I only wanted ostriches.

[melissajm]

I'll be honest; all this "Writing the Other" controversy is making me hesitant to write at all! At least in my current WIP. I set it in an "Africanish" fantasy world because I wanted to have ostriches in it, so I needed a climate where they lived. Now I'm finding myself second-guessing everything for fear that someone with think I'm being racist/insensitive/ignorant/all of the above.

Of course I'm racist, and sexist, and whatever -ists apply, at least by one definition. My perceptions are all colored through the view of a white, female, Northeastern US living 40-something Special-Ed schooled bookish... Ok, this could go on until we run out of applicable adjectives. Anyway, the point is that we all have only one POV. We're obligated to realize that everyone else has a different POV. And if we don't want to hurt each other, we do our imperfect human best to understand where other people are coming from.

I write Fantasy and SF because I like the freedom to imagine worlds and populate them with all kinds of characters. I don't want to create a million paper suburbs filled with clones of me. I'm not that exciting, or that important. I want to create forests and deserts and cities and afterlives, castles and caves and homes of all kinds. I want to fill my worlds with men and women of all sizes, shapes and colors (plus imps, serpent-demons, mermaids...)

So how do I do this and say "Welcome to my made-up world. I've made it from what I am and what I know, what I've experienced and what I've learned, all reflected back in words. It's not the same as anybody else's world real or fictional, because no two people live the same life.

If my reflection of you, or your world, or parts of it is wrong because my mirror is too small or dusty with ignorance to show a true image, please don't assume I'm using a mocking funhouse mirror on purpose. Help me to clarify the image. We all know our own worlds the most intimately. But if we take "write what we know" literally, and only write about our own little corner of the universe, we defeat the whole purpose of speculative fiction.

A person's first steps into a new environment will usually be halting and imperfect. Writing is the same way. The more I think about this, the more I think that the best an author can do is to learn as much as they can about people and places similar to their made-up ones, treat their characters like real people, and remember that somebody else always has a bigger, clearer mirror and no one ever captures the whole true image.

What do you think? How can writers explore their imaginations without poking at real-world people?

Comments

[katallen.livejournal.com]

::loves ostriches::

Well for second world I can entirely use my imagination, but being careful that it is all imagination and not upwellings of stereotypes from movies or charity organisations or the news. Making the characters true to themselves. Or else do that plus trying to find their stories and whatever details can help me make good fictional characters that have some real-world truth to them as well.

Anyhow, pretty much every character I write is the other because I make a poor fictional person (and I don't write because I want to write books with character like me in them). So I do what seems like enough, try to avoid being unfair, and cross my fingers for luck.

[And if you do create interesting individuals you'll not escape people saying things like 'a man wouldn't notice what the flowers were' or 'a girl would be reluctant to get her hands dirty' :)]

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

I suppose referring to someone as "a whatever" is a good warning sign. (Unless another character who's supposed to be ignorant says it.)

[katallen.livejournal.com]

True.

(I'm kind of hoping you haven't read 'whatever details' as refering to people rather than to the details one discovers or finds helpful...)

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

Of course. People are more than just details.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

*grins* looks like the current climate of misunderstanding is making me nervous.

People are more than details, but it's amazing how the right details can make a character feel real or individual. Like the difference between a wooden door and a carved mahogany door with a chased brass knob :)

[melissajm.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean. I even worried that people wouldn't like Yama's hairdo. (Many braids with colored beads in them. Keeps her hair out of her face when the pseudo-ostrich is going full tilt, and indicates her rank among the Riders.)

But like you said, relevant details make the character.