Writing Historical Fiction and Non-Fiction Responsibly
I tend to believe that writing carries with it a certain moral obligation - maybe not to lead to people into virtue and enlightenment, but at the very least not to cause tremendous harm, incite racism or sexism, not to promote violence, and to consider how the words we write might impact the world before we release them.
I would say that when writing about real people - whether through memoir, biography, or historical fiction or nonfiction, one has an even greater responsibility to take care with how they are portraying real people.
What do you think?
Is there an obligation to portray people honestly?
To not divulge certain family secrets or uncomfortabilities?
Or is writing simply an expressive art that has no ethical limitation?
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Personally I really struggle with this even in poetry and I believe it depends greatly on who the audience of your writing is.
If I am writing a rant-poem about an old ex from middle school that I plan on posting anonymously on YWS, I don't think I have much of an obligation to portray them truthfully or in the best light possible - the poem is never going to reach them, and my intended audience has no idea who I am talking about. However, if I am planning on publishing something about a living relative in which people could realistically conclude who the writing was about, then I think I have an obligation to not portray them as a villain.
I really enjoy writing about ancestry a lot too - I don't necessarily try to portray everyone as saints, but I do attempt to portray people with complexity, and you might even say generosity. It might seem silly, but I feel I have an obligation, even to my long-passed relatives who will never read my work, not to portray them in ways that I would consider slanderous.
What do you think? Do you get permission from your friends / family before using your shared stories in your writing? Do you tone down some of your writing about the negative realities of light to save people's feelings?
Feel free to engage in this question below - I'm quite sure there's not a universal answer - but as writers, I do think it's an important question to consider.
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