Year: 2020

Diversity

The Commodification of Indigenous Culture

Bruce Byfield

Earlier this week, my blog partner Jessica wrote about the difference between an enthusiasm for another culture and fetishizing it. By fetishizing, I take her to mean having a view of the culture that is superficial and false and reduces the culture to another brand to sell. To illustrate this meaning, I can think of no better example than the prevailing views about indigenous cultures of North America — those who in Canada we call the First Nations. In their case, the commodification has become almost mainstream.

In the current political climate, to talk about Black culture might seem more timely. However, in Canada, the First Nations occupy some of the position as Afro-Americans in the United States. Moreover, the First Nation’s situation is something I know firsthand. Knowing many First Nations artists and supporting their work, I have heard these misguided views I am pointing at again and again (and also the mingled anger and laughter of the First Nations themselves, since there is no shortage of European ethnics to tell them what to think about their culture).

For one thing, many people are surprised that there are more than one First Nations culture. In the minds of many, the traditional culture stretches from Florida to Alaska. It is like assuming that everyone from Ireland to Russia shares the same culture. The truth is that there have been hundreds of First Nations culture, ranging from nomads to city states and even empires. Those cultures that survive today are united chiefly by their treatment by the European settler governments, who for several centuries have done their best to eradicate and assimilate them.

The imagined pseudo-culture is a grab-bag of traits and customs. The tipis of the plains mingle with the totems of the Pacific Northwest. Everyone wears feathered bonnets and build sweat lodges, and decorate their dwellings with dream-catchers. Everything is all very spiritual — much more so than in modern industrial society, as one potential buyer told a local carver who drives a pickup, lives in a suburban house, and earns most of his income from his online store. It is apparently a deeply romantic place, especially in Germany, where thousands of fans of Karl May’s early twentieth century novels gather to spend a few weeks camping in tipis and calling each other by what they imagine are First Nation names.

This pseudo-culture is so powerfully entrenched in our minds that the modern reality is mostly ignored. Nothing is said of the poverty that many First Nations face. If we think at all, most of us imagine that the First Nations people who survive live on reserves and are dying out, when the reality is that three-quarters are urban, and the birth rate is among the highest of any ethnic groups in North America. Tell them that First Nations like the Nisga-a and the Navajo are self-governing, or that other hereditary chiefs are enough of a power to start country-wide protests, as the Wet’suwet’en of northern British Columbia did, and none of it makes an impression. The pseudo-culture claims our imagination more than the reality.

The pseudo-culture is especially strong when it comes to art. The best-known art among the northern First Nations of British Columbia is known as formline, a semi-abstract library of shapes and traditions that is often compared to Celtic knotwork. Often, it depicts family crests, although the art sold to the general public is more likely to depict stories from the traditional mythologies that are not owned by a particular family.

In its complexity, formline is regarded as one of the great arts of the world. Yet many of us, historically beginning with visiting surrealists and anthropologists, regard it as a primitive art form. Never mind that modern formline draw inspiration from Maori, New Guinea and South America, as well as from the minority cultures of China and Japan. Tourists on the streets of Vancouver see no difference between formline masterpieces and a carving done by an unskilled homeless person sitting in a doorway, except that the homeless person’s is much cheaper. Tourists are also easy marks for “artifakes” carved in Indonesia that are made of mahogany rather than cedar or alder, and mostly imitate formline with no understanding.

Instead, the pseudo-culture imposes its own meanings and standards. Countless gift shops sell pewter pendants and earring with a tag attached that assigns a characteristic to the animal depicted. Wolves, for instance, might be said to symbolize ferocity, or bears tenacity. Among those about to marry, rings or bracelets with pairs of hummingbirds are popular. I have often heard customers in shops natter on about this symbolism as they make their choices, although the entire system originated almost entirely in the minds of copywriters looking for a way to move more marketing.

Meanwhile, amid all this misguided imagining, the true cultures and reality of the First Nations are mostly ignored. A few writers, like Eden Robinson — who is First Nations herself — depict modern First Nations lives but such works are rare. Moreover, in any sort of fantasy, the pseudo-culture prevails. I have seen fantasies, for example, in which the giants of the Cherokees are conflated with the Sasquatch of modern Northwest Coast lore, although all the two have in common is height. Similarly, the Wendigo spirit of the eastern Woodlands is placed in Oregon, or the skinturners of the Pueblo legends in New York. It’s all the same culture, the reasoning seems to be, so why would the details matter.

After decades of genocide and neglect, this pseudo-culture is a final insult. After being nearly eradicated, now that the cultures are reviving, they are made into commodities — that, is, when they are not erased altogether in fantasy, or replaced by homo erectus, or orcs and trolls.

But in addition, reaching for the pseudo-culture should be deeply embarrassing to any writer. To do so, is to brand yourself superficial, if not actually racist. And, perhaps most importantly, it is to chose the trivial over the richness of the true traditions. Any writer who fetishes another culture in this way should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

Uncategorized

A Dubious Fascination: Culture as Commodity

thelocaldialect

Recently, on a writer’s forum that I moderate, someone asked the very salient question, “how can you tell the difference between having an interest or enthusiasm for another culture, and fetishizing that culture?” I myself have had some experience with straddling the lines that exist between consumption, appreciation, and experience, and have enough to say on the topic to fill multiple articles, but first, some context.

I moved to China when I was twenty-three years old after spending four years in university learning first Japanese and then Mandarin Chinese. I took my first Japanese class in high school, and at that point I certainly had no deep understanding of Japanese culture. My desire to learn Asian languages was driven mostly by a desire to do something different. Plus, I’d run out of Spanish classes to take by my senior year in high school but foreign language had always been my best subject. Doing a year without studying a language seemed inconceivable, so I chose Japanese. If they’d offered Vietnamese or Arabic or Igbo, I’d certainly just as soon have taken those. I wanted to learn something that wasn’t the usual Spanish French and occasionally German that my peers were all learning.

As a teenager and young college student I certainly engaged in some degree of fetishization. I was consuming foreign cultures as if they were the cure to that mid-90s suburban boredom that I felt so keenly as a teenager. Heck, eager for a break in the monotony, I even heckled my parents until they agreed to let us host a Japanese exchange student for a year. I took a trip to Japan after winning an essay contest, and I took first prize in the Japanese speech competition, and learned to like Japanese food, music, and dramas (I never did get into anime, however).  And when the Japanese language lost its luster for me, I turned to Chinese. It wasn’t until much much later, after living in China for close to two decades, that I was able to see my past behaviors as problematic. By that time I’d long since ceased being “fascinated” by my host culture. China was simply the place where I lived, and Chinese culture was the culture that I was living in — beloved, complex, often infuriating,  just like my own.

Realize that unless you immerse yourself in a culture (and sometimes you can do that, but other times, you can’t), your perceptions of that culture are usually largely based upon a commodified version of that culture, and in turn you treat that culture as product to be consumed. We must examine why we are “fascinated” by a culture, or the products of that culture. Is the fascination rooted in othering? Certainly, for teenage me, my desire for an escape from the monotony of American suburban culture, and my impulse to find that escape in Asian cultures was rooted in othering.  Usually when we speak of being fascinated by a foreign culture we mean we are fascinated because the culture is different in a way that we can enjoy from afar, and then set aside when we are through. It is treated as an expendable commodity, and the culture is made to serve us, rather than existing on its own, separate from our own perceptions and expectations of it.

Understand too that when you “other” a different culture, your implicit statement is that the culture is lesser than your own. It is something to enjoy, a pastime, but something that you ultimately set aside at the end of the day in favor of your own “superior” culture and its values. Think about the adjectives you might use to describe the other culture, and contrast them to the adjectives you would use to describe your own. Oftentimes this will reveal those implicit biases about those cultures. Do you call it exotic? Quaint? Fascinating? Colorful? Are the people humble? Generous? Kind?  How about the food? Is it an adventure? Crazy? While seemingly innocuous, those statements carry with them a distinct undertone of superiority. The message is “this is a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to stay.” They tell us that this place is different from our own homeland, good for a diversion, but not suitable for those with more gentle tastes. This language of othering is extremely harmful, as are the attitudes which prop up the language. T

Of course, enjoying other cultures as commodities doesn’t make you an evil bad person. Many of us enjoy traveling, learning new languages, and experiencing new cultures. However, the impulse is not something that should go unexamined. Consider what you mean when you say that you appreciate a culture. Have you lived in that culture? Interacted meaningfully with people from that culture? Do all of your interactions involve consuming, and does that consumption benefit the culture itself? When possible, rather than seeking out surface level ways to interact with a culture, you should interact in a meaningful way that actually benefits the culture, or at the very least, does little harm. “Appreciating” Japanese culture by eating sushi or watching anime is not, on the surface, harmful, but nor are they really meaningful ways of engaging with Japan. If you like the commercial products produced by this culture then consider that perhaps you just like anime, or sushi, instead of claiming to appreciate Japanese culture.

I critiqued the work of a young man who was writing a Chinese-based fantasy and yet the entirety of his engagement with Chinese culture came from C-dramas. Still, he claimed to appreciate Chinese culture. It goes without saying that while he created a world that looked, on the outside, somewhat Chinese, it was at best a surface level replica. I found his world to be a pale imitation, something that shared at best some shallow similarities with ancient China. As it turned out, he enjoyed C-Dramas and particularly the aesthetic of long haired men in flowy robes, but knew little about actual Chinese culture. His China was a pre-packaged imitation China, not the real deal.

For us writers, this is a particularly important lesson to learn. Interacting with a culture in a non-harmful way goes beyond simply avoiding appropriating from said culture — writers must be mindful of how we engage with a culture on the page. Here is the kicker — you can do all of your research, treat the culture respectfully, engage with sensitivity readers and still have your work be based upon a version of the culture that does not exist except in the mind of the author as consumer. Writers in particular must be wary of borrowing from cultures they have merely consumed, rather than engaged with and experienced in a meaningful way.

Characters, General Writing

The Fallacies of Character Flaws

Bruce Byfield

“What are your main character’s flaws?” I scroll past this attempt at conversation several times a week. I never try to answer it, because it is usually based on the assumption that a main character, if not all characters, are only realistic and sympathetic if they have defects. This assumption is so cluttered with fallacies that I have never taken the time to answer it until now.

So far as I can tell, the assumption seems based on a misunderstanding of Aristotle’s Poetics. In discussing tragedy, Aristotle introduces the term hamartia. Harmatia is often popularly translated into English as “flaw,” but, according to Wikipedia, is a much more neutral term, better translated as “to miss the mark” or “to fall short.” Harmatia is the misunderstanding or lacking piece of information that determines the events of the tragedy.

So, right away, the belief that a personality flaw is needed is based on a misunderstanding. This misunderstanding explains why it can be difficult to assign a flaw to a classical tragic hero. What, for example, is the flaw that leads to Oedipus marrying his mother? By every indication, Oedipus is a conscientious, upright soul with a strong sense of responsibility. Similarly, nothing is lacking in Orestes when he kills his mother. Rather, Orestes is caught between his duty to his mother and his responsibility to avenge his father’s murder. Neither Oedipus nor Orestes can be assigned a flaw without stretching a point, although many teachers have tried.

The tradition continues when Shakespeare is taught. I remember being told in high school that Othello’s tragic flaw was jealousy, while Hamlet was unable to make up his mind. Such over-simplifications create the illusion that we have a handle on complicated stories, but do we? Othello does not leap to jealousy by himself, but has his relationship with his wife poisoned by the whisperings of Iago. As for Hamlet, he delays only until he is convinced that what his father’s ghost has told him is true. If you had to assign Hamlet a flaw in Act V, it would be that he acts far too rashly.

Harmatia is a flexible enough term that it can cover Oedipus, Orestes, Othello, and Hamlet, but the hunt for flaws simply doesn’t work. However, few writers today are producing tragedies, so harmatia is irrelevant. Aristotle was not analyzing the structure of stories, but of tragedy, which is only a subset of stories. No matter how you translate Aristotle, his comments have no more than an indirect insight into a modern novel or short story.

Still, believers in flaws are apt to say, a flawed character is easier to identify with. And it is true that an impossibly noble hero is unlikely to be sympathetic. Often, an anti-hero, an amoral rogue with some redeeming traits is more likely to keep readers turning pages. However, all stories cannot be about anti-heroes. More importantly, I have to ask whether a personality flaw really makes a hero more relatable. Do we actually like a character more if they are weak-willed? If they drink too much? Or sleep around? At the very least, flaws only make a character more sympathetic if they are carefully selected. We might identify, for instance, with a ruthless killer who shows mercy, or only murders the corrupt. However, flaws alone do not seem a consistent tactic to make readers identify with a character.

Besides, fiction is not a role-playing game, where characters exist in isolation because the story is shaped by the DM. In fiction, a character depends largely on the needs of the plot. Does the story require someone who changes sides? Then the character involved is likely to be someone with imagination and empathy. Does it depend on a betrayal? Then the betrayer needs a motive like a lost cause or a wish for revenge. Successful characters rarely emerge fully-formed — they develop in a complex interplay with setting and plot where it is hard to say which comes first. If they are created in isolation, they are likely to be unconvincing. No matter how many flaws you sprinkle over them like spice, there is no hiding that you are serving up a bland dish.

Anyway, who is to say what a flaw is? A character who is rash could be praised in one circumstance for resolution, and in another for thoughtfulness. By contrast, working with the concept of flaws seems almost certain to result in puppet-like characters whom no one wants to read about.

What characters do need is an arc: a movement from one state to another. They might set out to accomplish a certain task. They might learn as the story continues, becoming fit to realize their goals in a way they weren’t at the start of the story. Such arcs are what engage readers — not a set of arbitrary flaws.

Uncategorized

#PublishingPaidMe and the Industry’s Problem with Race

thelocaldialect

In the wake of the historical Black Lives Matter protests that sprung up following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, conversations about race began to take place in many industries, and publishing was not exempt.

Of the many discussions that emerged surrounding the racism that permeates the publishing industry (publishing as a whole is 76% white according to a study by Lee and Low ) was the discussion of author advances. An advance is the money that the publisher pays an author up front, before the book has sold any copies, as an advance against any royalties earned. Before an author can start receiving royalty checks, they must earn back their advance, which means that authors who receive high advances have to sell a lot more books before they start to see royalty money. Usually, advances can be seen as a mark of the publisher’s confidence in a book. A high advance indicates that the publisher is relatively certain that the book will make a substantial amount of money. Higher advances often, but not always, mean that the publisher will invest more effort in the marketing and promotion of the book.

Advances have long been a rather mysterious topic, with very little transparency regarding the specific amounts that authors can expect. Traditionally authors have been reluctant to disclose their exact amounts advance amounts, although it is relatively common to read press releases stating that so and so’s book sold at auction for “six figures.” Some authors actually have clauses worked into their contracts which state that they may not disclose the amount of their advance, whereas others simply feel uncomfortable, in a culture that treats discussion of salary as taboo (a norm that has long been used to perpetuate salary gaps in many industries), discussing their exact advance figures. However, given the current Black Lives Matter movement, many authors and allies felt like a conversation about the discrepancy in advances between Black and non-Black authors was long overdue.

Thus, author L.L. McKinney created the hashtag #PublishingPaidMe.

The purpose of the hashtag was to expose these discrepancies. McKinney emphasized that Black authors did not have to participate by disclosing their advances, but that non-Black authors should disclose their advances in order to help Black authors confront a wage gap that existed so far mostly anecdotally. The hashtag would provide actual numbers which would prove not only that the wage gap existed, but that it was pervasive. Armed with evidence of what their non-Black colleagues were being given in advance, Black writers would be in a better position to negotiate their own advances.

However, Black authors quickly began taking part, exposing massive discrepancies in advance numbers. One of the revelations that sparked the most consternation was Hugo award winning Black author N.K. Jemisin’s:

Many authors and readers found it completely unacceptable that an author of Jemisin’s caliber had received such low advances. But Jemisin wasn’t an outlier. A Google Docs spreadsheet was quickly compiled in order to create more solid and actionable data. The numbers were revealing. While genres varied, at the time of writing this, of 163 advances payments greater than or equal to $100,000, only 12 of those advances went to Black writers.

Clearly publishing, like many industries, suffers from a wage gap. Publishing seems unwilling to take the same risks on Black authors as it does on white authors. In fact, white authors are often given multiple chances and are still awarded second chances even after a first book flops, whereas Black writers often are given only one shot.  As many have pointed out, this discrepancy does not fall solely at the feet of agents and editors, but is also the responsibility of sales executives and even booksellers who see books by Black authors as a poor investment, this despite the fact that college educated Black women are the demographic most likely to read books.  The source of this misconception? Implicit biases among mostly white publishing professionals who assume that Black people are less likely to read books and that white readers will not pick up books featuring Black protagonists.

To show their support of the Black Lives Matter movement and the light it shed on the issues with the publishing industry, a group of more than 1000 publishing industry workers declared a day of solidarity and took a day off to protest against racial injustice and also vowed to donate a day’s pay fundraisers. In response, major publishing houses such as Penguin Random House acknowledged the problems with racism within the industry and vowed to foster more diversity within the company. They also promised anti-racist training for all staff members. Of course, only time will tell if these measures will make a difference, or if publishing houses are simply worried about the optics should they fail to make a bold statement in the midst of a global movement.

One thing is for certain, publishing has a race problem, and that problem reflects the larger culture of white supremacy that exists in all countries where the legacy of slavery and colonialism lives on. While efforts such as We Need Diverse Books and #DivPit have helped to mitigate the effects of racism upon the publishing industry, it is only through the complete eradication of white supremacist culture that the publishing industry, like all other industries and institutions in this country and others, can finally rid itself of the specter of racism. So while diversity training and education and earnest pledges to do better are a nice gestures, they will be ultimately meaningless unless white supremacist culture is dismantled once and for all.

General Writing, Marketing, Reviews and Analysis

How I Learned to Love Series

Bruce Byfield

Shamefacedly, I have to admit: I’m now writing a trilogy. And to make matters worse, I feel pretty good about it.

It wasn’t always that way. For much of my life, I’ve looked down on trilogies. Tolkien may have needed to divide The Lord of the Rings into three books in order to be published, but that was something imposed on him, not something he planned. Those who have come after him usually don’t have the same excuse. As a result, trilogies have come to mean one book’s worth of material stretched over three, with a sagging second book that should be hurried over as quickly as possible to get to the better stuff. To me, trilogies were a sign of flabby writing and imagination.

As for series — well, I’d say don’t get me started, but I’m already on the backstretch. While I’ve read series, too often they seemed to me to be shameless catering to readers’ demands for more of the same. Nothing a serious writer (sniff!) would consider. Something always died in me when I heard aspiring writers cheerfully planning a twelve book series. “Why are you planning to be a hack?” I always wanted to ask.

Weighed down by these prejudices, when I became serious about writing fantasy, I resolved to only write single books. The trouble was, my current work in progress kept bolting and trying to become a duology. No, a trilogy. No, a series. Two-thirds of the way through and worried about length, I finally admitted the obvious: there were three sharply defined arcs in the tales, and I would have a far better chance of publication if I placed them in separate, shorter volumes.

I take comfort in the fact that in the marketplace, if not necessarily the canon, I am following in the footsteps of Tolkien. The only difference is that I am doing so before being asked. These days, that’s the likeliest way of getting agents or publishers to even consider me.

More importantly, I have to admit that a trilogy or a series does not condemn me to literary mediocrity. Plenty of respectable writers do series. Lois McMaster Bujold, for example, has kept her Miles Vorkosigan saga fresh for over twenty books. She does so by making each book independent of the others except for the same background and many of the characters. Mostly, they center on her hero Miles at a different stage in his life. More recently, though, the series have centered on Miles’ cousin, mother, and wife. And throughout, books have borrowed from genres ranging from space opera to mysteries and romantic comedies. Similarly, her forays into fantasy like the Curse of Chalion, The Paladin of Souls, and her Penric novellas share little more than their background. With tactics like these, Bujold manages to keep the individual books in her series fresh. They benefit from the shared background, but stand on their own.

More recently, I have come across Daniel Abraham’s five volume series, The Dagger and the Coin. According to my former attitudes, this work should be twice-damned, because it is not only a series, but one with multiple points of views — a choice many writers have followed down the path to disaster. However, Abraham manages to pull off these challenging choices, largely because of his unusual characters. Ensnared by genre tropes, how many other writers would make one character a young girl learning the intricacies of banking, of all things? Or an utterly conventional noble woman forced to struggle for her family’s and country’s survival? Or a villain who is a lonely introvert out to revenge himself for bullying, who cares for his young ward? Each of his leads is so strongly motivated that arc could be a novel in itself, and the fact that most books in the series have a minimal resolution hardly matters. Like Tolkien, the books are really one novel, and kept me too busy hurrying on to the next one to exercise my prejudices.

As I should have known, the problem was never with series in themselves. It was with mediocre writers, mindlessly following conventions. If there are any limitations to trilogies or series, strong writing and originality can overcome them.

So, yeah, I’m writing a trilogy. Want to make something of it?

Uncategorized

What White Writers Can Do

thelocaldialect

Activism can take many shapes. Some people take to the streets in protest, others donate to bail funds, still others choose to change the world by creating the works of art that shape our culture. If you’re reading this blog, you’re probably a writer, and, if you’re a white writer like me, you might be thinking about how you might best use your words to create change in the world. What can you, a white writer who wants to be actively anti-racist, do to make sure that you are not a part of the problem?

Recognize your privilege

Recognize that as a white writer you have benefited, from your earliest days, from white supremacy.  Even as a writer, you benefit from a publishing industry that is overwhelmingly white, which means that when you pitch your novel? Chances are the agents you pitch to look like you, share your experiences, and probably have some implicit biases in your favor. It means that your women’s literature book about two white sisters caring for their aging white mother, or your Game of Thrones medieval European fantasy, will not be considered a risk to publishers. No one is going to call your book weird or complain that the characters or setting are unfamiliar or confusing. No one will look at your book and think, “can we fit another white author on our list?”  Benefiting from white supremacy doesn’t make you a bad person, it doesn’t make those agents and editors bad people, but it means that you have an obligation, as a white person who wants to be part of the solution, to help dismantle those systems where you see them. Let go of your white fragility, of the knee-jerk reaction that is telling you “yes, but not me,” and remind yourself, “yes, even me.”

Boost BIPOC Voices

Instead of trying to write the definitive book on racism yourself, use your privilege to boost the voices of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color). Of course, not all of us have massive platforms, but the size of your platform doesn’t particularly matter. A great place to signal boost is in pitch events, particularly #DivPit and #PitMad, the latter of which has a brand new hashtag associated with it, #BVM, for Black Voices Matter. You can signal boost the pitches of Black and other marginalized creators by commenting or retweeting (according to the rules of each event) the pitches you like. Remember, the agents and editors need to know that these pitches have broad appeal, and your voice can help those pitches get noticed. When you see people asking for book recommendations, don’t just recommend books by white authors — make a point of recommending books by marginalized creators. Promote writers of color on your platform — retweet, link, boost. Remember, writing is not a zero sum game. Boosting others doesn’t mean that you take away from your own work, and in fact, some of the most successful writers are known for lifting up their fellow writers, rather than just focusing solely on self promotion.

Don’t Speak over BIPOC

Sometimes the hardest thing for us white people to learn is when to sit back and listen. We are used to being heard, after all, and writers, especially, have chosen this mode of expression because we feel like we have something to say. And of course, this doesn’t mean we should shut up and say nothing, it simply means that sometimes we should let others do the talking, and know when it is our turn to sit back and listen. What it also means is that sometimes we need to understand that our thoughts and feelings are not always going to be the most important ones on each issue. I am in a group for freelance writers, and during the recent Black Lives Matter protests a white woman wanted to know where she might pitch an article about why being married to a BIPOC doesn’t absolve her from racism. The members of the group politely told her that while her article was surely well intended, her voice was not the voice that was needed right now. At a moment in history when the Black community is taking to the streets to protest Black people being brutally murdered by the police, we don’t need a navel gazing article by a white woman centering her experience of white privilege, we need to hear the voices of the Black people who have been impacted by white supremacy. Will there ever be a time and place for white people to muse about their struggles to be antiracist? Certainly. These types of articles have their place, but that place is definitely not in the middle of a national Black Lives Matter movement. Make sure you read the room.

Change Your Reading Habits

Similarly to boosting BIPOC voices, consuming more media created by BIPOC yourself is a way that you can make a difference, however small, by doing your part to normalize non-white content. You might need a deliberate effort at first, depending on how diverse your consumption already is, to read diverse books, or watch diverse shows. Make a personal commitment that for every book you purchase that is written by a white person, you’ll purchase another written by a BIPOC. There is so much great content out there, and if you’re only reading books by white writers not only are you perpetuating a kind of white hegemony in publishing, you’re missing out on a lot of really great books.

Donate Time, Energy, and Money

Probably one of the most helpful things you can do is to donate, either your money, or, if you are short on that, your time, to causes that help marginalized writers or BIPOC in general. Recently, industry professionals and experienced creators have been offering mentorships and query letter critiques for writers of color, a way to help combat the imbalance in the publishing industry. If you don’t feel like you’re qualified to personally offer help to BIPOC writers, try donating money to an organization such as We Need Diverse Books, the Diversity Fellowship of the Highlights Foundation, the Carl Brandon Society, or the Writers of Color scholarship fund at the Viable Paradise workshop. In a broader sense, get involved in grassroots organizations in your community,  and most importantly, campaign, volunteer for, and donate to candidates that will support BIPOC causes and fight against white supremacy.

Finally, Always Speak Up

This should go without saying, but unfortunately, it is easier to stay silent than to speak up, and as white people, we often choose the path of least resistance when it comes to activism. Now, I say this with the caveat that if you cannot speak up for mental health reasons, I trust that you know your limits, and I do not mean to shame you for them. That said, if you are able, and if you care about being a good ally to BIPOC, then of course you should always fight against white supremacy when you see it in person. It might be uncomfortable to speak up and tell Aunt Karen that her views on the nationwide protests are wrongheaded, but imagine how far beyond uncomfortable it is to be a Black person who must live in fear of being shot by the police. Put things in perspective, and if at all possible, speak up when you can. Rather than muttering “yikes” to yourself and moving on, take the opportunity to educate when you can, and condemning when you can’t educate. As writer, be a voice for change, rather than a fence sitter or a reactionary. Boycott problematic writers, refuse to query agents who are not supportive of BIPOC and movements such as Black Lives Matter, and choose agents and publishers that support diversity in publishing. As a white person, use your white privilege to effect greater change in both the publishing industry and the world in general, rather than hiding behind that privilege and allowing the status quo to continue unchecked.

Please add any resources in the comments section of this article, and I will edit the article to add them in. I welcome any comments, suggestions, and corrections. I too, strive to always do better.

General Writing

Why I Use Chapter Titles

Bruce Byfield

Chapter titles are rarer than they once were. Today, chapter titles rarely go beyond listing the point of view in the coming chapter. Instead, chapters are simply numbered. When I started to write, I had the vague impression that numbered chapters were a sign of seriousness — of being more literary. Yet many of my favorite childhood novels used titles, and, halfway through my first novel, I added them on an impulse. It was only as I went on that I realized that there were several solid reasons for chapter titles.

The first reason is the simplest: on the whole, English-speaking culture is not numerically literate. Or, to put it another way, most of us do not remember numbers as well as words. You might be a person who remembers where they left off reading, or a reviewer citing a chapter, but, either way, you are like to recall a title more easily than a number. Titles, I believe, are a more efficient way of identifying a chapter than numbers.

More importantly, a well-chosen title can serve as an additional hook. Just as the opening sentences of a novel lure readers into the book, so a chapter title can lure readers into continuing onwards in the book. The only difference is that a title has fewer words to develop the hook — usually no more than half a dozen words. Usually, a title usually needs to be less subtle than a conventional hook. At the same time, it should not give too much away. Yet, within these restrictions, you can still hope to catch readers’ interest. Offer them “The Unexpected Guest,” and with any luck readers will stay around to learn who — or what — puts in an appearance. Similarly, “Blame and Betrayals” promises conflict, while “The Salmon Road” might lure readers onware for n explanation of the unusual phrase. More elaborately, if you can trust most of your readers to know their Chaucer, “The Craft So Long to Learn” suggests that somebody in the chapter learns something important to them. Used as a hook, a title can encourage readers to continue for just one more chapter — and maybe just one more after that.

Titles can also indicate themes. For example, when I retrofitted titles to my own work, I noticed that many titles referred to the relationships between families. It was only after seeing a table of contents that I made this observation — and after I did, it helped me to unify my writing by more specific references to families. Without seeing the titles in a table of contents, I might never have realized what I was doing, or had any control over it.

Other, more astute writers, can choose titles for themes deliberately. For instance, a story set in the early 1960s might borrow quotes from Bob Dylan to emphasize the setting. The Canadian fantasist Dave Duncan (who deserves to be much better known) once used lines from the old folk song “Sir John Peel” and named his characters after dogs in the song to emphasis, obviously but powerfully that the story was about a hunt, although of people rather than game.

However, perhaps the greatest advantage of titles is for the writer rather than the readers. In a one hundred thousand word novel, writers get all sorts of opportunities to practice different aspects of their craft. Yet if you number your chapters, a notable exception is the title — that you only do once. Perhaps that is one reason why so many writers agonize over titles. I myself generated at least three dozen titles over a year, and the final candidate did not even originate with me.

By contrast, after generating some thirty chapter titles, the next time I came to choose a title was much easier. I produced three titles in an hour, and in another half hour had my title. The next time, I was just as quick. I can only conclude that finding a title, like most aspects of writing, becomes easier with practice. Chapter titles, I conclude, on warmups for the main event.

Numbering titles do give you one less thing to worry about as you write. Yet when I stop to consider, titles are more useful for readers, and can help with thematic structures in general. I once thought that choosing numbered or titled chapters was mostly a matter of whim, but, having experimented, I am never going to willingly do without titles ever again.

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Social Media and the Writer

thelocaldialect

Conventional wisdom says that in the year 2020, social media is key to getting noticed, whether you’re an author or a musician or even an artist. The internet is full of people throwing around words like “platform” and “following,” but is a platform really neccessary if you want to be published? Does having a following on Twitter help an author sell books?

The answer, as with so many things, seems to be: it depends. A social media following certainly doesn’t seem to hurt certain authors. I only read Alexa Donne’s space romance The Stars We Steal because I watch her YouTube channel. I have picked up books because I came across recommendations in my Twitter feed, usually from authors who are mutuals (that is, two people who follow each other on a platform) with the author in question. I cannot say that social media unequivocally does not affect an author’s chances at publication or their future book sales. However, for every one of these authors, there are many successful authors with a minimal or even non-existent social media presence. Certainly genre factors heavily too — Young Adult fiction writers are notoriously prolific on social media, particularly Twitter. Adult historical fiction writers, perhaps not quite as much (my favorite historical fiction writer, Sharon K. Penman, keeps a Facebook page and a sporadically updated blog as the full extent of her social media presence and yet she still has managed a long and successful career. Each genre seems to have its own social media norms, but generally speaking, the younger your audience skews, the more important social media will be.

That said, avoiding social media altogether as an up and coming writer in 2020 is probably not a realistic game plan. Sharon K. Penman, who I mentioned above, started her career in the 1980s, and by the time social media was invented, much less widespread, she was already well established as a historical fiction writer. In 2020, however, a social media presence is expected. Not only do accounts on platforms such as Twitter and Instagram give potential agents an idea about your “platform,” perhaps more importantly they give an idea about what kind of person you are and what sort of content you engage with. Do you harass teenagers in the Harry Potter fandom and generally make a fool of yourself? Are you vocal about social issues? Do you interact positively with other writers, or are you antagonistic? These things might count for more than a high follower count, which, afterall, can be a poor mark of your overall reach as a writer.

So do numbers matter? Do you need Twitter followers in the tens of thousands to get published? Certainly not. I can think of dozens of professional published writers who have followings of fewer than 10k. I can name many writers with very high follower counts who gained those followers mainly through writers’ lifts and follow for follow games rather than through genuine interaction. My own personal Twitter following is modest, hovering between 2500-3000 followers, but my interactions are genuine, and when you scroll through my feed, you will get an immediate sense of what I am passionate about. I interact positively with my fellow writers, am vocal about the issues that are important to me. I am happy with my social media presence and do not feel pressured to inflate my follower count just for the sake of empty numbers. Genuine engagement will always make a bigger impression than numbers with no interaction to back them up.

Perhaps the best advice I can give is to build a social media presence, but do it honestly. Do not stress about numbers. If you’re trying for traditional publication, you should probably be on the more popular social media platforms, but you don’t need to be a huge name with a massive following. Create a genuine following, avoid being antagonistic or overly edgy, at least on your main account, and try to interact positively in the writing community. Follow some writers and agents you admire, boost other writers during pitch events, join in conversations about what’s going on in the industry, and you might even start enjoying the process of creating your social media platform. At the very least, the process should feel less like a chore, and more like simply another step on the long road to becoming a published writer.

Fiction, General Writing

Making Infodumps Work

Bruce Byfield

Like most writers, I struggle with back story. It’s often necessary, especially when writing fantasy, but how do you provide it with bringing the story to screeching halt? I’ve tried making the details interesting. I’ve tried doling out the information in dribbles and drabs. I’ve tried epigraphs at the start of each chapter. Whenever possible, I develop characters who would naturally think about certain matters. All these tactics can have limited success, the most effective tactic, I’ve found can be expressed in a single word: dramatize. Make the inclusion of the information a natural part of the story. If possible, have something else happen as the information is being given.

The simplest way to dramatize is to arrange a situation in which one character gives information to others. For example, have a student writing an essay. Place a general in a situation room, describing battle plans. Have a newcomer who needed to be brought up to speed. However, in writing any scene like this, you need to avoid writing a lecture, or of providing what TV calls “talking heads.” Such results are no better than a congealed mass of info-dump, and could mean that your extra effort to be reader-friendly is wasted.

Another tactic might be to have the point of view character overhear other tactics. The difficulty here is that it is difficult to have one character overhear everything they need to know without straining readers’ belief. It seems unlikely that your viewpoint character could conveniently overhear all they need to know.that the same character could conveniently overhear all they need to know — moreover, the overheard conversation is a cliché. Perhaps, though, you might give the cliché new life by having the viewpoint overhear a fraction of a conversation, or a few cryptic comments that they have to puzzle over, or else combine with information from another source

I suppose you could have a nervous character doing something for the first time, and muttering instructions. For example, a thief breaking into a secret room could be reminding herself, “Tenth brick from the fire place, press the acanthus leaf above it. Damn, why do secret rooms have to be so — secretive?” Similarly, a character might analyze information found in a book or in a film. So long as you establish that the character acts that way, mixing the information with a character’s self doubts and thoughts might dilute the dry, encylopedic tone of a recitation of facts.

Most of the time, though, at least two characters are needed to dramatize successfully. After all, you can hardly populate your novel with a dozen people who talk to themselves. But when you play one character off against another, the possibilities open up. For instance, imagine that it is important to your story that two ethnic groups have a hereditary feud. You might place a representative of both ethnicities together, and have them argue with each other. They could hurl insults and accusations. They could bring up the events of the past century, example being met with counter-example. While the information is being given to the reader, the characters’ argument can escalate, possibly to the point where they have to be separated before violence to begin. As they argue, the characters can also reveal their personalitiess.

To give a more specific example, recently I decided to give the history of a war through an alcoholic who fought on the losing side. He is at a dinner held by his former foes. He wants to show a generous attitude to his hosts. In his befuddled state, he concludes that the best way to do so is to stand up and praise them. However, his audience is impatient, because they already know the facts. Even worse, he is undiplomatic, mentioning incidents that embarrass his hosts. Worst of all, his audience includes his teen age daughter who is mortified by behavior. In his drunken state, he insists on not only having his say, but, interpreting the responses to him as an affront to his host, also starts scolding everybody. The situation works because the information is delivered with other purposes in mind as well: showing his character and his daughter’s, and the attitudes that linger between former enemies. If I have done what I intended, readers will absorb the information while being entertained by the dramatic cross-currents, the story being uninterrupted.

Presenting backstory as part of the story requires ingenuity. If you are like me, it may require several drafts before all the cross-currents work together. Yet, in the end, it provides a solution to one of aspiring writers’ biggest problems: giving back story without sabotaging their storytelling. Try it for yourself, and you will see what I mean.

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Writing the Deed: Sex Scenes in Fiction

thelocaldialect

Eventually most writers will have to decide whether or to include sex scenes in their books, and if so, how to handle them. Sex scenes can be incredibly difficult to write well, to the point that while good ones can add chemistry and passion to an on-page pairing, terrible ones can ruin an otherwise good book.

Sex scenes or not?

Not all books need sex scenes, or even romance at all. A reader is just as capable of getting involved in a well written platonic friendship as in a romance, and most readers would prefer a well written friendship to a poorly written romance. Even the writer who does choose a romantic sub-plot, or even a romantic main plot, does not need to include the deed itself. Authors who feel uncomfortable or unable to write a gripping sex scene might consider writing a sweet romance. Also consider — are the characters in question underage? Harry Potter, for instance, includes romance, but considering the age of the characters and the target audience, actual sex scenes would have been in poor taste. As a rule, Middle Grades books should be sex-free, while Young Adult books run the gamut, with more chaste romances found in books like Yes, No, Maybe So, by Becky Albertalli and Aisha Saeed, or The Betrothed, by Kiera Cass. In those books the couples in question share kisses, but nothing much beyond that, aside from, of course, lots of mutual longing and angst.

The middle-ground: fade to black

“Fade to black” is a technique that borrows its name from cinematography, when the camera would cut away from a couple, or literally, fade to black, before a sex scene as a chance to get explicit. In writing, fade to black can include details of foreplay — kissing, touching, with the action usually staying above the waist — but will generally stop short of penetration or description of body parts below the waist. Many writers skillfully employ fade to black as a way to imply the sex act without having to write more graphic descriptions. Many YA and adult authors use fade to black as a sort of middle-ground. Holly Black’s Folk of the Air books for the most part have fade to black sex scenes, as does the Graceling series by Kristin Chashore. In adult fantasy Juliet Marillier and Robin McKinley both write great love stories and sex scenes that are either fade to black, or low on detail. Keep in mind that a fade to black sex scene does not have mean that it was written for your grandmother. Many authors subscribe to the less is more philosophy when it comes to sex, revealing just enough detail to excite the reader’s imagination, allowing the reader to fill in the gaps according to their own preference. Fade to black sex scenes should be treated as any other sex scenes, and if you want the scene to be sexy, rules of consent should apply. A person being forced or coerced into sex is not appealing outside of specific kink communities, and if you’re writing for those, you’ll know it.

Explicit detail

Finally, if you’ve decided to write a sex scene, you might decide to go for broke and make it explicit. Perhaps your book has a grittier setting, and the sex scenes are not meant to be pleasant, in which case brutal detail can bring home the cruelty of the act. Perhaps you do intend for the sex scenes to be sexy and romantic, and believe the more detail, the hotter the scene. Detailed sex scenes can be hot and passionate, but they can also quickly verge into cringe territory when writers try to get overly creative with their euphemisms. What reader of A Song of Ice and Fire doesn’t remember Martin’s “fat pink mast” or “Myrish swamp?” Or Sarah J. Maas’ description in the A Court of Thorns and Roses series of her male lead’s “velvet wrapped steel?” There is something about sex scenes that turns authors all of a sudden into aspiring poets, and a cock is no longer just a cock.

Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander series, praised by many to have some of the best sex scenes in fiction, says in a blog post “A good sex scene is about the exchange of emotions, not bodily fluids,” and goes on to elaborate that this can mean any emotion — not just love, but anger, sadness, tenderness, surprise, boredom, anything. She suggests that one of the most efficient ways to accomplish the exchange of emotions is through dialogue, so rather than describing a play by play of body parts, who put what where, your characters should speak to each other, talking through the sex scenes. Perhaps they talk about the act itself “tell me how much you want me” (and the benefit of your characters talking it through is that the consent is explicit) or perhaps they speak about their feelings for each other, or perhaps they use metaphor to talk around important issues.

Actions can also accomplish something similar. Does character A reach up and touch character B’s face during the act? Does he rake his nails down his partner’s back? Actions can express emotions too. Most readers do not care how large your character’s member is, or how pink another character’s nipples are. The details are matter are the details that anchor the sex act to the story emotionally. Painting a complete visual picture is less important to writing a compelling sex scene than is connecting the characters to the acts through their emotional reactions to the action.

Regardless of whether you choose to write fade to black or no sex scenes, of course make sure that you do not glorify rape or non consensual sex, and be extremely careful when depicting underage characters having sex. A rule of thumb is that teenagers having sex with other teenagers is generally acceptable and can be written in a healthy way, but teenagers having sex with a 500 year old immortal vampires is unhealthy and problematic. If you want to write problematic sex scenes — sex between the lord of the manor and a servant, for instance — make sure that you depict it as problematic.

Sex scenes can be a lot of fun, and certainly writers should not shy away from sex if they feel comfortable writing, but nor should a writer feel obligated to include sex scenes. However, if you do choose to take on detailed sex scenes, write with care, because while a good sex scene rarely makes or breaks a book, a cringey one, or worse, a problematic one, can easily poison the well of what is otherwise a good book.