In the second paragraph of the answer, something got garbled. " (I want to b And I decide..."
What you say about being concerned that if you mention race in a story, people will bludgeon you with their own agendas instead of paying attention to your story. This reminds me of a discussion I had with another writer, who told me that he likes to write furry stories because he feels characters who aren't quite human don't carry the baggage that humans do -- when you give a human character a description that includes skin color, national origin, religion, etc., that brings all the stereotypes that go with that description. Write a story about a white person, a black person, and a brown person and you're setting yourself up for a much worse flaming than if you write a story about a fox, a rabbit, and a squirrel. If furries don't appeal, the characters can be a Kzin, a Kdatlyno, and a Pierson's Puppeteer, or an elf, a dwarf, and a hobbit; the point is that the reader is more likely to read what the story says about what kind of people the characters are when they bypass the stereotypes attached to human groupings.
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Date: 2010-06-28 02:57 am (UTC)What you say about being concerned that if you mention race in a story, people will bludgeon you with their own agendas instead of paying attention to your story. This reminds me of a discussion I had with another writer, who told me that he likes to write furry stories because he feels characters who aren't quite human don't carry the baggage that humans do -- when you give a human character a description that includes skin color, national origin, religion, etc., that brings all the stereotypes that go with that description. Write a story about a white person, a black person, and a brown person and you're setting yourself up for a much worse flaming than if you write a story about a fox, a rabbit, and a squirrel. If furries don't appeal, the characters can be a Kzin, a Kdatlyno, and a Pierson's Puppeteer, or an elf, a dwarf, and a hobbit; the point is that the reader is more likely to read what the story says about what kind of people the characters are when they bypass the stereotypes attached to human groupings.