"You can't write about that."

Fiction by nature tends to focus on improbable events - hence drama.

A book in which false rape accusations were portrayed as the norm or a commonplace thing, would be objectionable. But the reviewer clearly just doesn't think anyone should write a book with that particular plot, which does seem to be trying to put some topics "off-limits," which any writer should push back against.

Viridian said:

This has been on my mind recently, and I'm wondering how others feel about it.

At times, it seems like some topics are totally off-limits. Like some premises are simply not supposed to be written about. For example, recently a reviewer over at Dear Author reviewed a contemporary romance novel. The hero in the book was falsely accused of rape. The reviewer objected to this premise, saying:

She acknowledged, however, that the author had written the book very well and did nothing wrong. She simply did not agree with the premise.


So are some topics just totally off-limits? We're not supposed to write about certain things, ever? Including false rape accusations, no matter how well the book is written or the topic is handled?

Click to expand...

I don't think anything is too off-limits. Maybe taboo (like certain erotica topics, incest, bestiality, child erotica, etc), but not off limits, per se.

You can still write about any topic you like. It's just that some topics may not be for everyone, or may cause triggering in some readers. You can't please everyone, of course.

Regarding the fake rape accusation, I personally wouldn't like that premise, either. In real life, women already have a hard time dealing with the stigma of rape, so I wouldn't feel comfortable to read a book with such a premise. Rape culture is so toxic and angers and upsets me so much, I can't stomach anything that deals with such topics.

The author is free to write about it, but I'm not obligated to read it. Same with anybody with any book. Authors/writers are free to write about anything all they want, but the readers are also free to read (or not read) whatever they want.

In the example provided, I don't think the reviewer is outright saying that the topic shouldn't be written about or should be outright banned. I mean, I can see they're a bit concerned about it being written, and some people do get strange ideas from entertainment media (see stereotypes of POC or LGBT, for example).

But, I think the reviewer is just saying that they don't like the premise, and that they feel really uncomfortable about such a premise (especially since it's based a really sensitive topic that is really messy in real life), no matter how well it's handled.

It's like how some people are uncomfortable with the stalking or abusive boyfriends/love interests in Young Adult books, or the people who are concerned that such love interests would set an example for young teens. It's just personal feelings about certain aspects being written about in a fictional story.

Write what you want, and make it the best story you can write.

Just be prepared it will not satisfy every reader, and that some readers just don't like to read about certain topics.

In all honesty I think that every single reader will find a topic they do not want to read about. Especially on the Internet. If you write things more realistically you get people who get freaked out about how real it feels, you write it too fantastical you get people who think it's ridiculous because that could never happen. There are no topics that are off limits, in my personal opinion. IF, and it's a bit IF, you have experience with the topic OR have done extensive research on it.

I think that there are people out there who feel that as long as no one writes about certain topics, it will be as if they never happened. Life doesn't work that way.

I don't read her post as "don't write about it ever" so much as "I don't want to read about it ever." I won't knowingly read books about dogs who die, no matter how well-written and lauded. Part of authoring is accepting that the marketplace is what it is. Which also means deciding if one is willing to test the market. I think there is a lot of fiction out there that touches on taboo topics. Whether anyone reads it is another matter.

anastasiareeves said:

In all honesty I think that every single reader will find a topic they do not want to read about. Especially on the Internet. If you write things more realistically you get people who get freaked out about how real it feels, you write it too fantastical you get people who think it's ridiculous because that could never happen. There are no topics that are off limits, in my personal opinion. IF, and it's a bit IF, you have experience with the topic OR have done extensive research on it.

I think that there are people out there who feel that as long as no one writes about certain topics, it will be as if they never happened. Life doesn't work that way.

Click to expand...

^This!

Not to mention, there will also be readers who won't read certain POV or even certain tenses (if AW community is anything to go by), lol.

So, obviously (and realistically), one can't write a book that appeals to everyone.

Writers get mixed messages on this issue. On the one hand, we're told to write boldly, fearlessly-- that you can't create anything worth reading if you're constantly censoring yourself based on the opinions of an imaginary hypothetical audience. On the other hand, we see all these reviews and blog posts that practically tar and feather an author for having offended the reader. (ETA: not this one, which seems very fair. But we've all read reviews that devolve into a personal attack on the author's character.)

It's easy to say, "Screw 'em all-- write what you want." But if you're the type of person who loathes the idea of causing pain, it can be nauseatingly awful to read how your work offended or hurt someone.

I really do think that so much of this is a function of living in the information age. Writers got flak for writing about controversial subjects in the past, but the volume of reader response they received was much less. No matter how passionately the writers of these reviews and opinion pieces claim to feel, 99% of them would never be written if they had to a) print it out, b) find an envelope, c) pay whatever a stamp costs now, and d) know that only one person was ever going to read their opinion, with no likes or reblogging or supportive comments in the peanut gallery.

I think all we can do is be mindful about our decisions as storytellers, do our research, ask questions-- so that we own the decisions we've made, and are able to face criticism and know in our hearts that we told the story the way we needed to tell it.

This is a tough one, given the fact that so many average people on the streets think false rape allegations are as common as dirt and think that it's "so easy" for a woman to ruin a man's life on a whim.

The reality is very different, of course. So a book where a false rape accusation is a part of the premise would have an uphill battle for me, but much of it would depend on how it was handled.

The debate over what sort of responsibility writers have to portray sensitive and misunderstood topics with sensitivity and understanding, of course, extends beyond this one. I've had some fellow writers say they don't like books with drug use/abuse, or any book where teen sex ends anything but badly. Some people won't even read books where even an occasional character talks the way most people talk (aka curse occasionally). I've even run across agents and editors who say they won't consider any book with child abuse or neglect, which pretty much tosses out most MG and YA fantasy plots featuring runaways or orphans with wicked step parents.

I think it's fine to have an opinion about this, and to express it. As a reader, I consider such opinions and accept or reject them based on my own values and feelings about the author's understanding of the topic at hand. But I'd be nervous if the publishing industry as a whole decided a topic, even rape (or false rape accusations), was completely off limits.

To me this sounds like an interesting topic to explore. As the reviewer's own statistics show, false accusations do happen, and I think an examination of how such accusations affect the falsely accused could make for a compelling story. I would also hope that the author addresses how false accusations harm women who have actually suffered rape. (Seeing that the author is Sarina Bowen, I trust her to handle the subject thoughtfully.)

I think no subject should be off limits to writers, but I can also understand that some subjects may be off limits for some readers. In that respect, I suppose the reviewer did a service by alerting readers to potentially disturbing material.

Gravity Books just released A Stunning Accusation. I haven't read it yet, but it's from the viewpoint of a girl whose boyfriend is accused of rape by an ex-girlfriend.

Like any subject, it can be done if you do it carefully and respectfully, I think.

This discussion reminds me of books like that Romance book that had the male main character as someone who was a Nazi (and the female main character was a Jewish woman, I think?), and that one book that had an alternative universe in which White people were being oppressed by Black people. (What was the title of that book? Save the Pearls, or something like that?)

I mean, one can write about such sensitive topics (and hopefully did the research for them, but that's not always the case, lol), but one must be aware that there are readers who will be sensitive to those topics.

I guess it's all in what readers you want to reach, and which readers you don't mind losing. Like any piece of art, it's all subjective. It all depends on what market you want your book to reach.

So, again, write what you want. Just be aware of topics that may require more sensitive handling or research, and that you may never reach some readers because of those topics. If your story is well-written and engaging, and your publisher can find a market for it, then your story is bound to find readers for it.

Viridian said:

Okay. So...

False rape accusations might be okay if the writer handles it well.

So is anything ever off-limits?

A while back a writer wrote a romance novel about a Jewish woman who falls in love with a Nazi Commandant during the Holocaust. A lot of readers thought that premise crossed the line.

Click to expand...

I think there are some topics that will trigger people to the point where they must be handled very carefully. There are still some real-world topics that have a lot of history and baggage with them. There are people today who are still be alive after such terrible events, and there are people who still remember such events.

It's tough, because, well, one can't control how people react to certain topics/subjects. It's part of the risk of writing about such touchy subjects.

With the Nazi example, I remember hearing people (on a review site, Dear Author maybe?) saying that the author didn't do research in some aspects of that story as well. And had some logic gaps. So that probably didn't help, either, lol.

Viridian said:

So is anything ever off-limits?

Click to expand...

The answer is somewhat culture-dependent, it seems. I should hope in as large and varied a group as we are here on AW the answer is no. We're writers and artists, after all. We can acknowledge we might not like a topic without resorting to making it off-limits. But in post-revolutionary Iran there were off-limits topics, as Salman Rushdie discovered. From the outside looking in, I would still give a resounding no to them, but if I were immersed in the beliefs of a culture which had hard limits (and deadly penalties), I might not be so cavalier.

Viridian said:

It was Save the Pearls, yeah.

The discrimiflip thing has been done before, though. There's some really good books that did it well. Naughts & Crosses is usually mentioned-- I haven't read it myself, but I've heard it's very well-written and thought-provoking.

Click to expand...

I looked it up, and it does sound interesting, but I still wouldn't feel comfortable with such a topic to read about. Or, at least, I can't really buy the premise. Can't really explain why, but I just can't suspend my belief about it. (As an American.)

However, it seems that the author* draws from her own experiences of discrimination into the book, so it seems like it would be a well-researched book. It's definitely thought-provoking, that's for sure.

*ETA: Well, the author seems to be from London? I wonder if the experiences of racism is different in Europe vs the United States? I mean, the United States has a pretty ugly history of racism and slavery going on, and then there is the whole "Confederacy" and KKK controversies and stuff...

lianna williamson said:

Writers get mixed messages on this issue. On the one hand, we're told to write boldly, fearlessly

Click to expand...

Well, people everywhere are also told to "be yourself [and screw the haters]" but of course, no one wants you to actually be yourself if you're an obnoxious asshat.

(But some obnoxious asshats still have friends. Which leads into this--)

Viridian said:

Okay. So...

False rape accusations might be okay if the writer handles it well.

So is anything ever off-limits?

A while back a writer wrote a romance novel about a Jewish woman who falls in love with a Nazi Commandant during the Holocaust. A lot of readers thought that premise crossed the line.

Click to expand...

But some readers didn't.

I mean, I kind of think it does. But that's what I think. And there's that whole "I may disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it" thing--although that is like seventeen billion degrees more extreme than I would ever feel about it and there are various shades of gray. I would not take a bullet to protect someone's right to call my close friend a turdmason, plus there's language that incites violence and extreme assmastering and that sort of thing...but you know the general gist...

In any case, there's inherent complications in broadly saying whether a thing is "off-limits." Do you mean there will be no readers for it? Because we can find readers for both these books who had no issues with the premise--

Or do you mean there are things we shouldn't write about for ethical reasons? Which I think is mostly a personal issue--but of course, if you decide that personally you're okay with writing about a romance between a Jewish woman and a Nazi bowl of poop tempura, you cannot also complain about people having negative opinions on that subject. Freedom of expression goes both ways, and stuff.

Or do you mean bannination? Which is where Voltaire's somewhat ridiculous quote comes into play, I suppose.

Or do you mean that there will be readers but not *a lot* of readers...

Hmm. It's a hard question to define, in my head. I know there are some premises I will not read past, probably, but that's me. Would I have a lower opinion of the author for writing about, I dunno, a kid that definitively gets autism from a vaccine? Probably. If it is their prerogative to write it then it is mine to react. But is it totally off-limits? I don't know if I'd be comfortable saying that. There could be other fun dimensions to explore I'm not thinking of. And it could be satirical, anyway

But...I could be swayed. I really don't know.

My point is, I suppose, that it's a hard question to define the parameters of and therefore answer appropriately.

8% to 10% is not insignificant. That's 1 out of 10 men going to prison for no reason if you will. And it doesn't matter. As long as you don't libel or trash real people, or incite hate, violence, or discrimination, your words are yours to arrange as you damned well please. So it's offensive. So it's controversial. So go read something else.

I don't get readers who know about the offensive content before buying a book, then go buy the book, and then complain that the book offended them. What!??!

^What Buz said earlier.

It depends on what you mean by "off-limits". Are we talking about taboo subjects (like incest or explicit under-age sex, etc)? Are we talking about the ethics about using certain sensitive topics (like the Holocaust, etc)? Or are we talking about losing some readers or maybe having less readers on certain sensitive topics, like rape, etc?

The problem with the review, I think, is that as Viridian said, it isn't just about the reviewer being personally uncomfortable with the premise, which any reader is totally entitled to feel about a book. It is that the reviewer seems to think the book is contributing to "rape culture," and that it's problematic because it's about a girl who makes a false rape accusation, which is a thing that actually happens sometimes but the reviewer does not think should be used as a fictional premise because it might lead to someone disbelieving a real-world non-false rape accusation.

It's quite a stretch, particularly given that the reviewer points out that the writer apparently does handle the topic with finesse and sensitivity. This seems quite the opposite of Save the Pearls, which also had a problematic premise, but the actual problem with it was that the problematic premise was handled with the sensitivity of a brick by an author who clearly had no idea why the premise was problematic.

Viridian said:

When I say "is any topic off limits," what I mean is "is it unethical to use a certain premise." Like, are certain premises inherently problematic? There's no way to handle them right, they just shouldn't be written about?

Click to expand...

I don't think so...Unless you're condoning something like child molestation or rape or something....

I think anything can be written, as long as it's well-researched, handled with sensitivity and is, of course, written well.

I think you should write about whatever you feel called to write about. Hitting those less usual ways things can go is more interesting, imo. But of course, then you have to be prepared to hear some negatives in the reviews over it. But to me, it's much more how it's handled than what the topic is.

For example, I've decided to try writing a YA novel. I bought some of the most "edgy" ones to get a feel for where the limits were. Well, one of them started off with a fifteen-year-old (virgin) girl coming on to her mother's boyfriend until she succeeded in seducing him, then getting mad when he stopped having sex with her because he felt guilty about cheating on her mother.

I was so icked out I quit reading it. But the events themselves weren't the reason. It was because the portrayal of this young girl's thought processes, feelings, and actions didn't ring true to me at all. Instead, it read like a grown man's delusional and porntastic fantasy projected into the mind of a young girl and that's what grossed me out.

But, apparently, it was a big seller, so I guess even then that's just one reader's opinion...

Being "a big seller" is no guarantee that the writing achieves even a minimal level of ethics.