Hey all,
I just wanted to share this article with you guys. It's about the power of fiction to transform a reader--to psychologically transform the reader.
It's something amazing and meaningful we do!
Writing that kicks your ass
Saturday, May 26, 2012
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Really powerful stuff, Andy. Related to this, I've been thinking alot lately about how one would go about writing stories for unseen and disenfranchised children around the world - particularly in places where they don't have their own stories, like in Sudan or refugee camps in western Thailand. About how to write stories for them, rather than about them. Where they can identify themselves with the protagonist and feel seen and called out. Anyone have any ideas about this?
ReplyDeleteA wonderful idea, Dave, with noble purpose!
ReplyDeleteIt makes me wonder about those groups who are under-represented in literature, particularly children's literature--and by "under-represented" I mean both under-represented as authors of the literature and under-represented as characters within it. I imagine young readers find it easier to connect with characters they can identify with at least in one important regard--that the character is, like the young reader, a child, for example. Or that the character is of the same setting/landscape, or of the same country or culture.
For fiction, I think that one of the challenges of writing from the point of view of a character from another group is making the "empathetic leap" (did Ron call it that?)--the fewer points of similarity I the writer have with a character, the more difficult it may be to imagine myself experiencing the world as they experience it.
The magic of fiction writing is that it allows us to make such leaps. As fiction writers, we make these leaps all the time. I'm not a woman and have never lived as a woman, but I write female characters, and in order to write them well, I have to learn about women and how they experience things. And I learn by observing, reflecting, reading, having women read my work. By trying to learn.
In a similar way, the challenge--and the joy--of writing about characters from disenfranchised groups may be in the learning that goes into making a good empathetic leap!
I wonder, too, if it may be exciting to learn folktales and try to write them in ways that appeal especially to children.
What are some of the ideas you've had, Dave?