Young Writers Society

Hi,
I am currently writing a novel and I am debating weather the girls should smoke or not. I do not smoke myself have no intention too, but if I put it in my novel, I would like to know if it would bother people. In a lot of chick novels that I have read a lot of the characters smoke. It has never bothered me, I was just wondering how much it does bother other people.

The reason I want to them to smoke is to sort of prove to the readers how they can do without their parents caring.

I want all of your opinions, good or bad.

p.s. If this is in the wrong section PM!

Love,
N

no. It might add to the character's personality. Like she could be a person who is self destructive, and sad. OR a regular bad girl ^_^

No, a character smoking in a novel has never bothered me.

You really shouldn't worry about what people think about this sort of thing though. Personally, I'm more worried about what people think of my grammar and usage than what they think of the situations and ideas I present to them. I just never see censorship as being very necessary at all, unless you want to prevent people from knowing about something. And that's always suspicious to me.

Why would it matter?

Why would there be any problem with a character smoking? People smoke in real life. In my opinion, a novel world in which nobody smokes at all (even when their character demands it) would be more bothersome.

Go for your vision. To hell with what other people are bothered by.

~Annie

On the one hand, I don't want to make all my characters smokers just to be "edgy" or "authentic".

On the other hand, if it fits the characters' personality, than yes I'll make them a smoker. Really, something like this is a very minor aspect of a character/story (unless your story centers on the effects of smoking, and then smoking defines the character's life); just another detail to help flesh a character out a bit more.

If the author made a character smoke right out of a stereotype, then yeah it would bother me. But if it added to the story, of if it told something about the character and I can tell the author isn't just relying on stereotypes, then I would actually enjoy it.

Nope, i think that if you decide to have a character (or if the character decides ) then okay. As long as their smoking habits don't effect the story. Or if smoking is constantly referred. But other than that its all good =]

It wouldn't bother me too much. If the character was pregnant and smoking, then yes, I would be bothered because you shouldn't smoke while you're expecting. But the characters just smokes, then like I said, wouldn't bother me too much.

I don't really mind it. But if it's really the character's personality and reason to smoke, then go ahead. You're not the character. You're the one talking about the character.

Also, don't do stuff just for shock value. In this case, you're doing the exact opposite, but you're letting YOU get in the way of the novel. If a character smokes, then they smoke. Big deal. People do that.

well, that depends on what age group the novel is targeted towards. anything for young-adults and above, smoking should be fine. anything younger than that, i would advise against it. teenagers are a touchy group; it really all depends on what their parents approve of. plus, if the character's or characters' smoking is portrayed in a good way, that could cause a teenager or younger to be wrongly influenced and smoke themselves. of course, this could go for anyone younger than teenagers, or even older than teenagers, but younger ones are typically to stupid and dont really have a good sense of right or wrong yet, and older ones can just lose it sometimes, over something personal or not.

i recently read The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, in class, and watched the movie. there was smoking in it, but it wasn't necessarily portrayed as good. not really as bad either. the way the author wrote it made it seem that smoking was a comfort thing and could make you feel better when you're feeling down. that's about the only thing i dislike about that book, is how smoking is portrayed. i myself definetly think that if the book was read or the movie was watched by somebody younger than a teen, they could be wrongly influenced into smoking.

so like i said, it really all in all would depend on the age group of the readers you're trying to target. but of course, if you want to write about smoking in your book(s), go write ahead.

It shouldn't matter AT ALL.

Writing is your way of expressing yourself, do not let anyone deny you of this! Sometimes one needs to push the envelope, just to get their point through. While sometimes it might be disturbing/sad (Like the smoking while expecting example used earlier), it probably will add more personality to the character.

Sorry if this seems a bit...too serious, but it is 11:40 by me and I am as blunt as a baseball bat currently.

It depends on the artistic value. If it's just there, I don't really care about it. If it has a certain symbolism, then it's better and I want to know about it. Like in Suzanne's novel, "The Death Machine," smoke was used as a symbol and that's slightly fantastic. So it all depends.

For me, its definitely not a problem to read a book and see that a character is smoking. I'm currently slugging my way through "The Witching Hour" by Anne Rice and thought the action of smoking is brought up multiple times she has managed to find a way to make the subject almost unnoticeable. Its not that single aspect of the characters life that is defining them, rather, its just one trait that builds into others to form some extremely complex characters.

Why, just the other day when I posted my short story "Already Won Me," I had fit smoking into the first paragraph but only touched again on it once and even then it wasn't discussing smoking specifically. Rather, it was talking about the smell of smoke. I didn't bring it up constantly because I knew that with the characters, it wasn't the most important part of who they were but it did reveal a small part of who they were.

So, yeah, think about the character and how you plan to write the story. Are you gonna bring up smoking constantly and use it as the bases of your character? Because if you are, that's undoubtedly the wrong idea. But if it's going to be just another piece of your character amidst hundreds of others, then I say go for it.

Being a former smoker, I really don't care if there's smoking related in a story or not. It doesn't inspire me to march out to the nearest gas station for want of a cigarette or cigar....

and for some reason this thread reminded me of how disney now rates their movies for smoking as well. Kinda sad..