You don’t need it, but in a post on Lit Reactor, Peter Derk gives you permission to write horribly offensive things, which he says will change your writing for the better.
First, Derk says ideas are neither offensive nor inoffensive, because they exist only as words or images in your head. Once you put your ideas down on paper, you and others can decide if they are offensive. As an example, Derk notes the similarities between Spider-Man and the movie Death Wish. In both, the protagonist is affected by violent crime and becomes motivated to fight it. However, some audiences found Death Wish offensive, because of the way it depicted the rape of the protagonist’s daughter, the inciting event. In contrast, Spider-Man seems a wee bit more heroic.
Derk encourages writers to explore these possibly offensive ideas. “You need the experience,” he says. “You need to go too far sometimes.” The definition of “too far” will differ from writer to writer, but you won’t know your own line until you cross it. “Better you learn these lessons on the page than in public, than on Twitter, than in some other way that’s far more visible to the average person,” Derk says.
Whether you publish work you believe is offensive is also up to you, but the exploration is important, Derk says. “If you don’t take a single step into the wild for fear of taking the wrong step, you won’t get a whole lot of exploring done,” he writes. “Writing is the same way. If you can’t write a line for fear of causing offense, you won’t get a lot of writing done.”
