How to decide what's realistic? I remember quite a few people in SV fandom who didn't feel that Pete Ross was 'realistic,' because he was decidedly middle-class and well-educated.
OK, we have just exceeded my daily requirement of vitamin WTF. I wish I were surprised by this. That's just sad and pathetic and icky and...oh lord.
If anything I tend to go in the other direction. I feel that there is more than enough stuff on TV and in books and...everywhere, really...about Black people being criminals and joining gangs and being uneducated and dangerous and Not Like You (whoever you are) and sexy in a creepy way. I don't like it and I don't want to read/write it. None of the Black people I know are like that, and while I realise that there are in fact Black people who are kind of scary, I don't think anyone is likely to forget that.
In the end, I think the primary responsibility any artist has is to do their absolute best to get their message across, whatever that message might be, and to *own* that message, be clear and upfront about it, and not try to have it both ways.
Do you believe that there is always a message? I'm one of those irritating writers whose worldbuilding happens inside her head, and who has characters that just do what they're going to do--I don't consciously control the stories I write as much as some writers do. I know there are other people who write this way because I read matociquala and truepenny and so on. When I write, I'm really only aware of the characters and the story itself. When I try to write any other way, nothing comes out.
(I do know that this is not usually how TV is written and that this does not get TV writers off the hook. Although Ron Moore once told me at a party that he got the end of the last season of BSG more or less in a dream, lol.)
I have other friends who write who are very conscious writers and they puppet their characters as though they could literally pull strings on them. Most of these people write in a didactic style and are very concerned with "message".
I can't do that and don't try. I don't really know what message, if any, is in something I've written until years after I've written it; when I write, I'm pretty much writing down what the little voices in my head say, and I don't know where they come from, and I'm a little worried that if I look too hard I'll break something up in there.
Fortunately most of my work has been well-received so far (knock wood) with regard to portrayals of PoCs and characters of all genders and orientations. People have commented on the fact that I tend not to write good mothers or good parents, but it's something I'm learning to do from shared universe co-writing, as it's beyond my personal experience. I have to address these issues in the world-building or co-write to do it consciously; once the characters come to life in my mind, I feel like I'm taking dictation sometimes.
So the criticisms I find easiest to make, and to respond to, are things like: "This seems hollow and not human and like a stereotype and not filled in." "This is not real to me." "I could not suspend my disbelief that real people would act this way." And those are the things that bother me.
Re: part 2
OK, we have just exceeded my daily requirement of vitamin WTF. I wish I were surprised by this. That's just sad and pathetic and icky and...oh lord.
If anything I tend to go in the other direction. I feel that there is more than enough stuff on TV and in books and...everywhere, really...about Black people being criminals and joining gangs and being uneducated and dangerous and Not Like You (whoever you are) and sexy in a creepy way. I don't like it and I don't want to read/write it. None of the Black people I know are like that, and while I realise that there are in fact Black people who are kind of scary, I don't think anyone is likely to forget that.
Do you believe that there is always a message? I'm one of those irritating writers whose worldbuilding happens inside her head, and who has characters that just do what they're going to do--I don't consciously control the stories I write as much as some writers do. I know there are other people who write this way because I read
(I do know that this is not usually how TV is written and that this does not get TV writers off the hook. Although Ron Moore once told me at a party that he got the end of the last season of BSG more or less in a dream, lol.)
I have other friends who write who are very conscious writers and they puppet their characters as though they could literally pull strings on them. Most of these people write in a didactic style and are very concerned with "message".
I can't do that and don't try. I don't really know what message, if any, is in something I've written until years after I've written it; when I write, I'm pretty much writing down what the little voices in my head say, and I don't know where they come from, and I'm a little worried that if I look too hard I'll break something up in there.
Fortunately most of my work has been well-received so far (knock wood) with regard to portrayals of PoCs and characters of all genders and orientations. People have commented on the fact that I tend not to write good mothers or good parents, but it's something I'm learning to do from shared universe co-writing, as it's beyond my personal experience. I have to address these issues in the world-building or co-write to do it consciously; once the characters come to life in my mind, I feel like I'm taking dictation sometimes.
So the criticisms I find easiest to make, and to respond to, are things like: "This seems hollow and not human and like a stereotype and not filled in." "This is not real to me." "I could not suspend my disbelief that real people would act this way." And those are the things that bother me.