Rebel, Rebel, Be Aware of Your Choices

There was a conservative rule I heard many years ago to never start a story with a curse word. You'll lose too many conservative readers that way. So I filed it away in the back of my mind with that whispering voice saying 'watch me.'

It's not that I intended to piss people off. It just seemed like both a challenge and immediate honesty. In my adult stories, adults gets mad and cuss. Some people do that. If my character is a cold-blooded assassin, it would seem silly to give them conservative scruples about language.

I waited until the story fit. In UnNamed, it fit like a glove. The sample is up and it's glaringly obvious. This guy is pissed, begrudgingly returning to follow some confusing urge to finish what he started. It's not the entirety of his character and he certainly doesn't drop f-bombs like one of the teenagers around where I live who only have the bravery to string them together when their mom isn't around to smack them upside the head.

There are many ways I'll deceive and lie to weave a story. I'm forthright about the content however. I won't hook you into my story with promises of purity then decide to jump out of a box with dildos. Mostly because I haven't had a story to tell like that, but that 'adult' label is there for a reason.

You can go against the grain with rules, but keep your story self-aware at the very least. In my experience, the biggest story killers including false virtue signaling that is never called out (some who swears over and over they are honest but lie constantly; no one calls them out on it and they don't ever develop as a character to either embrace it or change their ways) and Mary Sues. Mary Sues are those characters that no matter what happens, they are as good as safe with no actual consequences. The male equivalent being Glenn in The Walking Dead series. In order to remedy that backlash, he was killed off almost comically.

It's not that I don't see a writer's appeal in killing off characters. It's often annoying because of how lazy it seems. It's sometimes used to kill off ever having to delve into a complicated plot or just to say "see? I'm not too attached to them. They're dead now." Again, if there is some hope that those plot reveals lie with other characters, it is bearable. A writer deciding to tie up a great plot with a stupid death and a newspaper article is just poor planning.

Whatever moral scruples people have with my stories, I am aware of the importance of telling the story. I don't want the narration to become muddled with the apologies of a writer that is uncomfortable with their own story. For me, writing was about removing the annoyances I had with my own reading experiences and writing those things that I wished a story would be. I didn't want hard agendas, political commentary, and personal religious beliefs buried in my fiction.

As I said, there are many ways a storyteller will lie and deceive to make it interesting. Being aware of what I'm doing doesn't impede my decisions. I would love to have a bestsellers someday, but it will be a sweeter victory if I didn't have to sacrifice the integrity of my story just to get there.

I'm not really out to change minds. I just don't think I should invalidate my own preferences to make someone else feel comfortable. When I silence myself, I may be destroying the opportunity to reach those people who needed what I was too afraid to share. Seems like a missed opportunity.

Many of my most commercially successful friends write in genres most of you have never heard of or quickly ran from. The reception from their fans is heart-warming, grateful someone wrote what others were afraid too. It's not going to make them mainstream, but their enthusiasm and feedback is the stuff worth envying.