Being a Better Writer: Taking the Lumps · 9:05pm May 13th, 2019
Hello readers! Welcome to another Monday! I know for many Monday is seen as a bit of a drag, being the start of the workweek and all that, but for me? Well, I always get to look forward to them because it means another Being a Better Writer post! And I kind of hope that in a way, a lot of you look forward to, if nothing else, at least this part of Monday because of BaBW.
Really quick, I do have some nice news, too, which also helps. Hunter/Hunted? Going into Beta. Look for a cover and a release date soon, fans! And Jungle? In Alpha, with a release planned for end of summer/early fall depending on the speed of editing. All I’ll say on that one is … dang. Rereading it and polishing it up, I’d forgotten how tenseit got!
While I’m on the subject, Colony picked up two more Five-star reviews over the weekend across Goodreads and Amazon! Woo-hoo! One step closer to global domination!
Okay, got the news out of my system. So let’s talk about improving your writing. “Taking the Lumps?” What does that mean?
Well … interestingly enough, this is kind of, in a way, a related follow-up post to an incredibly popular BaBW post from two weeks ago on the Strong Female Protagonist. Not 100%, but … well, you’ll understand in a moment.
See, what inspired this post was a news article I read elsewhere on the internet. Well … read half of it. I started skimming when it got foolish, and then didn’t finish. Why? Because … it was bad. Terrible, actually.
I’ll give you the rundown. And, fair warning, it’s a bit of a socially charged article, which was the root of part of the overall problem with it. Just go with me for a moment.
The article was in effect a complaint piece. And half rage. And what it was complaining out—or at least, thought it was complaining about—was misogyny in a story series the author’s article followed.
Long story short, this was one of those “We want strong female characters articles” (and yes, this is putting it very simply and bluntly). The author really, really wanted all the male characters of this series stripped out and replaced by women characters.
Pitchforks down. Though that is a topic, really, all in and of itself, it’s not one we’re discussing today. Because in this case, they’d gotten their wish. The male characters had been sidelined, the female characters were the new leads … and the article writer was upset and offended.
Why? Because the female characters were suffering losses, injury, and even death, just as the male team had. And as the article writer felt, that was ‘misogynistic and sexist.’
Yeah, that’s why I stopped reading. It was a pretty dumb article. However hyperbolic it was, though, it was something that got me thinking, because the mentality behind it isn’t something that’s unusual or new. In fact, it’s been around for a long time. Regardless of the reasons we’re beholden to a set of characters, from gender to backstory to … well, any number of things that make a character appealing to us, there’s a constant we should never forget.
Struggle means risk. And risk can—and should—mean loss.
For a moment there, I thought this was going to be the article where you remind us that authors cannot ever be politically correct, no matter how hard they try, because their adjustments to be so only create more reasons they're corrupt, misguided, ignorant, or just plain mean. Then you switched it around and I'm all "ooooooh."
But this is one of those subjects I rarely think about, at least not directly. I'm aware of consequences and the like, because I understand that character growth comes from challenge, but it's not something I consistently consider in my writing. Hopefully I get it right more often than not.
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Yeah, no joke I worried that readers coming in would think that and then skim over or skip the article because they were thinking “I know where this is going” when in fact, like you said, it takes a sudden switch.
Even with that worry, though, I stuck with it because it’s a really good example of someone not wanting the characters to take their lumps for a bizarre reason that doesn’t make a lot of sense at all when you think about it. And it’s written out in such a forceful way that looking at if from the outside makes it pretty easy to see that there’s a serious flaw with the reasoning.
Personally, this is one of those elements I’ve worked more at as my writing has gone on, and I’ve found it can create a lot more of, well, everything in the plot. In my early works, such as “Rise” or “Dead Silver,” most of the big injury or pain came after the characters had already succeeded, and the cost was simply once the characters could afford to pay it.
With later works like “Colony,” “Shadow of an Empire,” and “Hunter/Hunted,” I can see the change. It’ll be there in “Jungle” too. Characters take hits that stick with them, and make those later moments all the more challenging for it.
Never stop improving, right?