If you're only writing about things that are completely familiar to you and from your own perspective, no research is needed. But if you're trying to include people from other backgrounds or cultures, I think there's absolutely an increased expectation that writers avoid inaccuracies. There's much less acceptance for stereotypes than there used to be.
I can agree with this. I've pretty much spent my life exposing myself to as many things as possible. Googling stuff isn't quite research in my mind. I do like the idea of spending time in a place I might want to write about. I know other writers who have done this sort of thing. I guess I have done it too, only I didn't know I would someday use what I've learned from my time spent in different places. I wasn't quite researching as much as living. Here's the thing. It's the story that counts. And I try to write stories that I don't believe anyone else could write, characters no one else could write and setting that seem real and familiar even if I'm making it all up. I want my stories to also read as something real and familiar but also new. I don't believe I write stereotypes. And I have included some diversity in my writing just as I welcome it in my life. But, yes, I can draw on what I know and have learned from living. I don't really understand, I guess, when we're talking about research what we're talking about. If it's just googling stuff, maybe that's not the right direction to take the story. I don't know. There is a lot of freedom with fiction. But, for me, there is no desire to take on something I know nothing about or can't make up. Literary or realistic fiction is my main focus in life right now, and I don't think I'm doing it all wrong or disrespecting anyone in the process.
I do enjoy a good relationship drama in books and on film, but I can't write it. I just don't find writing about everyday events like going to work and meeting the in-laws or cooking dinner very interesting at all, and I find it hard to believe anyone would want to read such mundane, dull things. It's ironic I think this, of course, since I do read that stuff myself lol. Fantasy just gives it that extra edge, that thrill that books set in real life don't have. I like the extraordinary in the genre.
I'm more familiar with fantasy fiction. Back in the day, writers like Robert Howard would write Conan stories about his character traveling to different places. Howard was an incredibly racist guy, and his villains would include stereotypes of ancient non-European cultures with hardly a nod to any kind of positive representation. Worse was HP Lovecraft: When I got into fantasy in the the 90's, it commonly treated far eastern and African cultures as attractive because they are exotic. No where near as racist as Conan in the 30's, but would this fly now? I can't remember what book it was, or who the author was, but recently (in the last year or two) there was a woman who got focused down by the internet flash mob for writing a novel with a bunch of problematic crap like a pan-Asian culture helped by white savior. In response to the criticism before launch, they whitewashed the book. I see that as kind of the arc we've gone through. Flat-out racism >>> Lazy Objectification >>> Whitewash (now). It annoys me because we live in a time with unparalleled access to information and a market screaming for diverse representation, but because what passed for progressiveness in the 90's (Liberal Cosmopolitanism / I don't see color) being seen as unchecked racism by multiculturalist today, the power of the flash mob, and the actual difficulty of using your intelligence and empathy to represent diverse characters in a way that people can identify with (rather than characters that are filtered through your own unexamined prejudices, identifiable only to people who share your prejudice), is too much for many people who find writing about someone exactly like themselves extremely difficult, let alone someone else. So, for 2020, I personally think that even for writers that don't care about politics or diversity, they should at least realize that in many cases, diversity = realism, and some of us need it to suspend disbelief. Because of access to information and exposure to different cultures, more of us need that diversity to be well written in order to suspend disbelief. The only way to do that is to show that the full array of human personalities can come out of different cultures, and to write those cultures as complex places with many kinds of people (rather than planet of the hats). . Worse still, the threat of attack for an unintentionally bad job or appearing intellectually naive makes writers nervous, causing them to do an even worse job. Even asking questions can be seen as offensive and draw suspicion, because a certain percentage of people conflate race and ethnicity and are extremely excited to have a chance to look intellectually superior. It sucks, and it's a lot to negotiate, but on the other side I think we get some stories that are much better than they would have been if it weren't for the crucible, so whatever. It's worth it.
I can agree with that - it's why I like to read it, after all. But I can't write it - granted, I've never honestly tried - but I seem to find writing it boring. Perhaps I'm not doing it right? How should "the mundane, done right" look? What elements must it include? (genuine question) Because I might just be looking at it the wrong way.
I do agree with this. Sometimes, when I write poetry or flash fiction (I had a professor tell me once to try to write a piece of flash fiction a day to keep the creativity alive), I will write about what I know, or base something around an experience. For example, my grandmother likes to sit outside on her porch and feed the birds. I'll weave that realistic setting into it. Or the park I used to go to as a child, now its over grown with grass and hasn't been kept in years, I'll add some "fantastic" elements to that. The funny thing is, yesterday, my boss and I were just talking, and she says "you should write a book about your experiences with bullying". I have a "disability" (I use quotations because, I don't see it as a disability, but more of an inconvenience or an annoyance that I have to deal with). Regardless of how I feel about my disability, It was the cause of a lot of self hate and isolation that I didn't really get over until I went to an extended therapy group 4 hours away from home. It never occurred to me to write something like that, seeing that in my original post my reasoning for staying away from realistic fiction is because of the research involved. On this topic, I do know a lot about it, through lived experiences, meeting others with my disability in group therapy and support groups, and generally doing research on my own when I've incorporated it into school research projects. I guess what I'm trying to say is, if I knew the subject well, and have many lived experiences enough to write about them in realistic fiction, I would not be so hesitant to write about it. I am 24, after all and have been told that I'm pretty "wet behind the ears" when it comes to lived experiences (not sure if that was meant to be an insult or not!)
on this note, during undergrad, my writing Popular Fiction professor had a weekly panel of professional writers come in to speak with us. On the topic of Science Fiction, we had a scientist who worked for NASA come in (she was an fiction editor and writer on the side). She told us that she HATED reading science fiction because, as a scientist, she could not over look the inaccuracies. She started editing science fiction drafts and became a consultant to work with writers who wanted to "accurately" represent the science behind space travel and the universe as well as writing science fiction herself. She was a really sweet person, but she did make me extremely nervous about writing science fiction (or the "science" part of it).
I've tried my hand at all three, though I realize you aren't asking about those specifically. Outsiderism is something I often engage in my writing. That feeling of being on the outside looking in. The oddball, not like the rest, finding ways to be like the rest, finding ways of being happy not being like the rest. My stories tend to orbit somewhere around that theme. An itinerant childhood, the little Puerto Rican kid lost in the wilds of the very white American Midwest, being gay... makes sense, I think, that my writing would reflect an attempt to engage and resolve those feelings.
That's why I always tell people not to sweat it. The overwhelming majority of your readers aren't scientists. One must look at the effort-to-benefit ratio. When the writer gets the distance between Earth and Moon wrong because he is too lazy to use Wikipedia – that's unforgivable. But if you had to spend tens of hours to perfect something that maybe one reader out of 100 would even notice, it's probably better to spend that time on something else.
I like fantasy but not what is usually purported as fantasy -- other worlds, journeys, new races, magic, kinda thing. Usually I just like the fantasy to react as a catalyst for typical situations. I like Charlie and the Chocolate factory kinda fantasy -- real idea -- a chocolate factory but fantastical situations -- malfunctioning gum to mask real ideas; poverty, friendships, greed, goodness. Most of my fantasy includes -- shrunk people, robots, toys, weird situations. I think this reflects my childhood. I used to make, draw and find like plastic figures and make them little houses and worlds for them to inhabit. This escapism has spilled over into my writing. But it was never apart from reality. The little figures were always conscious of the boot that might crush them. And I also like writing Psychological dramas - My WIP bears no fantasy in the storyline with the exception of the characters paranoia. And I love Psychological dramas because it's essentially you as your own worst enemy. It's a lot trickier than writing in a villain and it's something everyone goes through in their life.
It comes to me and nags me until I write it down. For example https://www.writingforums.org/threads/piccolo-the-saga-of-tony-ward.157904/
Because, as much as I would love to write some kind of highbrow epic like Hugo or Tolstoy, I am not that kind of person. They say 'write what you know' and what I know is mostly mythology, folklore and soldiering.
I write what I am interested in reading/watching, and that means fantasy and sci-fi. I also don't like "slice of life" stories, because I also want to escape my boring life when reading/watching/writing a story. And, most importantly, I write because I enjoy it. I have no desire to be published. I just want to get all of the stuff that's jammed in my head out on paper, and enjoy the process. It is for myself, though I wish I had more people I could share my work with because, as it is now, I have only one really close friend who even understands what it's like to be a casual writer. So I end up only being able to ramble on to him about all of my ideas, my frustrations, and what I'm excited about. It can be quite a lonely existence.
A lot of what I write is inspired by things I read in the newspaper, music I listen to, dreams I have and feelings I have so most of the time my writing is plot based. Aside from my current wip, my stories are tight knit with internal plot lines that only affect the main characters.
For the most part, and strangely enough, my ADD. I often found myself, in the past, having such random thoughts that they even startled me. As my interests piqued more in horror, I found my random thoughts leaning more towards the horror genre, so that's why I write what I write. For example, my last short horror story all stemmed from a random thought I had: "What would happen if someone with amazing powers and abilities had Dissociative Identity Disorder and her other personality was pretty much pure evil?" From there, I just started writing and the story pretty much fleshed itself out. That's just my process, and I know it's a bit strange, but it's just how I think.
There are afew people in my family that know I write vampire fiction. The ones that don't know, won't know because I know it would be too much of a impossible pain in the neck. I write what I write because if I didn't it would feel like being staked in my heart. I feel. I write. I bleed. I grin. I smile. Two points shine.
Very true But done wrong it's agony to read. Words like 'pretentious' spring to mind. One really has to draft very hard to eliminate the joins and pencil sketches, and as soon as you fail you are doomed to the bin. I'm working toward eliminating my prejudice [and my repetition]. Some of the literary shorts are so puckered-arse, flaky strings of allusion, and so cautious and correct. That's what I need to resist, that hostility, I know it's not really or strictly true, I never recovered from the April edition of 'Poetry Magazine,' - political and earnest and self-conscious and wet. [probly fine/probly I flicked to the wrong pages] As for not knowing your narrator, stepping on cultural values? I'm working on one of those, trying to write from an amorphous Asian background. I might pull it off, my Mister Biswas. I mean Ishiguro (sp) succeeded with an English butler...or even...taken another level I can claim as 'racist narrator,' the game is on...
ROFL matwoolf you did something very dangerous. You made me laugh. You still holding your plushy against the monitor and hoping somone notices your need? Game on indeed. My story is going to include one of my main characters she's a very old vampire. But not as old as the vampire who pre-dates Mayan culture. I hope I don't step on cultural values writing about Mayan blood sacrifices to an ancient Mayan vampire. *crosses fingers*
Tough crowd.... Maybe give them ecstasy before the reading next time. Then slowly. Read to them. If they beg you to stop because they're feeling things they haven't felt since college you know your on the right track. Let em have both barrels.
I'm so sorry I deleted myself, I was getting too hyper-excited and revealing critical life data to...Zog. [That was at The Brighton Arts Club, gone now :/]
Hyper excited? That sounds like me when I hear an old door slowly creak open. That's going in my story. Night, suns coming up coffin time. Don't let the bed bugs bite, that's my job.
I wonder how much this train of thought applies to me and my writing. I over think and I worry. So I think it might but most of the time I think it doesn't. Best example is my world's China. It's set 200 years in the future and I try and explain how China reached this point. But my knowledge is limited on even modern day China. But I am not writing about modern day China. I have googled and done some research but nothing to brag about. To this effect. Some have said I should just rename it something else in my world even if it is still just modern day Chinas land. It's funny cuz part of the issue is that my China is well it looks bad(it has its own charm just visually is unappealing to visit) and this is where everyone thinks I am gonna have trouble. People that hear how it's descibed, see what it's called and outcry before knowing any context. But to me. Changing the name is well I think that's the only insulting thing I could do. For two reasons. 1. In world. I currently say they survive. China survived the event that caused such a big change and retained they name. To change the name is to imply they wouldn't survive. 2. To change something as simple as a name to avoid backlash says that I don't think society would accept something. Oh boy. Went on a bit of a rant there. Lol sorry
I like to read neat future sci fi. Aldous Huxley, John Wyndham, George Orwell and have just finished reading handmaids tale... Thats what I enjoy reading so thats what I write, not bothered too much about modern thrillers/crime so probably wont ever write one (but never say never... As they say) might try a bit of horror one day as quite a fan of Stephen King anf James Herbert.
