Don't Try This At Home!

My characters do lots of inadvisable things. They break laws and make hasty contracts with faeries and stomp all over their partner's feelings and lots of other things. At the same time, I (and others) harp a lot on this blog about how such-and-such a portrayal of XYZ character promotes some dodgy stereotype. 

So this all ends up in the confusing zone for a lot of writers. My coauthor and I certainly had plenty of conversations to that effect when we were writing Forgotten Gods. On one hand, we wanted to have a realistic portrayal of 'characters behaving badly', but on the other, we wanted to make sure we weren't endorsing their all of their views, some of which are pretty bigoted.

I think a big part of the trick is maintaining authorial distance, and making sure that the character's PoV doesn't merge with the 'objective reality' of the story (yes, it's possible to show a discrepancy, even with first person narration). Easier said than done, but certainly superiour to scrubbing up your characters and your world. [image error]