{"id":1613,"date":"2007-01-25T12:47:00","date_gmt":"2007-01-25T12:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/2007\/01\/25\/hate-mail-follow-up\/"},"modified":"2023-09-24T22:32:25","modified_gmt":"2023-09-24T22:32:25","slug":"hate-mail-follow-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/hate-mail-follow-up\/","title":{"rendered":"Hate Mail Follow-up"},"content":{"rendered":"

Following yesterday\u2019s entry about \u2018Hate Mail\u2019 <\/a>or more accurately, one particular reaction to one story, I\u2019ve had some interesting replies. Some of them agree with me, having received similar messages themselves, some sympathising with the correspondent.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s be clear about this, I don\u2019t begrudge the correspondent his opinion, and I make no judgments about him. I merely found his reaction interesting and was trying to explain it to myself. The common theme running through the e-mails I received since yesterday\u2019s post is that the correspondent clearly had issues with \u2018cheating\u2019, probably because he\u2019d been cheated on himself. Now, yesterday I said he\u2019d made assumptions about my characters but I\u2019ve just made one hell of an assumption about him too. I could well be wrong.<\/p>\n

A question this issue has raised for me is \u2018do we as writers have a responsibility to the varying sensibilities and feelings of the people who read our work. Should, for example, I have made Roy in \u201cReunion\u201d<\/a> more of a pantomime villain in order to excuse Matt and Kelly\u2019s affair? Or should I have made Matt stick to his original ethical assessment of the situation and steered well clear until Roy was out of the way? Of course, the problem with the second one is that Roy would never have been out of the way because it was only meeting Matt again that gave Kelly the strength to leave him.<\/p>\n

Should we, as writers, recognize that our stories are read by real people and that those people will ultimately form some kind of bond with our characters (assuming we\u2019re doing our job well that is) and may be hurt by their actions? But if we do that, and tone down the stories as a result, aren\u2019t we compromising ourselves? Doesn\u2019t it make our plots and characters weaker? And isn\u2019t that hurting the readers even more?<\/p>\n

Good fiction is challenging fiction and good characters are challenging characters. Villains shouldn’t be totally bad\u2014they need some sympathetic characteristics to make them human. And as I said yesterday, the best heroes are flawed heroes because it\u2019s not much of a story if you know they are going to win\u2014it\u2019s much better if there\u2019s a chance they may fail or give in to temptation.<\/p>\n

I think that the four best stories I have written have been the ones which have challenged the reader. \u201cReunion\u201d<\/a> challenges the reader to understand the motives of the two main characters even though their behaviour is not always appropriate. \u201cClaire\u201d<\/a> has a challenging ending that I know from correspondence has left many people in tears. \u201cCharlotte\u2019s Secret\u201d<\/a> has four main characters who all have major faults, and whose actions are all questionable\u2014but they are all trying to do the best for their \u2018family\u2019. (And on a side note, the ending to this always makes me cry, but for different reasons to \u2018Claire\u2019.)<\/p>\n

As for \u2018Lost and Found\u2019<\/a> (which I don\u2019t yet have a publication date for at Ruthie\u2019s), well\u2014who\u2019d want to be one of the characters in that story? There\u2019s only one person who\u2019s read this story the whole way through, and she\u2019s told me that the reason she thinks it\u2019s the best thing I\u2019ve done is \u201cit\u2019s like being on a roller-coaster. It makes you feel all sorts of emotions and leaves you drained.\u201d (not her exact words, I paraphrased).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Following yesterday\u2019s entry about \u2018Hate Mail\u2019 or more accurately, one particular reaction to one story, I\u2019ve had some interesting replies. Some of them agree with me, having received similar messages themselves, some sympathising with the correspondent. Now, let\u2019s be clear about this, I don\u2019t begrudge the correspondent his opinion, and I make no judgments about him. I merely found his reaction interesting and was trying to explain it to myself. The common theme running through the e-mails I received since yesterday\u2019s post is that the correspondent clearly had issues with \u2018cheating\u2019, probably because he\u2019d been cheated on himself. Now, yesterday I said he\u2019d made assumptions about my characters but I\u2019ve just made one hell of an assumption about him too. I could well be wrong. A question this issue has raised for me is \u2018do we as writers have a responsibility to the varying sensibilities and feelings of the people who read our work. Should, for example, I have made Roy in \u201cReunion\u201d more of a pantomime villain in order to excuse Matt and Kelly\u2019s affair? Or should I have made Matt stick to his original ethical assessment of the situation and steered well clear until Roy was out of the way? Of course, the problem with the second one is that Roy would never have been out of the way because it was only meeting Matt again that gave Kelly the strength to leave him. Should we, as writers, recognize that our stories are read by real people and that those people will ultimately form some kind of bond with our characters (assuming we\u2019re doing our job well that is) and may be hurt by their actions? But if we do that, and tone down the stories as a result, aren\u2019t we compromising ourselves? Doesn\u2019t it make our plots and characters weaker? And isn\u2019t that hurting the readers even more? Good fiction is challenging fiction and good characters are challenging characters. Villains shouldn’t be totally bad\u2014they need some sympathetic characteristics to make them human. And as I said yesterday, the best heroes are flawed heroes because it\u2019s not much of a story if you know they are going to win\u2014it\u2019s much better if there\u2019s a chance they may fail or give in to temptation. I think that the four best stories I have written have been the ones which have challenged the reader. \u201cReunion\u201d challenges the reader to understand the motives of the two main characters even though their behaviour is not always appropriate. \u201cClaire\u201d has a challenging ending that I know from correspondence has left many people in tears. \u201cCharlotte\u2019s Secret\u201d has four main characters who all have major faults, and whose actions are all questionable\u2014but they are all trying to do the best for their \u2018family\u2019. (And on a side note, the ending to this always makes me cry, but for different reasons to \u2018Claire\u2019.) As for \u2018Lost and Found\u2019 (which I don\u2019t yet have a publication date for at Ruthie\u2019s), well\u2014who\u2019d want to be one of the characters in that story? There\u2019s only one person who\u2019s read this story the whole way through, and she\u2019s told me that the reason she thinks it\u2019s the best thing I\u2019ve done is \u201cit\u2019s like being on a roller-coaster. It makes you feel all sorts of emotions and leaves you drained.\u201d (not her exact words, I paraphrased).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"templates\/template-full-width.php","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,2],"tags":[72,36],"class_list":["post-1613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-156","category-blog","tag-hate-mail","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/225744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcnobbs.co.uk\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}