All About the Werewolf

Research is your best friend.

Just a quick disclaimer, it's 2 am in the morning....I jammed my finger between a log of wood and a cinder block earlier today and it's giving me grief. So instead of tossing and turning for another four hours I'm awake and writing cr*p. 

Here is the next update!

Also, ignore typos, I'm trying not to use my injured finger but it's my index on my right-hand so...yeah, it was an important finger that got squashed!

So in light of a rather interesting conversation that I recently had in the werewolf forum I feel the need to elaborate on this subject and expand my thoughts just a bit.

If you're writing a werewolf story you'll understand that it is fantasy and you can put whatever the hell you want into it. Let there be sparkly werewolves who howl at the sun or the moon, who look beastly or cute and fluffy...who cares about that bit? Not me that's for damn sure.

What I care about is when werewolf writers start incorporating real life into their stories just to 'spice' sh*t up.

I'm going to use culture as the leading example here because it's what got me fired up in the first place.

I'm Maori, from New Zealand (little-known fact that no one really cares about and no, I'm not @odemira so don't even friggin ask) and someone who had no connection to the world of Maoridom wanted to use MY culture in their story.

There are two things I find ridiculously wrong with this, if you have no connection at all to a culture how are you going to understand it and better yet...how are you going to communicate this properly to your readers.

A lot of you might not see an issue with taking elements of different cultures and using it to your advantage, I think it's okay if you don't name the culture or use it as the main focus in your story. But if this culture is going to feature heavily in your story and you don't communicate it well to your readers you're putting negative or different ideas in their head about what this culture or thing is like IN REAL LIFE!

It's the same if you chop and change things, use some elements and omit others. You're creating this idea in people's heads that this culture is how you've portrayed it.

The other thing I have an issue with in regards to using real life things in your story is that it's not there for you to help yourself to. It's not there for you to use and abuse (or not) to get more reads in your story, it's not just sitting there waiting for your brilliant mind to find it and incorporate into your story. 

Don't be a pretentious ass about it too and assume that you can use it.

But at the end of the day, if you're going to absolutely insist on using culture in your story then do it and the people that belong to that culture a huge service and f*cking research the sh*t out of it. It's the least you can f*cking do to ensure you pay respect to whatever you're using.

Point 2 of this post

This account isn't in existance to make writers 'famous.'

F*ck that sh*t.

I don't have enough hours in the day to make undiscovered readers on Wattpad 'famous' so don't assume I am. Secondly, Wattpad writers can get famous on their f*cking own yo. I'm not helping them.

To clarify for all those new people coming in;

this account was set up to help connect readers to undiscovered, well-written stories and give some acknowledgment to those new writers who were pumping out new and good content. There was something else that I was supposed to add to that sentence but Rihanna distracted me and now I've forgotten (I dislike her music).

Anyway!

My finger is hurting like a mofo so I'm going to leave it there....

OH YEAH!

Did everyone see my post about reviewing books? It's on my wall, check it out.

Also Lorde's music gives me a headache (same with Rihanna's).

Goodnight!