Diversity in Fiction Reflection
I want this reflection paper to delve a bit deeper into some of the ideas that I’ve been thinking and writing about over the past quarter.
Early in the quarter I had a lot of ideas, a lot of directions to go in. I got some substantial writing done at the beginning of the quarter, and I had ideas that I was really excited about continuously through the entire quarter, but my schedule didn’t allow for much significant writing and finishing of writing until later in the quarter. The thinking I did in between that substantial writing was interesting in terms of how I developed the ideas in my head without writing them down, as well as tracing the origins of my ideas when I paid attention to what sparked them.
Ideas and Process
When I pay attention to where my ideas come from, or note down what I was doing when I had the idea, most of what has been the starting spark this quarter was phrases that people said, or lines that were in poems from people around me. A lot of them were one-liner type jokes that I like the sound of, or that I could imagine a more intricate version of that joke that would be interesting and surprising. It was the combination of words, usually in a situation that was funny, that seemed special. I don’t really know where the details of the idea comes from, I don’t know what that combination of words did to cause the deeper details in my head that create the rest of the story and the rest of the ideas.
Between the times when I had found the line or phrase that was interesting, written it down, and when I actually sat down and wrote out the rest of the idea or the story that went to it, my mind works in the background on the ideas. At the point when I sit down to write, I tend to write short stories in one sitting. And many times in the past, when I sit down to write and don’t finish that story in that sitting, it’s taken me an incredibly long time to come back to that partial story and ideas, if I do at all.
It’s really hard to keep track of that time and energy my mind puts in without much of my knowledge before writing, which is always interesting when you’re trying to keep track of what time you’re spending on a project.
Most of the pieces I wrote over this quarter were ideas or offshoots of ideas that I had fairly early in the quarter. I wrote down the lines or phrases that seemed interesting. Sometimes I wrote a note about what it would turn into, or a few days later I would write that note. Then I’d end up spending quite a while in between opening up that document and looking at it, but not actually doing work on it. Then the writing would start and finish. A couple of read throughs, maybe a rewrite. One idea turned into three separate pieces of writing, the Rose Series, because all the elements of the original idea weren’t going together the way I was trying to write them in the right way.
Some of the ideas I didn’t get to writing this quarter, when I went to write in the few details under the phrase or line, turned into needing to be a different media than I was expecting entirely, such as a comic. Because I had very little luck drawing anything that I am happy with, those ideas had to be shifted to a lower priority.
Most of the ideas that shifted from a strictly written media to a combination or another media, like comics or monologues or anything else, happened after I started doing writing, thinking, and reflecting on the media I was including in my project. When I was paying attention to what I was thinking when I was reading comic books or watching The Secret Garden or American Idiot.
Media Mixing.
One of the really interesting things I’ve thought about this quarter was the way media have mixed or influencing each other, and how that changes the way the ideas and stories are digested, as well as the way other aspects of my studies, social justice or politics influences various art forms and causes new art forms to be created. American Idiot is a musical created from originally unrelated Green Day songs, and We Will Rock You is a musical created from previously unconnected Queen music. Both have story lines that could be seen as highly political, as the first follows teenagers through their early adult years and the mistakes they make within their society, and the second follows a couple of teenagers through a dystopian future world of uniformity and sameness to discover a hidden past of rock and roll. It’s an interesting type of media to look at, something that was once music turned to the foundation for a live stage performance. During my last quarter, I did some thinking and discussing around how the music from some Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta songs have been used as the base music for political parodies, another really fascinating cross point of media, culture, and politics.
I’ve ended up thinking about those moments of mixing quite a bit. Some of it began during the Power of One Conference early in the quarter, where I attended a discussion about the history of queer comics, which was an angle I had never really thought about, which led to me several awesome and diversely minded comics.
Diversity, Science Fiction, and Storytelling.
One of the ideas that’s been important in thinking about fiction and social justice and diversity is the idea that you must have imagination when you’re fighting for progress and better lives, because you have to be able to imagine a world that’s better, and how to achieve to that world, once your battles are won. Science fiction is an excellent crossroads for that imagination, because it provides a form that allows for varying degrees of direct or indirect social commentary. Many of the issues discussed in the imaginary societies are issues that we have in this reality, they’re just being discussed through the books on a different planet with a green or an orange filter and some different names. Of course that is an oversimplification of science fiction, but it’s an element that’s been important to consider in this project over the quarter. Because through science fiction, activists can imagine the ways the world can change and be different, the ways that battles can be fought, and more. This was really driven home while I was reading Octavia’s Brood, an anthology specifically collected from activists imaginings.
Besides using the imagination, science fiction, and thus fiction in general as a tool for social justice, it’s important that diversity is visible in fiction and media in terms of representation as well. Tying into ideas around stereotypes, media representation of beauty, and understanding others perspectives, showing real diversity in writing is incredibly important. Showing real characters that aren’t driven solely by their diversity, having stories that aren’t diverse simply because they have a token diversity character, benefits everyone, though especially young people from the minoritized or marginalized communities that diversity is typically understood to come from. It’s important to have role models and characters that have experiences similar to your own when there are already burdens stacked against you, and on the other side, it’s really awesome and beneficial to read about situations that aren’t exactly your own, because you learn to see from different perspectives.
It’s less about changing which types of characters or books are the majority, it’s more about giving voice to identities, communities, and experiences that aren’t the typical or traditional.
Creating diverse fiction isn’t just writing books about LGBTQ kids coming out or facing some social issue, because reducing a character down to one issue isn’t truthful, it’s not multidimensional. It’s not just having one kid in the background with a different skin color, or a disability. It’s creating representative work that shows main characters, secondary characters, antagonists, facing those issues, but also just being characters beyond those issues. Stories where the driving principles aren’t diversity focused issues but human issues, with characters that have diverse experiences and lives, is much closer to creating diverse writing.
You can create fiction in the way you wish the world already was. The issues aren’t as important as another part of a character’s story, but everyone is present in the story. After the history of queer comics panel at the Power of One, a friend suggested reading the LumberJanes comics, and loaned me the first volume. It’s about a girl scout group, with baddassery and supernatural elements. All of the characters are diverse, there’s a trans girl, an asexual girl, a couple, etc. But the comic’s not about them being trans or asexual or a couple. It’s about chasing the strange supernatural things that are happening at the girl scout camp where they will be for the summer. It’s about being stuck on a river about to go over a waterfall, and falling into a cave with mysterious creatures. The diversity is not the driving plot point or driving obstacle, it is an element of character depth, and that is an incredibly awesome thing.
This thinking really impacts how you write when you’re writing with an eye to be as inclusive and realistic as possible. This thinking is the theory behind writing diversity into fiction. The practice is always learning more, so the characters and the depth of characters rings as true as it can. In a large part, this truthfulness and clarity would be increased by having a publishing world that made it easier for diverse stories from women, people of color, LGBTQ people, to publish stories. That’s ultimately the way to increase diversity in the writing and storytelling world, to allow, encourage, and celebrate the hugely diverse world of talented voices that exist outside of the traditional publishing world.
In the learning that must be done to create realistic and truthful characters, all the little things of experience must be considered. Things as seeming inconsequential as choosing or creating a new language for a science fiction or fantasy world can be important. In my quarter’s reading, I read an incredibly interesting article about how naming characters, creating languages, and using language can be used sloppily to echo oppressive patterns, or can be thought out to create incredible new languages. It talked about the logistics and elements of language that make languages realistic, that makes them sound right, and that makes them able to step outside oppressive patterns in the world. It warned not to simply modify an existing a little bit, because that does nothing but exemplify othering and the ‘exoticness’ of other languages, but it lets down the readers who speak that language, who are maybe excited to learn about a new language, but wait a minute, it’s just a warped version of the language they already know.
Conclusion and Application.
All of these theories, elements, and thoughts have made up my quarter’s thinking work on diversity, social justice, and fiction writing. Pieces of each of these things were in my mind was I wrote the stories I wrote over this quarter, and I know that taking some extra effort and time to think about these things was incredibly influential in the way I was writing.
It’s given me a lot of things to think about when I’m editing old projects, or working on future projects. It’s not all been applied and changed into actionable thought of course, because that doesn’t really come from a single quarter of thinking.
But it has begun a study and an awareness about how ideas, language, theory, and representation and of course the bias of personal experience, change the end result for better or worse, depending on how you use the knowledge and awareness of that topics.
There is a lot of knowledge and information that authors have in their minds as they write that never gets on the page. Some of it’s character backstory, some of it’s formatting and style and logistics, and some of it is keeping in mind the audience, the message you hope to impart, and how your work fits into the world at large.
The ability to think a little more deeply on those background topics, that’s what I’ve gained most this quarter.