The problems with this article are legion, beginning with the author's name: Kitten Holiday. Since when do kittens take a holiday on the internet? They're in every feed of every social media site I visit, mewing, purring, sleeping, eating, pawing some unsuspecting other animal, or getting pawed, or getting wet or getting someone else wet by avoiding getting wet.
Then there's the descriptive that goes with the author's name, and I quote: "Kitten Holiday is a mix of Camille Paglia, Cameron Diaz and Mae West." That's a whole big mess right there. Ms. Paglia is the one of those three I've actually met, a big fashion industry and feminism commentator, but hasn't really been noted or quoted recently. The same could be said about Cammie, who hasn't made a film in three years, and hasn't appeared in a good film in a lot longer. And then there's Mae West. Do Millennials even know who that is, and even if they did, would it matter to them?
But that's all the appetizer. Let's get to the meat of the article, an assumption laden, definitive statement of how moralizing is destroying the writing form and that pontificating on the world you want is getting in the way of an actual story.
To answer the question Gary puts forward here, that question being:
"Does your values drive the story or does the story drive itself?"
That's an easy one. The story never drives itself. As writers, we are Gods. We create characters, we toss them into specific circumstances, complicate those circumstances even further, give them help and support before snatching it back away and making things even worse.
If you are writing something it should have some sort of agenda. Politics is probably going to be baked in, to a degree. How you see the world is going to get in there, because your POV is from where you're writing! Can they be separated? Yes, but that requires active work to do that. You would have to specifically think about avoiding or changing those elements to get them out of the way or provide a different context.
It all depends on what the message is, what the agenda is, what kind of statement you want to make with the story. If it's political, it'll be in there. If it's not, you can avoid it all, but depending on how immersed you are, could require a rewrite to be certain it's been purged.
And now that I've written an essay, I'd better write an essay.
Then there's the descriptive that goes with the author's name, and I quote: "Kitten Holiday is a mix of Camille Paglia, Cameron Diaz and Mae West." That's a whole big mess right there. Ms. Paglia is the one of those three I've actually met, a big fashion industry and feminism commentator, but hasn't really been noted or quoted recently. The same could be said about Cammie, who hasn't made a film in three years, and hasn't appeared in a good film in a lot longer. And then there's Mae West. Do Millennials even know who that is, and even if they did, would it matter to them?
But that's all the appetizer. Let's get to the meat of the article, an assumption laden, definitive statement of how moralizing is destroying the writing form and that pontificating on the world you want is getting in the way of an actual story.
To answer the question Gary puts forward here, that question being:
"Does your values drive the story or does the story drive itself?"
That's an easy one. The story never drives itself. As writers, we are Gods. We create characters, we toss them into specific circumstances, complicate those circumstances even further, give them help and support before snatching it back away and making things even worse.
If you are writing something it should have some sort of agenda. Politics is probably going to be baked in, to a degree. How you see the world is going to get in there, because your POV is from where you're writing! Can they be separated? Yes, but that requires active work to do that. You would have to specifically think about avoiding or changing those elements to get them out of the way or provide a different context.
It all depends on what the message is, what the agenda is, what kind of statement you want to make with the story. If it's political, it'll be in there. If it's not, you can avoid it all, but depending on how immersed you are, could require a rewrite to be certain it's been purged.
And now that I've written an essay, I'd better write an essay.
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