Write a controversial opinion

[PennyThompson]

Okay, I have a controversial opinion that I'll share... When people here -- including people that I respect and like very much -- say things like "you don't owe readers anything," I think they're wrong.

I think that by choosing to publish stories to a public channel, I'm entering into a sort of mutually beneficial relationship.

I'm creating something with the intention of eliciting a reaction from an audience. If that wasn't my intention, I'd just write in a locked diary or a private text file. I gain a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from knowing that a story of mine generated titillation, or emotional catharsis, or even just a pleasant little squirt of dopamine from a reader.

But that also means that I'm accepting ownership for what I write, and for what reactions it creates. In the same way that it feels good to make someone happy, it feels bad to make someone unhappy.

That doesn't mean that I or anyone else should only write pandering stories that the largest majority of readers want, or that I should avoid topics or tones for fear of upsetting someone. But it does mean that I take on responsibility for what happens, for good or bad.

Writing to provoke a reaction without accepting responsibility is literally the definition of a troll.

"Death of the author" is a one-way street. It means that we can't control how an audience perceives our work, it doesn't absolve us of what we create.

 

[SimonDoom]

What it is all about is that if you judge people harshly, you will be judged harshly in return. And while not judging doesn't mean supporting, it still means not judging others for their weaknesses, sins, shortcomings, or failures.

Yes, I think the point of the saying is reciprocity. It's not a command not to judge. We can't function as a society if we don't judge when necessary, and it makes perfect sense for a moral person to judge others who act immorally. But we have to expect the spotlight to shine on us as much as we shine it on others. So think carefully before you shine that spotlight, bub.

Christ left out the "bub" part.

 

[Britva415]

If you never defend the speech of people you disagree with, then you don't really believe in free speech.

No, that makes it sound like you have to defend what they say. You don't.

Be clear - defending their right to say it isn't the same thing.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm trying to think of examples of this in casual writing. I agree, though, it's never needed, even among lawyers.

I couldn't give cites, but I feel like most of the time when I've seen this in fiction it's been as part of an intentionally facetious tone. That works for me but it'd probably feel stilted if used unironically.

 

[MillieDynamite]

It's all about how you treat each other, those you like, those you don't agree with, and those you don't like or even hate.

Yes, I think the point of the saying is reciprocity. It's not a command not to judge. We can't function as a society if we don't judge when necessary, and it makes perfect sense for a moral person to judge others who act immorally. But we have to expect the spotlight to shine on us as much as we shine it on others. So think carefully before you shine that spotlight, bub.

Christ left out the "bub" part.

 

[Britva415]

I'm trying to think of examples of this in casual writing. I agree, though, it's never needed, even among lawyers.

I see it in forum posts about once a week or so, and in stories almost as frequently.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I owe the reader at least this much: to write my stories the best way I can. But no matter how much the reader likes, loves, dislikes, or hates my work, I'm not required to rewrite it in the way they want.

Okay, I have a controversial opinion that I'll share... When people here -- including people that I respect and like very much -- say things like "you don't owe readers anything," I think they're wrong.

I think that by choosing to publish stories to a public channel, I'm entering into a sort of mutually beneficial relationship.

I'm creating something with the intention of eliciting a reaction from an audience. If that wasn't my intention, I'd just write in a locked diary or a private text file. I gain a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from knowing that a story of mine generated titillation, or emotional catharsis, or even just a pleasant little squirt of dopamine from a reader.

But that also means that I'm accepting ownership for what I write, and for what reactions it creates. In the same way that it feels good to make someone happy, it feels bad to make someone unhappy.

That doesn't mean that I or anyone else should only write pandering stories that the largest majority of readers want, or that I should avoid topics or tones for fear of upsetting someone. But it does mean that I take on responsibility for what happens, for good or bad.

Writing to provoke a reaction without accepting responsibility is literally the definition of a troll.

"Death of the author" is a one-way street. It means that we can't control how an audience perceives our work, it doesn't absolve us of what we create.

 

[iwatchus]

It's supposed to be "controversial."

I think my critique of Roger Waters/Pink Floyd is somewhere between controversial and sacrilegious.

 

[SimonDoom]

Okay, I have a controversial opinion that I'll share... When people here -- including people that I respect and like very much -- say things like "you don't owe readers anything," I think they're wrong.

I think that by choosing to publish stories to a public channel, I'm entering into a sort of mutually beneficial relationship.

I'm creating something with the intention of eliciting a reaction from an audience. If that wasn't my intention, I'd just write in a locked diary or a private text file. I gain a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from knowing that a story of mine generated titillation, or emotional catharsis, or even just a pleasant little squirt of dopamine from a reader.

But that also means that I'm accepting ownership for what I write, and for what reactions it creates. In the same way that it feels good to make someone happy, it feels bad to make someone unhappy.

That doesn't mean that I or anyone else should only write pandering stories that the largest majority of readers want, or that I should avoid topics or tones for fear of upsetting someone. But it does mean that I take on responsibility for what happens, for good or bad.

Writing to provoke a reaction without accepting responsibility is literally the definition of a troll.

"Death of the author" is a one-way street. It means that we can't control how an audience perceives our work, it doesn't absolve us of what we create.

You've made the biggest and most important controversial point anybody in this thread has made, considering this is a writing forum. There are a million things one could say about this.

I don't exactly agree that I "owe" readers anything. But I respect that my readers don't owe me anything more than what I owe them. For instance, I don't think it's wrong of me if I write something that happens to offend some readers. But if it does, they're just as entitled to tell me how much I suck as I am to write the story in the first place. I'm not entitled to expect anything.

This is why I believe it makes sense for writers to make some effort to master basic conventions of grammar and spelling and punctuation: show respect for the people you're trying to communicate with. Publication of a story is an act of communication with others. It's not just sounding off to the world.

And if you're going to publish stories with controversial or painful content, OK, there may be a good reason for it, but brace yourself for the response and don't be surprised at it.

 

[SimonDoom]

I think my critique of Roger Waters/Pink Floyd is somewhere between controversial and sacrilegious.

Critiquing Rogers Waters is pretty much shooting fish in a barrel, these days. Pink Floyd is a different matter.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Hmmm. Is that your impression, that we're showering each other in this forum with undeserved praise? That's not my impression. I totally agree with you that most of the work here is amateur work, including mine. A lot of it is fun and erotic, but it's not great art. But I see the support given here by authors for other authors as mostly helpful and constructive, rather than undeserved or cloying flattery. I'm not sure what the better alternative would be.

I think there's also a good deal of availability bias here.

I generally aim to offer compliments in public and criticism in private unless somebody has specifically invited public critique.* Partly because it's the nice thing to do, partly because it's generally a more effective approach to persuading people.

For example, I have edited/beta-read many stories for @AwkwardMD and @Omenainen, and I think they'd support me in saying that I'm not shy about telling them when something in their story doesn't work for me. With their permission, I posted a behind-the-scenes giving a glimpse of what those conversations look like. A few of my comments:

It sort of feels like we've had this dialogue already, up above ... - I know it's not quite the same moment, but it feels like repeating the beat.

I feel like we're missing a scene in Maddy's arc - the transition from where she is emotionally in her previous scene to this just feels a bit too abrupt. I spent a lot of this scene wondering if that was intentional and you were setting up to reveal something we hadn't yet been told about, maybe a fight with her partners, but apparently not.

Four out of five sentences in this paragraph are structured like "She [did thing] and Lyric [did thing]". Recommend mixing it up a bit more to break the repetition.

This passage might be stronger if, instead of leaning on the adverb to convey Maddy's mood, it told us how Lyric *perceives* Maddy's irritation. Is it a particular tone of voice, or a sigh? Could the irritation be conveyed in her dialogue instead, e.g. something grouchy like "What do you want me to say?"

TBH, Maddy's anger didn't come across strongly in the previous scene... If this is important for Maddy's arc, you might want to give her some more teeth in that argument.

I am not quite feeling this reconciliation scene. I need to sit with it a bit and think about why that is, but I'm wondering if I need to see a bit more of Lyric's arc leading up to this. On Maddy's side, she has worked for this. She fucked up earlier and hurt Lyric, but she's reflected and we've seen some personal growth, walking away from A+F and stepping into the unknown. On Lyric's side, though,... we don't see her working towards that realisation, and from there the reconciliation basically falls into her lap due to other people's efforts and the power of karaoke. It doesn't feel satisfying to me.

These are just some of the critical comments I made on one story by two authors who I very much like. Somebody who sees only the public interaction and mistakes the tip for the iceberg is going to get the wrong idea about how we're interacting.

*In some cases an author's behaviour toward others may qualify as that invitation.

 

[PennyThompson]

You've made the biggest and most important controversial point anybody in this thread has made

I humbly accept my Nobel War Prize for Picking Fights

 

[ElectricBlue]

.I gain a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from knowing that a story of mine generated titillation, or emotional catharsis, or even just a pleasant little squirt of dopamine from a reader.

But that also means that I'm accepting ownership for what I write, and for what reactions it creates. In the same way that it feels good to make someone happy, it feels bad to make someone unhappy.

That doesn't mean that I or anyone else should only write pandering stories that the largest majority of readers want, or that I should avoid topics or tones for fear of upsetting someone. But it does mean that I take on responsibility for what happens, for good or bad.

This is what sits behind my notion of "socially responsible erotica", and why I have a problem with those who say, "I can write whatever I want to, it's only fiction, it won't hurt anyone." Sure you can do that, but yes it can hurt people, so think about it for at least a second before you publish. Words have power, and some people conveniently forget that.

 

[KittyOfSteele]

This is what sits behind my notion of "socially responsible erotica", and why I have a problem with those who say, "I can write whatever I want to, it's only fiction, it won't hurt anyone." Sure you can do that, but yes it can hurt people, so think about it for at least a second before you publish. Words have power, and some people conveniently forget that.

Yeah, but some of us just want to watch the world burn...

At least I do with all that bullshit that's going around... I don't mind holding up mirrors, even if the ones that I hold up might be those you find at the carnival from time to time, but it's only to artistically enhance my point.

 

[AwkwardMD]

Okay, I have a controversial opinion that I'll share... When people here -- including people that I respect and like very much -- say things like "you don't owe readers anything," I think they're wrong.

I think that by choosing to publish stories to a public channel, I'm entering into a sort of mutually beneficial relationship.

I'm creating something with the intention of eliciting a reaction from an audience. If that wasn't my intention, I'd just write in a locked diary or a private text file. I gain a lot of pleasure and satisfaction from knowing that a story of mine generated titillation, or emotional catharsis, or even just a pleasant little squirt of dopamine from a reader.

But that also means that I'm accepting ownership for what I write, and for what reactions it creates. In the same way that it feels good to make someone happy, it feels bad to make someone unhappy.

That doesn't mean that I or anyone else should only write pandering stories that the largest majority of readers want, or that I should avoid topics or tones for fear of upsetting someone. But it does mean that I take on responsibility for what happens, for good or bad.

Writing to provoke a reaction without accepting responsibility is literally the definition of a troll.

"Death of the author" is a one-way street. It means that we can't control how an audience perceives our work, it doesn't absolve us of what we create.

I think you're treating Death of the Author and Authorial Intent as mutually exclusive when (I believe) they are not. I can be extremely purposeful about what I make, and the emotions I want to cultivate in readers. without feeling like I "owe" them, either in volume or specific topics (or topics avoided). I don't owe anyone a happy ending, and likewise they do not owe me their time. I'm grateful when they give it, every time.

There are benefits to choosing to engage in a mutually beneficial relationship with your audience, and there's a lot of our peers who do and recommend it, but I'm more like Willy Wonka, making my weird-ass smut in isolation and choosing to do something with it afterwards out of sheer creative joy, than I am Milton Hershey.

Being a Wonka is a choice.

 

[Erozetta]

There's also the aspect that dark words can sometimes help as much as they can hurt. Sometimes it's comforting to feel like your not alone in the world while in a dark headspace.

I've had comments from people thanking me for understanding how to bring a little light into the dark to help them see another way to continue forward, that's fucking powerful and something I won't give up because such stories have helped me before as well.

I write nice things and I write dark things. It all depends on how I'm doing at the time and I've had people respond to pretty light stories with both admiration of the sweetness and bitterness about how unrealistic such love would be.

How a reader feels when reading our work isn't something we can control and isn't something we are responsible for, unless the response is intended. If I want someone to walk away from a story ugly crying, they will. But happiness is a double edged sword because some people are incapable of accepting it since they either haven't felt it or simply don't want to feel it. We can't help it when someone like that comes across our words.

 

[AwkwardMD]

I should probably also clarify that (and I can only speak for myself here) when I say I can be purposeful, and I can be intentional, and I can control reader reactions, I believe that this is true for somewhere between 90 and 99% of my readers. Obviously, not every story is as successful as every other story because I'm always trying something new, but I don't feel that "3% of my audience walking away with the wrong impression" is my responsibility. At those kind of numbers, they are the exception that proves the rule. 10% is, to my mind, the upper limit for being able to claim the same.

I don't have specific numbers to back this up, just a general sense of how my stories perform over time (views and scores) plus the general vibe of comments and how they align with my intentions (which are usually fixed before I start writing).

Obviously, there's a ton of bias there. Potentially load bearing bias. However, I think that what I write is different enough from the average Lit story that my success must at least partially stem from how I do what I do.

 

[alohadave]

If you never defend the speech of people you disagree with, then you don't really believe in free speech.

To a point. Not all speech is defensible or nor should all speech be defended.

Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech. It means that the government doesn't restrict speech.

I'm never going to defend hate speech to meet a philosophical ideal condition.

 

[Off_base]

Coffee is better than tea.

 

[alohadave]

"Death of the author" is a one-way street. It means that we can't control how an audience perceives our work, it doesn't absolve us of what we create.

Death of the author is how readers interpret your work. You can't control how anyone will react to, or interpret what you create.

How you take ownership of what you write is on you and no one can take that away from you as the author.

They are conflicting positions. Whether you take readers opinions in mind or how much stake you put in them is something you figure out for yourself. Sometimes you care deeply about what you've made and when readers get it 'wrong', it affects you more. Sometimes you are more open to alternate interpretations.

 

[iwatchus]

Tea is better than coffee

 

[alohadave]

They are the children of allegory.

And that treacherous spoon.

I like the passage. It's evocative.

 

[SimonDoom]

To a point. Not all speech is defensible or nor should all speech be defended.

Free speech does not mean freedom from consequences of that speech. It means that the government doesn't restrict speech.

I'm never going to defend hate speech to meet a philosophical ideal condition.

Well, of course. But if in practice you regard all speech you disagree with as hate speech, and therefore not worth defending, then you don't believe in free speech.

The point of my comment is that the test of whether you REALLY believe in free speech is whether you EVER stand up for speech you don't agree with. It's easy, and also not meaningful, to stand up for the free speech rights of those you agree with.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

Death of the author is how readers interpret your work. You can't control how anyone will react to, or interpret what you create.

How you take ownership of what you write is on you and no one can take that away from you as the author.

They are conflicting positions. Whether you take readers opinions in mind or how much stake you put in them is something you figure out for yourself. Sometimes you care deeply about what you've made and when readers get it 'wrong', it affects you more. Sometimes you are more open to alternate interpretations.

So, the ACLU was wrong to defend the Nazis in Skokie?

 

[Britva415]

I couldn't give cites, but I feel like most of the time when I've seen this in fiction it's been as part of an intentionally facetious tone. That works for me but it'd probably feel stilted if used unironically.

I see it in fiction on Lit where it doesn't seem intentionally facetious at all, what it seems like is unintentionally clumsy. There are a lot of authors who, when they write, they seem to be writing with some kind of idea in mind about "what writing sounds like," and they wind up putting cliches from nonfiction styles into their fiction narration and their fictional characters' dialog—situations where these constructions are jarringly out of place.