Timeline for When your main character is a misogynist or a racist, how do you tell your readers that you don't subscribe to his racist views by merely showing?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
33 events
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| May 5, 2023 at 11:55 | vote | accept | CommunityBot | moved from User.Id=36239 by developer User.Id=55239 | |
| Mar 17, 2023 at 22:36 | history | edited | user36239 |
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| Jan 25, 2023 at 13:08 | comment | added | JohnFilleau | Can you say more about your book or your character? Nobody is writing a despicable character as an exercise to show readers how non-despicable they (as the author) are. What are your primary goals in introducing this character? What do they add to the story? Answers are going to depend on your genre, target audience, and story. | |
| Jan 25, 2023 at 3:00 | comment | added | slebetman |
Not an answer so I'm leaving this as a comment but I feel compelled to post SM Stirling's famous quote about this issue: There is a technical term for someone who confuses the opinions of a character in a book with those of the author. That term is idiot. (Stirling of course wrote the Dominion of Draka series where the racist bad guys either win or survive every book)
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| Jan 25, 2023 at 0:00 | answer | added | Laura | timeline score: 2 | |
| Jan 24, 2023 at 23:57 | comment | added | dan04 | You might want to take a look at Er ist wieder da (or English translation Look Who's Back) by Timur Vermes, which is from the POV of a reincarnated Adolf Hitler. | |
| Jan 24, 2023 at 23:20 | comment | added | Jamin Grey | You're under no obligation to make a bad person have a come-uppance or give voice to characters stating "viewpoint XYZ is bad!", it can come off as preachy or condescending to your readers, and is unrealistic and breaks immersion. Some readers might think that you, the author, actually hold those views. You can minimize that by turning the character's despicability up to 11. Most people (but never all) will understand you aren't promoting those views. Or just have a page at the front of your book saying, "This book contains fictional portrayals of racism and sexism." | |
| Jan 24, 2023 at 16:17 | comment | added | gnasher729 | @JohnGordon The character could not come to a bad end. Most racists and misogynists don't. | |
| Jan 24, 2023 at 16:11 | comment | added | gnasher729 | I always think she is lucky that her Harry Potter characters are not real. If they were, you can bet she would ne in a male body today. (Voldy #1 on the list, both for the lolz and as revenge for killing him. Luna #2, she knows all about discrimination). That character was 100% intentional to dump on transgender people. 100% propaganda. | |
| Jan 24, 2023 at 13:45 | answer | added | user57696 | timeline score: -1 | |
| Jan 24, 2023 at 12:53 | comment | added | Guy G | @osiris - J.K Rowling was already subject to a fair bit of protest regarding her views on transgender people prior to publishing that novel. Including her view about the potential for non-trans people to abuse self-identification laws to commit crimes. When she then created a character who pretended to be trans to commit a crime it added fuel to an already blazing fire, but it certainly wasn't the first cause of people's upset. | |
| Jan 24, 2023 at 10:11 | comment | added | osiris | People that mistake a character with the author aren't smart enough to understand the difference. No amount of explanation will fix that. Those are usually the same that complain about a character having a certain mix of features. A good example is the protest against J.K Rowling because she created that was trans and commited a crime, something unfathomable for people than conflate gender with behaviour. | |
| Jan 24, 2023 at 8:42 | comment | added | Itération 122442 | Is there anything saying that the writer actually believe it ? I mean, nowhere in science-fiction (like Warhammer) it is written that the authors actually believe we must purge the galaxy of the one who don't follow the Emperor, yet I never thought that the writer actually believed it. | |
| Jan 23, 2023 at 15:27 | answer | added | Willa | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 23, 2023 at 15:09 | answer | added | Negdo | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jan 23, 2023 at 13:25 | answer | added | ScottishTapWater | timeline score: 0 | |
| Jan 23, 2023 at 13:18 | answer | added | hszmv | timeline score: 4 | |
| Jan 23, 2023 at 7:58 | answer | added | quarague | timeline score: 14 | |
| Jan 23, 2023 at 3:48 | answer | added | Simon Crase | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jan 23, 2023 at 3:01 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackWriting/status/1617356758334201857 | ||
| Jan 22, 2023 at 23:19 | comment | added | Valorum | @TonyEnnis - Given that most larger publishers now have professional staff whose job it is to identify things that might cause offense and have them expunged, I'd say that OP is in precisely the right business if they're self-censoring. | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 19:57 | comment | added | John Gordon | The story could show that character coming to a bad end due to those beliefs. | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 17:59 | comment | added | Boba Fit | Can you give some examples of what you mean by racist and misogynist? | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 17:54 | comment | added | Tony Ennis | If you are afraid your readership will think badly of you because you write a story featuring a character with traits they consider repugnant, you're in the wrong business. | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 17:13 | comment | added | Barmar | It seems like this could be generalized to most kinds of anti-heroes. Do you think the author of the "Dexter" books believe in vigilante justice? | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 16:30 | answer | added | PLL | timeline score: 37 | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 14:32 | history | became hot network question | |||
| Jan 22, 2023 at 14:20 | answer | added | Erk | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 12:34 | answer | added | Amadeus | timeline score: 3 | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 8:13 | comment | added | Bassem | Perhaps you could add a rival that strongly opposes the main character's ideas. Or even better to show the reader the cost that other people pay because of the main character's actions. i.e. "Let the readers hate him not only for his ideas but for his actions and the consequences". | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 8:03 | comment | added | Bassem | Authors fear of ethical judgments is growing bigger everyday. "Look on my tribe, Moro. We grow small, and we grow stupid. We will soon be nothing but squealing game… that the humans hunt for their meat" - Princess Mononoke | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 7:55 | comment | added | Bassem | Which POV are you using? I think the 1st POV will make it harder for you. | |
| Jan 22, 2023 at 2:21 | history | asked | user36239 | CC BY-SA 4.0 |