Author Responsibility

The dictionary defines an 'author' as 'a writer of a book, article, or report' or as 'the originator or creator of something'. On one hand, an author of fictional books is a combination of the two; someone who writes down their own ideas or worlds/situations they have created. On the other hand, they are only authors in the first sense; just a writer of things that exist outside of themselves.

To say that a fictional writer, creator of their worlds and characters, is somehow writing about things outside of and beyond themselves is a controversial idea. It implies that there is something objective about their stories and some standard for them that the author has no control over. It seems counter intuitive to say that the creator isn't the master, yet more often than not that seems to be the case.

An author isn't perfect. They may be unable to represent ideas accurately in their writings even if they understand them correctly. They may get pulled aside by other concerns and influences and bend their ideas to match their current circumstances. For whatever reason, an author can and often does move away from an accurate representation of what they have created, and in doing so, they forfeit their mastery over their creation. And the creation suffers because of it. What is represented by an author no longer matches what should be represented; they become out of sync and create inconsistencies that the readers must sort though.

It is because of this that authors have certain responsibilities to both their creation and to their readers. The chief among these is the responsibility to allow characters to grow and develop naturally, free of outside manipulation. Another way to say this might be "characters are people (um...or beings) too". The risk of having real characters that aren't flat and dull is that they have real personalities, dreams, ambitions, and so on, and they can't be naturally forced to do whatever the author wants them to do. They must be allowed to "live" and should never be forced to do things and have things done to them that aren't in accordance with their person.

The same responsibility can be repeated for situations and events. There are certain types of things that don't belong in a created world, be it an author's version of New York City or a completely new fictional world. Worlds have rules and all situations and events must conform to those rules.

In short, an author is responsible for conforming to the worlds they create. Politics and agendas need stay out. Any kind of messages conveyed should be a natural part of the created world; the best messages always are.

(This is only a short note on this topic. An entire book could be written.)