Convincing argument about something I don't agree with

How can I write from the point of view of a character whose beliefs, at best, I disagree with, and at worst, view as immoral and inhumane? How can I give Day convictions in his beliefs when I myself have no such convictions?

Congratulations. You've just realized that being a writer is harder than it looks.

This is one of the key questions you need to face if you want to become a good writer, and there is no cookbook answer.

It's easy to write stories in which the protagonist and all of the good guy supporting cast are essentially you, with perhaps some of your fantasies about yourself added just to spice things up. The problem is, eventually you wind up with a story infested with mini-me's and not much in the way of a believable story. Tossing in some of your friends will help, but only if you can do them justice.

In order to create believable bad guys, you basically have two choices:

1) Hang out with bad guys and get to know them. Well, OK, maybe just reading extensively about various types (especially if you read some apologists or fans), but that's just a different form of "hang out with".

2) Use your imagination.

And no, the second one is not (entirely) being snarky. I'm afraid my memory is a bit too rusty for proper attribution, but I recall reading a quote from an author who was being accused of sympathy for his villain's philosophy, and it went something like,

There is a term for writers who only write stuff they agree with. That term is idiot.

The writer Joe Haldeman once wrote,

The conventional advice is, "Write what you know". This accounts for the large number of bad novels written about middle-aged university professors who are contemplating adultery.

On a slightly different tack, the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein had his greatest cultural impact with his 1961 novel, Stranger in a Strange Land which had a very considerable (semi-cult) following during the Countercultural Revolution of the '60s and '70s. Thing is, in an interview he stated that he basically wrote it as an exercise in embracing values he did not believe in, yet acting as a cultural agent provocateur.

So. Can you put aside your own prejudices and philosophy, and really and truly grant that others sincerely believe in something else? If so, can you (temporarily, one hopes) encompass those values? That, in effect, is what you need to do.

If you cannot do that, all is not lost, but it will mean that you'll need to avoid writing stories in which you (through your characters) must convincingly argue both sides of an issue.

EDIT - And, I would add, you should be aware that a book which attempts to discuss philosophy is one of the hardest types to do well, the other being comedy. Since a writer almost always favors one position over the other, it gets really difficult to do the other side justice, and the difference in the quality of the arguments shows up vividly. Plus, of course, the temptation to lecture usually becomes overwhelming, and knowing when to shut up tends to go by the wayside. ("But I have just one more point that NEEDS to be made!")

That's not to say that, even if you succumb to the temptations which occur, you will necessarily write an unsellable novel. Ayn Rand made a very respectable living that way.

posted almost 6 years ago

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WhatRoughBeast‭

40 reputation 0 8 8 0

The world isn't all black and white - it's grey and gray. There are arguments to be made for dictatorship. Consider, at the very least, the famous joke "a camel is a horse designed by a committee." It emphasises the ineffectiveness of group decision-making. What is democracy, if not a country run by a committee?

You agree with the opposing arguments - lovely. (So do I, but that's beside the point.) You've got to learn the logic of the side you disagree with. Read the relevant philosophers (starting with Plato, Hobbes and Machiavelli), structure your character's argument around statements that make sense.

Don't make your character an extremist; nobody is going to get on board with a statement like "we should kill them because they're ugly". But a statement like "how can a person without the education to understand the implications of certain actions demand that the government take those actions?" is a more nuanced argument, and not a stupid one at that (comes from Plato). And shall I remind you that dear democratic Athens voted to execute Socrates, because his ideas were "unsettling"? So maybe letting the massed rule is not such a great idea after all, and somebody wiser should protect them from their own ignorance and prejudice? Nuance and "making sense" are key.

The arguments that are most interesting from a story perspective are usually not the ones where one side is "right" and one is "wrong", but those in which one side (or both) takes their argument too far - they have goals one can agree with, but they use means which get out of hand; or, alternatively, arguments where one side is too idealistic - where what they say would work if only everyone in the system (or at least, the ruling class) were good, smart, honest and responsible, instead of being regular people with failings, at best.

posted almost 6 years ago

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Galastel‭

1885 reputation 81 551 319 3

It's possible that you have 2 problems here.

The first is that you're trying to find convincing arguments in support of someone who rules through fear, power and intimidation. Generally, these types of classic villain don't need a more convincing argument for people to follow them than "I will kill you if you don't". Sauron never needed people to listen to his arguments for why he would be the best ruler, he simply killed anyone who stood in his way.

The second is that you're asking the Turkey to vote for Thanksgiving/ Christmas. It's not possible to reasonably convince a genetic mutant that the oppression and imprisonment of genetic mutants is a good thing. Even if the argument is that it might be better for the population at large, it still isn't the best thing for her personally.

There are many solutions to these problems, but I'll give a couple of suggestions.

To fix the first, you could give the antagonist's belief system some positive qualities. There are already many suggestions that others have offered, but fundamentally if you're taking away people's freedoms, you need to give something back. Maybe people aren't allowed to criticize the dictatorship, but the trains always run on time and no one ever goes hungry. Even if people can't move up in society, make sure that they either have no reason to, or that they believe they do not deserve to.

For the second problem, you only need to look at politics as it works now, and has worked for a long time for a solution. You might blame all of society's problems on a minority, but in order to convince people in an oppressed minority to support you, find a sub-minority within that group to blame their problems on. Have him tell her that sure, people look down on genetic mutants, but within the mutant society there are people who are so mutated that they can't help but be violent, and really they are the ones causing the problems. He can try to convince her that if there were no uber-mutants, then society wouldn't look down on mutants in general.

This then causes a potential problem that you don't want the readers to actually support the villain's version of the truth, so you need to hinge the whole argument around an inalienable truth. Maybe Day meets one of these uber-mutants and realizes they're not so bad, so comes to the conclusion that he's being lied to by his father about their threat to society. Maybe the costs of the fascist society are more than he ever realized, and because there is no freedom of speech these costs are never realized to the people. It could even be that the dictator is himself creating the mutants to give people something to hate, all so he can stay in power.

Overall, to think of a convincing argument for something you don't agree with, try to think of how someone might actually try to convince you to support the argument. I tend to follow this simple rule: If there aren't enough reasons to convince you that a character should follow a certain belief, the reader won't be convinced they should either. If you need to introduce more positive reasons that a character should believe the argument then that is fine, so long as there is one central idea that separates right from wrong, and allows the character and thus the readers to know which is which.

posted almost 6 years ago

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Mike.C.Ford‭

165 reputation 8 17 30 0

Give him a compassionate reason, even if it is wrong

Like maybe mutants sometimes murder their friends in uncontrolled rages.

Day believes (correctly, from one of your other questions) that these mutants don't have control over their emotions. Day's father seems stern and heavy-handed, but it's because he's seen so many lost to these mutants. No one can stop all murders of course, but these mutants are something different. Just one of them, in an instant, can kill anyone within distance.

Justify the negatives by doubling down on compassion

People are afraid. They want a strong force to crack down on these mutants. Day knows these generals and ministers, he grew up around them. He knows they are good people, not tyrants. They have to show extreme force because these mutants look like anyone. Most of it is just "security theater", that means everyone expects to be searched so it works as a deterrent. If there are "good" mutants, they will stay away from populated areas. The extra security, and routine military searches, work to keep us all safe.

Innocent lives are saved every day. That's all he really needs to know.

posted almost 6 years ago

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wetcircuit‭

523 reputation 24 58 96 0

The best way to try and understand how someone might have arrived at different convictions/beliefs from yourself is to go back into their history and see the incremental steps and events that lead them there.

For example:

Day believes his father is a good person

While his day job might involve plenty of oppressing innocent mutants and ordering the deaths of those who have failed him for the last time (accompanied by suitably theatrical cackling) how has Day experienced his father?

It's unlikely that Day went around throwing his son into prison on a regular basis, instead he probably fed him, provided him with a a home, presents and so on. Nor did he probably come home from the office (Evil lair?) and reporting that he oppressed this person and beheaded that, instead if it was discussed it was more likely "I had to put down another rebellion of dangerous mutant criminals today, if they had their way they would kill me, your mother and you."

If Day never gets to see the other side of the coin (and really how would he?) then what reason would he have to doubt his father's intentions and actions.

Day believes that mutants are dangerous and subhuman

Well if his parents, teachers, friends etc have all been telling him the these things since he was a baby why would he believe otherwise? Probably all he ever sees of mutants is angry rebels who are saying bad things about his dad. Add in a few choice lies about dangerous mutant plots etc (his father doesn't sound like someone who would be over-burdened with honesty!) and it's going to be logical for him to believe that mutants are, well dangerous and subhuman.

What makes this even easier is that there will almost certainly have been rebellions, coup attempts and the like over the years.. say there was an attempt by mutants to bomb his father's car (or plane, or spaceship etc) a few years earlier. From Analise's perspective these mutants were freedom fighters, trying to remove an evil dictator and free their people from oppression. From Day's perspective does it really look that way? Or does it just appear that some people tried to kill his father.

As the old adage goes "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", it's all a matter of perspective.

Dictatorships are good

Dictatorships are good - for the dictators and their friends/families. Even the most malevolent of dictatorships is going to look very different to people on the "inside", they have plenty of food, things are clean and safe. Add in that a dictator's son's experience of life outside the safety of the Evil Lair is going to be largely of orderly, clean and healthy looking civilians (who aren't likely to be saying bad things about his dad while he's there with his armed guards!) and it would be easy to conclude that his dad's leadership is what keeps order and keeps these people safe (at least in appearance) and fed. Tie that with the continually reinforced opinions about the "dangers" of mutants (see above) and you can justify an awful lot of oppressive-behavior as peacekeeping and protection. Especially if the more dubious elements of what the regime does is kept under wraps.

posted almost 6 years ago

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motosubatsu‭

165 reputation 1 37 31 0

Put your research into real life propaganda spoken by real dictators and oppressors. These dictators could never have become so popular if what they said didn't make a certain amount of sense to someone who didn't have all the facts.

e.g. While Hitler was rising to power, what he was saying made a lot of sense to the depressed, defeated impoverished Germans living under an ineffective government. Likewise, communists were well able to point out that in the 19th century, huge amounts of workers were being oppressed and mistreated, working hard to earn huge money for their bosses but not seeing any of it themselves.

How did your dictator rise to power in the first place? There must have been some sort of (at least perceived) injustice going on that he could play to in order to get the people on his side.

The argument to imprison mutants can be made similar to real life arguments against immigration, for example, only taken to the extreme.

posted almost 6 years ago

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colmde‭

35 reputation 2 5 6 0

The main issue is that you have created a stock villain without depth. You have given him a son in the hope to give him a voice, but there is nothing to voice because they are both just extreme stereotypes: the fascist-dictator and the naive-dreamer.

You need to rework your villain. Give him a purpose that you can agree with, and make his actions justifiable, both wrong and right. The best villain you can hope for is one that could almost lure you into agreeing with him.

In its current form and in your current state of mind there is nothing truly that can give a decent shape to your one dimensional dialogue.

posted almost 6 years ago

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_X_‭

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