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Hello Summer!
- Joined
- Nov 1, 2005
- Posts
- 13,823
You've likely heard about this as it's all over the internet. You can read about it here, but the deal is essentially this: in the hugely popular book (the first one at least) there are two characters who are black. They are described that way. However, certain readers apparently missed or skimmed over this fact. Now the movie has come out and, faithful to the book, those two characters are black. Some readers tweeted their outrage over this (i.e. "Why is this n----- playing this character?"). When others pointed out to them that the character in the book was black, these readers decided this "ruined" it for them.
Obviously, such racism is pretty dismaying if, sadly, not all that surprising or shocking. What I wonder, however, is what it means to us as writers in regards to what our readers read. Most of the time when new authors ask about describing characters the advice is to be minimal. To leave it up to the reader's imagination. But what if a character's looks really do matter? I haven't read the "Hunger Game" books and I don't know if these characters had to be black, but it is science-fiction and the two come from the same district. The author might have been pointing something out about segregation in districts, etc. It might be relevant. Of course, even if it wasn't, it's the author's call if she wants to describe the characters.
But, obviously, the description didn't matter to these particular readers. They missed or outright ignored how these two characters were described on the page. So what happens if we write a story where it does matter what the character looks like, I mean there is something essential there to the story, but readers skip over it? How do we get them to see the character as described? Or do we assume certain readers' are going to have bad reading comprehension and/or biases that blind them to such words and we're just going to have to write them (such readers) off?
Obviously, such racism is pretty dismaying if, sadly, not all that surprising or shocking. What I wonder, however, is what it means to us as writers in regards to what our readers read. Most of the time when new authors ask about describing characters the advice is to be minimal. To leave it up to the reader's imagination. But what if a character's looks really do matter? I haven't read the "Hunger Game" books and I don't know if these characters had to be black, but it is science-fiction and the two come from the same district. The author might have been pointing something out about segregation in districts, etc. It might be relevant. Of course, even if it wasn't, it's the author's call if she wants to describe the characters.
But, obviously, the description didn't matter to these particular readers. They missed or outright ignored how these two characters were described on the page. So what happens if we write a story where it does matter what the character looks like, I mean there is something essential there to the story, but readers skip over it? How do we get them to see the character as described? Or do we assume certain readers' are going to have bad reading comprehension and/or biases that blind them to such words and we're just going to have to write them (such readers) off?
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