http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ Web Fiction Guide Forums » Tag: audience - Recent Posts en Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:32:30 +0000 http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/a-definition-of-success#post-7380 Tue, 13 Sep 2011 05:27:34 +0000 MadHacktress 7380@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Wynterlex demonstrates an important consideration for defining success: motivation.</p> <p>Those who write for a living, I suppose, would define their success by whether or not they're able to live off writing. Those who write for passion would measure success based on the fulfillment received by the creative process. Etc, etc, etc for the various motivating factors for those who write.</p> <p>My point, as with your point, is that it's up to the individual to set their own benchmark for success.</p> <p>I think a big problem is that people conflate the notion of a "successful writer" with that of a "professional writer". </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/a-definition-of-success#post-7378 Tue, 13 Sep 2011 01:52:48 +0000 Wynterlex 7378@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I agree great post - How many artists who's paintings are priceless now nearly never made a cent while they were painting? I can name five right now - And yet they kept painting. I think it's the same with writing.</p> <p>I write because I can't not write. I'm an okay writer but I doubt I'll ever be a great one, I'm able to promote myself but I'll never have enough confidence or showmanship to really push myself out there. And that's sort of alright. I have a job and in all honesety if I had to sit on my butt all day writing to make a living I'd go crazy (I need to move which is why I have an on-the-go job)</p> <p>I've been writing for a pretty long time and got into the fanfiction circle for a pretty long time - I had readers tell me that I made them cry, made them laugh, made their day better, helped with various emotional problems. Now I'm writing my own original fiction and if I can make people happy or touch someone with what I write then I feel successful.</p> <p>If I was an actress I'd be into community theatre, if I was a musician I'd busk, but I'm a writer and here I am :D </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/a-definition-of-success#post-7374 Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:28:13 +0000 Kess 7374@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Love the post! I've been giving this subject a lot of thought lately, and will probably babble on my blog once those thoughts have achieved a coherent state (and I have time to sit down and write it). I'll definitely be bookmarking your post as a reference. Thanks! :) </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/a-definition-of-success#post-7368 Sat, 10 Sep 2011 18:28:06 +0000 M.C.A. Hogarth 7368@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Since this has come up a few times in the past few weeks, I thought I'd offer a link to my post about definitions of success:</p> <p><a href="http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/989051.html" rel="nofollow">http://haikujaguar.livejournal.com/989051.html</a></p> <p>If you are too busy to read the whole thing, the takeaway is probably the last line: Because if you have ever made a single thing that touched another person, you too, have succeeded. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6950 Thu, 14 Jul 2011 22:01:03 +0000 Kess 6950@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I tend to keep an eye on the issues that mean a lot to me when I write. Mostly, this is racial and sexual politics. I don't write about particular issues in those fields, but I prefer to stay away from the stereotypes. I write scifi, which gives me freedom to mix things up, too, and that means I can make my own social rules (and throw away the ones I don't like). </p> <p>I tend to be annoyed by sexual or racial issues being reinforced by fiction - a story might be awesome in many ways, but quietly reinforcing the female victim trope or a particular racial stereotype really detracts from it for me. Sin City is one example of this. Sometimes, it's not even obvious until you step back and ask yourself 'are all the females weak? Always asking a man's advice? Are all the males obsessed with proving they're Da Man?' </p> <p>I often take that step back from my own writing and look for patterns, just to see what I've put in there accidentally. If I want to make a statement, I'd prefer to say it on purpose!</p> <p>As for feeling obliged to write about cultures not my own... I don't feel obliged. I write the story that matters to me, within the bounds that are important to me. I enjoy mixing things up and stirring in many influences. However, I prefer to write only about those cultures that I feel I know well. Definitely a research issue! Usually, it's just easier to leave them out - I'd rather have a smaller cultural pool than get it wrong. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6925 Sat, 02 Jul 2011 13:18:10 +0000 Gavin Williams 6925@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I think that "blank slate" default is part of my problem as a writer. I have a lot of cultural experience to draw on from my life, and yet it doesn't occur in my stories. I just realized it's because I don't have a cultural connection of my own to draw strongly from. Being high functioning autistic, I don't feel a sense of belonging in general to anything other than my immediate family. And, my extended family had weird homogenzed racial identity -- we had Christmas and Easter without church, so basically just presents, potlucks and very secular stuff. My background is Irish/Scottish/British and no one in my family really celebrated those roots. Me, I love Braveheart but I don't go to Highland games, you know?</p> <p>My stories No Man an Island and even The Surprising Life and Death of Diggory Franklin both deal with protagonists who are culturally, emotionally and relationally adrift. Ethan because he has Asperger's Syndrome like me and retreats into fantasy, Diggory because he has emotionally-distant parents and few friends. So, given that common theme, no wonder culture isn't that important to my writing yet. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6924 Sat, 02 Jul 2011 10:23:23 +0000 M.C.A. Hogarth 6924@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I think a writer can decide that s/he has a social obligation, or that his/her writing will follow a moral code of his/her choosing... but that these things are individual, and should be. All of us if questioned probably have some subsconscious ethical underpinning for our artistic endeavors; if not what we write, then how we sell it. And all of us are weaving our beliefs into what we write.</p> <p>Making ourselves conscious of those beliefs can be a useful exercise.</p> <p>As for me, most of what I write either features aliens, or the humans are from a future far enough that they have ethnicity, it's just their own (it's a Thing in one of my novels that the protagonist was born on Mars, because Mars is a bit of a ghetto).</p> <p>More than we write what we know, we write what we're interested in. I'm interested in cross-cultural issues, so I write about those. Other people might be interested in different things, so they use characters that are more "blank slate"ish so their background will be less of an obstacle to whatever that thing is.</p> <p>(Though one of my big sorrows is that Caucasians are treated as blank slates. They're not. The "white guy" next to me with the Scottish grandmother he regularly chats with in Gaelic and who has extended family in Scotland has a very different life experience from the "white guy" on the other side of me who knows he has some Italian in him and wishes he could get to know his roots better, and maybe he secretly wants to learn Italian, or visit Italy; maybe he resents being a mutt, someone homogenized and without racial identity.) </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6922 Sat, 02 Jul 2011 07:13:04 +0000 Jim Zoetewey 6922@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Speaking only for myself, I tend to go from the perspective of coming up with the story concepts first, and then seeing where they go. I try for verisimilitude which for me (as someone with a couple degrees in sociology) means I should think about the setting's demographics and the way the main character interacts with his/her setting.</p> <p>Is the character someone with friends from a wide variety of backgrounds, or do they tend to stick with their own group? Where are they going to run into people outside their group within their daily life?</p> <p>In settings where it makes sense to have a wide variety of people, it's easy to get diverse groups that way. In settings where it doesn't make sense, I'm okay with things not being especially diverse. A "not very diverse" group of characters in Uganda will be somewhat different from a "not very diverse" group in the US or Canada, however.</p> <p>It's then up to me to do the necessary research to write it well--not to mention paying attention to what I'm doing with the character(s). I don't want to write a stereotype. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6919 Sat, 02 Jul 2011 04:14:50 +0000 Jon Landers 6919@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Writers have an obligation to themselves to write the story that needs to be told. There is no higher obligation to a writer than that, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something (probably a novel). </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6918 Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:31:02 +0000 ubersoft 6918@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I think putting any demands on an author beyond "tell a good story" is probably dangerous. Considering that writers are not confined to any single political or moral ideology, trying to nail down what those obligations are would get ugly. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6916 Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:00:28 +0000 Ryan Span 6916@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I don't think it's so much a societal obligation to force in diversity, but a responsibility to be accurate in what you do. If you write any character that is outside of your experience then you should do the research and put in the effort to make them feel as appropriate as possible.</p> <p>That's my philosophy, anyway!</p> <p>Regards,<br /> Ryan </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6915 Fri, 01 Jul 2011 11:30:57 +0000 Robert Rodgers 6915@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>@Erin Klitzke: Isaac Asimov comes to mind as an example of a /fantastic/ author who couldn't write women for shit.</p> <p>I rarely write to educate; rather, I write to entertain. I don't think writers have any obligation whatsoever to do otherwise. However, I've come to realize that there are ways in which I can exclude people from enjoying my work--dealing poorly with matters of race, gender, and identity, for example. As an entertainer--and as someone who is passionate about stories--I want to share my passion with as many people as possible. That means trying my best (albeit with many failures) to understand the narratives that speak to them, and not belittling, dismissing, or otherwise negating their experiences.</p> <p>My goal is not to be instructive--only to tell stories that matter to those who read them. And to make that happen, I need to understand what matters to them. Put simply, expanding your understanding of human experiences makes you a better writer. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6910 Fri, 01 Jul 2011 10:00:51 +0000 Erin Klitzke 6910@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>I think that to a certain degree, we do have a social responsibility to perhaps be even-handed in our portrayal of other genders, cultures, and lifestyles. This having been said, writers run the gamut of experiences and strengths, and we have to know and accept our strengths and weaknesses, keeping those in mind as we write. There are bestselling authors that CANNOT WRITE WOMEN to save their lives. There are authors who can't write men. Fact of existence.</p> <p>I think it's important that we don't automatically fasten onto stereotypes as well, this going back to the even-handed portrayal. If you truly <strong>don't know</strong> anything about Islam, it might not be a good idea to write a Muslim character into your story, just to have one. If you have no experience with people of African extraction or Asian extraction, it's perfectly acceptable to avoid including them based on your lack of experience. If you've never had a transgendered friend, you may not want to dabble in characterizing a transgendered or transsexual character.</p> <p>This said, I'm guilty of writing fiction with primarily Caucasian main characters as well (though the exception to that is one of my favorite MCs of the moment, Brendan Cho, from my E-557 universe). Supporting casts tend to be more diverse, but for the main cast, I stick to what I know and what I've been primarily exposed to all of my life--but that's not to say I give in to stereotypes with my supporting cast, and unless there's good reason for it, I don't think anyone should. It's about writing what you're comfortable writing and really feeling like you've got the characterization right, and while some stereotypes MIGHT be true, there's always exceptions to the supposed rule, if the rule's true at all.</p> <p>In the end, I really think we're writing both to entertain and educate--with a heavier leaning, in most cases, toward entertainment. People will read what they like and what they can relate to. The trick is to make things relatable to as many readers as possible. If you're writing a homosexual relationship, you focus on the emotions, on what everyone can relate to about desire and being in love, or in lust (Ellipsis does this really well in the Traveller's Guide). Concentrate on the universals. When we do that, we end up educating people without them realizing it as they're entertained. </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/do-writers-have-societal-obligations#post-6909 Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:41:48 +0000 Gavin Williams 6909@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>An interesting conversation happened in the comments on Jim Zoetewey's "Legion of Nothing" this week when someone mentioned the superhero trope "Woman in Refrigerator," which is an idea with its own website that women in comic books are frequently victimized (killed, hurt, raped) to up the stakes on storylines. Different comments on the Women in Refrigerators website (WIC from here on) and comments on JZ's actual story summarized this trend as the result of a largely white, male, heterosexual writing class wanting strong masculine heroes to have emotional reactions to damsels in distress because that's their culture.</p> <p>So, parallel to that, most comics are white hetero-normative (I think that's the phrase I want to use). There's not a lot of cultural, racial, sexual or gender diversity. There are sometimes "token" gay or racial characters. (There are also some comics that deal with diversity well - I think of X-Men, which addresses oppression, discrimination and diversity all the time).</p> <p>Anyway, what I was wondering, was where do writers here weigh in? Do we have a social responsibility to try to incorporate different voices, perspectives and cultures in our writing, or just go with what we know? Do you write to be entertaining or educate? (This isn't an either/or thing, just want to see people comment).</p> <p>Me personally, I have a lot of multi-cultural experience, but because of plots I've decided to do in my stories, I just realized that the majority of my characters are white, and they're all heterosexual (so far as I know, I haven't really asked most of my characters about their sex lives). I found it funny that a kid that had black, white, Asian, Christian, Muslim, straight, gay, agnostic friends and studied world religions grew up to write primarily white fiction. My own writing doesn't reflect my experiences and while I know my plots have a lot of planning (like in NMAI the main characters are rural Canadian white kids from the same small town, not much room for a gay kid from Hong Kong to join them) I wonder if I'm perpetuating stereotypes. Does anyone else think about stuff like this? </p> http://forums.webfictionguide.com/topic/some-guy-with-a-blog-vs-a-real-thing#post-6459 Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:59:27 +0000 Alexander.Hollins 6459@http://forums.webfictionguide.com/ <p>Personally, every author should have a very obvious landing page link on every page, so if you get randomly linked to any page, first last or in between, by someone, you can find the about page right away. But thats me. </p>