indeed to omit such characters.

And I have to say, I'm sick to death of how stupid being PC has become. "Baa baa rainbow sheep"? WTAF? It's a black sheep. BLACK not friggin rainbow coloured! Infact in my opinion having children sing rainbow sheep instead of black sheep is an insult to their intelligence.

That song signals everything that is wrong with the world today. I knew a guy who was ordered by the council to remove the Scotland flag from his garden because it offended an Indian family (who by the way had an Indian flag flying in their garden) We live in SCOTLAND! If our flag offends you then go live somewhere else and let a poor Scottish or Syrian or another family from who knows where into a home that they will appreciate.

From what I just said you may think I'm racist or at the very least unreasonable, but the reality is far from that. I have several Indian friends, infact I am friendly with several people of several cultures around the world as I am sure you all are too. And this is the issue. Just because I say that that an Indian family were unreasonable, doesn't mean I think all Indian families are. The people that cause the problems are the ones that cause anger and argument without knowing what the hell they are actually talking about. You see it all the time in a hundred million different ways. Now does that make those people PC for saying that someone singled out a specific race and offended them? Or does that make the ones shouting the loudest the most non-PC of the bunch? Hmmmmm. Perhaps worth a serious thought me thinks.

Slight tangent there but the logic is sound and I believe that it illustrates my point anyway. Without non-PC characters, our work wouldn't feel real and would likely be un-relatable and as such may end up unread.

 

[Richard Sutton]

Paul, I had exactly the same experience with my book Back to Santa Fe. I had a hard-bitten cop investigating a really puzzling case involving a transsexual potential suspect. He wanted to push her buttons to get an emotional outburst, which I've always thought was a normal police S.O.P. with a resistant interviewee, but I had several readers com-plain that the character wouldn't treat a woman that way. Oh well... I left it in. You win a few, you lose many more...

 

[Fran Connor]

This may come as a surprise to some of you... but I am oftentimes not a politically-correct person.

Gonna let that settle. Sorry for the startle.

In those obscenely-long books I wrote, where I invented languages, wrote songs in invented languages, made up a religion and wrote a bible... you will recall I also wrote a subset dictionary of curses, like the Russian Mat. I drew up a list of dozens of swears (and actually felt very dirty by the end), and made like five or six different regional variances for each one. Included were racial slurs for all of the different fantasy races of the world — the equivalent of THE N-WORD for High Elves, Orcs, Half-Breeds, etc, and the same High Elf might be slurred slightly differently in the Deep South as the distant North, with the isolation of the city-states and the divergence of regional slang.

I actually had an Orc throw a racial slur at a High Elf ("good morning, gorroki-hova," or some such), and the High Elf said these words:
"Don't you call me that! That is our word!"

I damn-ner pissed me-self!

 

[Fran Connor]

Sorry about the previous entry from me. I don't know what I did but I pressed a button and Jason's post ended up with my name on it. I thought I'd just pressed the like button. I'm going to have to concentrate on what I am doing here!