Mine is probably the strangest goal ever...

Gnostic Knight said:

I do have one friend who suggested something I DON'T WANT TO DO and probably never will. "A secret weapon" he said: pedophilia. Make the MC a pedophile serial killer who has to save the world.

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Been done already. Sort of. Joe R. Lansdale made the second most important character in “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks” a pedophile. There's nothing new under the sun.

But as for your banning wish, it could always happen at AW.

You might write a book about the founder of one of the major Middle East Religious slants. One starts with a 'M'. (Hint...their females wear veils.) Part of that section of the world would ban you. Other than that....I don't have a clue.

Gnostic Knight said:

I said "banned," not "bombed"

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The kind of fundamentalist thought that would want you banned would also want you bombed if you dial the fundamentalism up a bit more.

EDIT: Also, unfortunately, it tends to be the popular hings that get banned. Or maybe just being banned makes things more popular. Anyway, there's a correlation. If noone reads you, noone will care.

Work on the "getting published" part first. The getting banned can come later. (It's easier to get banned from schools than from public libraries, BTW. See, for example, the short story "The Crack Cocaine Diet," and the novel Jumper.)

The trouble with getting banned, at least in the USA, is that pesky First Amendment.

James D. Macdonald said:

The trouble with getting banned, at least in the USA, is that pesky First Amendment.

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Isn't that always the way.

You do everything right to get your book banned and then someone comes along and tells you, "No, no, no, we're not going to ban YOUR book" and you're right back to square one.

Find classified information and publish it in a book. That should do the trick. I'm sure you'll end up in jail. But... you know... for the art and such.

edit:

No I didn't really suggest it. You should check out the Bizarro books. Like Ass Goblins of Auschwitz by Cameron Pierce. He sets out to offend absolutely everybody. He does a pretty good job, but has failed to be banned. I don't think his book is banned anywhere actually. I think you may just have been born in the wrong century to be banned.

alleycat said:

Isn't that always the way.

You do everything right to get your book banned and then someone comes along and tells you, "No, no, no, we're not going to ban YOUR book" and you're right back to square one.

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these people are very kind, gnostic knight.


your goal is asinine.

I think Milton beat you to the punch on the heroic-Satan thing. Now, when I was a kid, the Catholic church I attended used to put up lists of banned books and movies. If a book or movie reached the pinnacle of "Condemned," you'd go to hell if you read or saw it.

I both read and saw A Clockwork Orange, so I've already invested in my asbestos boots.

My suggestion is that you move to a country with a nice religio-politico-socio-oppressive regime. Though, as you noted, you only want to get banned, not bombed. Oh well. Gotta take the bitter with the sweet.

This is the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. Do you have any desire to actually stand behind your book, or write about something you LIKE?


Come up with a cool story. It's only fun to get banned if you had a good time bleeding sweat to write the stinking book.


If you think you are too fancy for YA, you aren't reading much YA these days. It isn't Harry Potter anymore.

I could say be like the guy who wrote the guide to being a pedophile...but he got arrested.

I do understand where you're coming from. I am a huge rebel, just read my work. But I feel if you're trying to do something to be banned, it seems forced. Write what is on your mind and if you are the way you think you are, it will get banned

Gnostic Knight said:

How is it "asinine" to want to ruffle feathers? I mean, if I said "I want to win an award" that would be okay, but I say I want to do something that should be easy, like on the Challenged Book List, and that's "asinine"?

Give me a break!

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So, your goal is to be a literary troll?

To me it fits a bit in the category of "I want to write a book that will make everyone realize my political viewpoints are the best!" or "I'm going to write a book that will convert everyone who reads it to Christianity!"

A novel should be, first and foremost, a story. Whenever you start imposing false constructs onto it, it shows. It becomes preachy or pedantic or annoying at worst, and at best tends to make for an uninteresting story or a plot that is forced and contrived.

To me, it sounds less like you want to write a story than to gain the notoriety from it. I've seen plenty of examples of gratuitous sex or gratuitous violence or whatever the case may be just for the sake of getting a rise out of the audience, and I've never found it the least bit appealing.

Personally, if you had written a book that you then hoped would win a prize because you believed it was great, I would say 'Awesome, go for it." If you told me you were going to write a book to try to win a prize, I'd feel the same way. It may seem like a fine distinction, but it's the same idea. Similarly, had you written a great book and then said, "You know, I think it'd be cool if it ended up on a banned book list," I'd probably laugh a little and say "Go for it." I might not understand, but that'd be fine.

I think maybe you just should consider your approach and how you're looking at this. I'm not opposed to someone writing a story and saying, "I'm going to go somewhere new and original that the story calls for and I don't care if it ruffles feathers." I'm even all for someone writing on a controversial topic as long as the reason for it is because it makes an interesting tale (enlightening people is a side-effect).

Gnostic Knight said:

Ghandi said, "first they ignore you, then the laugh at you, then they come after you...and then you win."

It would suck if I couldn't even get past the first stage.

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I'm laughing at you. Does that help?

Gnostic Knight said:

First of all, I write fantasy. I may be the only fantasy writer to admit this, but "great fantasy" is kind of an oxymoron. It's mild entertainment, not something meant to be profound. Anyone who actually cried over a hobbit or an elf deserves to be slapped, hard.

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Oh wow. Okay.

If you're trying to make people "reconsider their values" then you are trying to make something great. A "great" book makes people think about their life, think about changing things for the better. If you're trying to make people "reconsider their values" while writing fantasy which is "not meant to be profound" doesn't that seem like a giant oxymoron to you?

Gnostic Knight said:

Not true at all. Plenty of great stories have religious and/or political views in them. Take Star Wars. No one complained that it was, essentially, Taoist propaganda. If 90% of people don't understand the message or "get it", than it means that the message didn't get in the way of the story, but that the message WAS the story.

Not too many people understood the significance of the Ewoks, the simple little teddy bear people, being instrumental in defeating The Galactic Empire, with their ability to destroy an entire planet. Not too many people understood the significance of Luke having being able to win only be throwing down is weapon and doing nothing, thereby letting the Darkside defeat it's self.

But it was still all Taoism, so it got the job done.

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Okay, I wasn't going to do a point-by-point here, but there's enough in here that I felt needed addressing to deal with it. Actually, your example (if correct, I've never heard this asserted before, but I won't argue that you might be right because I'd have to watch it again) is one that shows I'm right. Star Wars tells an awesome epic story (well, the originals) in a fun way that was pretty darn original at the time. Any messages that were there were subtle and hidden within the story. Now go and read one of the later Laurell K. Hamilton books, where the author asserts that her point in writing them is to shake people up and go beyond people's comfort zones and show sex and violence in shocking ways, which are similar to what you've said. Now, goodness knows if that's really it or if it's just an excuse, but I can guarantee you those books suck so hard it's a waste of paper. They used to be about story. Now they stories suck ass and she's lost a lot of fans for it. And she still hasn't been banned as far as I'm aware, even though she's now toying with things like statutory rape.

The point was that the story has to come first. There are plenty of stories that have a meaning, but they're subtle, woven in, and part of a really awesomely kick ass plot. It's a lot harder to pull off a kick ass plot when you're focused on trying to tell a message or prove a point. Worse, it's generally pretty darn obvious and no one wants to be preached to.

No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'll only have what the story needs. I'm just saying that that alone should be, I wish, enough to anger enough Puritans to ban it.

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This might be the case, but I'm trying to point out the way it comes across in your original post. It sounds like you're saying "What can I write about to piss people off?" or "What can I throw in that will irk people." First off, that is an awful lot like trolling, and I don't quite understand the point, unless the point is to create a big enough controversy that you'll sell tons of books like the Da Vinci Code. Most writers write because they want to please the reader. The people who wrote these banned books, Harry Potter, etc., weren't writing to get banned--they were writing to entertain. That was their purpose. Hence they wrote great, entertaining stories. It just happens that certain groups (without even reading the books, often) just singled them out as "evil" for whatever reason and tried to have them banned.

Why would you want to write to piss people off? And if that's the case and you succeed you won't sell any books because people don't want to be pissed off, they want to succeed. And even if what you're really saying is that you want to write a great book but just think it would be cool to be banned, kind of like a rite of passage or something, then that's fine, but you need to be aware that what you wrote in your opening post is not succeeding in giving the impression that you want to give, hence the irritation and negativity you're seeing in the responses.

First of all, I write fantasy. I may be the only fantasy writer to admit this, but "great fantasy" is kind of an oxymoron. It's mild entertainment, not something meant to be profound. Anyone who actually cried over a hobbit or an elf deserves to be slapped, hard.

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Goodness. Well, there are a lot of fantasy writers here who would be pretty pissed about that assessment. I'm not a major fantasy fan myself, but I can guarantee there are definitely some pieces of great fantasy out there. Harry Potter, for one, and yes I often cried over that because she'd created amazing characters in a complex tale and a world that I could be completely absorbed into. Terry Pratchett is absolutely brilliant. Yes he's writing humor and satire, but he's also one of the best modern writers out there, IMO. The Bartimaeus Trilogy is probably my most favorite set of books in the past few years (though probably tied with WWZ). The Earthsea books, many of Neil Gaiman's, etc. etc.

I write suspense and yes, I believe that it's written to entertain and that's my goal as a writer, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some damned great suspense books out there, either. I'm always wary when I hear a writer say that the genre he writes in isn't particularly good.

Second, greatness is overrated. With so many people trying to write a great book, isn't it pointless to try to compete with that? Writing something entertaining and transgressive is allot easier. I see so many other trout struggling to get upstream, and I just giggle and go with the flow, heading downstream instead.

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Great books generally are entertaining. And define "great." I've read plenty of books I consider great that aren't literary. Hell, go read the Sparrow. It's one of the best books of the modern era, IMO, and it's straight-up genre.

My goal is to write a well-written, entertaining novel that lots and lots of people will want to read. Is it easy? Hell no. I've spent fifteen years doing this, and five actively trying to get good enough to pull it off. Do I want to win awards? No, I don't care. Do I need to be the number one book on the New York Times bestseller list? Not really. I don't need to be the best book of the year or any other such thing because I'll be happy with seeing my book on shelves and knowing that readers are enjoying reading it.

If you write a book to piss people off, it's going to piss people off. That probably won't work in your favor. Another thing to consider is that getting it published will be that much harder--and not because it's controversial. Because you often hear agents and editors talk about some of the biggest problems with submissions being things like "someone trying to prove a point" or "someone writing with an agenda." You might think it doesn't stand out that much, but it does. You might not see it that often, but that's because the vast majority of those books never make it to the bookstore.

And seriously, if you're going to use the excuse of "I'm going to write something controversial because it's easier than writing a great book," that just sounds lazy to me. Kind of offensive, too, considering I've worked so damn hard on that goal. There are no shortcuts. And I'm sorry, but unless you write a great book, no publisher will publish your controversy in the first place. Kind of shot yourself in the foot with that one.

Pick a story you think is interesting, give it fun and original three-dimensional characters, and learn the craft and you'll be good enough to be published.

Gnostic Knight said:

I NEVER said I was too "fancy" to write YA, I only said I'm to brutal, vulgar and honest to write it. Thing is...I'm from New Jersey. If I was denied the "F" word every three sentences I would be rendered mute. I just can't be PG, no matter how hard I try. Just like some people can't write graphic sex and violence, I can't NOT include graphic sex and violence.

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Plenty of "fuck" in YA these days. You really ought to check some of it out. It is NOT PG.

And you already know what piddle I think of your views on fantasy. I think it's great if you have a brilliant concept already, but you need to come in and say that, not I want to get banned FIRST, then figure out and idea for my book second, which is the impression you are giving.

Right now you are coming off pretty insulting to the rest of us, implying that nobody else here has any desire to be anything other than dull.

I assure you, that isn't the case.

Gnostic Knight said:

First of all, I write fantasy. I may be the only fantasy writer to admit this, but "great fantasy" is kind of an oxymoron. It's mild entertainment, not something meant to be profound. Anyone who actually cried over a hobbit or an elf deserves to be slapped, hard.

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dude, again? This may be your opinion but 1) it's snobbish 2) insulting to those who read/write and love fantasy and have read 'great' books in the genre. Like, lots of people here.

We've been through this. If you hate fantasy so much why do you read/write it? If it's so trite, then your book won't get banned because it's 'mild entertainment' and won;t be taken seriously anyway.

Your viewpoint is the oxymoron.

Second, greatness is overrated. With so many people trying to write a great book, isn't it pointless to try to compete with that?

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Only if you think shock value is more worthy than actually writing well. If you can;t be bothered to write well and try to compete, jumping up and down shouting 'look at me, I'm such a rebel!' will just make you look silly.

Writing something entertaining and transgressive is allot easier.

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Easier than writing all that fantasy that isn't great. Wow, you set the bar really low for yourself, didn't you? Writing isn't easy. Live with it, or don't write.

I see so many other trout struggling to get upstream, and I just giggle and go with the flow, heading downstream instead.

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Then you don't get to pass on your genes cos you can't be arsed? *censors self*

And schmuck can be offensive. That doesn't take talent, just cock-knockery. Writing a great story does take talent. If you don't think you have it, don't piss on those who do, just because they can do something you can't.

If you do have talent, why are you taking the silly route to being a silly sod when you could write a book that's 'great' by your definition?