{"id":10277,"date":"2015-12-17T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2015-12-17T15:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/?p=10277"},"modified":"2015-12-17T01:37:22","modified_gmt":"2015-12-17T08:37:22","slug":"larry-correia-on-creating-offensive-characters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.onelowerlight.com\/writing\/larry-correia-on-creating-offensive-characters\/","title":{"rendered":"Larry Correia on creating “offensive” characters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Larry Correia has a fantastic post<\/a> up on the pitfalls of political correctness when writing fictional characters. He not only nails it on the head, he takes a nail that’s been twisted in three different directions and rams it into the wood with just a couple of well-placed taps. Seriously, if you’re interested in writing at all, you should check the whole post out.<\/p>\n

The main gist of it can be summed up by this quote:<\/p>\n

Smart writers are going to focus on entertainment. They\u2019re probably going to offend everybody at some point. But at least they won\u2019t be boring while they do it.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve said this before, and I\u2019ll say it again, the unforgivable sin for writers is being boring. As a writer you can get away with damned near anything as long as you are entertaining a big enough audience.<\/p>\n

There is a contingent of readers out there who exist only to nitpick and bitch. There aren\u2019t that many of them, but they make up for it by being loud. Many authors are under the mistaken impression that you can make these readers happy. You can\u2019t. At best you can appease them. Temporarily. But you will cross their invisible line sometime and they will get all sorts of outraged.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The latest person to get outraged was Melissa Harris Perry, who denounced Star Wars<\/a>\u00a0because Darth Vader was\u00a0(and yet at the same time wasn’t) black. Seriously. It’s like she saw this clip and didn’t realize it was satire:<\/p>\n