Bookish Quirks & Icks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Authors that describe a character as “Black” or as a POC — when they don’t directly mention the race of any of the other characters. It’s like they assume that everyone assumes that the default for a human being is white. White characters are described by detailed characteristics. POC characters are often described primarily or even only by their race or color. (An elderly man, with the severe dignity of a priest, paused near the doorway, watching as a black woman walked down the steps.) — This is the sort of thing I mean. Once I started noticing this, I can’t not see it.

Related is the propensity for white writers to describe POC as food. Skin tones are: chocolate, caramel, honey, almond, coffee….. Which stands out to me because non-POC characters are rarely described that way …. Pale, sallow, rosy ….are more typical.

Then there are the stereotypes, but that’s a much more complex issue. I’ll simply say that I’ve given up on one otherwise favorite author’s ability to move beyond comfortable tropes with the one Black repeating character. She did try — but her inadequacies with this character are particularly evident when neither the author’s descriptions of the character nor her sexless ability to continually comfort the more complexly written and varied white characters ever changes — over the course of almost 20 books.

Vent, vent, vent. Rant, rant, rant. Exhale.

I totally get you, and the food thing is especially awful.

But here's a sincere question. White people avoid writing from a POC's POV because they almost always do it horribly (you're right about stereotypes) and it's cultural appropriation. But whites represent the majority of writers, if nothing else because they're the majority in the broader population. So, just by the numbers, the default kind of is to have a white POV. And, if the priest watches an elderly woman full stop, many will assume she's white, again just by the population numbers.

Do you have any ideas for identifying race respectfully? Identifying the race of every single character when they're introduced seems really clunky. There may be no easy answer and that's fine.

I’m not clear that “whites represent the majority of writers” or “the majority in the broader population “. I am clear that they represent the majority of mainstream publishers though. Rather than rant about your assumptions, I’ll skip to your question.

The simplest answer is that good writers often SHOW rather than TELL. If there are reasons for race to be explicitly identified, it can be done in the same, subtle or detailed ways that any other important characteristics are — including the character’s own musings and comments.
So if a writer starts with assuming that there are NO defaults, and that they have to introduce all of their characters to all of their readers, then it should work out fine.

You don’t actually have to identify the race of every single character “when they’re introduced”. Timmy and Karin can chat and interact for several pages or even several chapters before one mentions her stern Nordic grandfather and another mentions the family latke recipe while they make lefse together. A writer might leave it out altogether. Or a writer could notice that mentioning only some people as having a race — is Othering these characters, alienating at least some readers, and work to be better if that was not their intent.

I get that it can be clumsy to write effectively and sensitivity about people who are very different from you as a writer. That’s what research is for. And what having readers to critique your manuscripts before you publish them are for. If a writer has NO readers who resemble their characters in essential ways, then I would respectfully ask them to ask themselves why they’re including the character — and what they can do as a WRITER to make these characters as authentic and as complex as the rest of their characters— however authentic and complex that might actually be.

Thanks for for bringing up this good point. It was interesting to read your take. Just a quick aside that mentioning latkes (aka Judaism) doesn’t necessarily denote race or ethnicity, as there are Jews who are Black, White, Asian, Latin American, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Authors that describe a character as “Black” or as a POC — when they don’t directly mention the race of any of the other characters. It’s like they assume that everyone assumes that the default for a human being is white. White characters are described by detailed characteristics. POC characters are often described primarily or even only by their race or color. (An elderly man, with the severe dignity of a priest, paused near the doorway, watching as a black woman walked down the steps.) — This is the sort of thing I mean. Once I started noticing this, I can’t not see it.

Related is the propensity for white writers to describe POC as food. Skin tones are: chocolate, caramel, honey, almond, coffee….. Which stands out to me because non-POC characters are rarely described that way …. Pale, sallow, rosy ….are more typical.

Then there are the stereotypes, but that’s a much more complex issue. I’ll simply say that I’ve given up on one otherwise favorite author’s ability to move beyond comfortable tropes with the one Black repeating character. She did try — but her inadequacies with this character are particularly evident when neither the author’s descriptions of the character nor her sexless ability to continually comfort the more complexly written and varied white characters ever changes — over the course of almost 20 books.

Vent, vent, vent. Rant, rant, rant. Exhale.

I totally get you, and the food thing is especially awful.

But here's a sincere question. White people avoid writing from a POC's POV because they almost always do it horribly (you're right about stereotypes) and it's cultural appropriation. But whites represent the majority of writers, if nothing else because they're the majority in the broader population. So, just by the numbers, the default kind of is to have a white POV. And, if the priest watches an elderly woman full stop, many will assume she's white, again just by the population numbers.

Do you have any ideas for identifying race respectfully? Identifying the race of every single character when they're introduced seems really clunky. There may be no easy answer and that's fine.

I’m not clear that “whites represent the majority of writers” or “the majority in the broader population “. I am clear that they represent the majority of mainstream publishers though. Rather than rant about your assumptions, I’ll skip to your question.

The simplest answer is that good writers often SHOW rather than TELL. If there are reasons for race to be explicitly identified, it can be done in the same, subtle or detailed ways that any other important characteristics are — including the character’s own musings and comments.
So if a writer starts with assuming that there are NO defaults, and that they have to introduce all of their characters to all of their readers, then it should work out fine.

You don’t actually have to identify the race of every single character “when they’re introduced”. Timmy and Karin can chat and interact for several pages or even several chapters before one mentions her stern Nordic grandfather and another mentions the family latke recipe while they make lefse together. A writer might leave it out altogether. Or a writer could notice that mentioning only some people as having a race — is Othering these characters, alienating at least some readers, and work to be better if that was not their intent.

I get that it can be clumsy to write effectively and sensitivity about people who are very different from you as a writer. That’s what research is for. And what having readers to critique your manuscripts before you publish them are for. If a writer has NO readers who resemble their characters in essential ways, then I would respectfully ask them to ask themselves why they’re including the character — and what they can do as a WRITER to make these characters as authentic and as complex as the rest of their characters— however authentic and complex that might actually be.

Thanks for for bringing up this good point. It was interesting to read your take. Just a quick aside that mentioning latkes (aka Judaism) doesn’t necessarily denote race or ethnicity, as there are Jews who are Black, White, Asian, Latin American, etc.

I completely agree with your “aside”. My intention was truly not to use food as a proxy for race or ethnicity. I was trying to illustrate in an accessible way —paralleling the use of the tropes that I complained about earlier — that including details like this might suggest cultural indicators that, in turn, might nudge a reader to be alert for additional indicators in the pages ahead. And, yes, some of these cultural indicators might be surprising to some readers. I also wanted to suggest — however clumsily— that both POC and Non-POC deserve a few details of the sort that often get casually tossed out by writers for characters who are POC.

Although I realize now that I didn’t express this clearly, I was actually thinking along the lines of your valuable and valid criticism when I wrote my earlier post. To use myself as an example: I might make kasha for breakfast, muse about how much I miss the sable tails that I used to get from Posin’s as a small child, and wonder about how my friend created the tradition of making lefse with her children. These details could segue into wondering about things like: how my taciturn African-American father started making us kasha for Sunday breakfasts; how the DC neighborhood that I grew up in quickly shifted from being a predominantly Jewish neighborhood to a predominantly African American neighborhood before I was born; and how, two generations after this transition, interracial families in the same neighborhood both continue old traditions and create new ones.

Thank you for continuing this conversation. You’ve given me much “food for thought”!

[Anonymous]

Cat fur in my library books. I know animal fur and dander can be invisible to people who are surrounded by it, but I don’t like it in my home for my husband’s allergies. I guess you roll the dice when you use library books, and usually it’s not a lot, but sometimes I wonder if the patron combed their cat with the book or something.

[Anonymous]

My quirk & ick- it’s not too much with writers. It’s with readers. Who now come to books with a host of demands and expectations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My quirk & ick- it’s not too much with writers. It’s with readers. Who now come to books with a host of demands and expectations.

You have to elaborate there!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My quirk & ick- it’s not too much with writers. It’s with readers. Who now come to books with a host of demands and expectations.

Well, it’s not really a demand. We are consumers and we like what we like. Readers are free to have preferences the same way patrons of a restaurant or any other consumer has preferences, and we are free to voice those preferences.

Of course you are free to not like it that consumers voice their preferences but at least understand that nobody is demanding authors do anything.

[Anonymous]

Changing perspectives by chapter--that is, Chapter 1 is written in the "voice" of one character; Chapter 2 in the voice of another character, Chapter 3, etc. There are a lot of novels that employ this technique, and IMO, it's very hard to do well. Most don't succeed all the way, and you have chapters either sounding too similar to each other or one character gets the short end of the stick and is underdeveloped. So many fiction authors do this nowadays that it feels like a gimmick.

Same thing with jumps forward and backward in time. This is another technique that's really hard to do well without confusing the reader, and the past few books I've read lately that've done this have fallen short.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My quirk & ick- it’s not too much with writers. It’s with readers. Who now come to books with a host of demands and expectations.

Well, it’s not really a demand. We are consumers and we like what we like. Readers are free to have preferences the same way patrons of a restaurant or any other consumer has preferences, and we are free to voice those preferences.

Of course you are free to not like it that consumers voice their preferences but at least understand that nobody is demanding authors do anything.

+1 I would imagine that any writer who is mad at readers is actually mad at publishers? Aren't publishers the ones deciding what is going to move forward in the traditional publication pipeline?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My quirk & ick- it’s not too much with writers. It’s with readers. Who now come to books with a host of demands and expectations.

Like what? I expect decent editing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Changing perspectives by chapter--that is, Chapter 1 is written in the "voice" of one character; Chapter 2 in the voice of another character, Chapter 3, etc. There are a lot of novels that employ this technique, and IMO, it's very hard to do well. Most don't succeed all the way, and you have chapters either sounding too similar to each other or one character gets the short end of the stick and is underdeveloped. So many fiction authors do this nowadays that it feels like a gimmick.

Same thing with jumps forward and backward in time. This is another technique that's really hard to do well without confusing the reader, and the past few books I've read lately that've done this have fallen short.

+1 I am generally okay with this if the book is a beach read. I agree that it is hard to do well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Changing perspectives by chapter--that is, Chapter 1 is written in the "voice" of one character; Chapter 2 in the voice of another character, Chapter 3, etc. There are a lot of novels that employ this technique, and IMO, it's very hard to do well. Most don't succeed all the way, and you have chapters either sounding too similar to each other or one character gets the short end of the stick and is underdeveloped. So many fiction authors do this nowadays that it feels like a gimmick.

Same thing with jumps forward and backward in time. This is another technique that's really hard to do well without confusing the reader, and the past few books I've read lately that've done this have fallen short.

Tasha Alexander does this. At times, it's a dual POV that makes a lot of sense. But sometimes, she has you flipping between stories that take place hundreds of years apart and it's hard to follow.

The series she writes got optioned and it sounds like it's actually going to go into production. It'll be interesting to see if they stick with the main characters/plots or attempt or not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Repeated phrases or “forced” words throughout the book.

If I had a penny for every "chill ran down my spine" - I'd be a billionaire.

[Anonymous]

Romance novels where a big character trait of the male lead is fancy stuff he owns, like in Discovery of Witches.

[Anonymous]

This is a pretty obscure ick but I can’t stand when people eye roll when I tell them I prefer to read on my Kindle or the Kindle app on my phone. There is no inherent superiority to the method in which you consume your books!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a pretty obscure ick but I can’t stand when people eye roll when I tell them I prefer to read on my Kindle or the Kindle app on my phone. There is no inherent superiority to the method in which you consume your books!

Reading is reading! And with extremists coming for our books, we need to promote reading and support our libraries and booksellers regardless of our preferred format.

Having the kindle app and a few ebooks going means I don’t mind waiting in line at all anymore. I felt pretty happy when I whipped out my phone and read a few pages while in line at the supermarket this morning.