Reading, 'Riting, and Ramblings

True to character, Sweetie and I kicked off 2016 with a snore. At 11pm on December 31st, Sweetie looked at the clock, said "Eh, it's midnight somewhere," gave me a Happy New Year kiss and headed off to bed. By the light of the Christmas tree we have yet to put away, I sampled e-books from the library until the booms of distant fireworks died down and I could sleep in peace.

The next day I welcomed the new year with a new hair color: "Ultimate Black" from the Superior Preference line by L'Oreal Paris.

(I'm not wearing any makeup in this picture—just a swipe of lip balm. After I stopped using harsh acne-fighting products and switched to moisturizing cleansers and creams for sensitive skin, my face became clearer than it ever has been since my prepubescent years. Sometimes medications are the problem, not the cure.)

Last night Sweetie asked me what my 2016 goals are. In general, making New Year's resolutions doesn't work for me because I have a capricious character. If I get a bright idea to accomplish something but don't act on it immediately, I forget about it, or lose interest, or get cold feet. "Tomorrow" or "sometime this year" or "one of these days" usually translates to "never."

If I do make goals, they need to be very specific, attainable, and time-bound. Vague or overly ambitious resolutions will lie broken in my mental dumpster by Valentine's Day. For example, instead of, "Sometime I need to sit down and read this important but dry nonfiction book," which will never happen, I need to say, "Starting right now, I'll read 25 pages of this book every day for the next month."

So the goals below aren't very impressive, because I need to keep them realistic.

Health Goals

I'm in pretty good shape health-wise. My clothes still fit well, I've weaned myself off of candy, and my daily meals and snacks are full of fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and whole grains. The one area I've been slacking off is exercise. Changing into thin workout clothes and using the treadmill when the living room is 50-something degrees is not pleasant.

My health goal for 2016 is to stick to my current goal, which is to exercise for at least half an hour each day, alternating days between walking/jogging and stretching/strengthening. I have no excuse not to do it, since I can do both while watching dramas or reading books.

Financial and Career Goals

At this point, my financial situation is largely out of my control. We don't have a money tree out back, and we've already cut spending to the bone. Thanks to Sweetie's vigilance with the budgeting software, all of our income goes into fixed costs, student loan payments, and emergency savings. We rarely go out, we don't have cable or smartphones, and we moved to a cheap voice-only plan from a carrier whose target demographic is retired seniors on Social Security. I get $20 a month to spend on "frivolities"—cosmetics, clothes, etc.—and that's it.

All I can do this year is work on climbing up the career ladder one rung at a time, so we'll be better off in the future. I'm keeping an eye out for higher education jobs that would give me greater responsibilities, either in IT or in library administration, and I'll keep working on projects to improve my resume and portfolio.

Writing Goals

I have two writing goals for this year.

1. Finish the detailed outlines for all three books of my fantasy trilogy.
2. Finish the first draft of book one.

Originally I was going to write the first book before tackling the others. But after I completed the outline for book one, Sweetie convinced me it's smarter to outline the others as well. I don't want my trilogy to have a "tiger's head, snake's tail" (虎头蛇尾)—to start off powerfully but end weakly. Outlining them all in detail will ensure I'll write the whole thing as one cohesive story in three acts, rather than ending up with one good book and two disappointing sequels.

According to Wikipedia, the top five highest-grossing movies of all time, adjusted for inflation, are Gone with the Wind (1939), Avatar (2009), Star Wars (1977), Titanic (1997), and The Sound of Music (1965).

These movies are in different genres and have wildly different settings and story arcs. But they all have one thing in common, one element with universal and timeless appeal: romance.

Everyone loves a good romance. Women adore love stories openly. Men enjoy love stories more than they're allowed to admit. Children years away from puberty watch the love stories in animated movies over and over and over. Ancient tales the world over revolve around romance: heroes battling men and monsters for the sake of beautiful brides, girls overcoming magical trials to net handsome grooms.

The appeal of romance isn't just animal instinct. Romance is the promise of happiness. Love stories give people the dream of safety and stability with someone who cares.

What Is Not Romance

Sex is not romance.

Like people in real life, writers often confuse lust for love. They write about intoxicating kisses and earth-shattering orgasms and think their stories are romantic, but they're just erotic.

Some writers of romance novels try to show how much the hero loves the heroine by dwelling at length on his desire to ravage her. In every scene, he's dazzled by her curvaceous beauty. He's overwhelmed with the need to possess her, and he struggles valiantly to stop himself from pouncing on her like a wild animal in heat.

This is the same kind of "love" a man feels for actresses in pornographic movies. A man being aroused by a voluptuous woman doesn't mean she's his One True Love, any more than a man being tempted by a Krispy Kreme means that particular glazed confection is the One True Doughnut. The same goes for women, obviously. If a heroine's heart races at the sight of the hero's impressive abs, it's because she's a healthy young woman, not because he's her soulmate.

Sexy scenes are fun and titillating, and they add sizzle to a novel if you're writing for adults. They also stroke the ego, because people like to fantasize about being desired. But they're not romantic, because physical attraction is fleeting. The emotional high of passion fades minutes after it ends. When a fictional relationship consists of nothing but sex, the "romance" doesn't promise eternal happiness.

Dysfunction is not romance.

Since the neo-Gothic days of Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, writers have been glorifying dysfunctional relationships in romantic fiction.

In a typical New Adult novel for women, a virginal heroine falls for a poetically dangerous bad boy who's gorgeous on the outside and broken on the inside. He has anger management and substance abuse issues. The angelic heroine is the only person in the world who can understand him. She sees past his drunken rages to the wounded heart underneath, and she heals it with her innocent trust and devotion.

In contemporary books and movies for young men, the hero often crushes on a Manic Pixie Dream Girl who's an emotional wreck. Like a firework in the night sky, she dazzles him with her wild ways and then self-destructs in spectacular fashion.

Like the fantasy of being irresistible, the fantasy of being the martyr who offers salvation to a doomed soul strokes the ego. But there are two reasons it isn't romantic.

First, a proper relationship is between two people, not one person and a paper doll whose only reason for existing is to make the protagonist feel heroic. These tortured bad boys and wild girls are usually caricatures, not characters. They're Damaged Damsels in Distress who have no purpose in their stories other than to be rescued and to shower their saviors with love.

Second, only naive or willfully unrealistic readers will buy that these two characters can live happily ever after. Let's face it, Mr. Rochester is a selfish jerk. He only thinks he loves Jane Eyre because she's clean and sane, unlike the wife he keeps locked up in the attic. And Jane thinks she loves him back because she's 18, she was shut up in a house in the middle of nowhere with him for months, and the only other eligible bachelor in her isolated world is a sanctimonious bore.

What Is Romance

Now that I've ranted about what romance is not, let's define what I believe romance really is. Romance is when two characters overcome the conflicts keeping them apart and find peace and happiness with each other.

Those conflicts have to be real, and they have to be convincingly insurmountable. A misunderstanding is not a real conflict. Noble idiocy is not a real conflict. Secret pasts that He/She Must Never Know is definitely not a real conflict.

These are faux conflicts, the result of character flaws—excessive pride, poor communication skills, trust issues, etc. If the root of the problem isn't addressed, the resolution feels empty, and we don't get that promise of happily ever after.

Here's a hypothetical example. A hero and heroine are in the blushing honeymoon phase of their relationship. The hero visits the heroine after work one day and sees her handsome coworker's car in the driveway. He immediately turns heel and storms off. He sends a single text announcing that they're over and changes his Facebook status back to Single.

Then in an emotional confrontation, the heroine looks tearfully at her shoes while her spunky best friend lights into the hero because the coworker was only there to borrow her laptop. The hero feels awful and apologizes, and they kiss and make up. Conflict resolved!

Except the conflict isn't resolved. The conflict—the primary obstacle to the happiness of these two characters—isn't the stupid misunderstanding, but the hero's jealousy. In order for them to be happy together, he needs to kill the inner demons whispering that his girlfriend is unfaithful. Otherwise he's just going to throw another tantrum the next time he catches the chiseled barista at Starbucks swirling the foam of her cappuccino into a heart shape.

Now here are examples of romance done right, from two of my favorite love stories.

Margaret Hale and John Thornton from North & South

From the beginning of this miniseries (or book, if you have the patience for it), you can see that Margaret and Mr. Thornton are perfect for each other, but they'll have a devil of a time working things out between them.

First they need to overcome cultural differences, which are responsible for poor first impressions of each other. Margaret moves from the southern English countryside to the industrial north. Because she doesn't know the local customs and behaves like the daughter of landed gentry, she gives the self-made Mr. Thornton the impression she's a snob. She also doesn't understand the dangers of the cotton industry, so she thinks Thornton is a monster for beating an employee who was smoking in the mill, which could have burned the whole place down and killed everyone inside.

This incident foreshadows the bigger conflict to come: the strike by the mill workers' union. Margaret stands firmly on the side of the union, because she's become friends with the union leader's daughter and sees how poverty has driven the workers to desperation. But Thornton simply doesn't have the capital to raise wages, and he must bring in migrant workers to break the strike or the business will collapse and take the town down with it. Neither of them are wrong, and neither could possibly make another choice consistent with their codes of ethics.

The final conflict that keeps them apart is a misunderstanding, but it's not a silly misunderstanding caused by foolishness or stubbornness. Years before, Margaret's brother Fred fled to Brazil after participating in a naval mutiny, a capital offense. Fred sneaks back into England to visit their dying mother, and Thornton spots Margaret hugging him at the train station late at night. Because Thornton is a magistrate, Margaret can't endanger her brother's life by telling him the truth. She has to stay quiet, believing she's lost his good opinion forever. But though Thornton is jealous for a moment, he knows her and trusts she wouldn't do anything "unmaidenly." He even uses his position to protect her when an investigation into an accidental death at the station that night could drag her presence there into public light.

This love story is one of my favorites because both the hero and heroine are fully fleshed-out people with their own character arcs. Though they start out on rocky footing, they try to get along and don't abuse each other like in so many modern romances. You can understand why they make the decisions they do, and you can see them grow and repair their flaws individually before they join together. Margaret overcomes her prejudices towards the North in general and towards Thornton in particular, and Thornton overcomes his ego and his disdain of the factory workers' union.

Song Daepung and Kim Bokshil from Sons of Sol Pharmacy House

These two won the KBS Best Couple award in 2009 for good reason. It's hard to explain why if you haven't watched Sons of Sol Pharmacy House, but I'll give it a shot.

Daepung is a pediatrician who's terrified of getting hurt, and who has an almost pathological need to be liked. He acts like a clown to cover up his desperation for affection. If people don't like him, he loiters around them, showers them with compliments, and bribes them with sweets until they fall for his charms.

But though Daepung needs to be liked, he doesn't know how to love. Loving means opening yourself up to getting hurt, and Daepung can't do that. Because he's afraid of being hated, he can't express unpleasant emotions like anger or sadness. He turns every serious thing he says into a big joke and laughs loudest when he wants to cry.

Daepung has a quasi-marital relationship with the mousy nurse at his private practice, Kim Bokshil. She wakes him up in the mornings, helps his mother around the house, takes care of his meals and laundry...and on top of that, she has the face of a movie star and is hopelessly in love with him. However, Daepung takes her for granted and insists he doesn't see her as a woman. He plays hot and cold, acting impishly affectionate with her one second but ignoring her the next.

Eventually Daepung goes too far. He gets drunk, kisses Bokshil, and then brushes her off and keeps joking around like nothing happened. Bokshil finally gets fed up and leaves him. Daepung is heartbroken for the first time in his life, and he can't cope with it at all. He shuts himself in his room for a month, drinking himself into oblivion. His practice goes under and he's forced to take a job at the local hospital...where he finds Kim Bokshil.

Or rather, he finds Jennifer Kim, internationally renowned neurosurgeon.

Mousy Bokshil turns out to be the daughter of a big-shot hospital director, and she isn't mousy at all. When she was young, her father abandoned her mother, a nurse from the slums, to marry the wealthy woman his parents preferred. Bokshil's mother clung all her life to the memory of her ex-husband. On her deathbed, all she wanted was to see him one last time, but Bokshil's father refused to come.

Bokshil was furious. She quit her job and went into hiding, rejecting everything about her father. Everything. She changed her name from the English one her father gave her, Jennifer, to the Korean one her mother gave her, Bokshil. She deliberately lives in a tiny apartment and wears cheap clothes. She pretends she has no family and mimics her mother, slaving away as a nurse while pining for a man who doesn't treat her well.

Then when she's angry with Daepung, she swings to the opposite extreme. Bokshil dies and Jennifer is resurrected. She quits her job in Daepung's office, moves back into her father's fancy mansion, throws away the tacky outfits and the timid personality, and turns into an ice queen.

Bokshil is more mature than Daepung in most ways, but she's equally dishonest about her emotions. She lies to her father that she'll never forgive him, and she lies to Daepung that she has no lingering feelings for him. She accepts a job in the US and tells people it's for the sake of her career, but she's really just dealing with her complex feelings towards the men in her life in her usual way: by disappearing and reinventing herself.

The relationship between these two held my interest through the entire series because (a) their interactions are hilarious, (b) you can feel how much each one cares about the other even as they vehemently deny it, and (c) the biggest obstacles to their relationship are their own character faults, not the typical weak K-drama conflicts of irrational parents and clingy first loves. Daepung has to overcome his adolescent way of expressing himself, and Bokshil has to overcome her stubborn pride and anger, before they can be honest with each other and happy together.

How to Write Romance

Writing romance is a lot harder than analyzing it. Therefore, instead of deciding to write a romance and then creating the characters by certain rules, it may be better to think up the story first and then ask yourself whether it delivers the romance you want.

Are both characters likeable?

If you want readers to get sucked into a love story, they have to sympathize with both of the characters involved. Otherwise they won't get the emotional high of seeing them solve their problems and be happy together.

Do they have a positive intellectual and/or emotional connection?

Many people who write novels and screenplays think bickering is cute and sexy. I don't. If two characters fight like cats and dogs, I don't see how they could possibly be attracted to each other or happy together.

For a love story to feel romantic to me, I need to see the characters give each other what they need, and not just in bed. I need to see John Thornton show Margaret Hale that morality isn't black and white, and Margaret to show Thornton that he can't control everything and everyone. I need Bokshil to teach Daepung to treat people with respect, and Daepung to convince Bokshil to express her anger instead of shutting people out. They might fight a little in the beginning, but I need to see through the actions of the characters that they understand and care for each other by the end.

Are there unavoidable conflicts keeping them apart?

External conflicts are fine. Internal conflicts are great. Either way, they have to be real conflicts that make the readers root for these imaginary people, not roll their eyes at them.

Do they resolve these conflicts?

I mean really resolve them, not glaze over them in one heart-to-heart conversation.

For example, this is how I would fix the hypothetical story about the jealous boyfriend, to make sure the conflict is truly resolved.

First, I'd make sure the hero is actually prone to jealousy, and I'm not just throwing in a random misunderstanding to keep the lovers apart. The jealousy should be a simmering issue from the beginning, shown through the hero's aggression when other men flirt with the heroine, through his reaction when they watch The Notebook together, and through his back story, when he refers to an ex who two-timed him.

Second, there need to be tough consequences for his tantrum. In real life, it might be enough for a man to apologize, but this isn't real life. In fiction, every change in character needs to be shown through the story. The heroine can't forgive the hero as soon as he says "oops." She needs to tell him that their relationship won't work if he can't trust her. (Bonus points if the heroine has to overcome her own issues to say this. Perhaps she's always been a doormat who's terrified of confrontation, and it takes all of her courage to tell him she deserves respect.)

Third, the hero needs to struggle to address the root of his problem. He can't just say, "Gosh, I guess I've been a jerk," and that's that. Maybe he needs to meet the two-timing ex and sew up old wounds. Maybe he needs to go on walkabout and sort himself out, like Song Daepung does at the end of Sons of Sol Pharmacy House. Or maybe he needs to have a talk with grandpa or a good ol' brush with death to realize he's wasting precious time by letting the past ruin his future.

Finally, the hero should prove to the heroine and the reader that he's matured. For example, he shows up to a party the heroine's attending and sees her laughing with the handsome coworker, and he makes an effort to be civil to his rival. This shows that the conflict is resolved, and the reader will be happy to see the two make up and kiss under the stars.

The key point is that a romance is the story of two people overcoming obstacles to their happiness. It is not simply the story of two people who feel a lot of feelings. It is not the story of two people who meet and want to have sex, and then they do have sex, and then they continue having sex for the rest of their lives. Of course they should feel feelings, and they can have sex, but those things alone are not a love story.

My quest to find American fantasies set in Asia continues, with disappointing results. I've found a handful of titles that are close to what I'm looking for, but no bullseyes. The pool of options is too small.

1) Publishers believe Asian fiction "doesn't sell." It's not a sexy setting. All the sexy settings are in the United States and the British Isles. I rarely see popular fiction set in continents other than North America or Europe, and when I do they're exotic curiosities that highlight the horrors of living outside the "First World." If all I knew about Asia came from The Joy Luck Club and Memoirs of a Geisha, I'd think all the men are rape-happy Neanderthals and all the women are either prostitutes or child brides.

2) People don't write fiction set in Asia because people don't write fiction set in Asia. People write romances because they enjoy Nora Roberts, or they write fantasies because they admire Ursula Le Guin and Lloyd Alexander. Only people like me who enjoy Japanese comics and Korean dramas will even think to write in East Asian settings.

3) Cultural differences make it harder to identify with East Asian protagonists than we do with Western ones. This is the meat of today's post.

Differences in Philosophy

East Asian religions and philosophies are very diverse and complex, but for the purposes of this blog post, I'm going to represent them with the single icon below.

This symbol represents yin (black) and yang (white). Yin represents passivity, negativity, darkness, femininity, water, etc. Yang represents activeness, positiveness, light, masculinity, fire, etc. The point of this symbol is that these seemingly opposing forces are all part of one whole. Yin and yang complement each other and work together in harmony.

Americans often misinterpret the yin yang symbol. We think white means "good" and black means "evil." I know I did as a child. I couldn't understand when my mother explained that yin and yang should be in balance. Shouldn't positive forces defeat negative forces? Shouldn't light banish darkness forever?

I think this illustrates the essential difference between our cultures: Western cultures are individualist and idealize victory. East Asian cultures are collectivist and idealize harmony.

American stories are typically about righteous heroes defeating sadistic psychopaths. We make movies about Superman vs. Lex Luther, Indiana Jones vs. the Nazis, Clarice Starling vs. Buffalo Bill. We don't like moral gray areas. Even in Star Wars, when characters give lip service to the "balance of the Force," we really expect the Jedi to kill the Sith and then everyone can live happily ever after.

In contrast, the villains in East Asian fiction tend to be essentially good people who make misguided choices, and they reform their ways after the heroes make heartfelt speeches about the importance of friendship. In Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (1995), the villains are a group dedicated to ending war forever and uniting everyone in peace. In Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke (1997), there are no villains. Princess Mononoke is about resolving the conflict between man and nature, not about how one is good and the other is bad.

Differences in Cognition

People in these different types of societies, individualist and collectivist, process information in slightly different ways.

"At the risk of oversimplification, Westerners tend to think more analytically and East Asians tend to think more holistically. Analytic thinking is a cognitive style characterized by logical reasoning, a narrow focus on conspicuous objects in the foreground, and a belief that events are the products of individuals and their attributes....Holistic thinking is characterized by dialectical reasoning, a focus on background elements in visual scenes, and a belief that events are the products of external forces and situations." (Psychology Today)

In other words, Westerners tend to think micro to macro, while East Asians tend to think macro to micro. Analytic thinkers consider a whole to be the mere sum of its parts, while holistic thinkers consider parts to be mere components of the whole.

You can see the difference illustrated in traditional art. Western art focuses on individual people or objects in the foreground, with the rest of the world in the background. Asian art focuses on the big wide world—mountains, trees, rivers—with insignificant humans in the mix.

You can also see the difference in the way we tell stories. Modern American stories are usually told from a single person's point of view, and they're about heroes taking charge and changing lives. We expect—we demand—that protags protag. We get annoyed by reactive heroes who fail to drive their own stories.

In East Asian fiction, protagonists are often victims of fate, rather than shapers of it. Writers head-hop between many perspectives. They don't assume that a single hero can fix a troubled world. Characters suffer, and suffer, and suffer some more, and then they die.

Differences in Expectations

There's an unspoken rule in Western storytelling that protagonists can't die. We kill off villains, we kill off minor characters, and we especially like to kill off mentor figures (RIP Obi Wan, Mufasa, and Spiderman's Uncle Ben), but we don't kill off major characters. Americans get very upset when writers kill heroes. We want to believe we can control the universe with enough courage and savvy, and that only weak, stupid, unlikable and unimportant people are mortal.

But in Asian stories, nobody is safe. Nobody. Fierce warriors, beautiful princesses, comic sidekicks, adorable young kids, puppies and kittens...they're all potential victims. Don't be fooled into thinking everyone will be happy because you're watching a lighthearted Chinese comedy or a cheerful Japanese anime. The characters you love are going to die.

And unlike over here, children aren't zealously sheltered from tears. In Kroryu Sentai Zyuranger, the Japanese show adapted for the US as Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the original Green Ranger dies in the arms of his younger brother, the Red Ranger. In Candy Candy, a classic anime for girls, the sparkly-eyed, pig-tailed heroine's first love dies in a hunting accident. Then her great romance with a handsome bad boy, built up over two years' worth of episodes, ends when he's honor-bound to marry another girl.

East Asian love stories are often bittersweet, full of wistful sorrow, longing, and regret. Japanese romance movies typically feature two people who dance on the edge of a relationship without overtly expressing their feelings, and then one of them dies. In wuxia, a hero and his/her love interest almost always part forever in the end. They might be separated by death, like in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) and Prince of Lan Ling (2013). Or they might separate by choice when the hero decides to become a monk, like in the TV series Chinese Paladin 3 (2009) and in Jet Li's debut movie Shaolin Temple (1982).

To Americans, these are dark and disappointing endings. We want love to conquer all. We want impassioned kisses in the rain and promises of forever.

Differences in Codes of Behavior

Because collectivist societies prioritize the stability of the family over the happiness of the individual, in traditional East Asian cultures, the name of the game is filial piety.

When Western writers want to portray characters as good, we'll show how brave and generous they are. The hero will rescue an abandoned puppy, help an elderly lady across the street, or defend a helpless victim against some unattractive thugs.

When East Asian writers want to portray characters as good, they'll show how devoted and respectful they are to their elders. TV writers especially love to make their protagonists bow their heads to abusive older siblings, parents, grandparents, and other social superiors.

For example, in the Korean family drama Life is Beautiful (2010), a mother bursts into the home of her gay son, Kyung-soo, to scream that he's a disgusting pervert who ruined his family's lives by selfishly coming out. Kyung-soo snaps and declares he's no longer her son. His boyfriend is appalled that Kyung-soo treated his mother so disrespectfully. He lectures that they're also in the wrong for causing pain to their parents, and he promptly puts Kyung-soo on a plane home to mend fences.

Or in the hit Chinese comedy We Get Married (2013), the mothers of the hero and heroine wail hysterically because their children won't date the marriage partners they've picked for them. The characters swallow their frustrations and reply calmly or not at all. The few times they slip and show how upset they are, other characters are quick to remind them to try to understand a mother's heart.

Behavior like this infuriates Westerners. They'll watch Korean dramas about sweet heroines living under the thumbs of evil mothers-in-law and rant, "Why doesn't this girl stand up for herself? Why doesn't she tell her husband how nasty his mother is? Why is the husband so reluctant to defy his parents and move out of their house? He's flipping 35, for God's sake!!!"

This is a classic example of cultural dissonance (or what TV Tropes calls Values Dissonance). What American viewers see as evidence of weakness and childishness, Asian viewers see as evidence of strength and maturity. A woman forbearing her mother-in-law's insults with a smile shows that she has good moral fiber. She has the strength to remain humble and courteous even under provocation.

One of the most celebrated figures in Chinese history is Emperor Shun. According to legend, young Shun's family forced him to do menial labor and gave him the worst food and clothing. Still he treated his parents with respect and never once complained. When Emperor Yao gave Shun a government position and two princesses for wives, Shun's jealous stepmother and half brother tried to kill him multiple times. Shun cleverly thwarted their attempts, forgave them wholeheartedly, and rewarded his murderous brother with a position in office. Emperor Yao, impressed by Shun's humility and filial piety, named him his successor.

Western audiences would find this story ridiculous. We value independence. We idolize rebellion. Our fictional heroes are the likes of Robin Hood. We admire charismatic rogues who shake things up and defy authority.

So even the most avid fans of Korean dramas and Japanese anime are often confused and frustrated by the depiction of obedience as heroic. We want our protagonists to be smart-mouthed revolutionaries, not dutiful daughters and sons.

Dealing with Cultural Dissonance

Writers who portray East Asian characters for a Western audience can take four different approaches.

1. Write Asian characters with American values.

Until very recent years, Western writers didn't even try to depict East Asian protagonists with Confucian values. They wrote books in 17th-century Asia filled with characters who acted like 21st-century Americans.

For example, when Donna Jo Napoli retold an ancient Chinese fairy tale in Bound (2006), she made her heroine's character arc decidedly modern. Thirteen-year-old Xing Xing initially acts like her 9th-century inspiration, Ye Xian. She treats her cruel stepmother and stepsister with compassion even when they insult her and use her like a slave. But then she strikes out on adventures, starts to question the biases of Ming society, and eventually stands up to her stepmother and refuses to take her abuse any longer.

"Xing Xing had changed gradually in the weeks since her fish mother was killed. She was determined to be no one's fool anymore. She felt strong. A strong woman in a world that tried to deny the very existence of such a thing. But she wouldn't be denied. She felt she could leap into fire like the mystics and not burn up." (p. 176-177)

Emperor Shun she is not.

This approach is understandable, though dated. After all, books like Bound and movies like Disney's Mulan were made to entertain a modern American audience with modern American tastes and ethics. Audiences today want headstrong, independent heroines. They want princes to value princesses for their wit and impertinence, not for their obedience and humility. So in YA fantasies, the handsome hundred-year-old vampires and warlocks often speak suspiciously like children of the 1990s. And in today's historical romances, the men are egalitarian and the women are educated, outspoken, and confident in their sexuality.

2. Mitigate cultural dissonance through exposition.

Within the story, a writer can explain to American audiences why the characters are acting the way they do. When providing rationale for a person's choices, you can emphasize the importance of tradition, family, and honor.

The danger with this approach is that it can come across as patronizing, like you're generalizing about how the Orientals think.

It can also be awkward and artificial to explain cultural norms that real people take for granted. Imagine reading a novel in which the author takes care to explain that to modern Americans, the idea of an adult sleeping with a minor is abhorrent. Of course it's abhorrent. When movies and shows depict grown men seducing teenage girls, our gut reaction is revulsion. It just feels wrong.

Similarly, when Asian viewers see a character on TV talk back to an elder or cut off family ties, their gut reaction is shock and indignation. Of course it's shocking for a man to say he'll never speak to his mother again, even if she is a bigoted harpy. It just feels wrong.

So if you want to explain, you have to be careful to make the information feel organic. For example, in Butterfly Swords, Jeannie Lin made her hero a European, an outsider only vaguely familiar with Han culture. That way, the heroine can explain her family's customs and ethics to both him and the reader through dialog.

3. Write Asian characters with Asian values.

Readers aren't stupid. They can figure out that Asian characters will act like Asian people.

If they couldn't, the wall of the Teen section of my public library wouldn't be covered with shelves of Japanese manga. Jeannie Lin's Tang Dynasty romances wouldn't hit the bestseller lists. My coworkers wouldn't gossip happily about She Was Pretty and The Moon Embracing the Sun. People can certainly understand and enjoy stories from and about different cultures.

Understanding won't prevent them from getting annoyed, of course. Even though I'm genetically half Asian, I'm cognitively American, so there are times I want to scream at the TV, "Dang it, people! Stop acting so Chinese!" (Freaking Liu Bei.)

But the disparity between cultures isn't that great, really, and the gap grows smaller every year. There are plenty of people here who think holistically and put family before themselves, just as there are plenty of people in Asia who think analytically and thumb their noses at Confucius. We all consider selflessness, humility, intelligence, and courage to be virtues; we just prioritize them differently.

4. Dodge the issue.

Cultural differences are really only problematic for protagonists. Readers get annoyed if they can't identify with the hero or heroine, but they don't need to identify with or even like anyone else.

Therefore, many writers have dodged the issue by sticking a modern American hero on a plane to foreign lands. Many a Californian sleuth has ended up in Shanghai, and many an Midwestern archaeology professor has braved high-flying adventures in Europe, South America, and the Middle East.

Some writers neatly sidestep values dissonance by employing time travel. Then they can put relateable protagonists with Millennial mindsets in cool historical settings. In Outlander (2014), a nurse touches a magical stone during a trip to Scotland and is transported to 1743, where she enjoys a passionate romance with a handsome Highlander. In Faith (2012), a surgeon in Seoul is spirited back to the 1350s by an ancient warrior. I've lost track of the number of fictional teenagers I've seen touch mysteriously glowing amulets and suddenly find themselves in 1960s America, medieval Britain, or feudal Japan.

You can also make the main character unusual in a way that explains their individualist way of thinking. A feudal Japanese hero raised by an eccentric hermit in the mountains would naturally have different opinions than the socialized people in the cities. A heroine who's a Taoist, Shamanic, or Shinto priestess wouldn't be bound by the same social rules as the average Ming, Joseon, or Edo girl.

Another method of dodging values dissonance is to write a fantasy. Then you can build a world that suits your needs. For example, many steampunk novels take place in an alternative 19th century, in which fantastical advances in technology have sped up advances in society. On the decks of dirigibles, young men and women shake off their Victorian mores and become inventors, sky pirates, vampire hunters, etc. Et voila, you have characters with modern thoughts in period costumes.

Values Dissonance Is Everywhere

In Revision & Self-Editing, James Scott Bell says, "The mark of the hero is that she represents the values of the community. She is representing the moral vision shared by most people and is someone we root for as a result."

The problem is, there's no conveniently homogeneous "moral vision" shared by everyone in the world, or even by everyone in America. Values dissonance isn't unique to stories that take place in foreign settings. Every protagonist will represent the values of some people but not other people.

Wallflower Bella Swan from the Twilight trilogy appeals to people who share the worldview of Stephanie Meyer, a conservative Mormon, but she annoys the heck out of people who want their heroines to be Katniss Everdeens. But the stoic Katniss annoys people who want their heroines to be passionate Anne Shirleys, and Anne Shirley annoys people who want their heroines to be sensible Jane Eyres, and so on.

So even though I've spent considerable time thinking and writing about these cultural differences, I've decided not to worry about them too much when I write my trilogy. I'm choosing a combination of options three and four above. I'm going to create my own world based vaguely on China during the Qing dynasty, but with extensive modifications to make it fun and modern. Some people will hate it, but hopefully the people who like it will outnumber them.