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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Jul 11, 2018 6:41:49 GMT
As fiction writers I hope we all strive to create fully-fleshed out characters who live in a fully-fleshed out society, and if we do this then our characters should have political and religious affiliations and views. obviously this won't be appropriate for all books. If you're writing short erotica your readers prolly don't want to know whether your characters are Democrats or Republicans, unless that's part of the turn-on, of course. In today's climate a Democratic senator secretly fucking a Republican celebrity from Fox news could be seen as quite taboo.  But still normally, you wouldn't include such things for short erotica. For longer novels it may or may not come up. You shouldn't insert religion or politics into a story, just cos. But if it does come up either because it's an important plot point or it's simply an important part of your character's identity, how do you handle it? Have you ever received bad reviews from readers who felt you were preaching from the other side? Have you ever picked up someone else's book and thought the author handled the subject badly, which was good in a way since it taught you how to not approach it in your next novel? When I eventually publish novels they'll be set in a fantasy universe, but there will be tons of politics and religion since those are what wars are generally fought over. I would love to try and write them in such a way that no one comes off looking completely right or completely wrong, and that even the antagonists have understandable motives and don't just come off as irredeemably evil. Even Hitler was prolly nice to a kitten once, or maybe he bought a child an ice cream cone, or something. Not that this makes up for anything he did. But hopefully you get what I'm saying.  |
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Post by gaylordfancypants on Jul 11, 2018 14:31:47 GMT
I generally ignore most of that stuff unless it's important to the character or plot. Politics stuff will date your story, so only do it if you want to evoke a particular era. Anything with Trump in it will probably seem old-fashioned, quaint and stupid after Trump is out of office, unless you're writing a retro Trump-era story. Like I encountered a self-pubbed novel awhile ago that was obviously written during the Terri Schiavo case, and it just came across as idiotic like the author was watching the news while she wrote and got distracted responding to the what the teevee was saying.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Jul 11, 2018 16:31:44 GMT
I would certainly love to believe that one day the Trump era will be over. *teehee*
Sometimes reading a book that is stepped in an earlier era can be fun, but I could also see how it could be annoying, too.
Some people write trend books though that they want to sell huge right now and they don't expect them to sell later.
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dave
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Post by dave on Jul 11, 2018 17:37:42 GMT
Politics is relatively easy in my current series; it's set in the late 30's and the limit of my overt political speech is that Nazis are bad.
As for religion, that's a different story. I personally am not a believer, but about half my characters are. While I don't share their beliefs, I treat them with respect because I respect the characters. In one of the stories the climax hinges on a character's religious faith, as she draws on the strength of her beliefs to overcome the crisis. The trick for me is that while I avoid ever stating whether any faith is objectively true, I do treat them as being subjectively true as far as the characters are concerned.
I also try to match the religions to the character backgrounds. My expatriate Russians are Orthodox, the Chinese say they are Buddhist but also practice the traditional folk religion, and the American is a Baptist. The gorillas on the other hand are atheists, one very strongly so.
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Post by Stuffed Patrol on Jul 11, 2018 20:00:27 GMT
I stick it to Trump voters and other low-lifes as much as I can.
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Post by K'Sennia Visitor on Jul 11, 2018 22:33:06 GMT
dave, that's a good way to handle it. Be respectful and non committal. I always really liked how Babylon 5 handled religion. It was a huge part of the storyline, and some of the characters were shown to believe and others to doubt, but they all respected each other cos it was an international space station and they had to. I'm an atheist now, but I was still a theist when I watched and I count the shows as one of my influences toward my own personal enlightenment.
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Post by possiblyderanged on Jul 17, 2018 21:22:48 GMT
A major thing about the plot in my current work centers on the actions of a fundamentalist Christian group. I don't go into a lecture about how bad they are, just show that their beliefs are responsible for the characters' situation. Most of my characters have some sort of religious belief, some are atheists. Politics hasn't come up, for some reason.
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qirky
New Member
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Post by qirky on Jul 17, 2018 21:32:19 GMT
Politics don't come up often, although I suppose I write from a certain slant that I don't always do so purposefully. Things like corruption or big businesses cheating the system because they can are always seen as wrong. They just don't come up often, partly because most of my stories aren't set in the real world, partly because the focus isn't about all the bad things in the world. I do include racial issues sometimes, and try to be respectful of cultural differences, but tbh, most of my readers seem to prefer pure escapism to anything message-oriented.
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Post by kateelizabeth on Jul 17, 2018 22:00:12 GMT
Whether it's religion or politics, I do try to be respectful. I'm a Christian, and a few of my works are inspirational romance, but even my mainstream sweet(ish) stuff has faith being important to many of my characters (while others don't care much one way or the other). I have made some of my favorite characters different from me politically, but it's never important to the stories I write (so far). More like background for me, I guess, like hair and eye color, etc.
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But still normally, you wouldn't include such things for short erotica. 
