Is bigotry always necessary in a story?
I asked a question here on how to avoid political issues when I have a witch MC named Kem who is nonbinary, and a few people suggested that instead of including any kind of transphobia towards Kem, I should talk about how discrimination and anti-witch sentiments exist in Kem's world. I know that there is a stigma around witches and the wiccan religion, and touching on that or making it a plot point could either aid or impede my story. But I am still on the fence about including anti-witch bigotry in my story.
Do bigotry and other conflicts like it make a story more interesting? In a story centered around a group of people who have experienced persecution in the past, is it essential to talk about bigotry?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/42079. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
Conflict makes the story interesting. If there's no conflict of some sort, if everything your characters want - they get handed on a silver platter, then you've got no story.
Does the conflict(s) have to include bigotry? Not at all. Jim Butcher's Dresden Files series, an Urban Fantasy set in modern-day Chicago, include characters of every shape, gender, colour and species in sight. And I do not recall any bigotry whatsoever across 15 novels and two short stories collections.
No bigotry in Asimov's multiple Robot stories either, unless it is some people's suspicion of robots (but most of the time that's similar to people not liking TV or computers, when those were a novelty).
If bigotry adds a meaningful aspect to your story, include it. Doesn't have to be real-life bigotry either: consider how in X-men, there's the negative sentiment towards mutants. If bigotry adds nothing, don't shoe-horn it in. There are multiple real-life issues you're not including. Why should bigotry get preferential treatment?
0 comment threads
0 comment threads