It's WRONG, Is All

[bloodyrosemccoy]

An Open Letter To Disgruntled Authors

Please quit hammering on about how your characters are like your children. I realize that your characters are important to you, with a bond that cannot be understood by outsiders, but dammit your simile’s just inaccurate. I have read your books. I know what you do to those poor dopes. Your book is not a nurturing environment.

Therefore, when I hear you say they’re like your children, it makes me want to call child protective services.

C’mon—you can come up with a better comparison. You’re writers. I’m sure you’ll think of something.

Comments

[van.livejournal.com]

This is sort of exactly why, as a writer, I don't have children. Far better to torture my characters.

BTW, hi! I'm Van. I saw you metaquoted today, went and read your ten or so most recent entries and decided I needed you in my life. Hope you don't mind. Feel free to defriend me any time. :D

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Oh, hi! Duly friended back, and nice to meet you!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wastrel/]

Yeah, for one thing, I think a lot of bad parents missed their calling as authors, not realizing that they children weren't for them to treat the way they'd treat characters in a story.

And if I start thinking about slashfic authors, well, even though their characters are admittedly having a better time, that particular comparison would be kind of creepy in a context like that now, wouldn't it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Very true! The torture is bad, but the lovingly crafted sex scenes are also made disturbing with that analogy!

[anagramofbrat.livejournal.com]

YOu know, you should just invite all of the membership of Metaquotes to friend you, since you show up over there about once every couple days and this post won't be any exception (with permission?)

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Sure!

[broken-moons.livejournal.com]

As writer to writer - cihld protective services is not yet an actual service, though now I want to use cihld in a conlang or just in a story somewhere. I'm getting a vaguely fish-type species vibe.

Also, much agreement with your post. My own analogy is that my head is a hotel or apartment building, and all the characters guests/tenants. Though, um, I guess that actual tenants would not put up with a landlady like me for very long. (Nor any actual landlady with tenants like some of my characters.)

Perhaps no comparison is even necessary; as artists, writers naturally have a special bond with their creations, be they characters, worlds, plots or the story as a whole, that others cannot easily grasp.

Also, it seems to me that many people who do the 'my characters are my children' spiel only use the characters for role-playing or dress-up games and art, which, while fun, is not actually writing. Such characters have very fixed personalities and characteristics, and are mostly alter egos for their creator.

[cougarfang.livejournal.com]

An alien form of cichlids, perhaps?

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

The occasional exchange of one of them banging on the wall and yelling for another to turn that shitty music DOWN, yo, can be pretty hilarious.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Fixed--thanks!

Well, we created them, so the bond is very strong. I tell people that I could understand a loving god who lets bad things happen if he were an author. You love 'em, but that doesn't stop you from putting them through hell.

[acrossthelake.livejournal.com]

Yes, this means YOU, Laurel K. Hamilton. Apparently this has gotten so bad for the poor deluded woman that she's "promised them" that she wouldn't kill any of them off or have much long-term bad happen to them. Which basically means her books now consist of about 40% porn, 30% heroine(s) gaining random new powers and 30% what's apparently supposed to be plot if it can be called that with how much of a problem (none) it usually poses to the hero/ines.

(I'm so sorry I haven't been in closer touch. My phones are both FUBAR right now and I'm having trouble keeping up with people as such. What days do you have off this week? Maybe we can do something then.)

[bluetara2020.livejournal.com]

You know, after a certain point I started thinking that her books were more like fanfiction of her first...say five? books.

I mean, at the start her stories had promise, the world was interesting, the heroine wasn't perfect and the vampire/shifter mythos were decently thought out (and I could totally see vampires getting rights before shifters, I mean, centuries to follow laws...for that matter could you imagine a vampire lawyer? (I was there when the law was written you whippersnapper!) no contest) and then...

There was porn. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind porn but when I'm sitting down expect a battle between the forces of darkness and guns blazing and Edward(!), who deserves a mention all on his own, and I get porn I'm at least a little discombobulated. (and hey, I spelled that correctly first try, go me)

I tried some of the books later in the series cause I figured hey, switch from mayhem to smut, new category in my brain...
And came across uber-princess powers activate Anita!

...at that point I shook my head and went you so crazy.

[caprine.livejournal.com]

This. Anita Blake turned into a Mary Sue of herself pretty rapidly.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hee hee! And that's the flip side--if they do treat their characters like their children, their books suck.

'S okay. Like I said, it's the week of the extra shifts. I get a few days off for Independence Day, though ...

[kiaransalyn.livejournal.com]

What a wonderful post!

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

Seanan McGuire has outright said that if she ever ran into her main character in the street she'd expect to be punched in the face.

[sofish-sasha.livejournal.com]

...I now fervently hope that no one I've written fanfics about ever finds them, reads them, and then meets me in real life. That would be Awkward.

[bluetara2020.livejournal.com]

Heh, this is true. Although considering my own childhood a mildly frustrated writer might explain my parents. (They weren't terrible, baring a few instances that may have been somewhat exaggerated in my mind - I was there but I certainly didn't have the perspective I do now, but they weren't the best parents for me. They occasionally look at me like a changeling and I categorically refuse to believe that I sprung from their loins and eww, that was a mental image I didn't need.)

As a writer (a terrible one in that I haven't actually written anything in ages) I don't think of my characters as my children. I think of them as my creations and I am their god. Aside from giving me a complex (come on, I'm giving this one away) I do think of them like I imagine a god would (assuming existence yadda yadda), fondly but distantly and with a dash of wow this is a really entertaining soap opera/train wreck. What'll happen next week? Will Carla have the baby? Is Hunmph Ictack going to keep the bar? What about Verdant and the shrinking dimensional prison? I should really stay tuned.

If I ever met any of my characters I'd be far more likely to get sucked into a rabid sunspot than punched. And it would be quite deserved.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

SO MUCH YES. The writer as god has been in my head for YEARS. It makes a lot more sense, doesn't it?

[bluetara2020.livejournal.com]

So much sense. My idea of an omniscient god is that guy who personifies couch potato with this really big screen tv that shows all of reality at once. He never runs out of crisps and his beer is always cold. He also ends up yelling at the screen and once almost put his foot through it but ended up tripping over the dog.

No, seriously, I've imagined him in my head. And since he was already there anyway...

Yeah, he ended up being the god of laziness, unsolicited advice and ineffectual knowledge. His name is Cass.

Besides, if I'm god and I've given them free will I don't feel nearly as bad as when they get into trouble. Although there are sometimes when I facepalm and wonder if freewill is a gift I can return for, say, a nice coupon from Bloomies.

[bluetara2020.livejournal.com]

also, I think I'm in love with your icon.

[tay421.livejournal.com]

While I've often referred to my Intasiad story as "my baby", regardless of what I do to anybody in it, for me it's more of... something that's just grown up with me, I guess. XD For better or for worse.

But with characters I feel more like an awkward god... or a gardener thing, though I've no experience with gardening. I plant ideas, then sit back and let them grow themselves without adding too much direction to them. I don't often pull weeds, 'cause I find them to be just as interesting as the other plants, even if said weeds eventually kill the other stuff off. For the Greater Good.

DERP FACE.

[stormteller.livejournal.com]

My characters aren't like children. Children eventually shut up.

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

Considering how I sit back and decide how much more trauma I can heap on my characters before it gets silly... I would hope these kids would be packing to run away, if they were my children. If I have children someday, I do not think I'll tell the third one "Okay, let's see what body part we can remove! I haven't had a child with a missing limb before."

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Exactly! I do not think it is at all a good idea to say to yourself, "You know what my child needs? Deep, nigh-incapacitating psychological trauma! Also more stab wounds!"

[fadethecat.livejournal.com]

...now there's an appropriate icon for the conversation at hand!

Now I need to go ponder how I can properly traumatize this dragon, who's only suffered physical setbacks so far.