Politically Incorrect! Change it!

[Paul Whybrow]

I was contemplating my WIP this morning, wondering about the balance of characters. My fifth Cornish Detective novel, The Dead Need Nobody, is set in the art colony of Saint Ives, where murder conceals identity theft and forgery.

There are subplots, involving a prostitute who's been paid for her services with three paintings stolen by a gentleman cat burglar. Blundering into the action, are unsophisticated twin brothers, who make a living stealing money from car-parking meters.

This is the first novel I've written without that many minorities. The deputy detective is a Hindu, and one of the murder victims is a Latvian trawlerman. One of the leading detectives is a lesbian, while the murderer suppresses his bisexuality by devoting himself to what he sees as the incorruptible purity of art. Oh, and a support character, a detective constable is a vegetarian!

So, all but one of my characters are white, and most of them are British and straight, which might be a problem for publishers and politically correct readers sniping at things that offend them, as this worrying story shows:

Can You Revise a Book to Make It More Woke?

A couple of things startle me about the events. Firstly, how the hell did an unknown author get offered such a large advance, solely on the basis of a proposal, with no chapters written? I thought that in these times of austerity, such advances were myth. Secondly, why didn't the publisher immediately notice that, potentially, there were huge problems around the political correctness of what the author Keira Drake proposed? She was focused on telling a good story, but an agent and publisher are meant to redirect that gaze with cautious warnings.

Despite stating that the story has been improved by the alterations suggested by sensitivity readers and outraged readers, the author has become a performing robot who's jumped through hoops to please the politically correct. This is never a recipe for good art, of any form.

As I suggested before, your monster is the wrong colour!

The thing is about life, that there's no such occurrence as a perfectly balanced arrangement of the sexes, religions, sexuality, ethnicity in any group of people. Just as with baking a cake, some slices will contain more cherries than others.

Political correctness is often one-sided, incited by well-educated, prosperous, middle-class folk who neglect showing the whole picture. Are there any campaigners for more white people in modern novels written by Indian authors? Have straight people organised protests about there being too few heterosexuals in gay literature? I think not!

If you're telling a story, you use the ingredients to hand.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

A writer can always decide to introduce a new character or element, so long as it is congruent and serves the story. A modern city setting in the western world suggests a diverse tapestry. My sister and I were followed round the market in Tashkent. 1981. The first Thomson tour. Gorbachev and Glasnost, they were fascinated our clothing and by my sister's very long blonde pigtail, and the women even followed us into the loo, such was their fascination at this novelty.

No much diversity there at that time.

Life itself isn't balanced. Stasis is death. Some will sell out, some will decide they care most for the truth of human nature, and the call of the Muse.

 

[Amber]

Eh. How do you know it won't make you a better writer?

You certainly can have white and black and yellow people in improbable locales and time periods, if you want. If you dare. You're a writer and it's your job to make the impossible seem plausible.

My personal objection is I wouldn't want to make light of anyone's experience and nothing is as simple as all that in the United States right now.

 

[Carol Rose]

Hi, everyone. Let's remember to keep the discussion on writing, not politics, please. I know with a topic such as this one that distinction is a fine line, but it's far too easy to push buttons when we cross that line. Thank you so much.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Lionel Shriver has waded back into the debate about political correctness, after offending some writers back in 2016, with a speech about cultural appropriation.

Lionel Shriver says 'politically correct censorship' is damaging fiction

To me, what's weird, contradictory and illogical about political correctness, is that if one accepts that bigotry and prejudice is wrong, and that we're all basically the same under the skin, then why can't we write about one another? Why should it matter, that we're writing about a person with different skin colour, gender, sexuality or religion?

As Shylock said, in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice:

'Doesn’t a Jew eat the same food, get hurt with the same weapons, get sick with the same diseases, get healed by the same medicine, and warm up in summer and cool off in winter just like a Christian? If you prick us with a pin, don’t we bleed? If you tickle us, don’t we laugh? If you poison us, don’t we die? And if you treat us badly, won’t we try to get revenge? If we’re like you in everything else, we’ll resemble you in that respect.'

People are people, and I'm a writer who creates stories about the human condition. That's my agenda: I'm not trying to appropriate anything.

Actually, I've been listening to the devil on my shoulder, trying to come up with a villainous antagonist for my next Cornish Detective novel, that will offend the maximum number of sensitivity readers!

How about, a Black, Jewish lesbian with a wooden leg, who hates and kills all men and straight women, while enjoying drugs, fox-hunting and sex with minors, and who doesn't believe in global warming, gun control or feminism, but favours factory farmed meat, gas-guzzling cars and deporting immigrants!

Offended yet? I'm sure that I've missed something...

Oh yes, and she doesn't read books!

 

[Patricia D]

It seems to me that the characters should make sense in the setting - or if not, there should be a reason why not. My first three books are set in New Orleans, a city with a large African American population. While writing, I pictured one of the important characters as mixed race but, when the first book was finished, realized that did not come through. So, I left him alone and added other African American characters. anything else would be unrealistic.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

The odd one out, the rarity, the stranger is one of the all time great abiding story themes.

This just now, shared via The Bookseller on twitter: Shriver denounces 'politically correct censorship' in literature | The Bookseller

No amount of beta reading could create a writer of the literary or political stature of James Baldwin.

 

[Patricia D]

A writing friend wrote on another forum about the difficulty of writing a voice that is not yours without offending those to whom it belongs. She, like me, is a white, middle class person who enjoys the privileges that go with that status but doesn't want her writing world to be constricted by her personal history. In today's highly charged political environment - certainly in the US - that is a conundrum. One solution is to write hisitoric fiction, or about space aliens, vampires and other monsters, or anthropomorphize animals. Another is to just go ahead and write what you want to write, but do your research and avoid stereotypes. If you take the latter path and your book gets much notice, someone will probably object, but so it goes.

 

[Amber]

A writing friend wrote on another forum about the difficulty of writing a voice that is not yours without offending those to whom it belongs. She, like me, is a white, middle class person who enjoys the privileges that go with that status but doesn't want her writing world to be constricted by her personal history. In today's highly charged political environment - certainly in the US - that is a conundrum.

It really is, isn't it? Someone once told me they thought a story of mine needed more diversity. The character was blonde, mostly because my imagination liked the way blood changed the color of her hair -- not really for any other reason. But she said she was tired of it always being blondes--not blondes who got bashed in the head, I assume--but blondes who we were supposed to care about being bashed in the head, I imagine. I think I still feel bad about it even though I'm sure I didn't do anything wrong.

I tried to explain to her, I don't feel I have the right to write from a first person minority point of view. What do I know? Even having spent time around minorities -- what can I possibly know? I was raised in an upper middle-class very white home and I think it would be presumptuous for me to pretend to understand what it's like to be a minority and then put that on paper. I think something like that, as important as that, needs to be as close to real as possible even though its fiction. It's not okay to do it wrong. I think it would be harmful.

 

[Patricia D]

Amber, I agree with you regarding use of first person if you cannot know what it is like or expect to get it right. It is a fraught path. At the same time, I don't want to write only about people like me. Truth is, I'm pretty boring.

 

[Amber]

Amber, I agree with you regarding use of first person if you cannot know what it is like or expect to get it right. It is a fraught path. At the same time, I don't want to write only about people like me. Truth is, I'm pretty boring.

Yeah. I'm boring too. Funny. So, I guess it's space aliens and vampires for me.