Incorporating Social Issues Into Your Manuscript
By KL Burd | May 10, 2021 |
“One writes out of one thing only—one’s own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”
James Baldwin – Notes of a Native Son
Over the ages, any revolutionary movement has an element of art tied to it, whether it be paintings, sculptures, writings or music. These mediums are weapons in the fight that shed no blood and take no prisoners, yet they inspire, enrage, motivate, and encourage.
Art is resistance to the status quo.
It is a gift that enables the user to fight against the norms of the day. The way things are. The status quo is — by its own nature — resistance… It is resistance to change. And when we look at our current state of affairs, we have to understand that there is a dichotomy between the temporary and the persistent.
The temporary state of things may refer to a loss of a job. Your goal might be to rectify that situation as soon as possible. It’s something moveable, something you can change with your actions.
The persistent state of things, however, may indicate that you are stuck in a socioeconomic system that resists movement out of one social class and into another. This part may be immovable. This is where true frustration lies — in the things we believe we cannot change.
The status quo often stares at us directly in our face, like when an SS soldier bangs on your door in 1945 Germany or a cross burns on your lawn in 1965 Georgia. It’s the persistence of a civil war in Southeast Asia or the horrors of the prison industrial complex or inequitable policies that keep us at odds with one another.
When we think about the status quo we are talking about the pieces of puzzle that refuse to budge, that refuse to move, because that’s just the way it is.
This is where art comes in. As artists, we constantly look at the persistent — the things that bother us when we examine the world. We grieve it, we agonize over it, and then we get to a place where we fight it.
We need to consider art as a powerful force against the status quo. When we do it becomes a refusal to accept the world around us for the way it is, for the way that others dictate it to be. Art is the ability to produce works that will be appreciated not only for their beauty but their emotional power.
This is when you take a look at the world around you and weave what you see into your storytelling. It’s Anne Frank penning her diary despite her persistent state of torture and ridicule. It’s Nikki Giovanni writing Nikki-Rosa — a poem dripping with resistance to the status quo. A poem that shows the hardness and complexities of life; the pain of her persistent current state, yet at the core, a declaration of joy, a proclamation of freedom within bondage.
That. Is. Art.
And here is the charge of the artist: To explain how you see the world, in a way that resonates with others, and gives them a picture of how the world ought to be. When a painter puts the first stroke on a canvas or when a sculptor lifts their knife to the clay, they commit to sharing how they see the world.
For those of us who are fiction writers, we may believe that resistance is only for commentary, poetry, or random musings, but there is power in weaving resistance into a fictional story. As a novelist, when you type the first letters of your manuscript or the first stroke of your pen touches the paper, you have taken the initial step to letting art flow out of you and into your work. Sometimes we do this unconsciously, but other times we must do it intentionally, and when we do, we see the ideals we value displayed in our characters.
Sometimes our characters can embody entire ideologies and systems. Sometimes the bad guy represents systemic inequities that need to be defeated, and sometimes our protagonist represents the people fighting to make a difference. I challenge you to not hold back when you write these characters. Instead, allow them to fully live. This enables them to do the work of shining a light on the travesties in our world. By doing this, you resist the status quo.
If the current thing on your mind is your country’s policies you don’t agree with, let those issues come out on paper. It can be justice, immigration, climate change, capitalism, socialism, equity, women’s rights, or traveling the world.
Our words give voice to our causes and legs to our campaigns. Show the world as it is, through your eyes, and people will identify with you — no matter the genre. You can write mystery, romance, fantasy, or horror and still incorporate the scary truth of the world into each of those pieces. If you’ve read Tiffany Jackson’s Grown or Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, or Catherine Adel West’s Saving Ruby King, you’ve seen three Black women tell very different stories about their own experiences and the world around them. They dig into the stereotypes, lies, secrets, and traumas that show life through their eyes.
And yet, they all give us Hope. It may be subtle and some might even argue that it’s nonexistent, but there is always hope. Hope through that one character that believes against the odds. Hope by way of the character that perseveres through beatdown after beatdown that life unloads on her. Hope in the smallest of places birthed out of a story that resonates with your soul.
This is what we long for. This is what anchors us to a book. We want to be gloriously wrapped up in the emotion of a story. As artists, bringing all of ourselves into our work is our charge.
“Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”
That last line really sticks with me. Recreate out of the disorder of life, that order which is art. As artists, as creators, as magicians of our craft, we have but one concern that’s subtly woven into our subconscious screaming to get out.
I have to speak the truth.
I have to — as Baldwin puts it — create order from the disorder of life, to help make sense of the world. To point to a vision of the future that can be better than the present we experience, and the beauty of it all is that I can do it through telling a story that is uniquely my own. Whether it’s Sci-Fi, Historical Fiction, or a Picture Book, we have the very special privilege to infuse our novel with the social issues of the day. It’s at those moments when your manuscript really comes alive.
When you take your current environment, the social issues you are passionate about, and your experiences, and paint a picture of not only how the world is but how it should be, you’ll have created a reality in which readers can fully immerse themselves. You’ll speak to the heart.
When you have actually squeezed out of yourself every bit of experience that you can possibly give, down to the last sweet or bitter drop, then you can rest knowing that your words have done their part in changing the world.
KL Burd (he/him) is a YA Speculative Fiction Author and Educator living in Austin, Texas with his wonderful wife and two amazing boys. As a former teacher and coach, KL thrives on helping individuals reach their full potential, especially young and upcoming writers. Sign up for his newsletter to connect on all things writing. KL writes fiction so that underrepresented kids, especially young Black boys and girls, can see themselves in every type of story imaginable.
Beautifully put.
I so totally agree. I have read books/authors who have given me a story strictly for escapism, yet they changed me with one subtly placed sentence that has altered my world view on a myriad of topics both social and personal.
Thank you for the reminder.
You’re welcome! It’s amazing what one well placed sentence can do.
This is a fine article, thank you. What you’re describing is really the only thing that motivates my writing. Most stickers are about good form and craft, which are important because they allow thought-provoking situations to be felt, taken in, considered. Food is only nutritious if it tastes good enough to be eaten! I like my own stories to be entertaining, funny, flowing, but theit power, and my motivation, come from what they have to say. Your article articulates that. Too often, writings about writing speak of technique and marketing but go out of their way to avoid addressing content and motivation like the plague! Thanks again for your important message
You’re very welcome! For me, the motivation and underlying story is just as important as the education factor. Stories with substance draw us in and stick with us for a lifetime.
P. S. “articles” not “stickers” in the above reply! Why is it that everything can be perfect, proofed, ready for you to quickly add 3 words and one of them is a typo?
Some days I feel overwhelmed by the crazy, and frustrated that I’m not doing more. Then I sit down and focus on the story I’m telling and the crazy goes away. Same thing happens when I read. Fiction has a super power all its own. It can slip us into another person’s head. Into a life we couldn’t have imagined living until we are suddenly living it in the pages of a book. Fiction offers us the chance to experience empathy, and if anything is going to save us, I think empathy might be the thing. Walking a mile in another man’s moccasins. Just beautiful. Thank you for the exhale this morning.
You’re so welcome Susan. I love what you said about empathy! This is the key. Those of us who love to read have developed a great sense of empathy from our fiction reading. I just had an ah-ha moment!.
Your post is a very well put call to action. I think people might think incorporating social issues into a story might be heavy handed, or “lecturing” people, but really social issues are a part of all our worlds. Science Fiction has led the way in incorporating commentary of daily life and social issues. Gene Roddenberry brought social activism to the television screen through stories about “space, the final frontier” and because it was viewed as entertainment was able to present a different way for people to view some pretty significant social issues. Stories allow us a way to expose people to ideas that they might never encounter in their own personal world. If they see the same message over and over again in other stories and television, movies, etc… then it eventually becomes normalized and social change has a smoother path.
I also love your charge to the artist–“To explain how you see the world, in a way that resonates with others, and gives them a picture of how the world ought to be.” Social issues are an undercurrent in all our lives, because we live in a society. While parts of this nation (US) seem to have forgotten how to be communal, the truth is that what happens to one of us affects all of us. In fact, I think this very concept has become a subplot in my current novel because of the social divisiveness that has become so prevalent. In any case, your point that including social issues create a deepness and relevance to story is well taken by this writer! My hope is that I do it well enough that it does resonate with readers and I can bring a little social change to their lives.
Thank you for your response Lara. As soon as you said Science Fiction and social issues I thought about Star Trek and then you mentioned the great Gene Roddenberry. Star Trek taught me (and is still teaching me) that sci-fi can be one of the greatest vessels for change by showing us what could be.
Just earlier today, I was reflecting on Geordi La Forge and was thinking that I might have to write a tribute to his character one day. I knew that Warf was played by a Black man but he was still an Alien. The fact that Geordi was a human who was revered and respected as he was as an integral and loved character on the Enterprise played a huge part in my childhood and gave me permission as a Black kid to even watch TNG. Without Geordi, I’m sure I could never see myself amongst the stars. He paved the way for Michael Burnham to be the captain of the future and for that I am grateful.
Ok… I’mma shut up before I talk about Star Trek all day. :-)
As far as I’m concerned, Star Trek: The Next Generation is the best Star Trek. :D
Even in the family story that I am writing, even with the “bad actors” that can challenge sensible and good actions, a novel can speak truth. Writers can create a world that challenges the reader to “see” truth and to react to “truth.” At all levels in society, humans must become more aware that the smallest of actions has a ripple effect.
I cannot change the evil in the world, but I sleep better knowing that I want TRUTH and GOODNESS revealed in the words that I write. Thus, what my characters do on the page directly reflects who I am. How does the story end? Supporting the desire that every reader will work toward empathy and change after reading it. Thanks for your post.
You’re welcome Beth and thank you for this! “I cannot change the evil in the world, but I sleep better knowing that I want TRUTH and GOODNESS revealed in the words that I write.”
So good! What a charge for us to continue reflecting ourselves in our work!
A fine post, thank you for your passion and commitment. I would add only this: when writers succeed in truly and accurately seeing “what is,” and write about it, “what should be” is the implicit message to readers. Here is the unvarnished truth of my experience in our times, the status quo. Now you know what needs to change, without my having to tell you.
Hi Barry!
I like that. Removing the veil automatically allows us to see what is wrong.
Yes! A thousand times, yes! I finally got needed sleep last night and was groggy this morning. Your post lifted me up in increments until I was soaring. Not just because I believed in what you say here (oh how I do), but because you reminded me of why I write the fantasy novels I write. Behind your words was the whisper, “Christina, don’t forget the purpose that powers each tale you tell.” A thousand times over, thank you! :-)
Excellent topic – and a big responsibility.
You have to be subtle – if you want to tackle the big ones.
Angry fiction has its place, but fiction that changes minds goes out to a lot of people who don’t like being preached to. They want to be entertained. So you have to do the best job of entertaining them possible, and work your change magic sub rosa, beneath characters they want to read about.
Disability and chronic illness – and the part about how the world makes that so much worse by treating the topics as taboo unless for inspiration porn or to have the character miraculously get better – are my bailiwick, in a small way. Because, you see, they affect actual people, people who rarely identify themselves in fiction.
They do make the writer a lot slower – all the more reason to make the words count.
Keivon, I loved your essay and the charge of the artist. The pen is indeed mightier than the sword and you can see how journalists and novelists and other artists are censored when a regime begins to turn totalitarian. I’m reading Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and it’s a glimpse into this process. What struck me is how complicit we are. Ayatollah Khomeini “did to us what we allowed him to do.” It is a lesson in history, politics and the power of literature.
She writes, ““The worst crime committed by totalitarian mind-sets is that they force their citizens, including their victims, to become complicit in their crimes. Dancing with your jailer, participating in your own execution, that is an act of utmost brutality.” (in reference to Nabokov’s story Invitation to a Beheading).
“The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection…Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.”
As much as we learn from history, sci-fi takes us into the future and asks us to examine the what ifs, taking ideas to their logical conclusions. So many are prophetic in nature. Thank you, Keivon.
You’re welcome, Vijaya!
Wow, this is so hauntingly beautiful, “The novels were an escape from reality in the sense that we could marvel at their beauty and perfection…Curiously, the novels we escaped into led us finally to question and prod our own realities, about which we felt so helplessly speechless.”
Writing gives you hope and possibly sadness at the same time. Sadness because your reality is not as it should be and hope because you can envision a different world. May we continue to be inspired by the dreams and visions of those we have access to, whether by proximity or within a novel.
Vijaya, I read “Reading Lolita …” a bit back and was struck, painfully, but how suppression in a society can take away or make fear-inducing the simplest things, like enjoying literature with friends. Yikes!
Our culture has shown some authoritarian turns lately (and certainly in its past) that felt ominous—I hope they don’t gel any further.
Keivon, an inspiring and considered piece—thanks!
Awesome post.
I started writing multicultural stories encouraged by my daughter, a Latinx actress. She got tired of going out for parts that made her the pregnant teenager, the gangbanging bad girl, and the neighborhood meth dealer. She asked me to write a kickass multicultural protagonist.
In the stories I write, the catalyst for the stories is members of my family and our friends. Multicultural, spectrum, and LGTBQ. And they are not *Other Voices*. *Other Voices* is an incorrect term. *Other* gives the impression that diversity is a branch off from the mainstream. But, look around you, and you know that’s not factual. Diversity is the mainstream, but too often, the media portrayal of diversity misrepresents it.
This! This is why I write. So that Black and Brown kids can see themselves in stories and not just as the stereotypical negative portrayal that we so often seen. Keep writing, it’s so important that people realize that diverse IS the mainstream. It’s the norm, not the outlier.
Yes. 1000 times over. Thank you for your encouraging words.
I’d also like to add that we NEED diverse-minded literary agents. Those stereotypes wouldn’t keep getting made if certain *gatekeepers* didn’t keep pushing it. The agents who quietly disagree with *the way things are* need to quit playing *the game* and stop acquiescing.
Equity-minded activists have been laying the groundwork and fighting the status quo for years. The conversation is not only happening; the change and reckoning that’s been a long time coming are here.
In solidarity for a better world!
Thank you, Bernadette, for helping to extinguish that word “other.” Othering is one of the major plagues of our time and culture. The more we can do—especially, as you say, by showing that diversity is not a side branch but the mainstream—the happier and more at peace we will be.
Thank you for speaking out, Anna. We need to stand in solidarity to make this world a better place, and that includes our writing.