The Moral Responsibility of the Storyteller

This was a panel at #Nerdcon 2015. Transcribed from notes in 2023.

Ethics

Rothfuss: Where is the line between didactic ethics and entertainment, and where storytellers fall, which is more important to storytelling?

Reading the hobbit to his 3 year old, Gandalf & Bilbo both are smoking, kid started putting things in his mouth, pretending to be smoking.

And that's not in his worldview (teaching his kid to smoke)

Smoking is the only magical thing that happens in the Hobbit that we can make happen.
Or the princess and the frog, where kids were hospitalized w/ salmonella from kissing frogs.
Unintended consequences.
(things you don't expect to happen come from your writings, how do you deal with that?)

For example: Attitudes about abuse, violence, relationships, drug use, etc.

Nalo Hopkinson: Can't control what your readers understand about your work. But you have a responsibility to consider it, to think what you are writing and how people will take it.

Paolo Bacigalupi: It's easy to get sucked into the whirlpool of consequences, and the scale is large

When you interact with someone and you tell someone a story, you can tell one story and gauge the reactions based on them (same with a small group), when you send your book out into the world, you cannot interact with them, you can't correct or dissuade, and more people will read it than you'll ever talk to, the scale is impossible to grasp

Nalo:
You have to show people themselves (re: killing your father). Offer them a catharsis they cannot actually experience. People with similar experiences will see themselves there, and can experience that and work through it w/o killing their own dad.
Responsibility: Offer an outlet that avoids bad results

Lev Grossman:
Hadn't considered it before the panel.
Hard to write something worth reading, much less something that's morally sound

We offer readers a tiny bit of info and they collaborate massively, and bring everything else to the table.

A text file has small amount of information. There's only so much you can truly convey through the novel, every time someone reads it it's different.

Rare to find something in a character that isn't lurking in yourself. If you say "I want to kill my father", the book didn't plant that thought, it just brought it out.

"Our moral responsibility is to show people a moral way to survive in the world."

A reprehensible moral set can destroy a book.

Paolo:

General responsibility, but more a responsibility to your own values. Fine line between presenting and teaching. Also accidental values: over/under rep of different races or genders.

He thinks it should be didactic.

Is creating discomfort unethical? Is discomfort necessary

Paolo:
Sometimes one persons unethical is someone else's catnip. "I like stories where everyone gets killed", could be someone else's real life experience

Rothfuss: difference between disliking a book and "this book is culturally poisonous because…"

[like depiction of women]

[story of stopping women from using magic]

Paolo: no such thing as just a story. Look at Ayn Rand. You can't predict what people will grab, or label as truth

Lev:
We depend on novels to determine what's human? Where the line between people wanting to do bad things and encouraging bad things?

Tropes

Pat:
Writing Fella in fishery, something needed to happen, something big, so there was a fire. Oops that was a trope, damsel in distress. Tried rewriting it Sim, but it isn't the same. Because there's something comforting having the same story over and over again.

Babies first trope: one two three, throw, one two three, throw, they start laughing at 2, but if you give them a 4, they look at you with disgust.

Even thought it's not the BEST thing, it's what people expect

Nalo:
Sometimes people and events fit into tropes.
Rachel sews and cooks, but isn't stereotypical housewife.

Lev:
Novels have easy answers pressed against hard questions, but ethics requires hard answers.

Paolo:
Novels comfort us about what it means about what it means to be human. Fiction should piss SOMEOME off. If it doesn't piss anyone off, it's probably garbage. Growth comes from being uncomfortable

Nalo:
When you write, people are going to be offended, and sometimes people are right. That's how you grow as a writer too, if you look back and realize you were wrong. Every story should be a discussion.

Pat:
"I'm going to try really hard not to take a shit in our collective subconscious"

Jim Henson had a quote from Pan's Labyrinth: I want you to leave feeling like the world is a better place, that people are good. 2023 note: Somehow I feel this is about Labyrinth, not Pan's Labyrinth

Reading is intensive therapy for empathy, they make you realize you're a human being.

Trigger warning should help you avoid making you uncomfortable, it needs to stop you from CRISIS, from total shutting down.

Instance of casual racism might make someone uncomfortable. If it throws you into psychological distress, YOU probably need help

Nalo: I don't mind scenes that throw me off, if I'm avoiding that, it tells me what I need to work through.

Lev:

As a reader, we have a responsibility to recognize the issues that are presented in the novel, and know when they do reflect in us.

If you see something ethically unsound in a character and that resonates with you, you have a responsibility as a human being to step back and examine yourself (not just with reading, anytime). As long as it isn't codified in the book as OK, as long as it's not presented as okay, then it's okay to be there.

Human condition featuring the desire to do the bad thing.

Writer responsibility to include that ^^ realism in your character crafting.

"We depend on novels to learn about being human", to depict humans honestly, with flaws and all. Even if they follow all political correctness they have to be good, or they can be racist and bad, or a minority and not have that be important.

Joe Abreocombe books are mortally bankrupt that make YOU feel like you need to be better.

Character who's transgender, The Jester, as a side character: it's great to have a character who is a minority as the main character, the book becomes about them struggling with that, but if they are a side character, it's not their defining characteristic, and it's still important. (he didn't notice the Jester until about 4 books in being trans).

Don't introduce it that way.

Mal: Nonchalance in heart of gold when saying not gay. (2023 note: this is a reference to Firefly, though I no longer remember the exact instance.)

When you have a defining characteristic that isn't mainstream, it doesn't HAVE to define them, and show how other characters react to them. If you make a big deal out of it, it's regressive.

If you include a PERSON who happens to be trans, it's healthy, are they doing things, are they important.