Taboos

My personal lines are drawn in pretty tight, yes. Mind you, I'd be willing to include unsavoury elements, as long as it was pretty clear that I was not condoning them. On the other hand, I've got characters whose views I disagree with rather strongly who are nonetheless being portrayed with real sympathy.

I just closed the covers on what is supposed to be an excellent book, because I got tired of the MC's foul language and abrasive character. He was losing my sympathy and I was tired of wading through sewer water.

My personal taboos would include excessive foul language, blasphemy, too many gory details... Very nasty things can happen in books I'm reading or even writing, but I don't particularly want to know the blow-by-blow details. I've been haunted, almost traumatized, for years by things I've read or heard, and I don't care to subject myself to it again. Nor will I do it to anyone else. Perhaps my imagination is a little too keen, but that's how I am. Strangely enough, I find real-life gore easier to deal with than seeing it onscreen, for example. Go figure.

I haven't yet come across a topic that I would not include in my work if it's germain to the story. I do think, however, that I would limit how explicitly I handle a sensitive topic by how necessary the details are to the story line. Instead of showing the heinous act, I might instead choose to show the results.

Whatever the story needs, the story gets.

There are, however and IMO, ways of handling topics or scenes or characters I personally find distasteful. I can describe a murder scene without minutely describing all the gore; leaving details to the reader's imagination can actually be far more effective. I can make the personality of, say, a bigot clear in a sentence or two without the need to send him into a three-paragraph rant. And having a character casually use a word I find offensive just once can have a far greater impact on the reader than the continual -- and numbing -- use of four-letter words.

As for taboo subjects, I can't think of any I wanted to explore and felt I couldn't or shouldn't. Pushing myself out of my own comfort zone has helped produce some of my best work.

YMMV, of course. Some writers feel very strongly about self-imposed limits or restraints, and that's their right.

As long as they don't try to tell me I should adhere to their beliefs, we're cool.

Anything goes for me, but I do reserve the right to be as detailed as *I* deem appropriate for my stories...

But no. There's no taboos in life, in that anything can happen in real life -- so there should be no taboos in what I (potentially) will write.

maestrowork said:

Anything goes for me, but I do reserve the right to be as detailed as *I* deem appropriate for my stories...

But no. There's no taboos in life, in that anything can happen in real life -- so there should be no taboos in what I (potentially) will write.

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I agree. Even though I'm still young, I'm really trying to meld real-life elements into my new novel that I'm writing. Whether it be with war scenes, cursing, sex, ect. You want to make the reader feel like they're really in the story with the characters, so you don't want it to be too flat. I admit, there's a limit on how much you should be using curse words, but it really depends on who the character is. If it's some thief or drug-pushing criminal, they're not going to go up to someone while smelling flowers and say, " Oh my gosh, what a beautiful day!" Think about that.

Birol said:

For you, personally, where do you draw the line with what you like. How graphic or explicit can you get? Are there any subjects or representations -- god, religious titles, rape, rascists or hate-speech -- that you won't include as part of your fiction, even if the characters don't think or believe as you do?

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I've had characters use racist terms, and I've done descriptions of innocent people in books being dismembered, shot to death, and treated cruelly in other manners.

The thing I cannot abide is extensive amounts of foul language. It's like the first time I watched Beverly Hills Cop. In the first five minutes Eddie Murphy cussed more times than I could count. The story required it, I suppose, and I did like the story as a whole. But the cussing got to me so much that I almost turned the movie off.

I will use foul language in my works, but there is a point with me where it becomes overpowering.

There are a couple oaths I hope never to use in one of my works. They usually are the ones that denigrate a deity. Any deity, not just mine, I am not fond of cursing, because that is one of the things I have found most offensive in works I've read or viewed.

The other thing I really don't like doing is rape. It just sends a chill down my spine thinking I might ever write something like that. There was a time I might have willingly done so, but after an elderly family member was raped, I don't see it as necessary to my particular stories anymore.

Those are pretty much the only taboos I can think of right off the top of my head. If I can think of any others I might come back and list them too.

There's virtually nothing I wouldn't write about if I felt that it was needed for the story I had to tell. But there are many things I would never write of approvingly or blithely.

Most of the things I could not handle writing about such as the torture of children are topics I would not be drawn to write about.

I'm not into explicit anything--scenes or dialogue or whatever--but I will run through an abstract description of, say, rape...something that tells the reader what's going on without getting into a potentially offensive retelling that distracts the reader from the emotional state of the character and the point of the story. For this reason, most of my stories aren't about the act itself but rather how the character responds to the act.

I use profanity very sparingly, and only when it would add an emphasis to an important part of the story. Even when if character was a gang member I'd probably say "he cursed" than actually put the word in quotation.

I don't really have any taboo subjects, save for maybe homosexual relationships. I'm cool with them, don't get me wrong!--but I'm not comfortable writing about them. Sometimes I write about subjects that make me uncomfortable (but not unbearably so) like incest and rape just to push the limit of what I think I can and cannot write about. If I find out that I can't stand what I'm writing, I put it away and focus on something else

Oooh, I like this topic.

I get pretty graphic. A lot of the stuff I write is dark, and the nature of the story makes explicit violence germane to the work (I do write about street fighters, after all). And I loooooove to torture my characters.

But. I don't torture kids. I've put them in peril, but they are always safe in the end (and not tortured). And I do employ a form of racism in one of my series. It's urban fantasy, and the ... uh, what's the word? You know, what the Puritans were ... gah, I can't come up with it. Kinda put-upon. Anyway, those being discriminated against are half-breeds (human/angel). Yeah.

There are probably topics I wouldn't tackle in my writing, but it's because I would not enjoy writing about them -- not because I don't dare. I dare pretty much anything.

Birol said:

For you, personally, where do you draw the line with what you like. How graphic or explicit can you get? Are there any subjects or representations -- god, religious titles, rape, rascists or hate-speech -- that you won't include as part of your fiction, even if the characters don't think or believe as you do?

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I don't draw the line anywhere. I would put anything in my story if it was intergral to the plot. That said, I would never put in something for pure shock value.

I personally have no sacred cows. As Cheshire Cat said, whatever the story needs, just haul the appropriate cow over and I'll slaughter it.

However, that said, I won't cross societal lines. If something is considered reprehensible to society, I have no need to cross that line just for a story and the publicity that comes with public outrage.

If my story requires it, I can write anything. But I won't kill a child. Even if I had a horrific car crash and the entire family had to die, I would probably find a way to keep the kids out of it. It's the only place I draw the line. Everything else is fair game.

Yeah, I'm the same when it comes to kids. I just can't kill them. In one neglected WIP (which I may come back to later), the MC's kid gets hit by a car. I was going to have her killed, and I just couldn't do it. She was the same age as my child, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I know that I could also never write about torturing children or beating them.

No limits for me. I typically don't write explicit sex scenes, but it has nothing to do with morality. I simply don't enjoy writing them. I can lead it up to that point, but when it gets there I close the curtains.

Well, don't anybody shoot me, but I've killed kids in a story. Not onstage, in front of the reader, mind you, but it was clear the kids died, and sometimes in horrible ways. I didn't like doing it, because however totally made-up my characters are, they're alive to me, in my head, and those kids died.

Not fun. But there was emotional depth to what happened to them, and in how the surviving characters dealt with the tragedy and its aftermath, and that made the story better.

It also gave me nightmares. And not many things give me nightmares.

CheshireCat said:

Well, don't anybody shoot me, but I've killed kids in a story.

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BANG!

Sorry, just kidding. I totally understand the need to do it sometimes. It's just something I can't do. I could before I had kids but once he came along...boom, can't do it. Too much bad stuff really happens to kids...I can't do it to my characters too.

I read a recent James Patterson book (can't remember which one off the top of my head) but he blew up a bus and a boy died along with all passengers except the boys mother. I shut the book, cried and it was weeks before I was able to pick it up and finish it. I couldn't deal with her grief. It was just too much for me.

Honestly? I won't know what I will not write until confronted with the notion of it (if that makes sense). I've written a pretty wide variety of things, when the story calls for it.

I have dealt with rape. One character was raped as a teenager, and relived those memories later as an adult. It was not explicitly written, but still relived on-screen. I don't know if I could write an explicit, detailed rape scene. I've never had the need.

I have dealt with torture, on screen and off. Some explicit, some not. I don't really have a problem with violence in my writing. My betas will tell you that I love to beat on my characters (pent up personal aggression? Dunno....). I've had them shot, stabbed, beaten, electrocuted, tossed down stairs, smashed beneath falling debris, caught in fires, inhaled chemicals, nearly suffocated, drowned, etc...

I've never written the graphic torture-leading-to-death of a character. I probably would, if it became necessary. Again, because that sort of graphic physical violence squicks me less than graphic rape.

I've written semi-explicit sex scenes. Many of them are blow by blow (no pun intended) encounters, but I prefer to use "nicer" language. I'm not fond of words like c*ck or p*ssy and won't use them. But I am careful that I don't fall overboard with the euphemisms (pulsing staff and hot tunnel just don't work for me, either, ugh).

Personally I'm not offended by much, unless things are incredibly sick and twisted, as, sadly, some movies are becoming lately (Saw! I'ma callin' you out!)

Some things though are just unneeded, such as excessive swearing, unless it is truly part of a character. When I write, I will swear, and even go into some of the "worse" words, but fairly rarely.

As a fantasy w/ action writer though, I do take some liberty on battle scenes, I do the blow by blow, scene by scene version of most battles I write about, but that might just come from reading to much R.A. Salvatore (my favourite author to be truthful).

Rape I personally find just distastful to read and or write about in detail, but if a rape happens to progress the story, I'm fine with that... as long as it is an actual plot element. Sex, I personally don't write about in detail, I prefer to use inuendos and the such, but that's not as offensive.

Taboos can be a tough thing to deal with as a writer, if you write one thing that a reviewer may find offensive, and a bad review gets out, that can really suck...

CheshireCat said:

Well, don't anybody shoot me, but I've killed kids in a story.

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I have kids dying in my novel. I think children's death is fair game in fiction. It happens in real life. As long as we're not doing it to a point of pure manipulation...

Same with tough topics such as rape, child abuse, etc. To me, if it's a story worth telling, then we must tell it truthfully. If I'm afraid to "offend" anyone, I might as well as write a story about cute fluffy bunnies (okay, some people may even be offended by that). If someone is offended by the subject matters or plot or language or sexuality or whatever... I can only say, "Please don't read it, then."

I've killed my share of kids too (in stories, that is). But there has to be a pretty damn good story-related reason to do it. Same thing with kids and sexuality.

Stephen King's It has a scene in which kids have sex. It bothered me when I first read it, and it still bothers me now. It was not necessary to the novel, as it neither revealed character nor moved the story along. On the other hand, King makes lots of money writing, and I don't. But if that's what it takes, I'll pass on it.

maestrowork said:

I have kids dying in my novel. I think children's death is fair game in fiction. It happens in real life. As long as we're not doing it to a point of pure manipulation...

Same with tough topics such as rape, child abuse, etc. To me, if it's a story worth telling, then we must tell it truthfully. If I'm afraid to "offend" anyone, I might as well as write a story about cute fluffy bunnies (okay, some people may even be offended by that). If someone is offended by the subject matters or plot or language or sexuality or whatever... I can only say, "Please don't read it, then."

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I only have problems with kids getting killed if they die in sick, twisted, horribly drawn out ways. A car accident - sad, but okay. A sick, twisted kidnapper who buried a kid alive - no way. It's the stuff they go through before they die or get rescued that bothers me.

kristie911 said:

If my story requires it, I can write anything. But I won't kill a child. Even if I had a horrific car crash and the entire family had to die, I would probably find a way to keep the kids out of it. It's the only place I draw the line. Everything else is fair game.

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My very first published story was about a guy who was going to commit suicide because he'd hit rock bottom. He was just about to shoot himself when his daughter walked in and he realized he couldn't leave her alone.

So he ended up killing both of them.

In the book I am writing my villain is a racist. But, I removed him using the 'N' word in the current rewrite I'm working on right now. So I guess that is one line that I will not cross. I guess because I know some people that if they read that in my book I would get accused of being that same way just because one of my charters is.