A fellow writer/reviewer/tumblr-sharer-of-pretty-things asked me a question back when I was taking prompts for my current blog tour, and since that concept didn’t come to be, I thought I’d tackle it here.

The question:

“I love that you never portray any one profession or character in one specific way or another (positive or negative) and we can draw our own conclusions mostly, see what we want to see, especially on sensitive subjects. Do you have any advice for us writers-in-training on how to broach this in our writing?”

The answer:

My response to that question is a simple one:  As a writer it’s not my job to preach to the reader in order to make them see my side (or, more precisely, my character’s side) of things; it’s the character’s job to present the story of their life, and let the reader decide if they’re making the proper choices or coming to the right conclusions.

Allowing a reader to come to their own conclusions about sensitive subjects relies heavily on the ‘show, don’t tell’ rule of writing. Let’s say your character is dealing with homophobia. A writer could list all the things that are wrong with hate, and all the things a person should be doing to support their fellow human beings, but you’ll get a lot more audience appreciation with several scenes showing what’s happening to your character and how that character is dealing with it. And this rule applies to all your characters, including the antagonist. Why are they homophobic? Who taught them? Why did they believe it? After all, a sympathetic and/or relatable villain is captivating.

Just remember that unless you’re writing in first person your narrative voice is the neutral one. It doesn’t make judgements or conclusions. It simply tells the story.

If a person is unsure of how to voice that in their writing, if they’re worried about the fact they might be coming across as preachy, my advice is to think of how they might speak to a child about the issue that they’re writing. If at any point the words that you’ve written mirror your imagined conversation, you’re preaching to your reader. I’ve made the mistake myself, a couple of times in fact, in Forty-two Stairs. I regret that immensely, because it would have been a stronger novel without it.

To clarify what I’m saying: try not to get to a point in your writing where you’ve stopped the story to step on to a soapbox. Instead, wind the idea around your character’s mind. Try to write a scenario about the effects/outcome of the situation you’re discussing. Drop your issue into your story piece by piece, and weave it into the storyline. But don’t ever tell your reader what they’re supposed to be thinking or feeling about that issue. If they don’t catch the concept, or they don’t agree with you, that’s okay. As much as we all want to change the world for the better, and as much as we might hope that our novel, short story, or poem is going to do that, there’s a ridiculously strong likelihood that if somebody has their mind made up about something, nothing you write will change that. Just get your character to the point where they believe it.

If you’ve done that, you’ve done the job the Universe set for you when It dropped the story into your lap. If you’re lucky, you’ll catch a few readers along the way as well.

This blog post isn’t a novel though, is it? So I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that the reason I write out of character characters is because I believe that people are people, first and foremost, regardless of what they do. I don’t view people in a specific way regardless of their profession, their background, or their personal beliefs. I’ve met honest lawyers, book-smart mechanics, and conscientious police officers. Everybody, every single person, has a good side and a bad side. The stereotype is a bullshit, overly-simplified way to look at life, and it’s born out of ignorance and fear. As a society, we’ve gotten too advanced to continue to allow this kind of thinking into our consciousness.

I think we’d all be a lot happier if we lived and let live, walked away from confrontation instead of fostering it, and opened up our minds to a clearer, investigated way of thinking.

But that’s just me. 🙂

All my love and until next time!

AF Henley <3

Henley was born with a full-blown passion for run-on sentences, a zealous indulgence in all words descriptive, and the endearing tendency to overuse punctuation. Since the early years Henley has been an enthusiastic writer, from the first few I-love-my-dog stories to the current leap into erotica. A self-professed Google genius, Henley lives for the hours spent digging through the Internet for ‘research purposes’ which, more often than not, lead seven thousand miles away from first intentions but bring Henley to new discoveries and ideas that, once seeded, tend to flourish.

Henley has been proudly publishing with Less Than Three Press since 2012, and has been writing like mad ever since—an indentured servant to the belief that romance and true love can mend the most broken soul. Even when presented in prose.

Henley’s newest release, “Road Trip” hit the market on February 11th and is now available at your favourite online book retailer in both ebook or print format.

Check it out on Amazon, or directly through LT3 Press.

For more information please stop by for a visit at afhenley.com.