Young Writers Society

In addition, what I might mostly is, I'll do the research, just, not that way. If I had the chance, I'll do it, most certainly. It's just, wouldn't it be ok if I keep it seperate from the culture I'm trying to represent( I'll still research on the matter, and if I find another accurate magic system based on a certain culture, i'll choose that one.)

I'm a little confused.

It's just, wouldn't it be ok if I keep it seperate from the culture I'm trying to represent

I'm not sure I understand what you're going for with the aim of this story. Are you trying to represent a specific culture, or not? How can you represent something, but not actually include things about it? Maybe you're approaching the story from the wrong direction?

They say "write what you know." Obviously that's not 100% accurate or else there'd be no SFF stories ever written. But I do think it's a good foundation; IMO you/one ought to come at a story from an angle that you DO know something about, whether that's a part of history that's your personal fascination, a character trait or illness that you've experienced, a setting based on a location you've visited, etc. For example the author Dan Wells wrote a looot of different books (epic fantasy and similar genres) before he allowed himself to delve into his personal passion--an interest in serial killers--and published a serial killer series that hit it bigtime. He came at it from the angle of "I already know tons about serial killers in history and their psychology, and I love reading about it already" and that made the series very engaging and authentic.

So, I guess ChildofNowhere already kind of asked this, but why Native cultures and why spirit animals? Could you interchange it with something you DO already know about (hence making the research phase shorter and, more importantly, more enjoyable for you)? Could it be something more fantastical in which you can invent all the rules yourself?

Diversity for the sake of diversity is pretty much never a good idea. Anyone you're trying to "represent" is going to be miffed if they're only in your book "cuz." A lot of authors TRY, with good intentions, to include a multicultural cast, but end up doing more damage by perpetuating tropes and stereotypes. I actually just listened to a Writing Excuses podcast on Writing the Other, and they've done plenty of other good podcasts on the topic, such as this one Writing Other Cultures. You definitely want to listen to both of those no matter which direction you choose to go.

I was never big fan of write what you know. My culture or anyone's I know has nothing to do of what I've specify. I'm not even sure any native American nation I've looked to have such a concept. Every time I'm greeted with this, I take it with a grain of salt.

I honestly looked everywhere and not single person answered any questions I've asked them. I've looked and looked, but nothing.

People have, however, given you advice and asked you questions, and pointed out some problems they see with the idea you presented. Perhaps by accepting and considering those, you might make people more inclined to tell you more.

When it comes to "write what you know", I think many people take it the wrong way.
It doesn't mean "stick to your own culture/race/sexuality/experience/etc and don't you dare tackle anything else 'cause you'll NEVER GET IT RIGHT no matter what you do".
It can mean something similar, granted, but only so if you're not ready to dedicate proper attention and care to researching whatever topic you want to include in your story. If you're really ready to do it, and that includes listening to people who point out holes and give you advice based on their own experience, you'll realise that write what you know is really more of a know what you write, which -- whether you're a fan of it or not -- makes for stories well told.

The thing about Native American cultures is there are two "cultures", broadly speaking: the pop culture Native, and the hundreds of real cultures that exist. The two only barely overlap.

Spirit animals are a concept firmly under "pop culture Natives", and have a pretty detailed history to them:

Native Americans have, across quite a few cultures, animal gods. These animal gods are deities in their own right, and are sometimes seen as protectors of the tribes. However, they are not spirit guides. They are creators, and/or equals to humans, and/or beings that humans should take care of (varies by tribe).

Non-Natives saw that some Natives have animal gods who act as protectors and created the "spirit animal" concept based upon a mistaken belief. People started talking about how Natives "spoke" to animals ("the Iroquois said squirrels showed them how to tap maple syrup! They must be talking about a god that came to them because there's no way a real squirrel could've shown them how to tap maple syrup"— actually, real squirrels do indeed tap maple trees, let the sap dry, and lick off the pure sugar; Natives observed them doing this and replicated the process) and assumed that Natives speaking about animals showing them how to do things were "spirits."

Native dances and prayers would involve animals, and non-Natives assumed that meant they were talking "spirits" who "came to" Natives, and those qualities matched up to qualities that the person themselves had, or needed. The reality of it got twisted, once more, and added to the concept of "spirit animal." It's more like in some cases, like a hunt, they would pray for the animals to continue to help them by giving up their lives for humans to continue living.

Cultural homogenization also happened, where people took the similarities between tribes and started assuming all Native cultures were basically the same, so if one group practiced it, then they all must practice it. Differences weren't respected between tribes, so people started thinking there was such a thing as a singular Native culture.

So the myth grew, and spread, and pop culture got its teeth in it. Non-Natives assumed "spirit animal" is what Native culture looked like, so they started writing Natives who used spirit animals.

Natives themselves don't use spirit animals. That's why you're not finding any cultures that talk about it— they do not have them. It's a made up thing, based on a few grains of truth that have been twisted over literal centuries.

So, to reiterate.

Truths:

- SOME tribes have animal gods
- Tribes in general learned how to navigate the world by watching how animals already navigated it
- SOME tribes would pray to animals to continue the relationship between animals and humans, in a symbiotic relationship ("if buffalo gives up their lives for us, we will make sure their grazing fields are lush and only take the buffalo we need to survive")

Lies:

- All Native cultures have animal gods
- Natives use animal powers
- Natives take on animal qualities

Finally, thank so much for this. Whelp, I guess I'll put that in the back burner. That's all I wanted. Clarification.

I now I know why took it with a grain of salt, it was bullshrimp all a long. Thanks. I guess I kinda understand why you had a problem with it.

and now it's dead

I hate to see your creativity die on this and I want to help you. I have been researching for a historical fiction for several years, so let me give you my advice.

FORGET THE RESEARCH, WRITE THE STORY WITH SPIRIT ANIMALS IN IT.

There is no plot that is incompatible with a given culture, only details, and finding out the details before you find out the plot is like building a house roof-first. When you write about spirit animals, you will be able to identify what it is about spirit animals that excites you and interests you and be able to look for that specific element in the hundreds and hundreds of Native American cultures that are out there. You will be able to integrate research into your editing process and actually know what the heck to research about because you have something more specific in mind than "Spirit animals".

Please don't be afraid of offending someone by not knowing any better or making something up. You don't offend people by being ignorant, you offend people by being racist, and that takes actually doing something racist, like writing up some alcoholic caricature of a noble savage. Be wary of people on the Internet who tell you that your work is offensive but can't actually tell you anything that helps you learn, and do not listen to them.

And don't let anybody on here talk you out of making things up when it comes to Native Americans or any other culture for that matter. Nobody is the sole representative of their culture, period, and what is offensive to one person is a great idea to another person of the same background. They can only speak for themselves, and unless you are specifically writing for them, then don't do what they tell you to do. If they're not your publisher or your agent, you do not need to cave in.

ETA:
There are Natives who have beliefs about taking on animal qualities. Look up "Nagualism". Tribes to work with include the Hopi, Ute, Maya, Navajo, and Olmec.

There are Natives who have beliefs about negotiating for powers from the spirit world, including from animals. Well-documented example would be the Comanche concept of Puha and the hands-down best starting place to read more about the Comanche would be Comanche Ethnography.

All right, I have to say something. I don't want to be mean or crotchety or beat a dead horse, and I really don't want to to scare people away from posting or trying out ideas. But there are some things that are pretty important to me.

I don't have a dog in the Native American cultures fight. I do have a dog in the representation & diversity fight, and also the writing accurate fiction fight.

It's certainly your prerogative to write something however you want. You can abandon research and get settings and cultures wrong--heck, lots of authors do. Both self-published and traditionally-published. Sometimes egregious errors slip through all the agents and editors along the line. It's "allowed." No one's going to jump out of your computer screen at you. As Stephen King says in On Writing: (warning - profanity)

^ The most important part is the last line.

The attitude of "meh, why bother" begs a lot of questions. Is that the precedent you want to set for yourself? Lazy writing? Are you going to be surprised if people criticize your book for its inaccuracies (eg unresarched historical fiction), blacklist it for being offensive (eg cultural misappropriation), or simply don't read it?

I have two fish to fry here.

1. LAZY WRITING
There are all sorts of symptoms of lazy writing. Adverbs. Cliches. Not doing your research. Readers WILL pick up on this. Readers WILL dislike the book for this. Readers WILL tell others NOT to read it. Are you okay with that? If so, that's fine, and I honestly mean that. Some people only write for themselves, or close friends and family. If you don't care what anyone else thinks, then what difference does it make.

2. PERPETUATING DAMAGING IDEAS
This is the far more dangerous one. This hurts people, on a big scale. One example is how gay men are often portrayed as only desiring a specific type of hot, buff physique, and it's so reinforced that real life gay men who don't fit that physique can wind up with self-esteem issues. Another example is how Latinos or black men are cast as thugs and gangsters in TV and film--some really good actors can have a hard time getting non-stereotypical roles, because they look like they ought to be a big burly thug, and they get automatically slated for that role in the casting director's mind.

Cultural misappropriation and perpetuation of stereotypes causes REAL HARM to REAL PEOPLE, so that's why it's worth repeating, again and again. You don't have to be intentionally offensive to do damage. Most such damage is NOT INTENTIONAL. Hence the existence of the Magical Negro trope, where people try so hard to not make their minority guy a bad guy, they end up causing a whole new set of problems. This damage comes from IGNORANCE far, far more often than from intentional racism/homophobia/sexism/what have you.

That's why this comment is not only wrong, it's dangerous:

You don't offend people by being ignorant, you offend people by being racist, and that takes actually doing something racist, like writing up some alcoholic caricature of a noble savage.

This one is also deeply troubling to me, even as an outsider:

And don't let anybody on here talk you out of making things up when it comes to Native Americans or any other culture for that matter.

You can't just make up facts about real cultures?! As a sci-fi writer, I can *definitely* appreciate the need to bend the truth, to find that line where you all agree that the laws of the real world no longer exist. But there's a difference between saying, "This far-future civilization has discovered an energy source that's powerful enough to power FTL travel" and trying to convince readers, "A regular human can breathe underwater with no biological or technological adaptation." You're going to end up with people going, say what? There's blurring the lines, and then there's outright getting well-known facts wrong. As much as I love The Flash, I'll never forgive them for freezing laser beams and having them shatter and fall to the floor. They lost sooo much respect and credibility with me from that episode. And you'll find readers having the same reaction if you treat YOUR source material with the same disrespect, whether that's science, history, or culture.

I almost feel like the problem with this thread is that people are thinking Native American tribes and their spirit animal beliefs don't matter as much, don't get as much say. If someone was suggesting having a cult of black voodoo worshippers from Africa as their bad guys (yeah that's actually in Call of C'thulu :/), we'd be having a different discussion. If someone was suggesting having scheming Jewish bankers as the bad guys, every single response would be, "maybe you should think about how that comes across and, like, do something different." Nobody would be saying, "Don't let anyone talk you out of writing about Neo-nazis beating the evil Jews!" But with spirit animals, well hey, that's kind of mainstream. That's okay, right? Let's just ignore how that comes across, let's just ignore the voices of the members of that group when they speak up on the topic.

So I'll end this by saying research is part of writing. The two podcasts which I linked above, in the post that was largely ignored, are in fact very good resources for important considerations when writing "the other."

Megrim wrote:I really don't want to to scare people away from posting or trying out ideas. But...

Writing a rough draft of stupid, inane things that are inaccurate so that you can use it as a template to research and edit does not do real harm to real people. It sits in your notebook or your .docx files until you get a peer reader to look at it and tell you what you’ve gotten wrong, and then you edit it. You don’t publish your first draft, your first draft isn’t going to sprout legs and go join Robert Byrd in a klan rally, and you’re not going to find yourself madly Dr. Strangeloving your arm away from the pen as you fight your horrible, renegade hand from spewing White Apocalypse because you were Possessed by the Spirit of Racism because you wrote a historically absurd Spaghetti Western in your wide-ruled notebook.


I’ll say it again: You don't offend people by being ignorant, you offend people by being racist, and that takes actually doing something racist, like writing up some alcoholic caricature of a noble savage.

I will, however, expand on that, since apparently my comment is “dangerous”, heh.

People taking offense is a different issue than you offending people and it will happen if you are ignorant and it will happen if you are historically/culturally accurate. You must not allow your fear of people taking offense to your work stop you from writing.

The idea that something must be historically accurate in order to not be offensive is patently absurd because being historically accurate will not save it from being offensive in the first place. All I have to say is Huck Finn to make this point, but let me give you a Native-American specific example: the movie Blackrobe. It is stunningly historically and culturally accurate in excruciating detail and yet it has famously offended people due to its unflattering and yet accurate depiction the Mohawk. There is no sense in pressuring someone who hasn’t even written the first draft into making sure their content is historically accurate in the name of not offending.

Yes, you can make up things about real cultures. Not even mentioning that making things up about real cultures is an inevitable fact of historical fiction (an educated guess is still making something up), you must not forget that OP is talking about introducing supernatural elements into this story. As soon you assert that a certain cosmology or supernatural force works a certain way, that will invalidate anything that contradicts, throwing all the remaining cultures (Native American ones!) out the door with just as much disregard as if the story had asserted a Judeo-Christian supernatural world. Here’s a fine example: the Navajo belief of Skinwalkers. An accurate portrayal of the Skinwalkers, written by a Navajo person, would defy the traditions of other tribes who believe in Skinwalkers, such as the Hopi and the Ute and several Mesoamerican cultures (not to mention assert that the belief systems of tribes that don’t incorporate skinwalkers are just flat out wrong entirely).

It has nothing to do with that spirit animals are mainstream. It has to do with the fact that there are, in fact, countless Indigenous cultures in the Americas and with such a grand canvas of potential cultures to choose from, it is more practical for a writer to go ahead and write enough of their first rough draft, step back, and look at it in order to pick out the topics of research that they can use in order to refine it into an adequately historically/culturally accurate story. Again, your rough draft sitting in your notebooks or thumbdrive isn’t going to start morphing into Mein Kampf when you're not looking.

Megrim wrote:I almost feel like the problem with this thread is that people are thinking Native American tribes and their spirit animal beliefs don't matter as much, don't get as much say. If someone was suggesting having a cult of black voodoo worshippers from Africa as their bad guys (yeah that's actually in Call of C'thulu :/), we'd be having a different discussion. If someone was suggesting having scheming Jewish bankers as the bad guys, every single response would be, "maybe you should think about how that comes across and, like, do something different." Nobody would be saying, "Don't let anyone talk you out of writing about Neo-nazis beating the evil Jews!" But with spirit animals, well hey, that's kind of mainstream. That's okay, right? Let's just ignore how that comes across, let's just ignore the voices of the members of that group when they speak up on the topic.

Dear God.

The problem with this thread is that it’s full of people who insist that you shouldn’t “other” Native Americans, and then go straight onto lecturing a minority about how Native Americans are some special class of people that you cannot write about without an in-depth tutorial series and instruction manual.

The problem with your post is that you are the one shoehorning advice on the process of writing and researching for historical fiction into a discussion of ethnicity. You the one are inserting moral hierarchy where there is no moral hierarchy. You are the one asserting and attaching morality to ethnic identities where there was no peep of morality.

Stop putting what isn't there, there. It’s as if you do not understand that the fact that the bad guys are bad guys has nothing to do with a bad guy’s ethnicity or race. It's as if you do not understand that context and execution is the ultimate arbiter of whether something is, in fact, offensive.

It's as if the only diversity that you don’t care about is intellectual diversity.

Is that the case, Megrim?

MissElaney wrote:Writing a rough draft of stupid, inane things that are inaccurate so that you can use it as a template to research and edit does not do real harm to real people.

Straight off the bat, you've switched from "FORGET THE RESEARCH, WRITE THE STORY WITH SPIRIT ANIMALS IN IT. " to "first drafts being rough is okay" -- an opinion no one's questioned, and in fact most/all the people commenting on this thread agree with.

However, you're taking it a step or a few too far for my taste with what you seem to consider a rough draft. I can agree with "write now, edit later", and I definitely know that one's not even close to having a finished book when they finish the first draft. But the way you speak about it, you're basically saying that the OP should just go ahead and write their idea with no respect for accuracy of any sort, spend at least months on finishing it, and THEN go back and start researching the topic they'd just been writing about.

That doesn't sound like something I can agree with. Frankly, it sounds like wasting time.

MissElaney wrote:I’ll say it again: You don't offend people by being ignorant, you offend people by being racist, and that takes actually doing something racist, like writing up some alcoholic caricature of a noble savage.

You also offend people by refusing to acknowledge or address your ignorance once you realise it/are called out on it by the people who belong to the group you described and/or have more experience and/or know about the topic more than you do.

Besides, something being harmful and something being offensive isn't the same thing. But more on that later.

Also, I've removed the bold from here on when quoting, 'cause I'm quite capable of reading and comprehending what was said without the emphasis smacking me in the face.

MissElaney wrote:People taking offense is a different issue than you offending people and it will happen if you are ignorant and it will happen if you are historically/culturally accurate. You must not allow your fear of people taking offense to your work stop you from writing.

Most definitely, people taking offence and people actively being offended are two different issues. No one's denied that, either. But when one realises that people are taking offence and refuses to even look into what they might've done wrong, instead just keeping up with whatever they're writing about because they can't "allow their fear of people taking offence to stop them", that behaviour becomes actively offensive.

MissElaney wrote:The idea that something must be historically accurate in order to not be offensive is patently absurd because being historically accurate will not save it from being offensive in the first place.

You have two main thoughts here, and you treat them as mutually exclusive, but they aren't so whatsoever. Something accurate coming off as offensive is a completely different story from something being offensive because of its inaccuracy. Do you see what I'm saying here? These two things don't clash; they're different things. They don't make each other absurd, because they can both be true at the same time.

MissElaney wrote:There is no sense in pressuring someone who hasn’t even written the first draft into making sure their content is historically accurate in the name of not offending.

No one is saying that the first draft should get everything right. No one is saying that you're supposed to research for half of your life before ever writing down a single word.
But approaching writing a novel/novella/whatever with the attitude of "I'll make everything up and then research later and take the accurate stuff that fits into my made-up story" is just as bad-- and, taken that you're writing about a culture (or a period) that exists, especially if underrepresented or usually misrepresented, it's just backwards.

You say a draft won't be hurt by doing no research for it before writing it. I disagree-- it will take time, it will take effort, and then it will either be a complete scrap [and redo] once the writer does get to researching and realises how much they've gotten wrong, or it will lead to the writer going "whatever, I'll just add in the realistic stuff that fits, and leave the rest made up 'cause who cares about accuracy anyways." Neither sounds good to me.

Researching your topic before and while writing about it can in no way harm you, however. It will probably strengthen your idea (and possibly the writing itself), and you get to learn new things even if you don't end up using all of it in the end.

MissElaney wrote:Yes, you can make up things about real cultures.

And no one's denying that either, but when you're trying to base your whole story on a real culture's real beliefs, you can't just go make those up.

MissElaney wrote:Not even mentioning that making things up about real cultures is an inevitable fact of historical fiction

...which I don't know why we're talking about, really, since the OP said they weren't writing historical fiction, and the ideas expressed in the rest of the posts can apply to historical as much as contemporary fiction anyway.

MissElaney wrote:...you must not forget that OP is talking about introducing supernatural elements into this story. As soon you assert that a certain cosmology or supernatural force works a certain way, that will invalidate anything that contradicts, throwing all the remaining cultures (Native American ones!) out the door with just as much disregard as if the story had asserted a Judeo-Christian supernatural world. Here’s a fine example: the Navajo belief of Skinwalkers. An accurate portrayal of the Skinwalkers, written by a Navajo person, would defy the traditions of other tribes who believe in Skinwalkers, such as the Hopi and the Ute and several Mesoamerican cultures (not to mention assert that the belief systems of tribes that don’t incorporate skinwalkers are just flat out wrong entirely).

Yes, okay, I agree with you here. Regarding one culture's beliefs as "true" for the sake of basing a story on them will probably make all the others "not true". But that's not an issue. That's how belief systems work anyway. Saying that it's okay to not do your research or respect the beliefs that you're trying to base your entire story on, just because those beliefs clash with some other ones, makes no sense as an argument.

MissElaney wrote:It has nothing to do with that spirit animals are mainstream. It has to do with the fact that there are, in fact, countless Indigenous cultures in the Americas and with such a grand canvas of potential cultures to choose from, it is more practical for a writer to go ahead and write enough of their first rough draft, step back, and look at it in order to pick out the topics of research that they can use in order to refine it into an adequately historically/culturally accurate story. Again, your rough draft sitting in your notebooks or thumbdrive isn’t going to start morphing into Mein Kampf when you're not looking.

I'm not going to repeat myself, but I will say that going with what's practical at the expense of not only accurately representing a certain group or culture, but also actually educating yourself in the process, is just not what makes for a good writer.

MissElaney wrote:The problem with this thread is that it’s full of people who insist that you shouldn’t “other” Native Americans, and then go straight onto lecturing a minority about how Native Americans are some special class of people that you cannot write about without an in-depth tutorial series and instruction manual.

I feel like I'm saying this a lot, but... there's a difference between the two ideas expressed here. Not separating someone out as "other", and including them in novels/stories/whatever, doesn't equal not doing any research on them and just treating them like any other character completely regardless of their culture, heritage, beliefs or whatever other relevant bit of who they are. And before I get my words twisted and thrown back at me, I'm not saying that you should give roles to characters according to their ethnicity or race or any such thing; I'm saying that all those things should affect them as people, like they do real people, regardless of their roles in the story.

You said it yourself, sort of, after all: "...the fact that the bad guys are bad guys has nothing to do with a bad guy’s ethnicity or race."
Which, by the way, no one's tried to dispute either. What Megrim was getting at by giving those examples of black voodoo worshippers and scheming Jewish bankers were the double standards people approach these discussions with. The fact that something's been used before, that it's practical, isn't an excuse for building up on prejudice and false information-- and as she said, were this a discussion about an issue more often talked about, this would be a much larger problem than it seems to be in this case.

MissElaney wrote:The problem with your post is that you are the one shoehorning advice on the process of writing and researching for historical fiction into a discussion of ethnicity. You the one are inserting moral hierarchy where there is no moral hierarchy. You are the one asserting and attaching morality to ethnic identities where there was no peep of morality.

What Megrim -- and some others, including myself -- is shoehorning is the fact that if you want to write about someone's culture, and base your story on it, looking into the said culture before you start writing and while you're writing it is the only logical way of approaching it.
This thread isn't a discussion about ethnicity anyway. It's a thread asking for advice on how to go about writing a certain thing, which is why we're here in the first place. And it's filled with people trying to get across the idea of actually understanding and respecting what you're basing your story on before you dive into the story itself.

MissElaney wrote:It's as if the only diversity that you don’t care about is intellectual diversity.

I'm honestly not sure what you mean by this. I take it to mean something along the lines of Megrim having somehow disrespected others' ideas and/or ways of going about turning those ideas into stories? Not sure, but let's say I'm on the right track.
Neither Meg nor anyone else is trying to force anyone into writing their story in a certain way. No one's arguing about diversity in writing styles, or approaches to writing, or any such thing. An important thing to keep in mind is that this thread was open with the intention of the OP to get some advice, and that is what we've all been doing. That's all we've been doing. Even if sometimes it meant saying that some method or other is a terrible idea or disagreeing with the OP themselves, or explaining why giving straight answers isn't as possible and simple as the OP might've hoped.

MissElaney wrote:Is that the case, Megrim?

I'm adding this final note as a mod, not as a warning but as a concern. Threads like this one can and sometimes do get a bit heated, as the discussion goes on. I have nothing against disagreeing with each other, quoting each other's words and asking each other specific questions, but I'd like to ask everyone involved to keep in mind that none of it should be taken to a personal level. What we post and say here should be about the topic at hand, and not about the other people contributing.
Okay?
Okay.

Hello, MissElaney, I apologize if you took that as a personal attack. Though it WAS directed at your comments, like I said, I have dogs in the diversity & representation fight, and I have general non-specific issues with the topic at large. The whole subject is basically my agent's #1 goal in life and publishing, and every single thing she blogs or tweets about is related to issues relating to the one's we've been talking about. Plus, I have my own set of grievances as a SF writer and medical professional regarding fiction's frequent disrespect of scientific and medical accuracy (like, disregarding even high school level knowledge sometimes/a lot of times). I feel like you cherry-picked in your quoting a bit to avoid those comments, but I really am not any more pissed about cultural misappropriation than I am about historical inaccuracy or about scientific inaccuracy or about LGBT misrepresentation or ANY of those things.

I have no experience or answers on the Native cultures conversation, which I said. To rephrase what I was trying to get at: there are people who DO know about such things, who've posted on this thread, and we should be respecting the voices of people who belong to the group(s) in question. Coming back at them with the suggestion to forget about what they've been saying and do your own thing seems highly disrespectful.

Writing a rough draft of stupid, inane things that are inaccurate so that you can use it as a template to research and edit does not do real harm to real people.

I don't disagree with this at all. You didn't mention anything about rough drafts in your original post.

I do agree with ChildofNowhere that it seems self-defeating to spend a bunch of time writing a draft and then do research, but that's up to individual method. If you write a whole historical fic book based around a fictional battle and then start googling after it's done and realize gunpowder wasn't invented until 30 years later and you have to re-imagine the whole plot, you've wasted an awful lot of your own time. (In the interest of avoiding more cherry-picking, this example can be extrapolated to cultural and scientific errors as well, and I'm only using it as an example, as that's how examples work)

I also didn't mention anything about offense. The only time I even used that word in my post was part of a list: "Is that the precedent you want to set for yourself? Lazy writing? Are you going to be surprised if people criticize your book for its inaccuracies (eg unresarched historical fiction), blacklist it for being offensive (eg cultural misappropriation), or simply don't read it?"

Respectfully, I think you may be dragging the "offense" argument in from elsewhere/previous experience, because admittedly that comes up a LOT. People are always arguing about that, especially with regards to writing. No one here is really talking about "you don't want to offend people." You'll notice in my post the two big points I wanted to make were 1. Lazy Writing and 2. Perpetuating Damaging Ideas. At the risk of repeating myself, things like how LGBTQ individuals are represented, which then get incorporated into people's assumptions and expectations. Or ANY minority. Or women! Female characters written by men, setting up expectations of how men *think and assume* women think and act, which can lead men further and further down the path of assumptions and unintentional sexism (complicated topic so I'm going to avoid specifics. Again this is an EXAMPLE)

But back on point, perpetuating damaging ideas =/= worrying about offense. That's another big discussion, and I'm guessing it's one you've participated in a lot, which is why it automatically came out. Hence the existence of the Magical Negro trope, where people try so hard to not make their minority guy a bad guy, they end up causing a whole new set of problems. This damage comes from IGNORANCE far, far more often than from intentional racism/homophobia/sexism/what have you.

I'm afraid I found your post rather difficult to understand. For example your comment about intellectual diversity? Is that just meaning, not respecting other people's approach to ideas? I don't understand some of your sentences there. I'm not sure how a moral hierarchy plays into it, or how I'm "shoehorning" historical fiction and ethnicity together. Allow me to reiterate, my two issues with the attitude of (and I quote): "FORGET THE RESEARCH," are 1. Lazy Writing and 2. Perpetuating Damaging Ideas. This applies to culture, history, location, medicine, biology, astronomy, physics, sexuality, gender identity, religion, animal husbandry, passage of time, and all those other things that as writers we frequently tab over to google to check while working. I'm not picking on any one particular of those. I'm not picking on first drafts, which you failed to mention in the post to which I was responding. And I'm saying we should all be listening and respecting to the voices of members of a specific group when they try to educate us on representing them in fiction.

may I clear things up, it's both about ethnicity and culture, mind you.

I have not switched my opinion, @ChildOfNowhere, my original post opens with “Forget the research,” and the immediately following content explains integrating editing into your research. I will cede both to you and @Megrim that I did not explicitly state “rough draft,” however I did not specify any degree of finish, and in regards your comment about how I’m taking it a step too far with what I “seem” to consider a rough draft…. I hate to say it but I cannot help you with whatever problems you have with what you assume about what I said because they are your assumptions, not my words, and I fail to see how I can communicate what I “seem to consider a rough draft” when, as you pointed out, I didn’t even say the words “rough draft” in the first place.

How did you arrive to the conclusion that taking the practical route would be at the expense of representing a certain group or culture or educating yourself? The practical route is writing something inaccurate and then editing it with research. I didn’t actually specify how in-depth that you should write said inaccurate story.

Now, I’m going to go over the ideas in this thread that provoked my first response, my second response, and this one.

The very first response was this:

Rosendorn wrote:Do your research before even beginning to touch this idea, because right now you have gotten a lot wrong in the very premise.

Telling someone “Do you research before even beginning to touch this idea” is the polar opposite of encouraging a rough draft, and “you’ve gotten a lot wrong in the very premise” is also in direct opposition to the idea of first drafts being rough as okay. Please, go re-read Rosendorn’s responses and tell me again with a straight face that “nobody” has said that you can’t write a rough draft. This thread, from the very start, has started out with the message, “stop writing.”

The tone of this thread then continues on in such a way that it actually compelled ewolf to apologize for “being an idiot.”

But it gets worse. Here’s a quote to summarize the attitude the thread takes on:

Rosendorn wrote: avoiding researching the heritage isn't the way to represent Natives. Researching, researching, and researching is the way to avoid offence. 

There are many other quotes but that one is the most prominent and direct and obvious one that has the message that I’m taking issue with: the idea that there is only one way to representation, and that you can’t write until you know better. It’s absurd. I already discussed why.

So, @ChildOfNowhere and @Megrim, I am responding to this thread’s message of “You cannot write a rough draft and edit. You must not write anything unless it is historically accurate.” You say the attitude is not there, but it IS, I just showed it to you.

ChildOfNowhere wrote:You also offend people by refusing to acknowledge or address your ignorance once you realise it/are called out on it by the people who belong to the group you described and/or have more experience and/or know about the topic more than you do.

Please take a moment to remember that the topic at hand is a book, and OP’s worry is now that their work will be offensive. Their work is going to be an inanimate object. It is going to be read by people who may or may not take issue with it, and a vast majority of the time, OP is not going to be capable of responding to these people, if they are even aware that these people have read their work at all. They’re likely going to encounter their work in a medium where OP cannot directly interact with them, so the possibility of OP not considering their criticism is moot because OP won’t receive it in the first place.

With that in mind, do you see now, that I was and still am discussing how your written work can offend people and why I believe that is the only topic that actually matters for this specific discussion? You are talking about how your personal conduct in general can offend people and while this is true it is not remotely on topic and doesn’t even apply to OP, who has been responding with questions and wanting to know more rather than shutting others down. OP doesn’t need to be taught how to do what they’re already doing. In fact, OP has been so receptive to all of the criticism here that they’ve allowed the people in this thread to talk them out of writing. On a forum dedicated to encourage others to write.

How do you not see this? This entire thread has been “Don’t write, you don’t know enough, you’re not smart enough, your brain has been poisoned by pop culture and so your work is rotten from the start, you have to educate yourself before you’re worthy of writing again, and you need other peoples’ permission in order to use your creativity.” A young writer will never succeed in that environment and it is shameful that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it happen. You’ll notice I’ve been a lurker since February.

Megrim, I haven’t read your post yet, I saw you posted but I haven’t read it yet. In the meantime:

ChildOfNowhere wrote:...which I don't know why we're talking about, really, since the OP said they weren't writing historical fiction

Because Megrim literally said “You can't just make up facts about real cultures,” so I gave her an entire genre which relies on having to know how, why, and when to make up things about real cultures.

ChildOfNowhere wrote:But that's not an issue. (ed: the fact of supernatural elements invalidating other cultures’ lore)  That's how belief systems work anyway. 

Take a second to recall JK Rowling’s Skinwalker controversy. It portrayed Skinwalkers, believe it or not, actually accurately, because it took place over a century before 1864, back when Skinwalkers were closer to Naguals, and audiences – including Native audiences – hated it, because they expected them to work like post-1864 Navajo Skinwalker beliefs and took personal offense to the idea that JK Rowling was, in picking one arguably accurate execution over another, ignoring their beliefs. It is an issue.

Now, Megrim, I would like to take the time to give you the same attention to your last post as you did mine, so I will post again later, but now I'm going to stop.

Ewolf,

I know very much about Plains Native American cultures. My emphasis is on the Comanche, Tonkawa and Karankawa. If you need information about them, then please don't hesitate to PM me and I will forward you books that you can read. Never, ever, ever "shelve" an idea.

Instead,

Most of the time that you will run into someone unwilling to give you information about magic or ceremony, it is because of the following:

1. You are asking about how a curse works and they don't want you to know how it works so that either you, or someone else, does not abuse this information. To solve this problem, don't write yourself into a situation where you're obligated to actually itemize and detail how the curse works.

2. You are asking how divination works and they don't want you or someone else to get hurt by trying it yourself before you're ready. In several beliefs, when you try to perform divination, you can provoke the wrong spirit. If you cannot recognize the warning signs to prevent harm falling to yourself or others, then you have doomed yourself. To solve this problem but still be able to write about divination, again, don't write yourself into a situation where you're obligated to go into detail. You can hint at the ritual enough that people will recognize what it is, but not go into such detail so as to teach others how to do it.

3. You are asking about a certain class of people that the person is unwilling to talk about. There are multiple magical belief systems where you have, essentially, a man for hire, from the Palero to the Navajo Skinwalker. And they can be hired to do terrible things -- like kill and sicken other people. In these cases, the people who you interview do not want it to get out that they actually discussed these people, for fear of their own safety. They don't want the for-hire to know that they talked about them because they don't know if they might have an issue with it and do something. To solve this problem, ask if the person is willing to discuss the subject with you on the condition of anonymity or if they know anybody who might be okay with it, and try to locate people who have left the religion.

4. You are asking a culture which carries the belief that talking about evil things can get their attention and bring them your way. To get around this problem, you will often want to talk to a religious or ceremonial leader instead of Joe-Schmoe, because that person is more likely to be confident that they can handle whatever happens due to having spoken of it. Another option is to ask them if you can get it in writing instead of talking out loud about it -- it might or might not convince them to let go of the information, but don't hold your breath. Your last option would be to find someone who has left the religion in question.

MissElaney wrote:This entire thread has been “Don’t write, you don’t know enough, you’re not smart enough, your brain has been poisoned by pop culture and so your work is rotten from the start, you have to educate yourself before you’re worthy of writing again, and you need other peoples’ permission in order to use your creativity.” A young writer will never succeed in that environment and it is shameful that this isn’t the first time I’ve seen it happen. You’ll notice I’ve been a lurker since February.

I have to go to bed and catch an early train tomorrow, so the rest of the reply will have to wait, but I wanted to address this.

The fact that you feel this way is saddening, but also upsetting to me, because that wasn't what any of us has been saying and I'd like to clear the confusion about it. While I believe that the others more or less share my opinion, I'm talking completely from my personal point of view here.

No one needs anyone's permission to use creativity. No one's called anyone stupid or unworthy of writing, and no one's told anyone to not write in such a definite way. The OP came to this forum and started this thread, asking for advice -- and we assumed that was what they wanted, and we've provided.

True, that advice wasn't "just go ahead and write it!" -- but that's not always good advice, and that's not how a person can really learn. When someone asks me for writerly advice, I approach it with the assumption that the person is ready to hear an honest response, even if it's one that may make them question their idea. Especially so, perhaps. I don't want to tell young writers all they want to hear and blindly encourage them to go through with everything they think of -- I want to say what I think, even if it means saying there's no answer to their question, even if it means saying that they don't understand what they're trying to deal with, even if it means pointing out all the holes and bad sides -- because that's what pushes a person to learn and discover what they don't understand, to ask more or different questions if the first one didn't get them a reply they wanted, to find ways around the shortcomings.

I don't assume that everyone wants to be a professional writer like myself and some of the others in this thread aspire to be/are already. But I do assume, because the person who posted the thread in the first place asked for advice, that they want to do the best job they can, and I don't believe that's possible without being ready to have all those "negative" things pointed out to them. That, in my opinion, is how young (and not-so-young) writers learn to succeed; by learning to accept criticism and either use it to their advantage or nod and move on.

And sometimes, it's okay to move on. It's okay to realise you're not quite ready to tell a particular story yet, be it because you don't know enough or because you can't at this time come up with ways to tackle the issues others have pointed out. It doesn't mean you'll never be a [good] writer, it doesn't mean you're in any way inferior or stupid or unworthy or any such thing. It just means you may want to shelve that particular idea for now, and maybe focus on something else.

^

Regarding having seen it before-- if you find that anyone is given advice or general treatment that you consider harmful, I invite you to PM me with the link to the scene. We're here to help each other with our writing, and I accept and understand that our different views on what good or helpful advice is may sometimes lead to misunderstandings and hurt feelings. And when it does, I want to know about it, both as a Resources mod and as a person/fellow writer/member of YWS in general.