should bullying and suicide be explicit in story writing? I think personally they are best left to their own devices and not written about. but that is my opinion for various reasons. what is your opinion ?
Overcoming bullying is a common trope, like in the Karate Kid. Suicide is also a common topic. Most people like to read about a descent into chaos and watch the protagonist overcome the problem. Some people really enjoy a good slice of life / misery tourism, but that's a hard sell for me.
I don't think they need to be in EVERY book, but I certainly don't see anything wrong with writing about them if they're of interest to the author. What are your reasons for thinking they should be avoided, @katina?
Hi there Bay View. I was thinking that the more you utilise a weakness and the more it becomes a strength in other words the world is littered with tragedies already and bullying and suicide are two of them, Isn't it time literature cleanse itself of these stereotypes and shows other sides of stories that these common type of tragedies are not always necessary for a story to be enticing or successful. In other where reality fails imagination sails .
Do you think bullying and suicide are more overdone than other sources of conflict? (murder, rape, poverty, war, etc.) Or are you looking for fiction that has less conflict and more peacefulness overall?
I must disagree because I for one would not read anything that reminds me cruelty that is reality it and so to turn into a book where it accentuates it just puts me off. My mind is saying I need to unload so i can improve. that is the whole point of writing is to move far away from everyday challenges and find something positive so I can deduct and move on to better things.
I wholeheartedly disagree with your opinion in regards to the point of literature (Or any art form, for that matter). Negative feelings are necessary for the proper psicological development of the individual, and to achieve personal growth. Many masterpieces of different arts are meant to cause "bad" feelings. I could list countless great films with horrible tragedies in them. The point is that bad stuff happens, and undestanding how to deal with those feelings prepares you for the moment tragedies materialize in your life.
I think that the more emphasis on world tragedies and the less inclined we are to improve. humans are creatures of habits and also less inclined to think there is no other way. the less they have to think about a change the better. I prefer fiction that stresses not on what is already but emphasises more on what could be . literature is a tool that explores new venues never seen or heard before. we write because we know changes are overdue and therefore to keep that in mind is a priority otherwise creativity is lost on all of us.
If we accept this as true - which I don't by dint of this being an overly broad statement, but for argument's sake - then it negates your prior thesis. We cannot talk about the change we need without talking about what we wish to change from. You are asking for a coin that has only one side, and that doesn't exist.
It sounds like you're making the more general argument of, "Why can't we write about happy things?" And I'd say that we can't always write about happy things, because our lives are not all about happy things. And we rarely need fictional support in coping with all our happiness, while we may often need support in understanding and coping with the dangers and fears and betrayals of life. And by "support" I don't mean head-patting and "now, now, it's all going to be fine"--I mean exploring our worst fears. Let's say that a kid is a victim of school bullying. What good does it do him to read a bunch of stories about schoolkids who are all sweetness and light and kindness to each other? Those stories will essentially teach him that his experience is not normal, that maybe it's not even real, that he must deserve the bullying because nobody else ever gets bullied. My mother was a compulsive hoarder. Learning that there are other compulsive hoarders out there, and other children of hoarders, and that they reacted to the situation in a way similar to me, wasn't bad, it was good. I learned that mostly in real (though online) rather than fictional interactions, but that doesn't mean that fictional interactions wouldn't have been similarly useful. You can't make the world better if you close your eyes to what's wrong with it.
First off, the idea of anything being cleansed from artistic pursuits like writing, music, painting or what have you makes everything inside me clench up. It implies that such topics are inherently dirty, wrong or immoral. HELL TO THE NO Also, please check out the bazillions of published books where bullying and/or suicide isn't referenced at all and yet somehow still manage to be successful.
The way I see it, as long as bullying and suicide are a real problem, there is a place for them in writing. In fact, I would go one step further and say that even if bullying and suicide disappeared from the world, there would still be a place for them in writing (a different place, but a place nonetheless). Now, by no means do you have any obligation to include the topics in any work you are writing. As Laurin said, there are many books out there that don't touch on those subjects and have been both published and successful. If the topics make you squeamish, then don't write about them. I would, however, advise against writing a story where such issues would be expected and where you have intentionally left them out (i.e. a story set in high school revolving around one of the unpopular kids).
