#MotivationalMondays -- Motivation for British Wannabes

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #319 -- All Ages Writing

Do you write your pulp-style action stories with all ages in mind, 

intentionally targeting a particular age group as being okay for it?

Unless I'm mandated by a publisher, I don't set out with the intention of telling a G, PG, PG-13, R-rated story. I mainly just focus on being true to my characters.

If my dirty cop would cuss like a sailor, he's gonna cuss like a sailor. If my jaded P.I. would drink himself into a stupor and sleep around, then you can bet he's gonna do it in the story. If my struggling pastor recovering from an affair stays on guard and tries to be the most moral person in the room, by golly that's going to flavor the words he says and way he does things.

Nothing irks me worse than reading a cop thriller in which the cops all talk as if their moms were hiding behind the corner to wash their mouths out with soap at a moment's notice. Or to read about despicable people who do despicable, violent things, then talk like missionaries (unless that's an intentional affectation). Or worse, to read about lost, broken people who are looking for affection in a physical relationship, then have a writer chicken out and have them barely hold hands with each other and only hint about rainbows and doves and rain as euphemisms for physical interaction. I got enough of that in the overly sanitized religious fiction I used to sell when I worked in a Christian bookstore.

When I write, I write gritty, pulp-style narratives or adult literary prose. I don't write bloodless cozies or sweet young debutantes solving a murder with their local book club. I write about real people (or at least the closest I can get in prose) getting into life or death situations and struggles who react like the broken, angry, hurt, beleaguered, wounded, faulty, fallen people we all can be. My characters speak, think, and act in neither whites nor blacks for the most part. They live in the grays where we all have to.

My bottom line is to be true to the characters. If I'm writing for a younger market, I'll create and write about characters that are appropriate to that market. If I'm writing for a religious market, I'll create characters that fit that market, not sanitized characters who don't fit it until the point of overly sensitive artificiality.

If none of those cases apply, I'm going to assume I'm writing to adults who want to read my story the way it's supposed to be written.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now #301 -- Cussing in Fiction: How Much Is Too Much?

Recently two of my writer friends published posts about this topic on their blogs, and it got me thinking.

First, Mark Bousquet ran the article Genre Fiction: To Curse or Not to Curse, That Is the Question, in which he states:

"Since then, I’ve largely kept curse words out of my stories. My go to swear word is “damn” because that’s a soft curse word, in my book, and I’m sure the occasional “shit” and “piss” has made its way through to publication. Part of this is a choice on my part to not use that kind of language (and if you think that’s a prude thing, you missed the demonic orgy in this book), but again, it’s mostly about what the right words are to come out of a character’s mouth."

A few weeks later, Lance Stahlberg, a former Shooting Star Comics alum and fellow pulp and genre writer, through his two cents into the discussion with his article To Cuss or Not To Cuss. In that article he writes:

"...in the crime novel I am working on, I'm up to 48 F bombs and 78 variations of feces. I even drop the dreaded N word. Twice. Two and a half if you count the time someone started to say it and was shot before he could finish it. Earlier drafts have an even higher curse per word count ratio."

Then I found that Lance referenced this article, Why I No Longer Swear in My Books, by Robert Chazz Chute, a writer I was unfamiliar with up to that reference. He adds to the discussion with this bit:

"The f-word can be a crutch.

"Use it too much and dialogue risks a feeling of laziness and sameness. Increase the frequency and the impact suffers. Working around that obstacle has proved so minor, I wish I’d done without cursing from the beginning. “She cursed him as she sliced his throat,” can serve just as well, or better, than a string of expletives."

So, where do I fall on this topic? What do I feel I can add to it?

Precious little, I'm afraid, but I will say that the following is how it works for me.

Gratuitous-ness is a relative thing, a sliding scale. As with any kind of possibly gratuitous content, be it sex, violence, language, gore, it is necessary for as long as it keeps the story grounded and keeps the illusion intact for the reader. The very second it begins to pull a reader from the story because it seems superfluous it becomes gratuitous. I know that makes it an art more than a science, but it's the best way I can gauge it. Only the contract between the reader and the writer can determine the answer to that question.

Unless...

You're writing for a market with rules about such things. Then you do what the publisher or the market dictates. Other than that, I stand by my first comment.

And that's my two pennies. As always, your mileage may vary.

The Writer Will Take Your Questions Now (#40) -- Gratuitous Content

When do you think language, violence, or sexual content becomes gratuitous in a work of fiction?

The short answer: 

When it distracts a reader from the story.

The long answer: 

Let me respond by first telling you a story. (After it, it's what we storytellers do, right?)

Years ago, when I was in college taking a fiction writing class (My professor wrote an official biography of Joyce Carol Oates -- how cool is that?), I quickly identified with three other writers and we really hit it off. One introduced me to Lovecraft. One had an affinity for early British Lit. And one of them had a quirk that I still remember with affection -- she could write dialog for the saltiest of the salt of the earth characters, but she couldn't  always read her dialog aloud in class as she wrote it. So, she would say the word "fish" in place of a certain other f-word that she would write.

Why do I share that? Because she recognized the difference between what might be inappropriate to her personal sensibilities and what might be gratuitous for her stories. She understood that while certain words might make her uncomfortable, they fit her characters perfectly. 

That, and it was totally awesome to remember listening to her say "Fish you" when she read it aloud.

Repeat after me: My character aren't me. They will say things I won't say. They will do things I won't do. They will have different beliefs than I have.

Your characters don't have to behave like good boys and girls all the time. It's not their job to make your grandmother's idea of polite manners their standards of behavior. They are free to be themselves and do as they must in order for you to tell their tales and entertain readers. In short, they will behave in ways that you may or may not emulate. Or they may stop far short of what you yourself might say or do. 

That's the first step, Grasshopper.

So here's the G-Line (line of gratuitousness, I just coined that, like it?) for me. As long as our characters say or do it without breaking character or bogging down your story, it's on the right side of the line. When they have to break character to say or do it or when the action rips a reader from the illusion world the story is supposed to transport him or her into, then you've crossed that line and become gratuitous.

If people complain about the language or violence or sexual situations jarring them out of the story then it's bad writing on your part.

If they complain about the mere existence of language or violence or sexual situations in your work at all, then it's on the reader who needs to find a different book.

Caveat#1: This is all moot when you are writing for a publisher who requires or requests a certain level of rating (such as PG-13) from you. That's a contract, and you suck it up and play within the fence the publisher has built around your playground.

Caveat #2: Certain genres, such as YA or religious fiction for example, require a more conservative approach to language, violence and sex. In contemporary works it often can be there, but not in a direct manner. So you must have it happen off-screen, or euphemistically (like fireworks, a change of time on the clock, or a release of doves in old Hollywood flicks), etc. Establishing character based on these things must be more implied than implicit.

Caveat #3: Don't bill your story as something that is isn't. If it's a book meant for adult audiences, then have at it. It's intended for the YA market, let a potential reader know it's got a disturbing scene of violence or sex or even some language in it IF IT'S NOT TYPICAL FOR THE MARKET. DC Comics and video games are doing a great job of this at the moment. And no, it's not censorship to reveal the type of content in your book, no matter who tries to convince you that it is. It's respect for you readers.