ruckus24

Okay, you've had a lot of people making a lot of good points in this thread, but judging from your responses I'm not sure whether you're genuinely interested in discussing and debating this topic, or if you simply want to re-iterate your opinion. Either way is fine by me (after all that seems to be what a blog is for) however I am going to assume the former.

@fodigg said:

However, I doubt any of the authors you listed ever needed to take a creative writing course. In these classes it's the instructor's job to turn out competent writers and improve them incrementally, not to foster the next great master.

I will postulate that no writer has ever or will ever need to take a creative writing course, no matter the relative skill level. It's possible that there are teachers out there that see their job in a creative writing class to turn out competent writers and to improve them incrementally, however I've never seen it. What I have seen, and this is taken from experiencing exactly 1/2 of a "creative writing" course and auditing seven different courses over the years from as many different colleges, is men and women who would rather force their personal political agendas down the eager throats of many bright, talented writers, rather than teach the craft of writing creatively. It seems to me that's exactly what you experienced, and I've seen this happen far too often to consider myself proven wrong. Fledgling writers are far better served by composition and rhetoric courses where they can learn the ground rules of writing well, and work-shopping with their peers where they can refine their talents.

@fodigg said:

How is that example not hate-filled speech? I mean, I agree that it's integral to the novel because exposing and addressing racism is central to its theme but I don't understand your initial claim at all.

The example I gave isn't hate-filled speech because there's no hatred expressed there. There's no hatred on the author's part, and there's no hatred expressed on the part of the characters speaking either. It's simply the way the characters given the time period and their social upbringing speak. When we read that passage are we made uncomfortable by Huck and Aunt Sally's easy devaluation of human life? Of course we are. But there's no hatred reflected here. It's indifference and that's not the same thing.

Look, I'm not advocating the right to use racist words freely. I'm advocating the right to use all words freely. I think that use of charged language should be as carefully considered as every word you set down when writing a story. You seemed to miss my entire point so to reiterate, "When you write, your first, last and only obligation is to the truth. If the character you are writing uses "trigger" words in his dialogue we'd damn well better hear them, or the character rings falsely and you've created just another hollow cypher.

"The argument he made was this: by using hate-filled speech you are spreading hate-filled speech, that this is true even if you are portraying the speaker in a negative light, and to never, ever do this. Furthermore, that if you cannot get your point across without hate-filled speech, then you are not much of a writer and should quit now."

By this reckoning, the following writers should never have set pen to paper: William Shakespeare, Ernest Hemingway, Mark Twain, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Lynda Barry, John Steinbeck, Robert A. Heinlein, Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, David Mamet, Kevin Smith, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Rick Veitch, Harlan Ellison, Kurt Sutter, David Chase... the list goes on. There are many lies that we are told by people who purport to be our teachers in life, and some of the worst falsehoods I have ever encountered have been spread by "Creative Writing" teachers. Here's the thing. When you write, your first, last and only obligation is to the truth. If the character you are writing uses "trigger" words in his dialogue we'd damn well better hear them, or the character rings falsely and you've created just another hollow cypher.

Frankly, charged language is not always "hate-filled speech" either. Case in point: When Aunt Sally asks if anyone was hurt in the riverboat explosion, and Huck answers "No'm. Killed a nigger." She replies, "Well, it's lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt." This isn't hate-filled speech. It's simply the way the characters speak. The force of this dialogue is in their casual acceptance of African Americans as less than human, ironically even by Huck, whose main teacher and father figure in the story is the escaped slave Jim. My point here is that the charged language forces us to confront the way we think about racial tensions that still exist. It's necessary and integral to the novel.

Unfortunately for our chosen hobby, mainstream comics have many of the same censorship issues television has. Comic books are routinely written with a certain amount of sanitisation in mind, because of the mistaken impression that the audience needs to be protected from "charged language" or "adult situations." The reality is that in a lot of cases, we've swapped good parenting and ratiocination for shallow stories rife with rampant political correctness. We're not perpetuating hate when we write about a racist who speaks like a racist. We are simply doing our jobs as writers... we're telling the truth. Is it possible to get your point across without using charged language? Of course it is. I'm merely saying that the characters must ring true, and often in order to do that you have to use a few dirty words.

As a final note here's some wise words by another person who never should have started writing:

"Altogether, I think we ought to read only books that bite and sting us. If the book we are reading doesn’t shake us awake like a blow on the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy, as you put it? Good God, we’d be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves. What we need are books that hit us like a most painful misfortune, like the death of someone we loved more than we love ourselves, that make us feel as though we had been banished to the woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is what I believe."

–Franz Kafka

I have to admit that I'm not a fan of villain centric comics, however I think Lobo proved that an absolute bad guy can quite handily sustain his own series. I think that the best example of villains carrying a series is probably Sons Of Anarchy. Yes, it does have a bit of a redemptive character with Jax who is the core of the show, but he's still a villian surrounded by other villains. The show is incredibly well written, so it works. The same applies with comics. With the application of enough craft and heart, a villain series can work, and work well.

With Larry Young in the mix, there's no telling what they're going to do.

perfect, thanks guys. :)

I realize this is probably a dumb question and I'm just missing it, but is there a way to get to a master list of all the forums?

There's a lot of love for the big three on this site, but what are you all reading that qualifies as a minor indie comic. For my money, you can't go wrong with Finder by Carla Speed McNeil.

With all of the exciting news coming out of SDCC this year, I want to make sure this doesn't get lost in the shuffle. First comics is coming back after all these years. I absolutely can't wait to find out what they'll be doing.

Our local Borders is starting its liquidation sales today. I was just thinking about how this national chain going under will affect the comics industry. They never sold much in the way of floppies, but graphic novels and manga were huge. Loosing all those outlets has go to hurt a little.