Cliches, stereotypes, and oxymorons…
Stereotypes can be misleading. They’re often originally based in some truth. NYC used to have a lot of Irish cops, for example—maybe not so much anymore. Maybe blonds do have more fun, but with both sexes dying their hair all the colors of the rainbow, who can say that this is still true? Oxymorons can mislead too. Intelligent politician, ethical businessperson, fair media, and so forth can be a lot of fun, but whether they’re true isn’t often so obvious.
I guess a stereotypical oxymoron is doubly questionable. Honest lawyer, for example, might bring to mind ambulance chasers, defenders of MLB drug users, and sleazy legal departments at polluting corporations, but undoubtedly malign many lawyers out there who strive to make people’s encounters with the law as painless as possible, often taking cases pro bono because either the persons can’t pay up front or they’re overwhelmed by life’s tragedies.
An author has to be careful with both. Both can be used, especially in dialog. People often use stereotypes in ordinary speech; they often use oxymorons without realizing it too. One can spice up speech that way by using them. One can have one character correct their use by another character. But an author has to be careful. If s/he wants to show a character’s a bigot, have him use a bigoted stereotype, but a misuse can spell disaster.
A lot of fun can be had by playing against stereotype or developing a situation where an oxymoron isn’t really oxymoronic. A hard-boiled detective is a stereotype, but a female cop goes against that stereotype. My character Dao-Ming Chen and Tess Gerritsen’s Jane Rizzoli play against this stereotype. My Rolando Castilblanco might be hard-boiled, but he’s no Sam Spade—the Puerto Rican cop plays against stereotype in many ways too. Hispanics are typically Catholic; Castilblanco’s become a Buddhist. Instead of Bogart’s dangling cigarette or Savalas’ lollipop, Castilblanco sucks Tums.
Stereotypes are often confused with clichés. Many stereotypes are clichés, but the reverse isn’t necessarily true. And some stereotypes aren’t clichés—in fact, you can have fun trying to create new stereotypes, which, by definition, can’t be clichés. Readers might think, “Geez, that’s true in general,” or “That has a lot of truth in it,” and you’ve created a new stereotype. In this case, there must be some truth associated, or what you say won’t be accepted as a stereotype.
Some authors don’t realize they’ve used a stereotype or oxymoron. If that doesn’t affect the story, that’s OK. One can become so immersed in the cultural background of a story that this can happen. But that adage about “knowing your reading audience” (actually a cliché) can apply here. If you don’t know and your target audience is insulted, you’re in trouble. In fact, if I’m reading your ebook and break out laughing when reading a serious scene because you unintentionally used an inappropriate stereotype or oxymoron, you’re in trouble. It’s best to recognize that what you’re writing could be either one and decide whether it fits or not.
Sometimes you’re too close to your prose to do this. A good content editor (hopefully not an oxymoron) or beta-reader might save the day. A little note to the effect “you’re doing X to a whole bunch of readers Y—did you mean to do that?” can be a lot of help before you publish the novel. If your answer is “I intended that,” you’re OK—that might be a correct response if you want to paint the character using the stereotype or oxymoron as some kind of anti-Y. But if you didn’t intend that, you might want to fix it.
This isn’t easy. I’m sure I’ve unintentionally offended some people in my prose. On the other hand, while not wanting to encourage Trump wannabes, I do think political correctness is overrated. Certainly non-PC characters are part of life in general. Even if you’re writing sci-fi, your characters still need to appear real. That’s easy in non-fiction. I’m reading a Churchill bio—he, FDR, and Papa Joe Stalin were real scalawags, so it isn’t right to hide those facts just to be PC. Similarly, characters in our fiction can be real louts too—that makes the fiction seem more real.
I don’t want to belabor these words of advice. If anything, they only show that writing a novel isn’t the easy task some people say it is. Maybe I should say “good novel.” But maybe there would be a lot more good ones if writers paid attention to some of these ideas. Using stereotypes and oxymorons is a part of this art as much as anything else. Something to watch out for, that’s sure.
In elibris libertas….
