Writing Excuses 5.18: Offending Your Readers

Send your angry emails to Howard, because this was totally his idea. This is a discussion of avoiding unnecessary offense. Sometimes, especially in humorous works, offense is a required risk, so that's not where we're going here. We're going to talk about the sorts of things we sometimes do that offend our readers, and how we can prevent those sorts of elements from entering into our writing -- at least into our final drafts. Some of the offenses we might offer include talking down to the reader, certain racial and gender demographics, poor representation of a particular culture and/or gender (anyone remember RaceFail from two years ago?), straw men, potemkin villages, open moralizing, and breaking the promises we make to our readers. Book of the Week: Dragon's Ring by Dave Freer, available now in paperback from Baen Books. Ask for it by name at the bookstore. Inspiration for This Podcast: A completely unrelated request from Oletta. Howard's New Band Name: "Nuke The Blue Monkeys" Writing Prompt: Start with hard science-fiction, move to werewolf romance.