For Whom Do We Write?: A Musing About Literary Choices

I believe we all have the right to live as we choose as long as we don’t cause harm. No one has the right to tell someone who they are or who they should be, personally or professionally. This is true in our writing as well. No one has the right to dictate which stories we tell, or how we tell them.

Authors tell stories. We write about the things we know, and things we imagine. We pull from our personal lives and life around us. Our experiences shape the characters we draw and the worlds we create. As we write, we incorporate what is most important to that story. These elements build that particular world alone. As writers, we also want to sell our stories, to have them read by people (hopefully outside our circle of family and friends) and have them mean something to the reader. So, what do we do when our subjects are not hot in the current market? We make a choice.

Our choices are our own. We may choose to alter the story we would write to make it more marketable to the masses, based on current trends. Popular catchphrases of the day may be used as tag words when marketing the story, clickbait for the savvy surfer. We may sell more copies of what we have written, but, perhaps at a cost?

I recently read the 5th novel in a series I have loved from the beginning. The character arcs are full of depth and the world building phenomenal. In the latest book, however, trending topics were introduced. It’s not that I mind the topics, it’s that they don’t feel real. It seems as though the author tried to appease the masses at the cost of the story’s flow. If these elements had been there from the beginning, they would simply be a part of the overarching plot. As written, they feel like cheap handouts.

I understand the choice. I’m simply disappointed in the writer. For me, as long as the trending subjects are part of the true story the writer is trying to tell, they work. As superfluous additions, they don’t.

We all have the right to write as we like. At the end of the day, the only person who has to live with who we choose to write for is ourselves. How do you choose?