Writing a character without arms.

Discussion in 'Character Development' started by Lone Vista, Mar 19, 2016.

  1. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    I'm confused. Are you saying:

    #1- If a character is disabled or black, you want that character to sit down and feel sorry for him/herself for being disabled or black? Go “poor widdle me...” for most of the story until he/she decides in the triumphant finale that the thing that makes them different won't stop them any more? And that's the plot?

    Or

    #2- To recognize the difficulties a disabled person or black person might face?
     
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  2. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    I have unambiguously been arguing for number 2.

    It is fundamentally wrong to give a character any characteristic without acknowledging anything else that comes from that characteristic. It is both bad story telling and tokenism. A character is determined by their characteristics, both physical and psychological ones. Acting like there is no baggage from changing these characteristics is totally at odds with reality. Everyone has challenges, everyone has baggage. Making a character black doesn't mean that they suddenly have challenges, it just changes the challenges they have, and those different challenges lead to a different person. That doesn't mean you can't write a black character it simply means that when you do tell their story you need to reflect the specific environment that created them in a genuine and honest way; the exact same way that you should be writing every character.

    My whole problem is writing a character who's background isn't being reflected in the character; particularly when they are being shown to be the same as 'normal' characters. Showing a disabled person being successful and unique and interesting and funny and clever and generally awesome is absolutely fine. Many disabled people are a genuine inspiration. But they are simply not the same as a non-disabled person. Showing them to be so in total opposition to what we would expect is disingenuous. Giving him a near magical ability to overcome his disability when the plot needs to is directly counter to the central disabled experience; it's not something that goes away when it's convenient. It's all the time. There's all kinds of ways to make a disabled character interesting and engaging and I've suggested a bunch of them in this thread; different ways he can overcome his disability without compromising his experience as a disabled person.

    It is simply untrue to say that a black or disabled or gay person has had the same life experience as I have in exactly the same way as saying that no white person has the same life experience. We are all people and all deserve respect and opportunity, but we are not the same people. We are not interchangeable. We cannot be simply interchangeable.

    I am absolutely in favor of more stories with black and disabled and gay and trans and everything. I write about weird fringe groups of people who the vast majority of people have knee-jerk prejudices against. I like taking these very different characters and drilling down into them to show that there is a common core of human experience (like love and pain and grief) that unites all people. We can all understand how it feels to be in love, how it feels to lose someone we love. We share those, and so we can empathize with every other person if we try. But that doesn't mean we are all simply the same. We are all individuals with unique experience united by these common strands. We are both similar and unique. Every character needs both.

    It surprises me to have to labour this point so much especially among writers but you must acknowledge the individual experience of your characters. They are supposed to be a person. Saying 'they just happen to be black' is a cop out and a non-answer. If you think 'happening to be black' doesn't change anything about your character then you are genuinely (although unintentionally) displaying bigotry. This is what I mean by saying any of these choices must have a reason within the book. You don't have to justify doing any of this, you simply need to demonstrate that this person's background is actually being reflected in the person we see. If it's not it's dead weight and by definition it should be cut. That's what I mean by 'doing nothing' in the narrative. Details are fine to have just to build character but if they aren't even doing that then you absolutely need to stop and ask yourself why.

    When I learned to write fiction it was hammered into me to ask 'Why does this scene/character/characteristic matter?'. Everything has to earn it's place in your work and if it doesn't it shouldn't be there. Characterization is enough; why is it there? To give an insight into the character. But if it isn't giving any real insight or providing any particular glimpse into their psychology or life experience it is doing nothing. The word black might as well read 'clown' for all the difference it makes. It's not making them a more interesting or sympathetic individual, it's not telling us about how he grew up or the kind of person he is. So why is that word there? Just because you want a black character? Well that's not good enough. You must give your black characters the exact same attention as your white characters and build them as unique and interesting people with unique life experience.

    Just slapping 'black' onto a white character and calling it a day is actively racist. And the worst thing is no-one here seems to realize that. Everyone has unique experiences that inform who they are. If you want to write well you need to start by reflecting that in your characters.
     
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  3. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    I think I understand it now. Everyone has their own life experiences, regardless of who they are, or what they have. Let me get back to Joker from Mass Effect. Would it have been smarter to dedicate a side mission reflecting on the condition? How would you have done it without compromising Shepard's story (ie, an action-adventure story about preventing a galactic invasion by an unknown threat)?
     
  4. TheRealStegblob

    TheRealStegblob Kill All Mages Contributor

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    Again, you are just coming off as vaguely kind of racist. You keep insisting that if someone is black they're somehow inherently different than someone who is white and you'd have to somehow convey that, and you're insisting that anyone who doesn't agree with that is displaying some kind of bigotry. You claim there's a fundamental difference (no matter what, apparently) in how a black child would be raised as opposed to a white child and that is, in every sense of the term, racism.

    In an earlier post, you likened being black and (oddly enough, I don't know why you brought this up specifically) Inuit to being disabled, as if somehow any ethnicity other than Caucasian is somehow an extraordinary trait or something to be 'hurdled'. Obviously if you set your story in a racist place/time period, skin color will matter, but other than that, there's literally not going to be a difference between how a black or white child grew up (again, so long as they're living in the same, unbigoted culture with nothing to influence them differently) and the fact you don't understand this is kind of worrying.

    The rest of your post, while kind of hypercritical and even a little pretentious isn't bad, you're making thoughtful points, but I'm not sure if you're just trying to push your point too hard and you keep sticking with something that's wrong (this whole "black is different than white no matter what!") or if you seriously are just unconsciously bigoted.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2016
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  5. Link the Writer

    Link the Writer Flipping Out For A Good Story. Contributor

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    I think what Lost is trying to say is that someone who is different can and will face challenges someone else won't. While we are all human beings, we have our own battles to fight. Some worse than others, and it would be detrimental if we don't recognize that in our characters. The plot doesn't have to be about what makes them different, but there are certain things that the person will notice/have to deal with that others won't.

    @LostThePlot - I liked Joker's character, personally. I thought he was tastefully done. He wasn't “I AM DISABLED! WAAA!!! IN YOUR FACE!!!” yet there was enough subtle information and cues (even the aforesaid moment where you play as him for one level in Mass Effect 2) that reminded us that he was disabled. No need for a sub-plot where Joker asks Commander Shepard to go on a long-winded discussion on what it's like to have brittle bone disease, or ask Shepard to come with him to meet a kid with the same condition so he could pull the ‘Inspirationally Disabled™’ card.
     
    Last edited: Mar 21, 2016
  6. TheRealStegblob

    TheRealStegblob Kill All Mages Contributor

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    Yeah, I'm on board with this much of what he's saying (outside the fact he's trying to assert there's never any such thing as a character quirk that can just be there for the sake of a crazy quirk, despite the fact it's been done before and worked fine but lol who cares about that, CHEKOV'S GUN ROFL). It's a strong point to consider if you're writing something that isn't Mad Max-esque, but where he really starts losing me is where he's just insisting 'if a person is black they're fundamentally different from someone who is white no matter what' and then calls us bigots for not understanding that.
     
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  7. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    Before I start: In some parts of the below, I'm going to use the phrase "majority" and "minority" rather than specific characteristics. Because I assume(?) that if you were giving similar advice to a Chinese writer in China writing for a Chinese audience, you wouldn't be telling him that his characters needed a reason to be non-Caucasion, but instead that they need a reason to be non-Chinese. I assume that "white" in this discussion doesn't mean "white" but instead means "majority race found among the audience of the fictional work."

    Your opinion may have been completely unambiguous, but your words in advocating it have indeed been ambiguous. I'm now understanding that you're saying--I think, I'm still not positive:

    A) When you create a character, keep all of the characteristics of that character in mind when writing, and allow them to influence the story in the ways that they logically should. And if you don't know anything about a specific choice on a specific characteristic, either do your research to do it right, or, if you're not willing to do that work, then use a choice that you do understand.

    Yes?

    But it very often SOUNDS like you're saying:

    B) When you create a character, don't give them any non-majority characteristics unless the story is very specifically ABOUT those characteristics--right down at the story's core.

    And then you choose to misunderstand the other side as people saying:

    C) When you create a character, give them all sorts of exciting minority characteristics, and then ignore those characteristics completely! Completely, do you hear me, completely!!!

    I think that most people--not all--agree on A. You think we're saying C, and you often seem to be saying B. I realize (I think) that you're not saying B, but your meaning IS AMBIGUOUS.

    I think that you're often misunderstanding the meaning of statemnts like that. It doesn't mean, "they're black and that doesn't affect their personality and life experience even a tiny little bit." It is more likely to mean, "They're black, and I didn't make that decision because of some deep critical core part of the story, I just made that decision because I wanted to. So there. You got a problem with that?"

    That doesn't mean that the writer isn't going to write that character keeping that decision in mind, it means that they didn't feel that they needed some very specific justification before they were allowed to write a non-majority character.

    No. I don't need "a reason" to have a non-majority character. I don't need an excuse. I don't need a note from my parents. I just need to write that character well.

    I suspect that this ties in with your writing philosophy in a way that is transparent to you and not to others. If you feel that every detail in a work--the color of the ribbon on the Christmas present, the fact that the little girl's hair is in one braid and not two, the fact that the dog hates the mailman but loves the UPS guy--must have a clear and compelling plot reason, then of course you feel that an important non-majority characteristic must have a clear and compelling plot reason.

    But many writers don't feel that every detail must have a reason. So if you say "race should have a reason", you're just including race along with everything else, treating it with the same respect as everything else. But when you say that to people who DON'T require a reason for every decision, it sounds like you're adding special requirements for the race decision. Hence, unintentional amiguity.

    But that still doesn't explain why you don't feel that the MAJORITY characteristic must have a clear and compelling plot reason. And I see that as a big issue here.

    Now, when it's an overwhelming majority, as in the case of this threads (the characteristic here being whether a person has, or does not have, arms), I can see that varying from that majority is a decision that, in your writing philosophy, needs a reason, and that a character being in that majority doesn't require a reason.

    But I've never lived in a place where race has that overwhelming-majority distribution. Majority, yes, but far from overwhelming. To assume that (1) the reader's life experience is with an overwhelming-majority race distribution and (2) the reader's majority is the SAME as the writer's majority, is not, IMO, a valid assumption.

    Unless you are writing a society without racism, declining to state a race IS making a decision about race--you've decided that the character is of the majority race. In fact, unless you are writing FOR a society without racism, declining to state a race is going to result in a decision about race in the reader's mind.

    A decision can't be cut if that decision can't be avoided. And I feel that in the cases of most fiction, a decision about race can't be avoided. If you don't pick a minority, you picked the majority. You made a decision. Now you need to do the work to support that decision with your writing, EITHER WAY.

    It's similar to the decision about sex--you can't cut that decision. Male or female, pick one. When you pick one, you have to do the work to support that decision.

    That's the way YOU write. Not everyone writes that way. And, again, in the vast majority of cases, a race has been chosen. So that requires you to decide why that race, majority OR minority, has been chosen.

    Why is "he" there? Just because you want a man? Well, that's not good enough.

    Except you have to pick one.

    No, most people realize that. What you don't seem to accept is that majority OR minority requires attention. Majority OR minority is a decision, except in the case of overwhelming-majority characteristics that are shared by most of your readers. "Has arms" is one of those characteristics. "Majority race" or "everybody I see today will be majority race" or "I'm not aware of anyone's race" is not.
     
  8. Feo Takahari

    Feo Takahari Senior Member

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    To be fair to LostThePlot, I've read some good books that fit into what I think he's talking about. Take Full Tilt by Neal Shusterman. The main character is on a swimming team, so he survives when a room floods with water; he loves old airplanes and knows all about how they work, so he's able to (barely) fly one . . . Almost everything about him and his friends progresses the story, even if it seems irrelevant at first glance, and things like race that don't progress the story simply aren't brought up.

    It's a very specialized style, and I don't think it works for most stories. It tends to lead to shallower characterization, putting more emphasis on plot and action.
     

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