Let Them Be Ugly.

There’s a nervous way writers handle bigotry in dialogue, and you can spot it a mile off. The slur gets softened. The bigot gets a redeeming moment two lines later, just so nobody’s confused. Or the whole thing gets a wink at the camera so the Reader knows the Writer doesn’t really mean it. I get why people do it. Nobody wants to be misread. But here’s the thing: real bigots don’t hedge, and if your character hedges, you didn’t actually write a bigot. You wrote someone doing an impersonation of one.

My characters say ugly things. And I don’t clean it up after. Not because I’m trying to shock anybody, but because I trust you, the reader, to know the difference between a character’s voice and mine without me holding your hand through it. That’s the whole ask. Not “believe I don’t mean this personally.” I shouldn’t have to say that. Just: trust yourself to know it.

Let me show you what I mean.

Easy version first: A dad sees his son sitting with my character Northway, shooting the breeze, sharing peanuts, nothing weird going on, and without knowing ANY of that, the guy snarls “You’re one of those pedophile faggots, aren’t you!?” and hauls his kid off. That man is just wrong. Nobody’s confused about him, nobody feels for him, and honestly? Any writer can pull that off. It costs you nothing. It’s rubbish.

Now to the one that actually costs something: Later in the same book, Northway runs into the ghost of his childhood sweetheart, his fiancée, the one he lost, the one this whole story already made you grieve right alongside him. She is NOT some stranger. She is not wrong to be in pain. In the middle of that pain, jealous over the woman who’s taken her place, she calls Burningsand a slur. A bad one. Bad enough I’m not printing it here, and I’ll get to why.

That’s a different animal entirely, because I’d already spent real pages making you care about her. The easy move, right there, is to pull the punch. Give her a softer line. Let her grief excuse it. I didn’t do that. She says the ugly thing plain, and nobody rushes in to forgive her or punish her for it. Both things just get to be true at once: her pain is real, AND what she said is inexcusable. Holding both without picking one, that’s the actual work. Anyone can write the dad at the pool. Writing her is what costs you something as a Writer.

That’s the test I’d give you, if you want one: could the ugly line survive without me jumping in to tell you how to feel about it? The pool dad doesn’t need that test. Nobody’s confused. Northway’s former fiancee does need it, and she passes, because I’m trusting you to already know a person can be someone you love AND say something unforgivable, in the same breath, without either one canceling the other out.

And honestly, that’s what real bigotry actually looks like most of the time anyway. It’s not cartoonish strangers. It’s people you already love, caught in the moment they feel most entitled to their worst self. Writing it softer than that isn’t kindness to you, the reader. It’s just me ducking the harder book.

I’m not going to tell you the word she used. That’s not me being coy. It’s the same rule, just running the other way. In the book, that word is hers. It’s her worst moment, and I let her have it without apologizing for her. Out here, talking to you directly? It’s not hers anymore. It’s just an ugly word in MY mouth, with no character left to carry it. So you don’t get it that easy. If you want to know what she said, go meet her the way I did: inside the story, where it’s actually hers to say, and actually costs what it should.

That’s the whole difference between writing a bigot and being one. It was never about the words on the page. It’s about whose mouth they’re allowed to live in, and whether you, the Writer, are brave enough to step back and let them.

No matter what you do, keep writing.

~ Shiri