Writers in the Storm

by Amy Winters-Voss

Imagine if someone claimed they were giving your minority representation in a book or movie, but it was so far from accurate you didn't recognize your people in it? How would you feel if the group you are in was always the one killed off in stories or added to the stigmatization of your group? Unfortunately, it happens all too often.

Cultural appropriation and representation are volatile topics. Someone will always be quick to call you out when they have a different understanding than you do. But, we could hurt people if we don't take care. It’s what I hope to bring to your attention today. It's especially important for those of us who aren't minorities. We need to see where things in our creative work can go in a direction that would reflect badly on another group.

Additionally, I'll also touch on hurtful stereotypes and non-ethnicity minorities. Next month, we’ll talk about what we can do to ensure our work is respectful. One or two articles are only a starting point on these broad issues. I’ll only be able to graze the surface of each to bring them out into the open. If these are new topics for you, let this article be a jumping off point for research. If you’re familiar with them, let it be a reminder to be vigilant.

Why me?

So why would a white woman be writing about these topics? I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to meet people from every continent, and even one that worked in Antarctica. I’ve always had an interest in other cultures and people groups. But I know not everyone has that chance. We can grow up isolated, in ignorance, or get sucked into negative thoughts around us.

While I was growing up, members of my family spoke badly about others, particularly black people. I don’t think they even thought about how bigoted what they said was and being called racist would have shocked them. But I can’t deny what I heard. If they were alive today, I hope they’d see things a little differently. To my parents' credit, they worked hard to take that out of our family culture—sharing the racist things that disgusted them. Another generation later, my husband and I expanded on trying to eradicate bigotry in our family.

Have I had to face my own ghosts of beliefs about people groups? Yes, multiple times. But I long for the day when we as a world society see everyone as equals. May our writing be a step in that direction.

Now, for the tough topics.

So what is cultural appropriation?

The Oxford Dictionary says it's:

The unacknowledged or inappropriate adoption of the customs, practices, ideas, etc. of one people or society by members of another and typically more dominant people or society.

Let's take a look from a minority standpoint, specifically. The Florida Seminole Tourism website (for tourism on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation) says:

Cultural appropriation is commonly used to identify when the imagery, fashion, practices, music, or artifacts of a culture are removed from their original context. The significance is ignored and they are taken and used by someone else.

Basically, I read it as we want to know the culture and see what they ‌feel is ok and what isn't, and ensure we respect those wishes.

Cultural Appropriation Examples

If this is a new topic for you, a few examples may be in order.

• One of the most common complaints I've seen from minority groups is someone not of the culture wearing a symbol or dress with deep meaning, such as a Native American war bonnet as a costume.
• Another is writing about a part of the mythology when a people group asks others not to. An example is the w**digo—an evil, cannibalistic spirit that used to be human. The Anishnaabe people even avoid saying its name, so I opted to not spell it out completely here.
• "Namaste, Bitches!" I don't know how many t-shirts I've seen this on. Namaste is a greeting of respect in the Hindu beliefs. A gentleman from India taught me it meant "I salute/bow to the divine within you." So the t-shirt phrase flies in the face of the original meaning.
• A Swedish friend of mine throws a fit every time a new Thor movie or a new "Viking" game comes out. He just wants them to do research, ask questions, and represent his ancestors properly.

Hurtful Stereotypes

These are the nasty cousins of cultural appropriation that stuff people into a simplified idea, boxing them in. They turn people into things. My eyes were opened to some of the awful stereotypes of Asian people after reading Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu. If you write about East Asian cultures, please give it a read.

What are some of these stereotypes for various groups? I'm sure you've seen these before: "sexy Asian lady", "noble savage" Native Americans, "Nazi German", and "damsel in distress". Each of these devalues the people group being portrayed. Characters in your work need to fill more than a shallow role. 

With the hurtful stereotypes, it’s worth spending time on the fact that minorities are often the ones killed off in a story line. Glancing at TVtropes.org, here are a few particularly ugly ones: “Black Dude Dies First” and “Middle Eastern terrorist”.

Please don’t just put a minority in your storyline to kill them off, even if you have them make a noble sacrifice. Remember, they need a presence with powerful agency, just like every other character. 

Negative Tropes

Negative tropes enforce how society sees a group. A friend of mine has had to raise her half-black kids to be careful when choosing clothes they wear and about what to do if a police officer stops them. She isn’t the only one. Many black parents face having “the talk” with their kids on these topics.

Also, please be careful when putting a minority in as a terrorist. Terrorists come from every group. In the US, one of the first names that comes to mind is Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber—a white guy. After the September 11th attack in 2001 by Al Queda extremists, it wasn’t safe in the US for people perceived to be Arabic. But were you aware that US citizens of Arabic descent helped hunt down remainders of those cells? I didn’t think about it until my friend mentioned his dad was one of the brave guys that helped.

Media often perceives Africans as not having access to and being very behind in technology. Yet, a friend from Ghana has a cell phone and uses WhatsApp all the time for international calls. She taught me how to use the app!

Descriptions

Please, also consider how you write descriptions of people. A few examples: comparing skin color to foods and using the words “almond eyes” in order to describe an East Asian person’s hooded ones. These are considered bad form by the groups being described. Would you want someone to ask if you tasted like, say, chocolate? Yet, I’ve heard of black people being asked that very question.

There are many, many more hurtful stereotypes. These were just a small sample.

Representing People Beyond Bloodlines

What about other groups such as minorities of gender and sexuality, the handicapped, those with mental health issues, people following a particular religion, and disadvantaged groups like the poor?

The entertainment industry is often brutal to minorities—the LGBTQ+ community, especially. I didn’t realize how bad it was until I was skimming through “All 230 Dead Lesbian and Bisexual Characters On TV, And How They Died”. So the trope “Bury your Gays” really hits hard. There are stories where the “Anyone can die'' trope fits and is an equalizer of sorts. But authors and TV writers need to look hard into which characters they are killing off. Seriously.

Also, this group gets stereotyped to be the leak in any operation or the troubled villain. I’m looking at you “The Jackal” and “Tron Legacy” (think, Zuse)!

Hurtful Stereotypes

For physically disabled people, the hurtful stereotypes again include the villain. But there is also the helpless victim and the inspirational hero. Helpless victim is easy to understand. No one wants to be seen as unable to help themselves or needing to be saved, or not being seen as “enough”. Another personal example for you, when I was in elementary school, the dad of one of my friends was blind. He never let it stop him. Being blind was just part of him.

But what about the superhero one? Well, how would you feel about living up to the pressure of having to be superhuman? Of again, not being seen as normal.

For those with mental health issues, the challenges they face include a similar list, stories often overgeneralize, exaggerate, or trivialize them. Not all depressed people are suicidal, though stories will portray the most extreme option for “drama”. Mental illness should not be instantly associated with violence, yet it’s portrayed as that. How many killers in stories have a mental illness? Spreading misinformation does not encourage those who need to seek help.

https://youtu.be/WYerKidQGcc

Beliefs

People’s beliefs are close to the heart. Grouping all of one religion into the same pot is damaging. Portraying every Muslim (or any belief) as an extremist is vastly unfair. I know quite a few Muslims. My son’s best friend from elementary school follows Islam, as does his father. They are both peaceful men. Keep in mind, extremists exist in every belief set. Even Buddhism, which is known for its pacifism, has issues. Look at Myanmar where there is the forced conversion of minorities and in Sri Lanka which has persecution of Muslims.

Also, media mashes faiths together, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism in movies like Kung-Fu Panda and Avatar. Or it rarely represents those who choose belief sets, such as atheism or agnosticism. 

Media often shows those who practice witchcraft as the villains: devil worshipers, curse slingers, craving to control and manipulate, “demonic conjurers of darkness”, “irresistible sirens of corruption”, or “idiotic flakes”. But the faith doesn’t follow the devil, discourages things like cursing, control, and manipulation, and there are many academics among them. (Quoted from a Discord Q&A with Sable Aradia - author of the The Witch's Eight Paths of Power: A Complete Course in Magick and Witchcraft)

Financial Disadvantage

Often, the poor are shown as “incompetent, delusional, drunk or foolish”, and in need of rescue (with a focus on the rescuer and “oh don’t they look generous”). Also, the “race” card rears its head again, with media showing more racial minorities as poor or as criminals, when statistically it’s not correct. More white people are poor and crimes are more often committed by whites.

Such a discouraging pattern, isn’t it? Minorities have long been fodder for stereotypes in media, which are shown as the defining aspects of a character. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Closing

Writing a minority character gave me a chance to dig into that culture more and learn what his culture feels is acceptable and what is not. Have I done things perfectly? Nope! Had my hand slapped a few times. I’m still learning. Thankfully, they were minor incidents, correctable before print!

In May’s post, I’ll share things we can do to show respect for and do our best to represent minorities and cultures that are not our own. Until next time, peace.

Where have you struggled with writing others respectfully?

About Amy

Amy is the author of the Liminal Chronicles series, a mythological/urban fantasy set in small town Japan that focuses on social redemption and found family.

She runs the vssCollab very short story challenge on Twitter, Instagram, and Tumbler and publishes the best of the entries in the online zine--'In Threads'. Additionally, she founded the Anvilite Streamers Corps and streams her writing and crafts on Twitch.

Top Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

World building is one of my favorite aspects of writing science fiction and fantasy. It’s a chance to open up the creative floodgates and let the imagination run wild. But world building is more than just the physical and descriptive details of a place. The culture, history, and language of a group of people contribute to what life is like in that world.

This history and culture is where those clichés, metaphors, and similes come from.

Consider how even within the United States terms and phrases differ. If you’re from the Midwest, you probably order a pop with lunch, but on the East and West Coasts it’s a soda, and in many southern states, it’s a coke (regardless of the type of soda it is). You can often tell where someone is from by the words and cliches they use.

So how can you use these devices to bring your world to life?

The key is to be intentional. Don't just throw in a cliché or a metaphor because it sounds good. Think about why you're using it and what effect you want it to have on your reader. Is it helping to create a more vivid image of your world? Is it revealing something about your characters or their emotions? Is it adding depth and complexity to your story?

For example, you could write:

• The city was a labyrinth.
• The air clung to me like a wet towel.
• "Actions speak louder than words," he said, shaking his head at my gaff.

But look what happens if you added a hint of the world and the characters who live in that world:

• The city was a labyrinth of twisting streets and paths that led to trouble.
• The air around the old biddies clung to me like a towel dipped in Chanel #5.
• "Actions speak louder than words," he said, “and you just shouted at the whole room.”

These take a basic phrase and turn it into something more. The city has an air of danger now, we get a stronger sense of what the air feels and smells like, and the cliché adds a bit of character voice.

Here are some tips to make the most of your clichés, metaphors, and similes:

Choose your clichés wisely.

Although clichés get a bad rap, they can serve a valuable purpose. They’re cultural shorthand that can suggest the larger world a character lives in. Using “common” phrases and clichés in your writing misses an opportunity to flesh out your story world—even if that world is New York City. How often have you seen a blanket of snow, a head spinning with ideas, or a smile as bright as the sun? These mean nothing to readers because they’re so general. 

But clichés are effective when used in the right context. For example, if you’re writing a scene where a character is trying to comfort a friend who has just made a terrible mistake, saying, “You can’t change the past” might be appropriate. But you might also brainstorm ways you can evoke that concept in a way that better fits your world.

For example, in my Healing Wars trilogy, my protagonist says, “What’s done is done,” and her sister finishes it with “And I can’t change it none,” suggesting this is a common cliché in their world. It carries the same vibe as “you can’t change the past,” but in a fresh way.

Use metaphors and similes to create vivid descriptions.

Metaphors and similes are useful tools for creating sensory descriptions that help readers imagine what your world looks, sounds, smells, and feels like. For example, “the wind whispered through the trees like a lover’s sigh” creates a vivid image of the sound of the wind blowing through the leaves.

I once wrote a pirate character who'd spent his life at sea. When he referenced things, he used sea metaphors or similes, because that’s the world he existed in. People went “white as a sail,” or something was “hard as a north wind.” It reinforced who he was and how he saw the world around him.

This applies even in the real world. Maybe your software developer compares things to coding, or the teacher makes math metaphors. The Iowa farm girl might pepper her speech with colloquialisms. Every culture and group has their own “language” and how they communicate, and the phrases everyone knows. “Let’s see if this dog is gonna hunt,” is clear for those in Arkansas, but a New Yorker might be lost as to its meaning.

While you don't want to dip into purple prose trying to "write fancy," think about how your character would use a metaphor or simile and how that fits into your story and world. What metaphors show an aspect of your world? How would your character describe the world around them?

Make sure your comparisons are accurate.

An inaccurate or nonsensical comparison can pull readers out of the story and undermine the effectiveness of your scene. For example, comparing a playful person’s smile to a “crocodile’s grin” is an interesting image, but it’s not an accurate comparison because crocodiles are usually associated with aggression and danger. It sends the wrong message to readers.

Also consider the tone and style of your story. For example, if you're writing a gritty crime drama, using a lot of colorful, literary-style metaphors and similes might feel out of place. If you're writing a humorous tale, creative and unexpected comparisons might add to the overall tone of the story.

Mix them up for the most impact.

Too much of anything is usually bad, so be wary of overusing any particular device. Too many clichés can feel stale and unoriginal. Too many metaphors or similes can feel overwritten or even pretentious. Mix all three into your story where they feel the most natural.

You can even use them to show the characters’ individual voices. Maybe one character frequently uses clichés because they think it makes them sound smart. Another might compare things using similes on a regular basis. The narrator or point of view character might fill their internalization with metaphors.

By choosing the right clichés, metaphors, and similes, you can give readers a deeper understanding of your characters' personalities, emotions, and perspectives, which helps illustrate your world.

Remember to use them sparingly and strategically, and always be intentional about the effect you want them to have on your reader.

If a cliché, metaphor, or simile helps create a more vivid image or reveal character, then it's serving its purpose. But if it's just a gimmick or distraction, then it's better to leave it out.

How do you feel about clichés, metaphors, and similes? Do they add to a story or just muck it up?

About Janice

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy. When she's not writing fiction, she runs the popular writing site Fiction University, and has written multiple books on writing, including Understanding Show, Don't Tell (And Really Getting It), Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, and the Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft series. Sign up for her newsletter and receive 25 ways to Strengthen Your Writing Right Now free.

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Top image by Deleyna via Midjourney

by Stefan Emunds

This is the fifth article of the article series The Yin and Yang Relationship Between Psychology and Storytelling. The first article is about reader investment and reader engagement. In the second article, we covered how to create story experiences that feel real to life. The third article shows how to tap into your readers' subconsciousness and engage them in your story. The fourth article dives into characters’ goals, motivations, wants, needs, and objects of desires.

This article covers psychological engineering, aka characterization.

Why Do Writers Need to Know Psychology?

Writers need to know psychology for four main reasons:

• Know how readers think and feel and use that knowledge to engage them.
• Understand the psychology of experiencing so they can create story experiences that have a real-to-life feel.
• Design characters with plausible traits, flaws, talents, motivations, etc.
• Know themselves — why they write, what they really want to write about, and how to get out of their own way.

The Eight Crafts of Writing

This article is written with the eight writing crafts in mind. The eight writing crafts are:

• Big Idea (aka theme)
• Genre
• Narrative
• Story Outline (aka plotting)
• Characterization
• World Building
• Scene Structure
• Prose (aka line-by-line writing)

Note: To avoid confusing readers, the author of these articles avoided the alternation of she and her and he and him. Instead, he uses the nonexclusive she and her to mean writer and reader.

Psychological Engineering, aka Characterization

Psychologists are analysts, writers are psychological engineers. They use psychology to engineer story characters.

Characterization is complex. Among other things, writers need to know how to:

• Engineer characters
• Design character arcs
• Weave sympathy and empathy
• Set up character conflict
• Show and reveal character
• Reveal backstory

This article covers character engineering. The Eight Crafts of Writing recommends engineering characters in four steps:

1. Determine your characters’ story outline profile (prior to writing the first draft)
2. Give the character a simple, one-dimensional profile (prior to writing the first draft) 
3. Engineer your characters’ psychological profile (aka deep characterization)
4. Dress your characters with superficial attributes

How to Give Your Characters a Story Outline Profile

Many writers discover their characters while they write about them and they have no character profiles to begin with. This poses a challenge, since characters need to fit into the roles they play in the story. Discovering a character randomly may mess up the plot.

The solution: Create a story role profile for important characters prior to writing your first draft. It helps to have a cheat sheet for each character, something like: 

1. State the character’s story outline role, e.g., protagonist.
2. Show the genre role, e.g., victim in a crime story.
3. State the subplot role, e.g., lover.
4. State how the character relates to the story’s adversity? Is she a protagonistic or antagonistic agent or does she shapeshift?

As you can see, role profiling can already give you some characterization ideas. For instance, a victim needs to have a weakness, otherwise, the antagonist won’t be able to victimize her. What could that weakness be? If the character is a love-interest, she needs to be lovable somehow. In which way is she lovable?

What Makes the Character Tick?

To complete the story role profiling, you still need to define what makes the character tick. You can do that by answering the following three questions:

1. What is the character’s primary motivation? Is it fame, fortune, romance, or partying?
2. What is the character’s goal before and after the inciting incident?
3. What is the character’s need? The need determines the character’s subtext.

These three characteristics belong to the story outline too, and they should support the plot. The character’s motivation, goals, and need can give you a good inkling what kind of person she is. What about turning that into a one dimensional character profile before you write your first draft?

Define a Simple, One-dimensional, Psychological Profile Prior to Writing Your First Draft

It helps to give story characters a simple, one-dimensional psychological profile before writing the first draft. This can kick-start the discovery of your characters without stifling your discovery of characters while writing.

An easy way of doing that is assigning one of the Big Five character traits to your characters.

The Big Five theory is a well-researched psychological theory. According to Wikipedia, the Big Five is a suggested taxonomy, or grouping, for personality traits, developed from the 1980s onward in psychological trait theory. The theory identified five factors by labels for the US English speaking population, typically referred to as:

1. Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
2. Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless)
3. Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
4. Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. critical/rational)
5. Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident)

Now, you can assign a Big Five trait or a sub-trait to your characters and work with that until their deeper psyches reveal themselves to you.

Deep Characterization: Psychological Profiling

After your first draft, it is time for deep characterization. Deep characterization makes your characters more interesting, removes inconsistencies, and shows character instead of telling.

Add some of these:

1. Pick a dominant trait, e.g., smart, lovely, serious, happy, or emotional. If you chose a Big Five trait, use that.
2. Identify their worldview, e.g., Catholic, Hippy, or Rasta.
3. A nickname
4. An internal paradox, e.g., a righteous man with a rebellious streak
5. A talent that fits the character’s role
6. A flaw - decide what wound caused it and reveal that wound (backstory) in a key scene to make it memorable
7. A goal and its opposite, i.e. the last thing she wants to do. You want to get her into a situation where she has to do exactly that.
8. Define their first impression vs. true character. Example: A neurotic character who hides her anxieties behind a mask of arrogance. Reveal the character’s subtext in key moments to make them memorable.
9. Props that embody characteristics, e.g., talismans, pets (John Wick’s dog), a piece of clothing (Indiana Jones' hat), or a unique weapon (Anton Chigurh’s captive bolt stunner in No Country for Old Men).
10. Facial expressions - use these to reveal emotional subtext
11. Gestures, habits, ticks, and mannerisms
12. A home and the way she lives. For instance, a rundown penthouse shows that the character is rich but lazy.

How deep should deep characterization go? This depends on the importance of the character’s role and how far you want to take it. A rule of thumb: characterization serves story outline, not the other way around. If it doesn’t serve the story outline, you can nix it.

Dress Your Characters With Superficial Attributes

Last but not least, you can assign superficial attributes to your characters. This does not serve the story, but it serves the reading experience.

You know if a character trait is superficial, if you can change the trait any time without affecting the character or the plot. Examples of superficial attributes are:

1. Name, age, gender, build
2. The character’s place in the story world, e.g., family, career, social standing, relationships, friends, and enemies.
3. Appearance — clothes, the way she moves, etc.
4. The character’s backstory
5. A character-themed vocabulary

The last one is super useful. Character-themed words distinguish characters in dialogues and POV narration.

Advanced writer tip: If you’re blocked, change one or two superficial attributions of a character and see whether that can get your creative juices flowing again.

Bonus Topic: How to Show, Hint at, and Reveal Character

Show character with the results of your psychological profiling and the superficial attributes you defined, in particular, character-themed words. Hint at character by revealing backstory and subtext. Reveal character through the decisions characters make.

A) How to Show (and not tell) Character

When you write in a character’s POV, you need to use character-themed words for descriptions, action beats, and internalizations. The same holds true for dialogue. Every character has her own way of speaking and uses character-themed words.

You can also show character through body language and smart dialogue tags. Example: “What did you say to me?” She puts her curly hair in a ponytail.

B) How to Hint at Character

You can hint at character by revealing backstory. For instance, you can show where and how a character lives, e.g., in a rundown penthouse or a tidy one-bedroom apartment.

The way a person dresses — neat, cheap, stylish, sporty — hints at character too.

The proverb If I know who your friends are, I know what your character is applies to stories too. Show your readers what friends the character has and how they talk about her. Then show her enemies and how those talk about her.

Last but not least, you can hint at character by revealing subtext. You do that by showing a character’s emotional reaction to her environment or the behavior of other characters.

Example: “You don’t scare me.” She lights a cigarette and blows the smoke in his direction. The cigarette shivers in her fingers.

C) How to Reveal Character

Plunge your characters into adversity, let the pressure strip away their superficial attributes, and reveal the truth about their selves by letting them decide on courses of action.

Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

Kurt Vonnegut’s sixth of eight writing basics

I hope you enjoyed this article about psychological engineering and that it will help you fine-tune your characterization.

Why don’t you share an interesting character trait from your WIP?

About Stefan

Stefan Emunds is the author of The Eight Crafts of Writing. He writes inspirational non-fiction and visionary fiction stories and runs an online inspiration and enlightenment workshop. Stefan was born in Germany and enjoyed two years backpacking in Australia, New Zealand, and South-East Asia in his early twenties. Prior to becoming a writer, he worked as a business development manager in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. At the moment, he lives with his son in the Philippines.