#Or I misrepresented poverty ect

[fantastic-mr-corvid]

5 and 22 for the fic writer asks!

tyyy!

first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP

His older brother doesn't keep many photos of those people, doesn’t speak about them much, expert in the dead of night after too much drink.

From chapter two of the detective au! Cecios talking about Muro, those people being Elena, Soverano and Baccio [gone dead and dead respectively]

do you ever worry about public reaction to what you’re writing? how do you get past that?

So much. I joke about every fic of mine needing a long list of warnings and it's true. When I wrote fics with canon characters I get anxious about characterisation, but I reread the relevant bits of the source material to help refresh my memory.

Luckily it's my ocs I can't do them wrong, but I do really worry that people will not just bounce of my ocs fics but hate me for them, lord knows there is plenty of stuff to misinterpret and bad faith read, but it's my story, I try and warn people, and I'm writing for me first and foremost and I can't get enough of that dark messy shit. Also having a second pair of eyes read it over really helps when my anxiety has blown out of control!

[writingquestionsanswered]

I have a story about a Lesbian woman of color and her twin brother and baby sister. It's most likely going to be Portal Fantasy. My issue is how to bring up different issues the characters face since they are heavy ones. I don't want to misrepresent them. I'm worried I'll go wrong. For example, a single parent household, drug abuse, poverty, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ect. Any suggestions?

Worried About Portraying Sensitive Issues

When a journalist wants to do a story, they go out and learn about the thing they want to write about. They do research, they investigate, they ask questions, they gather data... When, as writers, we want to portray real life subject matter that we’re unfamiliar with, we need to do the same thing. Here are your options:

1) Do your research.

Research is something people naturally shy away from, but it is an inherent part of being a writer. We live in an age where there is endless information at our fingertips, all we have to do is make an effort to look for it, usually through an easy Google search. Not only can you read articles and watch documentaries about the issues you need to portray, you can almost always find blogs, web sites, and guides on these specific topics geared toward writers, written by people who understand these issues firsthand. All you have to do is search for things like “writing about drug abuse” or “portraying racism in fiction” or “how to write about characters facing homophobia” and similar terms. :)

2) Find help within your community.

Whether you go to family members, friends, a group or organization within your school or community, look within the writing community (such as here on tumblr), or search on writing forums, there are definitely people out there who have firsthand experiences in these matters, and if you ask nicely they’ll almost always be willing to talk to you about any questions and concerns you might have. The key is to do your research first so you can ask relevant questions and not expect them to give you a ground up lesson in the subject matter.

3) Use a sensitivity reader and/or beta reader with that experience.

Since so many writers are trying to be more diverse, which often means portraying characters who might have experienced things like racism, homophobia, etc., there are a whole slew of people offering their services as sensitivity readers, meaning that you can pay them to read your story and let you know of any red flags in your portrayal as well as how to fix them. Assuming you’ve done your due diligence through research and talking to people within your community, presumably there should be a limited number of red flags, but the sensitivity reader is there to check for them if they exist. Many sensitivity readers are flexible as far as working out different types of sessions, for example reading summaries or addressing specific concerns. You can also look for beta readers who have experience in these areas, but make sure you reciprocate by offering to beta one of their projects as well.

If you can do these three things, you should be in good shape. :)

[wordsnstuff]

I have a story about a Lesbian woman of color and her twin brother and baby sister. It's most likely going to be Portal Fantasy. My issue is how to bring up different issues the characters face since they are heavy ones. I don't want to misrepresent them. I'm worried I'll go wrong. For example, a single parent household, drug abuse, poverty, racism, homophobia, transphobia, ect. Any suggestions?

I do not believe that I have much area to give advice here because I haven’t written many stories yet with such heavy issues at the forefront, but my baseline suggestion would be to be sensitive and intentional, and do your groundwork. Talk to people who have dealt with or do deal with the issues you’ll be writing about and incorporate someone else’s testimonial detail into your story. Talk to multiple people to see each specific experience through different lenses. It’s impossible to represent an experience universally, so just try your best to be true to what you do know and find through research. 

Again, it’s not really my place to give advice beyond that point but there are so many resources out there, tailored specifically for writers to help with tackling such difficult topics in any genre of storytelling.