A lot of writers pride themselves on being honest in their work, a style of writing I respect and try to emulate. They tell the story as they see it, no sugar coating. As for me, it was never intentional to hurt anyone in my writing, and for the people who knew me best ever saw my writing, only a couple would know where my "inspiration" came from. Everyone knows the truth hurts, and I haven't written anything of the sort yet, but that's where the character development is leading in my latest. Should I write it in the name of brutal honestly, or should I clean it up?
If I was going to adapt a hurtful fact about a real person into my fiction, I would make absolutely certain that there was no way for the inspiration to be recognizable. Though I don't normally base my characters on other people in the first place, so maybe I'm missing something.
Don't sell out your story to save feelings. It'll suffer for it and I predict you may come to feel unsatisfied with the final result. If you're writing for you, then write the story you want to write, especially if the character development is naturally leading that way. Holding back is just going to hurt.
I don't think anything honest can be hurtful. As long as it's honest then it's fine. But if it's not honest then no, you shouldn't do that. Not because that's a bad thing to do, per se, simply that you should be writing everything with an eye to honesty and making every character sympathetic. There's some people that we may like to think don't have any redeeming qualities but I think we all know that's not true. I can say that I hate my sisters husband but if I wrote him into a book he'd still be a decent bloke, he'd just be tiring and dull, but he'd still love his wife and there's plenty of stuff there that I find sympathetic or even laudable. I can't stand the fucker (and it's really lucky I only ever see him when I'm fucked in half drunk) but as a matter of fictive quality I'd be forced to write him as a rounded character. It might come across as unflattering (he's a 40 year old man who still rides a BMX, I can't get blood from a stone) but I'd still have to make the reader sympathize with him. I think this is the test here; if you were writing a book about Hitler (as many have) would you just write some hit piece that made him out to be the despicable cunt that he was? Would you set out to be hurtful to Hitler? Or would you do a proper job and write him as a terribly flawed character who believed he was doing the right thing, then saw everything he believed in burn to the ground? You'd do that, right? Because that's actually interesting writing.
I wouldn't do it, not if I cared about the person. I don't like the idea of "art" being more important than people.
There's a thing called tough love. I participate in online discussion supporting Climate Change (or Global Warming) and Atheism. The discussions get a little heated, to say the least. Both sides believe they are right. Anytime pride, or something personal is involved, feelings get hurt. Nobody ever wins a debate on belief, because everybody values their data more. What you hope to do is plant an idea using logic that will manifest overtime into a change in the other's way of thinking. Best case scenario at the end of the discussion, we agree to disagree and part as friends. Unfortunately, it doesn't always end amicably. As far as I know, presenting my case in writing during these events is about the only time I risk hurting someone's feelings with my writing. But it's tough love. I'm trying to set them straight. And they're trying to do the same for me.
For me, there's a distinction between something reasonably trivial like this - I'd consider it hurt pride rather than hurt feelings, unless you're saying cruel, personal things to people who have liked and trusted you - and really hurting someone you care about. Intellectual discussion may get heated, but I don't think it's the same as, say, writing a character that's an unflattering, unpleasant portrayal of a family member.
Yeah I agree. To me hurtful means that it's personal. Even if you have a really heated argument and call someone a willfully ignorant luddite lover of the fictional sky-daddy; that's mean but it's not hurtful. It'd be hurtful if you said something like "that's rich coming from someone who's daughter sells her body for smack". That's clearly way outside a debate, that's a cheap shot at someone with the intention to upset them. You aren't trying to persuade them, you aren't even really arguing, you aren't even pointing out some perceived hypocrisy. It needs to be something that goes outside the remit of what you're doing and with the intention to upset them.
I'd go further and say that the "daughter sells her body for smack" line isn't necessarily hurtful unless the daughter actually does or unless it's a betrayal of a formerly trusting relationship or unless there's something else there to make it actually dig into the victim's brain/heart. Random snark between strangers? It's not attractive, but I wouldn't say it's hurtful.
Yeah, that's fair enough. I think the important thing is the intention to be hurtful. As long as you're striving for honesty over upsetting someone then it's not really hurtful.
Oh, I don't agree with that. I don't think honesty is a get-out-of-hurtfulness-free card. Like, if a woman breaks up with a man because she just doesn't love him anymore and isn't sure she ever did, she's being honest, but he's still going to be hurt by that, right? Assuming he cares about her and trusts her and thought she did love him? Honesty might still be the right choice, but that doesn't mean nobody gets hurt.
So something more pertaining to my question. If that guy wrote a book and put how that relationship MADE HIM feel but the honesty came as hurtful to the ex-girlfriend, is that wrong?
I don't know about "wrong". It's something I wouldn't be comfortable doing, unless I was really angry with the ex-girlfriend. But wrong? I don't know that it's wrong...
Right, but there's a difference between someone being hurt and the other person being hurtful. In the example you give, the woman isn't being hurtful even though the other person was hurt by the result. Almost anything could potentially cause someone to be hurt, but that doesn't mean that everything that leads to that is someone being hurtful to them. That's why I think the intention matters. The woman certainly didn't intend to hurt or upset anyone; that was a consequence but it wasn't her intention and in the end she has to put herself first in the situation. Someone could very easily be hurt by you giving them honest criticism with the goal of trying to help them improve. Surely you wouldn't say that giving someone honest feedback is hurtful?
How are you measuring what's "right"? You could argue that the intentions behind an action make it right or wrong, or you could argue that the consequences make it right or wrong. It's probably best to consider both. What do you aim to get out of this? And you don't have to tell us the answer, mind. Just know the answer. And what are the potential consequences? What kind of consequences can you live with? Speaking from my heart, you're all you got. I'm all I got. If you live true to who you know you are and power through situations like this knowing that you were genuine in the end, it'll be a lot easier to live with yourself. You will only ever be you, so you better be able to like that person.
Charles Dickens based some of his best known and beloved and/or hated characters on family, friends, enemies and bosses. Whether he felt badly about it, I'm not sure. Going by the fact that he seemed like a dark person, I doubt that he felt badly, at all. If anything, he probably revelled in it. Personally speaking, it really depends what kind of a person you are. If you're a sociopath then go for it, however, if you care about the feelings of others, then give it some thought. They say that "The best revenge is living well", well, my version is "The best revenge is making your enemies into fictional characters... and then stomping on them!". Keats ~ "'beauty is truth, truth beauty,' And I just realised that I didn't answer the question: No. I haven't, but I'm doing so in my current WIP. Hurt feelings are inconsequential when it comes to the truth.
Well, there's a difference between saying something hurtful and being an asshole, for sure. But for me, at least, it's pretty hard to divorce "being hurtful" from "causing hurt".
Right, but there's clearly a difference between punching someone in the face and accidentally smacking them with your elbow as you turn around. They both cause harm but only one of those is being hurtful. I think that what we're really talking about is being deliberately hurtful. Think about how you would use that word if your characters were talking. If, say, someone elbows someone in the nose does it make sense for them to respond by saying "That's so hurtful!". It doesn't really does it? In the strictest possible sense maybe it could; as in "That was an action that caused hurt to me." but that's not what people mean when they say that. You wouldn't say that someone unknowningly asking about your father when he's just dropped dead is hurtful either; it might still hurt you but it's not being hurtful. In either of these cases it would read as a massive overreaction on that persons part, or even as a complete non-sequitur.
I think intentionally writing something merely to hurt a specific person or people group is probably not wise. I don't think much good can come from a purely vindictive attitude. However, we live in an age where all kinds of art is considered offensive or hateful if it does not conform to popular views. Frankly, some readers (and listeners and viewers, for that matter) do not possess the critical thinking skills to evaluate art fairly. Thus, it is important to understand that some people will at least claim to be hurt by your good writing.
There's a difference to the person doing the smacking, but not much difference to the person getting smacked. It hurts whether it's deliberate or not. So, yes, we could phrase the asshole behaviour as "deliberately hurtful" or "vindictively hurtful" or something, but I don't think we could say that in the absence of deliberation or vindictiveness there's no hurtfulness.
Unethical? Maybe that's a better word. In my story, the main character is basically calling out everyone on their flaws, and none of it is too harsh, but there's one criticism that I think the personality may be too sensitive for such criticism. I do care about this person, but as stated earlier I would feel just as bad not putting it in there. In my eyes, the critique isn't even that bad, but you never know how someone will feel about a critic especially when it's vented out into a book.
Is there the possibility that the MC is a self-insert character, allowing you to "call out" a lot of people from your own life? If so, I'd be concerned about the artistic integrity of the story (like, I'd be worried that it's a self-righteous polemic rather than a work of fiction) and with the ethics of criticizing someone in your life without the fairness of allowing them to respond. If you want to say this stuff to this person, say it in real life. If you wouldn't say it in real life, don't hide behind fiction as a way to do it. Again, though, just my opinion, and I'm obviously operating from limited knowledge of the situation.
The only way what you describe can be hurtful is if your mc is "calling out" characters who are based upon people you know, people you think (probably correctly) would recognize themselves in your work. And if that's the case, I agree with @BayView that perhaps you should just say it to their faces. However, I also see another potential problem - who is this one character to be doing all this "calling out", all this cataloguing of flaws? What qualifies him/her to be the judge? After all, we are all flawed in one way or another. Does anyone call the mc out for his/her flaws? If not, THAT might be off-putting to the reader. Just a thought. Good luck in working this out.
Um... sure. I guess? This is a really subjective question, and it's hard to give any sort of useful answer without knowing your subjective point of view, where you're coming from. I write stories where my gay protagonists usually live in worlds where their gay love is a complete non-issue. In the eyes of some, I am guilty of a heinous and dangerous pattern of "normalization" as regards the sexual spectrum. I (and possibly you) may not think that's hurtful, but there are some who think it's dangerously so. I agree. Honesty in writing is not easy, especially when that honesty is about oneself. You yourself are the one human paradigm you can actually, experientially know; all else is theory and conjecture. If you are basing your story on real-life events that aren't pretty, then right or wrong isn't the question. You can't ask us for permission, and we certainly aren't in a place or duly authorized to give it. The question you need to be asking is: Are you willing and able to own this action, an action that sounds as though it may have possible repercussions for you and for other parties?
