A good writer needs clarity of vision, 20/20 for the words on the page. Words are powerful things. Consider that a picture may be worth a thousand words, but if the picture is not there then someone can still describe it to you. Readers may never visit Paris, Australia, or the moon in person, but they can travel there through words. Readers trust writers to accurately portray what the reader cannot see directly. Whether fact or fiction, a writer must be in command of the words he or she (or it, for my readers out past the Oort Cloud) sets down, equally aware of what they represent to the written work as a whole and to the reader.
Where am I going with this? Let me wipe the egg off my face and I’ll tell you.
I cannot wrap my head around stereotypes. Oh, sure, I know the meaning of the word, and could describe one or two in conversation, perhaps, but they make no sense to me. How can anyone benefit from making gross generalizations about any group based on its appearance or behavior? I just don’t get it, not in writing nor in real life. This is one of my strengths as a writer. It is also a weakness.
The goal of the Clarion West workshop is to provide us with the opportunity to expand our horizons as writers. Our first week was taken up writing a flash piece assignment a night that would be read aloud by the instructor the next morning and critiqued by the class without revealing the writer’s identity. By the second week, we were ready for “the Clarion West experience” of writing a longer work to be critiqued by the class and the instructor.
Before heading to Seattle, I promised I would challenge myself by trying new subjects, playing with different styles, things like that. Having never successfully written a military science fiction story before, I threw my hat into the ring and pounded one out. Crack military strike unit, tough, capable, fighting in a near future scenario where the tech and political situation were close enough to where we are now that we could see the story from here. I fully expected it to be a rough, crunchy draft. I’m not a military expert, I don’t know squat about weapons or tech, but I had a few informed aces up my sleeve and I managed to crank out a piece that was a challenge to write, gritty and, I hoped, realistic. More than anything else, I wanted to learn from the experience.
One of the characters was a large black man. Who carried a big gun. He had a hyena thunder laugh. And liked to eat brazil nuts. His nickname was slang for brazil nuts. And I used said nickname in the second sentence.
You see where this is going, don’t you? I didn’t. My writer’s vision was fuzzy, and I failed to realize that to some people, a cigar is more than just a cigar.
Critiques are run thusly. Each student has one-and-a-half to two minutes to remark on the story before the instructor speaks his or her peace. The writer is not allowed to respond in any way until all of the critiques are finished. Only then is the writer allowed to comment, ask questions, etc.. If anything else remains to be said, the instructor can allow for a minute or two for cross talk before moving on to the next story. It’s all about the story. Say what you want about the story (other than “it sucks” or “it’s good”), but you are not to direct any comments at the writer as a person.
Two people approached me before class began on my critique day to tell me they didn’t care for the character’s name because of one of the words involved, they thought its presence was much too abrupt, but otherwise liked the story. They wanted to inform me of this beforehand so I wouldn’t be surprised. I thanked them and made notes to that effect in my notebook.
Nine o’clock rolls around and I wait for my turn in the hot seat. The first critiquer immediately remarked on the name, suggesting I change it, and continued to talk about the rest of the story, a generally positive experience. The next four critiques ran the same way, starting with the character’s name and then moving on to the rest of the story. So far so good, even with the concerns that the main character was not sympathetic, and that the nature of the story was brutal. And then one of my classmates took aim with both barrels and opened fire at the story and at me.
Ursula K. Le Guin once said “A confused reader is an antagonistic reader.” and that was certainly true in this case. She was so angry she was crying and could barely speak coherently unless it was to quote the offending characteristics directly from the page. She spoke of being so angry at my stereotypical portrayal of this character that it was all she could do to not come to my room and cuss me out the night before. She was frightened by the thought that anyone could be so thick as to not recognize the stereotype. Half way through her critique, I started to cry.
Mind you, as a writer I fell down on the job. I couldn’t see the effect the traits would have when bundled together, and that put me at odds with at least one reader, but I wasn’t crying because of what she said about the story, I was crying because I had unintentionally hurt her. And because I was angry. She’d taken the commentary off the page and made it personal.
The rest of the session went downhill from there. One classmate found the subject abhorrent. Another objected to the way the characters referred to the enemy. One admitted that his immediate reaction to the nickname had made him so angry that it probably colored the rest of his critique (I appreciated his honesty in that regard). One classmate with a heart condition was so upset by everyone else’s reactions that she started to have chest pains. A pall hung over the room, an uncomfortable dark thing shot through with a lightning of words no one would speak. The few times I could bring myself to look at the others, folks looked away.
The instructor handled matters with a firm, even hand. She briefly discussed the effects of the name and traits, and my reaction. She stated with no ifs, ands, or buts that because of the stresses of the situation I would be allowed to speak and then we would have a thirty minute break without the usual option for crosstalk. I thanked her, spoke briefly about why I chose the traits I did, and left. I was back at the table 30 minutes later; I wasn’t going to give anyone the satisfaction of driving me away. One of my classmates was quick-witted enough to lighten the mood for the next critique with his quirky humor.
Later I sat down with the instructor at my face-to-face and she walked me through exactly what had happened and why. She even spoke of some of the strengths in the story that could not be addressed given the nature of the critique session. The story wasn’t all good, but it wasn’t all bad, either. I came to Clarion West to learn, and that day was a learning experience, and, like life, lessons are not always easy nor comfortable. Over the course of the afternoon, five classmates asked how I was doing, one even telling me he didn’t want me to stop writing.
We’ve heard over and over you get out of the Clarion West experience what you put into it. I’ve thrown myself into the program with the intent of getting everything out of it that I possibly can, which means putting myself and my words on the line. Take this post, for instance. Some of my classmates may read this. I could have sugar-coated it, might even have taken a step back and addressed the issue as a generalized concept rather than directly addressing the incident, or not mention what happened at all. Yet Clarion West is an experience in the totality of the word, warts and all. I’m not ashamed of what I wrote. I can see why it upset people, but I’m not ashamed. I tried something new, took something away from the experience, and I know in the end I will be better for it.
What’s that? What’s my next story about?
Closeted Nazi fluffy bunnies with an enema fetish.
You went to learn, and are learning – also teaching at the same time: the depths to which your classmates and you have opened yourselves to each other and each others’ works bespeaks a bravery I only dimly wish I shared, as I must admit I’d be hiding behind my distant remove of “Words are only a map of the *map* of the territory, certainly not the territory themselves”, attempting to duck the idea that words ARE a territory *unto* themselves.
At bottom, part of being adults means owning responsibility for how we choose to respond or react to what we are presented with: inasmuch as you are using all of the above to achieve your goal of becoming a better writer, it is good. I would ask that you not take anything said so deeply as to let it make you doubt or reduce your worth and value as a person in your own eyes… I don’t have to remind *you*, the deeper you swim, the more the pressure affects things…
If you aren’t offending somebody with your work, you probably aren’t doing your job as a writer. If it is so bland that nobody could possibly object to it, then why bother?
Steve
There is a difference between setting out to write a specific message, to breathe life into a certain idea, whether it is one held by the writer or one brought to life by a character. It’s quite another thing for a writer to not recognize what is being set down on a page and how such matters may affect a reader’s perceptions.
I don’t pull punches unless I want to distract you from the claws popped on my other hand when I swing at you in earnest. A large part of what I’m learning here is to take responsibility for what I write, not in the sense that it must be PC, but in that I must be aware of the impact of every. single. word. I. set. to. paper. Honing that awareness is an important part of the writing craft, it is the fine line between a good writer and a great writer.
Did certain words and turns of phrase help the story? Not all of them. Was the affect intentional? That depends.
The words and voice I established as part of the characters (the characters refering to the enemy by a racial epitath; remarking in an off-handed manner that civilian losses in combat are expected and nothing more than collateral damage) are most certainly intentional. They are the *character*, part of the *character’s* worldview. Like the character, hate the character, that’s for the reader to decide for themselves. My job as a writer is to make certain the character is believable and consistent.
The words I used to establish the setting, the voice of the *writer* rather than the *character*, were not intentional and did not help the story. In fact, they actively worked against the story by establishing an immediate hostility between writer and reader. I was not aware of the posibility of this, and I should have been. The real victim in this whole affair isn’t my ego, or even the sensibilities of my classmates; it is the story. I did not have the necessary 20/20 to see what was going on. I was not in command of every word and image set down in the story, and the story suffered because of it.
I have already corrected two of the points of the *writer’s* voice that do not serve the story, just as I will address issues concerning tech when I have a chance for an in depth edit. The last point of contention is in and from the *character* and stays. What matters most is the story. It’s my story to tell, and I want to do it right.
…and *that*, dear lady, that deep single pointed focus, is what leads me to know you’ll get there.
HUGS!
Hey, hey, HEY! *NO* claws!
lol.
Yep, that sounds like it was a painful lesson. The best thing I can say now is that you are taking to heart, without knowing it, a favorite motto of Michael’s: Fail Faster! By which you can probably guess that he means, don’t be afraid to make mistakes, make them with gusto, and keep your eyes open so that you can learn from them and fail in a new way next time. So, Congrats on that.
Hi Sandra,
You’ve probably been over this ground with other people, but it sounds like the issue with the story–even just from your very brief description–can’t really be dismissed by saying that other people “overinterpret” things, as seems to be suggested by your comment that “some people don’t realize when cigars are just cigars” note.
Putting aside epithets, the idea of a black man with a hyena laugh–presented non-ironically, or without an acknowledgement of the history of that kind of phrasing–is stereotyped writing. It’s equating the people of the continent of Africa with its animals, a line of imagery that has a venerable history in the annals of oppression, tracing back its use to attempts to portray black people as being less like humans than they are like lions, hyenas, and so on.
http://www.granta.com/Magazine/92/How-to-Write-about-Africa/Page-1
I don’t know if it was your intent or not, but there are a few points in this article where it seems like you’re saying that not only did you not intend the character to portray a racist stereotype (which I totally believe! I completely believe your intentions were good!), but also that you weren’t really drawing on the racist stereotype.
That’s kind of hard to believe. You may not have been doing it consciously, but your brief description of the character is full of so many stereotyped pings that it seems very likely that you were drawing on things that buzz in the background culture that you weren’t even aware of.
I think that happens to all of us as writers, and the solution is definitely to be aware of cliches, and wary of them! And that includes cliches that you’ve absorbed without being aware of them.
What I’m trying to say is, it’s probably not just a cigar-like coincidence that this cliche happened in this way. Either that or we’ve got an awful lot of coincidences in the history of fiction, with people all just randomly aggregating traits together for no apparent reason. When these traits are common stereotypes evoked by media, occam’s razor suggests the simpler principle of unconscious bias stemming from cultural assumptions.
I don’t think it’s helpful to blame people for being angry, or for trying to point out the problems in the story. Maybe you weren’t trying to blame them. But that’s the way it comes off when you say that people are trying to “drive you away” from the critique table.
Do things sometimes get more heated in critique discussions than they might be in an ideal world? Absolutely. It sucks that you and your classmate were both so upset that you cried, and also of course it’s really awful that your other classmate got heart palpitations, and I’m not trying to minimize any of that.
At the same time, it’s not like people pointing out the problems are being irrational, or somehow searching for ways to be offended. When a story flags several of the tropes in the satirical “how to write about africa” article, then readers are reacting rationally when they see evidence there of unconscious bias. They aren’t over-reading and searching for reasons to cast cigars as penises when the cigars are just cigars.
They probably weren’t trying to drive you away from the table either.
*I’m* certainly not trying to drive you away from the fiction table, in case that’s how it feels. There are just a few edges and corners in this article that I wanted to respond to, hopefully in a friendly spirit. I probably wouldn’t bother to respond, except that as PodCastle’s editor, I always thought you had potential, so I actually have an interest in seeing you succeed.
Anyway, good luck with your writing and your future endeavors.
@Rachel: Thank you for stopping by!
The issue of stereotypes, being able to recognize them, and the writer’s obligation to the reader, was what I wanted to address and I appreciate your input. This has been a difficult matter for me because stereotypes don’t make sense to me, nope, never will, and it would be too easy to leave it at that and move on. I can’t do that. I can’t fall back on my difficulty recognizing and processing social cues and information. I won’t be standing behind the reader to explain that in my eyes the color of a person’s skin has no effect on a person’s choice of weapon, or that hyenas are strong enough to drive lions off the kill and that their barks and calls can be heard from miles away. To become the writer I know I can be demands that I take what was written apart piece by piece, word by word, and learn from the experience so it won’t happen again.
Your insights are informative, well stated, and well received. They’d be received better with chocolate, most everything goes better with chocolate, but we’re all good.
Ditto everything Rachel said, and I wanted to add that this is a great opportunity to really _listen_ to what your peers are telling you. If you know this is a weakness for you as a writer, then you can work on it.
Even if you feel that you “don’t get stereotypes,” they are insidious and sneak into things because society reinforces them. They’re in your head, even if you consciously reject them. That’s why all of us have to pay attention and work hard to keep stereotypes out of our work.
Maybe, after CW, it would be worth it to do a lot of reading and learn about these issues. I don’t have a good recommendation off the top of my head, but I’m sure you can find plenty of information.
Sandra,
The best way to use race or other ethnicity specific words, descriptions etc, is to have another character of the same population type (rather than the narrative voice) say it. If you dont want to insert a character just for the sake of this safety device, then have the narrator remember a non-diegetic past conversation with such a source. Eg: Disabled people can use the r-word among themselves, but will react negatively if a normal person uses it against them. But in a story, a normal person can say that s/he heard two such people use it among themselves.
I believe self-/non-self discrimination is at the core of human psyche, right down to the genetic level. So authors have to be very very sensitive to this issue.
Good luck with your authorial journey.
@Vylar: Thank you for taking the time to stop by. I’m already looking into resources for after CW and have spent some time talking to by classmates, as well as this week’s instructor, about the matter. Oh, no! Not another learning experience!
@radiojoyce: Thank you! Many of those in the special needs community tend to refer to those folks as having normal syndrome, so it’s all good.
This was a tricky and emotion-fraught situation, but it’s also a session in which you and the rest of the class learned a lot. It’s a moment that you’ll come back to more than once in thinking and writing, and one that you’ll continue to learn from. Part of that processing is sorting out the emotional part from the logical part, because the emotional part and our own defenses to it can often initially (and sometimes for a long time) get in the way.
Having read the story, I thought that apart from the racial issues, it was a powerful and well-constructed piece. I look forward to seeing the rewrite appear.
@Cat: Thanks. I’m playing with those responses, teasing them out, wondering which is shadow and which is substance. The trick is realizing that shadow and substance are one in the same no matter where you shine the light. And thanks for the kudos! Coming from you, that is quite a compliment.
[...] Stereotypical Behavior – Oh my. I don’t know where to begin on this one. Although, it did remind me of this blog post by David Mills about the versatility of the n-word. [...]
Hi Sandra,
I think something of this nature happens in every Clarion and Clarion West class at least once, and it’s both painful and an opportunity to learn. As Vylar said, take this opportunity to really listen to what your classmates are telling you. During my class, some found it easy to dismiss the student who most vocally and personally objected to the stereotypes presented in a story simply because they didn’t like her. Instead of looking at the problem apart from how she made them feel, they tied their decision about the issue to their dislike of her, which is definitely the wrong way to go about it.
When you mentioned that you were upset because your story hurt your fellow classmate I felt right there that you’re already halfway toward doing better in the future. Though you may not understand stereotypes, for those of us affected by them, they are not just bothersome, they are hurtful. Sometimes deeply so. When you keep that in mind, it’s easier to understand why working against them should be a big priority (in life, not just in fiction).
Anyway, Painful Lessons Are Painful, but you have the benefit of great instructors this year and it sounds like you have some good classmates. And I know Leslie and Neile are two of the most awesomest people anywhere and are very supportive.
Sandra
It’s things like this that make me proud to be able to call you friend.
A lot of people would have given up after this, and you didn’t. Not only that, you are now aware of something, something you’d have never learned any other way.
I hope that you figure out how to make your characters real without stereotyping. It’s not as easy as one would like to think. But I know you are up to the challenge.
I agree w/ K.T. Bradford — from what I can tell it _does_ seem to happen every year. I won’t try to deconstruct your story based only on your summary of the story, but I will say that now, two years after the fact, I wish that I would have responded differently to our own ‘intervention stories.’
Thinking back, what really needed to be said was: “This character is a caricature, and isn’t believable, and so your story seems kind of stupid’ and that would have sufficed; instead, we rounded up a posse for some street justice. I’m annoyed at the part I played in that affair. Annoyed at how easy I was able to slip into the ‘offended and sanctimonious’ role.
Anyway, keep your head up. Learn what lesson there is to learn. If you need to be better, or more sensitive, then by all means be better and more sensitive. But also keep in mind that just because you piss somebody off doesn’t make you wrong.