I’m more and more tempted to write some fiction again. It’s been years since I did that. I’m good with characters and environment, but not so good with plot. I don’t like to write about negative things, or nasty people, which is rather problematic when you need to have conflict.
I know part of it is reading books and thinking, “Damn, I could do better than that.” But to be realistic, anybody who has finished a book is doing better than I actually have done.
One thing that’s really getting to me is the number of anti-fat statements that get thrown into so many stories. They have nothing to do with the story–they just happen because of the authors’ prejudice. Describing a minor character as fat is a cheap shortcut because most readers will assume the person is lazy, sloppy, and not terribly intelligent (or a hyperfocused geek with no social skills if he is smart).
I know that starting out with a “message” is a crappy way to write fiction, though. Messages are better expressed in essays, not stories.
Still, I have this itch. Bah.
I was wondering if I was just being over-sensitive to the frequency of the anti-fat stereotype. Seems like I run across it an awful lot. I’m glad it’s not just me being finicky.
I’ve wanted to do the same thing, working size-acceptance into a story, but I’m afraid I’d take it too far. I tend to be a bit heavy handed when I start out with a message. I get prosy fast. 🙂
If you scratch that itch and you like how it turns out, I’d surely love to read it.
No, you’re not being over-sensitive at all. I read two books by a new author today, and one of them had so much fat-hate in it that I decided not to even mention the author’s name anywhere–I don’t want to give him any Google happies. Sam called it right, though–I saw a photo of the author, and he’s chubby. Probably has a lot of self-hatred.
I visited your site, but couldn’t figure out how to leave a comment. I’ve seen that “southerner” test, too. I am a lifelong southerner–from Alabama, for goodness’ sake!–and I didn’t score very high on that thing when I took it at some point in the past. I don’t think it was written by a southerner, and a lot of that stuff is more about social status/class (the one I took, anyway) than anything else.
I’m tempted to write dragon smut, entirely because the first TCM book I read was really terrible dragon smut.
I’m still not sure how to write that review! I think I’ll write the best review I can without actually lying, and send it to the coordinator and see if it’s constructive enough to be used.
The first one I got (the only Adult title I’ve asked for so far) was so bad that I just couldn’t go on after the first chapter. I was practically screaming, “SHOW, don’t TELL!” So I wrote to the coordinator and explained that there’s no way I could write even a halfway positive review, and she said that was cool. Some books, they just don’t review.
Anyone can write. Making money from it, that’s the trick. If you get famous enough, you can sub that out, ‘though! [grin]