A little background: I was TAing for a (creative) writing class and somebody (a straight white male) chose to write from the perspective of a trans lesbian (is that the right term? Male became female and was a lesbian after becoming female.) Student got a TON of flack for writing from the perspective, on the grounds that there was no way he could understand that position and therefore should not even consider writing from it. As I was reading it, I did not have a problem particularly with writing from an alternate perspective, however the writing was garbage, just not fun to read poorly written et cetera. But it got me thinking, what is the social acceptability of writing something like that. Not even necessarily as different as that, but say a straight male writing from the perspective of a gay male or straight female et cetera. Is it socially acceptable to do this? If it is, can it be done well? I mean obviously it can be done well, plenty of pros write from first person perspectives not their own in experiences that are not their own. I'm not 100% sure what exactly I'm asking there but any feedback would be helpful, both for the roughly 600 drafts I'm considering submitting to this site, TAing and the future in general.
And I've only begun fucking with you people.
At the end of the day, it's all math.
637 actually. Most (approximately 630 of them) are either rough concepts or marked with a gigantic DO NOT SUBMIT ANYWHERE EVER on the file name, title and every page.
And I've only begun fucking with you people.
At the end of the day, it's all math.
We worry too much about what's "socially acceptable", particularly these days. You can get bogged down writing practically anything by worrying about if your characters perpetuate stereotypes and a whole bunch of other stuff. Basically, people are individuals with their own motivations, desires &c, and thus characters in fiction need to be so as well. To suggest that you can only write from "within" your own particular sex/ethnicity/sexuality is basically to deny the commonalities of existence, and the possibility of empathy. Moreover, to put yourself in somebody else's shoes is a vital component of social intercourse - so to suggest that it shouldn't be done is just plain stupid.
As regards the 1st person thing. Even 3rd person writing requires an ability to get inside a character, and from there it's a short step to the 1st person narrative.
The attitude you're (OP) describing is naive at its best, and bigoted at its worst. While it may be well-intentioned, in the end it only serves to further the division between human beings. Poetry or prose - showing or telling - a writer's job is hopelessly simple: observe and report. Manipulate the readers' attention so they notice what you want them to and try to stay the fuck out of their way as much as possible. If there's any truth or music at home in the writer's heart or mind, it will come through sooner or later. But in any writing workshop, there are rarely more than a couple of people who will still be writing, say, five or ten years later when style, technique, sensibility and vision finally begin to merge. But then again, how many of us can really stand to take this shit this seriously? Fuck it. Just use whatever imagination you have and tell somebody a fucking story.
Here's what I didn't learn even in the best of the workshops I once took part in: that anguish, disappointment, joy, lust, yearning, fear and the desire to be loved and accepted are universal. It doesn't matter where you're from, what language you speak, what color your skin is or how much money you make. It doesn't matter if you have boobs or a penis...or wish you had boobs or a penis. We're so fucking hell-bent on pointing out everything that makes us different we can't even remember how much the same we ultimately are.
If someone told me I only had permission to write about white, nearsighted American males with adjustment issues I would fall dead on the spot from boredom.
I hope the 'ton of flack' didn't come from the writing instructor! Good writers put themselves (in first-person narrative) into characters totally different from themselves all the time. If writers only write from their own life experiences, literature would be a pretty dull discipline. Good writers RESEARCH everything they write about, until they can identify and empathize with whatever type of character they choose to expose to the reader. Who cares what is socially acceptable in literature? Great literature is always a challenge to societal norms, not conformity to them. If a student submits bad writing, then the crux of the critique should be creative failure, not failure to conform to social norms!
Nice post, Nice replies...
(I FAMOUSLY love this process stuff...)
Writing (unless you are relating an ACTUAL experience in first/second person) is very much akin to the ACTING process...
An ACTOR will tell you that in order to INHABIT a character, one needs to research, to KNOW what you're talking about, but then also to EMOTIONALLY FEEL and INTERPRET AND TRANSMIT that character to an audience.
A WRITER has to DOUBLY do this!
(All good writers do this, of course... Thomas Harris has MOST LIKELY never trepanned a person and fried and eaten their brain...)
I write A LOT in character. (Even when I'm basing my writing on ACTUAL experience, I still conjure an ELEMENT of imaginary character.)
I've written as a woman, (straight...) as various men, (all straight, mostly...) as historical characters, as people INCREDIBLY different in character to me... I think I've MOSTLY carried it off!!!
But here's a thing...
I've NEVER written as a BLACK character... I've NEVER written as an LBTG (Gay) character... I've never written a BDSM story... Why is that?
It's because AS GOOD A WRITER AS I AM... (that would be 7/10 on my BEST day...) I know my limits...
Here's the difference... I COULD write a story about an Axe-Murderer, but you know what, WHO WOULD KNOW IF I GOT IT ASSWAYS??? (Only other axe-murderes!!!)
But if I write as a BLACK character and get it WRONG then not only have I proved myself an idiot, but I might possibly offend and alienate readers who would probably NOT say, "Whut the fuck does this Natural Frozen Yogurt mothafucka think he's a-doin'??????" *IRONY!!!!!* (But you get the point...)
Write What You KNOW is an excellent maxim. But STRETCH that too...
(I once wrote a story about a Serial Killer who dressed as a pest-exterminator (overalls/net mask etc...) because it made him impossible to identify... My thought process was, "WHY would people answer the door to this guy???) Well, they would if he explained he was there to check for wasp's nests... It was PLAUSIBLE...)
INHABIT YOUR CHARACTERS to the best of your ability. KNOW WHY they do what they do. Be able, through your skill to TRANSLATE and IMPACT (?) them in the mind of your reader. (A character will frequently ILLUSTRATE who they are simply by how they SPEAK...) Also, what the character LEAVES UNSAID can be as telling as any amount of description or dialogue..
With regard to the ESSENTIAL process of (self) EDITING, I have to say that in my opinion after 2/3 edits it's as good as it's going to be... (600+ edits is simply an excuse to avoid committing to the writing...) This is why EDITORS are professionals sought after by writers. (It's a different discipline...)
Nice post. Made me THINK!
xx SF
So . . . the idea here is that, according to some people, I cannot write anything other than views from a character that's:
White
35 years old
Big breasted
Blond haired
Blue eyed
Straight with bisexual interests
I'm a walking stereotype for Christ's sake . . . I'm A CLICHE.
Just how stringent are these guidelines? Do i need to delete and unpublish all works that violate these guidelines? [yes - heavy sarcasm]. Or is it really okay if my characters are different than me in any regard?
People tend to hold knee-jerk views without really thinking of the consequence and implications.
I don't understand why there would be an uproar over a creative writing student writing in the first person from a completely different person's POV. It should have received accolades--the difficulty of pulling off such a feat and pulling it off well is fairly substantial.
I've written from all POV's, my main fault is a) that I tend to always describe the female protagonist physically as more or less identical to my actual appearance and b) that I always tend to not be terribly imaginative in the description of a setting, generally putting (sometimes down to the actual year and winery from which a character's wine comes) the setting into someplace with which I am intimately familiar. My house, a hotel, whatever.
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If the student was getting a "ton of flack" from other students I think they are missing the whole point of being creative. As an inexperienced writer I recently tried to write a story from this perspective thinking it would be a great learning experience and challenge. In my opinion great writers can use the smallest spark or experience and turn out something that is far beyond their own personal experience. Whether we weave in details from our own lives or create from thin air at the end of the day good writing is simply that; good writing.
I have experimented with writing from the male POV and found some success. My first was a response from a male character from a novel and the class thought it was an interesting take. Even the professor praised me for taking a chance.
With my last piece, a he said/she said, I was smart enough to ask a few men I trusted to look over my story and evaluate my male POV. Each one had different suggestions to help me bring my male's voice to the front without taking away from my writing style. Overall it wasn't shit... but there were a few bugs that needed to be addressed. I was very appreciated to receive their feedback and the end result earned me an RR.
Having someone you trust for honest feedback can do so much to help, especially when you're writing from a POV you don't normally use.
I think this would make for a great story competition. Women writing from a mans perspective and being scored by the men and vice versa. It is a kind of measure of how in tune the author has become to the views and perspectives of the other sex.
In my view I may not be able to fully empathize with the female perspective so writing in first person is more about exploring what I would love them to be thinking during my fantasy.
Apologize for resurrecting this thread that is a few months old. Been away from Lush for a little bit and just saw this.
I am a straight male, and did choose to try and write a couple of stories from a first person female point of view, so wanted to chime in on this. Based on comments and ratings I think it was fairly well received. Personally, I was happy with how the story turned out. https://
If I'm writing fiction I don't want to write me, then it just becomes auto biographical. I want to try and get into the head of someone else and try to figure out what motivates them, what is their thought process, and what might bring them to or into a certain situation.
I will never really know how successful or how realistic I was in getting inside the mind of someone of the opposite sex, but half the fun is trying. Writing fiction is about taking all your life experiences, observed and experienced, throwing them in a blender and projecting it into something new.
For my latest, I went a tiny bit out on a limb and wrote from a female first-person viewpoint for the first time (I've had female viewpoint characters in third person narratives before, though). The viewpoint character is a straight, middle-aged, married lady so not a big stretch since I'm a mostly straight, middle-aged, married man, but I did worry about well how I would pull it off. So far, comments are positive (it's a comp entry so I can't see scores yet) and I haven't received any hate mail so I guess I didn't totally botch it up at least. I'd be more reluctant to stretch out into something like a trans lesbian given how little experience I have from either perspective. I have great respect for the trans and lesbian folks that I do know and I would worry a bit about disrespecting them in some way if I did it wrong. Still, I won't say never ever.
I imagine that on a college/university campus the complaint was that this student had appropriated a voice not his own. However, I think that writing is a creative process and that we cannot and should not be limited by whatever demographics we belong to. However it is necessary to research thoroughly to inhabit character of someone who is not at all like you so that your representation of that character is believable and authentic to the reader. On the whole, I think we tend to write from a perspective that feels most comfortable to us whatever gender, sexual orientation, or other factor we are. To write from a male point of view as a female is a leap, for example, if it is to seem plausible to men who read it. I think that talented writers can carry this off, but as I said that it cannot be done without doing a lot of homework first. Writing is, after all, about creativity but has to be rooted in some semblance of reality and not to great a suspension of disbelief.
