Is There a Place For Social Commentary in Our Novels?

How much social commentary should a writer put into their work? Should they put any in at all?

I think we all know how polarized our country is right now. Say the wrong thing in your novel and you’re liable to lose fifty percent of your readers. For that reason, I stay the heck away from politics.

Mostly.

These days, the strangest things set up a political firestorm. Masks, vaccines, mandates. Instead of following the science, we follow the rhetoric.

In my fourth book, Shadow Hill, I touch upon LBGTQ bias, school shootings, and climate change.

One of my characters, fifteen-year-old Caroline Bell, writes a column for her high school newspaper that centers on school shootings. Without pontificating about gun rights or gun control, she very simply talks about how many children have died in horrific, senseless mass murder events. And how, with semi-automatic weapons easily at people’s disposal, how fast it can happen and how bad the body count can be.

Caroline goes on to interview her teachers and fellow students about how they feel as they practice lockdown drills. The queasy stomachs, the nightmares, the headaches are the resulting trauma of having to train for a possible mass murder event.

When I talk about climate change in the novel, I talk about the science of the greenhouse gas effect, primarily as a result of burning fossil fuels. I also talk about insane amounts of subsidies the United States Government gives to oil and gas companies. I also mention how much money the fossil fuel industry spends on lobbying against climate change policies.

Have I lost any readers over it? I don’t think so. I’ve had neighbors on both sides of the political spectrum tell me how much they enjoyed the book. One of them even mentioned a character I introduced who was a United States Senator. The congressman in the book is sexist, hypocritical, and an opportunistic liar.

One of the hats I wear here on the coast of North Carolina is that I serve as the president of a non-profit organization called the Business Alliance for Protecting the Atlantic Coast. BAPAC represents 43,000 businesses from Maine to Florida and 500,000 commercial fishing families. Our primary goal is to oppose the offshore drilling for oil and gas. The Deepwater Horizon disaster is fresh in our minds even though it happened eleven years ago.

I’ve been to Washington DC three times and testified in front of a US House committee stating our position and why. There are presently a number of bills moving through the House that would permanently ban offshore drilling off both the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

Do I I know of any politicians as bad as the one I describe in the book? No comment.

I just finished reading a wonderful mystery by my good friend Warren Easley entitled No Witness. He spends a great deal of time in his novel talking about how immigration laws affect the Hispanic community and the distrust that they create. It too is kind of a political book but without being preachy. Will he lose any readers over it? I hope not.

So, back to my original question. How much social commentary should you put into your book? Heck, I lost a reader because I once took a shot at Fox news.

I guess it’s all about how passionate you are.

Guest Blogger Warren Easley

Type M is thrilled to welcome Warren Easley this weekend. Warren is the author of the wonderful Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries, featuring compassionate, guilt-ridden, crusading lawyer Cal Claxton and his precocious Australian shepherd, Archie.

My Kingdom for a Plot!

To paraphrase one of Shakespeare’s kings—you know, the one they found under a parking lot in Leicester a few years back—A plot, a plot! My kingdom for a plot! I love to write, always have. Give me a scene, any scene, and I’ll flesh it out for you. Give me two people caught in a face to face encounter, and I’ll capture their dialogue. Show me a setting, and I’ll bring it alive, replete with sights, sounds, smells and touch. But put all the elements of a novel together in a coherent, believable plot? That’s a task that gives me pause.

Plotting a mystery, you might argue, is easier than plotting, say, literary fiction. After all, there are some pretty clear rules in the mystery genre. For example, unless you’re a Louise Penny or a James Lee Burke, you had better kill someone off in the first fifty pages of your book, since the patience of your readers (and publisher) is notoriously short. And you also need to build-in an event that signals the approaching climax, and ensure that, in fact, you end with a bang, not a whimper. This leaves the “slushy middle”, which must never be slushy, so all manner of clever devices should be inserted to not only drive the plot but keep the pace brisk, the tone engaging.

Easy, you say?

One school of thought says outlining is the answer. Achtung! What we have here is a need for discipline, we’re told. Put your mind to it, and the plot will seamlessly unfold in an orderly sequence. This group of writers proudly refer to themselves as Outliners. I tried outlining in my early writing without much success. The experience was a little like driving in a dense fog. I could see a small distance ahead and very little from side to side. Sure, I could get something down on paper, but after a short burst of writing, the outline would have to be rewritten. Those pesky, unruly characters of mine kept asserting themselves in ways I hadn’t anticipated.

The other school of thought says that the plot is an organic element that must be allowed to evolve as the story progresses. In other words, the plot builds outwardly, informed primarily by what has already been written. Enter the Pantsers, an equally proud group that flies by the seat of its pants, metaphorically speaking. This laissez-faire approach may sound appealing, especially to those like me who dislike planning ahead. But the other side of that coin is that the story can easily bob and weave itself into chaos, a kind of literary proof of the law of entropy. And I can tell you from experience, there is nothing more painful than backing out of a corner into which you have written yourself. It invariably involves trashing a lot of good work.

Of course, authors should adopt a strategy for plotting a novel that works best for them. I land somewhere between the extremes of rigid outlining and unfettered evolution, although I admit to being a Pantser most of the time. I didn’t plan on using a hybrid strategy. It turned out that was the only way I could get a book written and keep my sanity.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to figure out how the book I’m currently writing is going to end…

_____________________-
Warren C. Easley is the author of the Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries published by Poisoned Pen Press. Coming in October, book 7, No Way to Die.
https://www.warreneasley.com
facebook.com/WarrenCEasley
poisonedpenpress.com/WarrenCEasley

Never Look Down

Our guest this week is Warren Easley who recently became the Blog Master for Poisoned Pen Press:

Warren grew up on the west coast and was educated in the UC system, where he majored in chemistry and minored in “wave mechanics and surfboard hydrodynamics.” His love affair with the mystery genre started with Ian Fleming’s James Bond gems when he was in graduate school at Berkeley. After receiving a Ph.D. he pursued a career in R&D and international business, including a stint in Geneva, Switzerland, where he learned he had no facility for foreign languages and was often accused of preferring skiing to work.

A closet poet most of his life, Warren started writing fiction 12 years ago, and currently writes for Poisoned Pen Press. Never Look Down, the third book in the Cal Claxton Oregon mystery series appears this September.

When I started writing the Cal Claxton mystery series, I had this vague notion of my protagonist, a burned out ex-prosecutor from L.A. who had moved to the Oregon wine country to start a one-man law practice in the aftermath of his wife’s suicide. I began writing the first book (a book that rests in a drawer, never to see the light of day) in first-person POV, as we say in the biz. This means the story is being told directly by Cal, so he refers to himself as “I” in the book. I did this, to be honest, without giving it much thought since I was a writing novice.

Little did I realize that I had just made a very significant decision.

As I began to tell Cal’s story in that first book, I could simply place myself in his head and “see” the story unfold from his point of view.  This was great for helping me bond with my protagonist.  As I began to see him more clearly, it was as if his thoughts and feelings emanated from him rather than me.  What would Cal do in this situation?  What would he say to this person?  After a while, I didn’t have to think about those questions as much.  I just knew.  First-person POV gave me that intimacy. 

But, wait.  I quickly learned that there’s a price to pay for this intimacy.  Since I’m telling the story strictly from Cal’s point of view, the plot can only advance through what he directly sees and does.  For a mystery with a complex plot and lots of twists and turns, this can be a daunting limitation.  Had I chosen to tell the story using a narrator who knows all and sees all (called an Omniscient Narrator) I could roam around the story and tell it from multiple points of view.  Such flexibility!  Such power being omniscient!  It was tempting, to say the least.

I began writing my first published book, Matters of Doubt, in first person POV.  After slugging through about twenty chapters and wondering if I could pull it off, I began rewriting what I had using an omniscient narrator.  Sure enough, it was easier to move about the story, which involved a couple of murders and a bunch of unruly, headstrong characters, all vying to take charge.  If I needed the reader to know about an important clue, I could simply have the narrator reveal it.  No problemo.

It was around chapter 12 of the rewrite when I had the epiphany.  I remember that moment well.  I stopped in mid-sentence, pushed myself away from the keyboard, and said out loud, “I’m not doing this!” 

 Sure, it was easier to tell the story, which was important for a writer like me, who finds it difficult if not impossible to outline.  Sure, I could plant clues and see a few more chapters ahead.  But, I had lost that intimacy with my protagonist, Cal Claxton.  It was as if he had become simply one of many players in the story.  I didn’t want this.  I wanted the story to be his story, and I wanted the reader to experience it through his eyes and nobody else’s.

 The beauty of writing, of course, is that, aside from grammar, there really aren’t any rules.  Some writers, probably most, use an omniscient narrator to tell their tale.  I’ll stick to first-person, thank you. 

 Warren C. Easley is the author of the Cal Claxton Oregon Mysteries, Matters of Doubt, Dead Float, and coming in September,  Never Look Down.

www.warreneasley.com

www.facebook.com/WarrenCEasley

www.poisonedpenpress.com