'Too much' diversity?

"... and as this thread rounds the infamous bend to Page 9, it's losing its traction and rear ends are fishtailing more than Un Poisson qui s'appelle Wanda. Terry, I don't know about you, but I think we're in for a pile-up as big as last year's. What do you think?"

"Well, Ted, I hate to be the one to constantly nay-say that turn to Page 9, but history cannot be ignored. We'll have our eyes on this one and I'm sure it's going to be a bumper-crashing, door-trashing, driver-smashing spray of shattered glass and plastic. Should be phenomenal for those who tune in just for the ambulance scenes. Back to you, Ted."

"Thank's, Terry. Now, over in our inflammatory word as a metaphor event, things seem to have died down a bit..."

 

No, but I did write a romance where roughly 70% of the book has nothing to do with romance at all, and instead follows a fictional cooking competition in TONS of detail. I've had a couple negative reviews here and there, but by and large the feedback I have gotten has been positive. I've sold a fair number of books (over 500 in 6 months according to my last royalty statement, and I also garnered a few awards for it. So obviously there are some readers out there who really enjoy books with excessively irrelevant detail - Under the Knife is filled to the brim with passages that are completely irrelevant to the romance plot (or sub-plot, as it may be) and serve only a pure food porn.

 

But you're throwing in the value judgments again, with "pointlessly". I mean, no, of course not, if the car chases and gunfire are pointless, nobody wants them. But romantic suspense is a big sub-genre of romance, and there are plenty of car chases and gunfire in romantic suspense novels. They just aren't pointless car chases and gunfire, at least to their authors.

 

I think the distinction you all are glossing over is whether or not the story necessitates the scenes that it has. A novel can be any mixture of genre and in any balance of this mix. What is important is that every scene plays a valuable role in the overarching theme/character arc/plot. If there is a scene (in a romance for example) that is a gun blazing car chase, then that's cool! As long as it is important and informs (or is informed by) the rest of the narrative. Whether or not a scene is pointless is not determined by the genre it is, but rather how it fits within the entirety of the narrative it is in.

 

"All"?

No.

Edited to add: I'm not at all disagreeing with your point. I'm disagreeing with the premise that your point wasn't already apparent to me, or for that matter most of the people in this discussion.

 

Yeah, I don't think anyone's glossing over that at all; I think the primary disagreement (which is still completely baffling me tbqh) is whether certain scenes or subplots inherently add value to a story, or are distractions / filler / derailing.

Which frankly still has nothing to do with the op, because the inclusion of diversity full stop doesn't imply focus on diversity as a subplot or theme, but ... well, I can only say it about a dozen times before I'm tired and/or bored.

 

I did not flee
I was just unable to find a way to bring this thread back to where I'd originally started and I found out most of what I wanted to find out by that time anyway.
Again, if anyone is interested in what happens in my stories they are welcome to pm, I just don't want to write a mahusive post with dodgy internet.
Plus I don't think everyone here would be interested.

 

Replying to OP's original post, not the nine pages of discussion.

Adding to this...

LGBT people tend to gravitate towards each other. Every single one of my friends are minorities in some way. We have one gay guy, one gay drag queen, one pansexual guy, one bisexual polyamorous transgender person, and a demisexual atheist. We only have one "normal" straight couple, and they're a Pagan and a Christian.

I only become friends with people if we have things in common. And when I meet another queer person, they automatically have something in common with me: they're queer. And because we're queer, we often have similar opinions and life experiences. They don't treat me weirdly once they find out I'm into men and women, which is a big plus. What I'm trying to say is, I'm more likely to become friends with a queer person.

And it's true that minorities are minority, but there are a lot of different ways to be a minority. It might sound counter-intuitive, but statistically speaking, most people are some kind of minority in some way, whether it's race, sexual orientation, gender identity, ect.

Anyway, regardless of whether or not it's realistic, it's your story. Use all the minorities you like. I don't think realism matters in this case. The stone-cold truth, though, is that some people might hesitate to read it if it has too many LGBT characters in it for them. You need to decide if that matters to you or not. Personally, I've found that I like writing about LGBT characters, and I enjoy it so much it's worth it to me.

 

Oh, I have a story about that.

So I read this webcomic called Gunnerkrigg Court. Some background information: Kat is a teenage girl who goes to boarding school. She likes a boy, but he stops going to her school, so it doesn't work out. After he's gone, Kat starts dating a girl. At first, Kat worries her best friend Annie will not accept her, but they work it out and everything is fine.

The author is a really good writer. There's a lot of very subtle character development. Kat is a little tomboyish. She quietly struggles with her identity; she tries to force herself to wear makeup, dresses, and headbands, then later comes to accept herself. She's complicated, intelligent, and flawed. She's dating but it's not the most important thing in her life. In other words, she's a teenage girl.

According to one review:

Gunnerkrigg does in fact have some incredibly written and developed LGBT content. It’s heartfelt, feels true to life, and has been featured prominently in the main story. [...] Even in the earliest chapters, we’re soon introduced to some quietly implicit queer relationships. There’s the codependent partnership of Zimmy and Gamma – a girl cursed to see the world in horrific symbols, and the only girl who’s ever been able to calm the visions. Their relationship is complicated, overall difficult to describe, but it’s undeniable from the very beginning.

The story follows with the strange relationship of Shadow and Robot – two characters who exist outside of the gender binary altogether. Their partnership grows throughout the comic to almost become a symbol of unity between the factions of forest and court. ​

Anyway, so one day I was quietly lurking in another forum, and a discussion about gay characters popped up. Some asked: "Can anyone give me an example of a gay character that was shoe-horned in?"

Some replied... saying they thought Kat from Gunnerkrigg Court felt forced. Because, in their words, "she was straight but became a lesbian out of nowhere" and it felt wrong. I just sat there, staring at my screen, so confused. I mean, the author can be a little ambiguous sometimes, but that isn't what happened in the story at all.

Anyway, the long and short of it is, no matter how good you are, someone is going to complain.

 

And let's not forget that we live in a day and age where everything is hyper-politicized. I'm gay. When I write gay MC's I'm not SJW'ing or "white knighting" or any other dynamic that springs up as a backlash to the dynamic that came before it in this never-ending back and forth game. I'm simply following the oldest writing advice there is: write what you know.

But, just because all I'm doing is writing what I know doesn't mean that this is the way my hoped-for readership is going to engage the work. I have no control over that once I'm finished with the piece of work in question. The author is dead, as they say.

In a related sense, I was reading an article on-line about "whether Science Fiction should be scarring us more", pointing to many of the more popular YA dystopian novels as warnings of the future that we need to take heed, and does Science Fiction have a responsibility to write more stories like that to make us take heed, blah, blah, blah... As a writer, I can't help but feel like the point has been missed as regards those dystopian YA novels. They aren't about the future, not really. They're about the present. They aren't predictive warnings. They're current indictments about the state of society today, magnified through the lens of Science Fiction. But my words tend to fall on deaf ears. Many people are assured that Science Fiction is actually talking to us about the future, and that's their engagement of the work, and not something I have any control over.

 

What exactly is diversity? If you're using the word in relation to what is presented in American media, it will mean one thing as that portrayal of Americans is completely off from the actual population. I'm currently working on a book based in the D&D Forgotten Realms and the word means something completely different in relation to that lore.

My advice, stay true to your story and setting. If you're writing about a Royal Air Force squadron fighting the Germans during 1940, you can have a caste of characters drawn from the historic British Commonwealth of that day. On the other hand, something that makes me groan is the portrayal of Jesus in the media. Here you have a Palestinian-Jew looking like a member of an American southern rock band from the 1970's.

If you stay true to your story and characters you are staying true to yourself.

 

And the teeth were razor sharp, glistening white... The prey never saw it coming. The fear in its eyes when it heard the sound at the last second... The screech of fury from both predator and prey... Devoured the poor creature was.... Full the bellies of the victors.... For nature is nothing without its pounce and silence as it's consumed by another... We cannot be without the shame and suffering knowing... you just werent fast enough to escape.

 

This is one of those posts that i dont even think the person posting was really disagreeing with a concept, but rather poking at something that would spark a fury of intelligent conversation... if that's the case thank you sir for that.. because the following conversation that has come from your post has been brilliant to read.

The devil's advocate. As they call it.

Often people say and do things, and they are ignorant fools... because... they just are.

Other times they do the same, with intelligent expectations.. Lets spark the conversation.

And the brilliance that follows is a world of people both communicating ideas and sparking new conversations, and sharing intelligence.

I love this post so much... and i hate it... but i love it.

 

yes yes yes.. 100 percent... your story, your rules, your characters, your world.... your dream... made into written glory.