[This article was originally published at civilianreader.com]
So you're going to be a writer? Awesome. You are never going
to please everyone, so own it; the thin-skinned have no business being authors (or
auteurs). Words have put the most popular and successful authors on the painful
side of a controversy (Sometimes it's intentional.) That said...keep an open
mind to the opinions of critics and friends. If you are going to create
fictional scenarios that skirt the edge of mass acceptance, know why you are
writing those actions. When
George R.R. Martin decided to have brother and
sister lovers in
Game of Thrones, he was setting up the premise of the entire
series. The question of legitimate authority and unra
veling of Westeros as a
society came out of that relationship. Everything that happens in your story,
no matter how taboo, should serve the narrative.
