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Separating the Story from the Character from the Author

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I'm still working on Invention 2, but there's been this story rattling around in the back of my mind that I'd like to write. Something a lot more serious than "man fucks a lot of girls and gets them pregnant" (and my readers know I do enjoy that).

This story though would deal with some difficult subjects, like how people perceive race, national origin, class, all the goey icky stuff that makes people upset.

I know this from personal experience, because I once had a character who was pretty awful. They used a racial epithet against another character. Now, I should mention - Character A was a killer, someone who used their power to torture and blackmail people. They were clearly Not A Good Person, and they used a Not Good Word.

But when I had them use this racial epithet, I had several emails that boiled down to "You are a horrible racist person for putting that into your story!"

And I had to think - wait. This character, who was established as Not A Good Person, said a Not Good Thing - and you blame the *author* for being a racist? Is this how Mark Twain felt when he wrote about Huck Finn (not that I'm saying I'm anywhere near Twain's league, it's an example) where Huck uses the n word, reaches the conclusion that "man - this racism stuff is really stupid" but people today get upset because he was using the language of the time which we've (mostly) moved passed.

I've said before I don't write for my readers, or fans, or whatever. I write for myself, and if others enjoy it, glad they did, if they didn't, well - read a story you like.

We'll see how things go. But it's always a consideration when you set out to write something you know will upset some people, and even though you mostly don't care, you'd have to be a sociopath not to care a little about how people feel.

 

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