So 11th Sun is about 90% of the way through its second draft. At that point posting here will go on hiatus for a couple of months. During that time I will be taking a break from thinking about it (month one) then working on the second draft (many more months) and sometime around there I'll start posting again.
During month one, with nothing to do, I'll be writing somethings else. I've been on a high school kick lately and I haven't found quite what I'm looking for, so I'm going to write it.
"Be the change you want to see in the world." -quoting Ghandi to my brother
"I don't think Ghandi was talking about porn" -my brother
The point is this: I don't see a lot of high school writing with drugs. Drugs were everywhere in my high school. I dabbled but it never stuck. But I try to get as real to the experience as I can with my work.
Do you get turned off by drugs in the stuff you read? And do you get turned off by teenagers using drugs?
Comments
You're Up Against a Convention...
-- or maybe trope would be a better description -- where it's the villains of the story who use drugs and/or try to swing the protagonist to the dark side by doing so. The high school jocks who bully our hero(ine) are taking steroids, the college-age sexual predators all have date-rape drugs, the girl or guy who offers our teenaged protagonist marijuana (or tobacco, for that matter) is trying to get them to identify with and join their group -- either the airheaded elite or a quasi-criminal bunch of losers.
There are a few protagonists out there who use marijuana occasionally and don't consider it a character failing or anything else of significance. (And there are occasional best-friend types who are heavy users of alcohol or drugs who'll probably either die or shake their addiction before the story ends.)
I think it's safe to say that most authors of TG stories are hoping to have their readers sympathize with their lead characters; there aren't many anti-heroes in this genre, and I think a lot of readers on sites like this aren't sure what to do with them. (I may be overstating the case; with very rare exceptions, the authors most likely to be publishing that kind of story here aren't ones that I read.)
As that parenthetical sentence probably indicates, my answer to your title question would be "no". But I wouldn't consider it an absolute turn-off. And of course I'm only speaking for myself.
(I suppose I should point out that I may have been the only Cal Berkeley student, 1968-72, who never even got offered marijuana, let alone used it. And I've always been very scared of what I'd say or do under mind-altering circumstances, which is probably ironic now that I've been taking prescription antidepressants for more than a decade.)
Eric
Not that trope
That's not where I was going with it. Just a story with drugs in it. They figure into the plot a bit, and are the transition catalyst, but other than that the main character uses some drugs some times and that's pretty much it.
Drugs
There are a number of things in stories that will turn me off:
1.) Drugs
2.) Incest
3.) Suicide or Attempted Suicide
I've included all of them in my stories, knew the risks, and mostly wish I hadn't. Better to avoid entirely.
Like Eric I'm a child of the 60's. Drugs missed me . . . almost. Had one bad trip that haunted me for years.
It took me two decades to realize that my drug of choice, alcohol, was ruining my life. I now drink about a six-pack -- a year.
Jill
Angela Rasch (Jill M I)
I attended a very middle class high school.......
In upstate NY. Although the mix was fairly evenly distributed between nationalities, it was almost exclusively white. Yes, we had both Catholics and Protestants, and a good mix of national origins - myself being one of only a few true WASPs, there were few blacks or other non-Caucasian groups.
Marijuana was in largely in evidence, but most harder drugs were much less so.
As to whether or not I like them in fiction, I don’t approve of most drug use in real life, so not really in fiction either.
D
D. Eden
Dum Vivimus, Vivamus
Drug use in a story can be okay if
Drug use in a story can be okay if it is part of a plot. The drug use should not be the focus of the story. I've written many stories where high alcohol consumption was pivotal to the plot. Drug use, like alcoholism, should not be glorified but it should be shown as the negative it is.
Boys will be girls... if they're lucky!
Jennifer Sue
Smart people.
I wrote a story in which drugs were completely uncontrolled. The smart people lived.
Fear and Loathing in the Big Closet
You should write it, but expect a low kudos count + a lot of negative comments. Bad health choices have replaced sex as the great sin of the modern world, something for people to get all self-righteous and huffy about. They make me want to roll up a big flat spliff and smoke my brains out until the sweet oblivion of drug abuse drowns out their finky yammering. But I don't; if I had money to buy weed I would rather give it to BigCloset, which has become my drug of choice...
Although I do enjoy fiction that transgresses the drug taboo, books like TRAINSPOTTING and THE BASKETBALL DIARIES that are full of dark humor and scary but perversely entertaining anecdotes. And those are about hardcore addicts; but not every high schooler who smokes dope or eats a few mushrooms is going to destroy hisorher life; most manage to maintain recreational drug use as exactly that, until it gets old and they taper way off or quit altogether. There are those of us who did mistake drugs and booze for the answer to all our problems and spiraled into addiction, but the majority others just had fun with it and I think it would be refreshing to read a story that accurately reflects the wackiness of the big kegger/pot party at Wendy's house when her parents are out of town.
~It's only teenage wasteland, Veronica
Well shit, I guess it really CAN happen here..,
.
Drugs
I agree that drugs are everywhere in high school as alcohol or cigarettes or now electronic cigarettes. There is a language not many of us will understand and there are no dictionaries to translate it and there is no service to convert curses into beeps. Most stories are without curses or even without cigarettes and it works cause they are natural. Story's succes depends not on realistic background.
I don't have an issue with drug use in stories per se.
I've known a lot of users in my day, and a lot of abusers. I've personally steered clear of them since I feel my grasp on reality is thin enough without mind altering substances affecting it, but if someone else does it then, so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else, I don't have a problem with it.
Note that parents doing drugs like meth that can affect anyone who so much as comes in contact with them is a huge exception there, since there is absolutely no way to use it where it won't affect others.
Having said that, if drugs feature heavily in a story as something the main character is a part of, it probably would negatively affect my interest in the story as a whole since it's not something I can identify with or have any interest in, though in that regard it's one of many many things that cause the same reaction. A little marijuana I can overlook for the most part, as well as *ahem* "responsible" alcohol use, but if the main character goes any further than that I'll simply stop caring and stop reading.
Melanie E.
Personally i'm okay with, but...
then I consider marijuana and alcohol on par with each other in how they both affect the users of them. If you have the ability to use either of them for recreational use without it harming others, then I have no problem with someone using either. The only difference being that Alcohol is legal and thus the only one I would allow to be used around me or consider using myself.
That being said, when it's use or especially its overuse is integral to the story then it has to be included in the story. I can't say that I have nver seen either used in a positive way in a story and doubt that I would find that kind of story enjoyable, nor would I think a story that revolves around the positive use of drugs or alcohol as its main theme could ever be something I would enjoy.
Its funny that I should find this blog as this morning I had to go to the doctor after waking up with one eye scratchy burning and watering so badly that I could not go to work. Luckily it was determined I somehow scratched it badly in my sleep and it wasn't some contagious virus. But while I there I was asked about the prescription drugs I take and discovered I had an active prescription for Oxycontin and Hydrocodone(both powerful pain killers) and Tramadol (a moderate opioid pain killer) because I never went and got any of the refills that I was supposed to have used as I never finished off the first bottle of any of them and eventually flushed what was left down the toilet.
And of course reading everyone's reply to this gave me an idea for a short story, (Muhahaha)
We the willing, led by the unsure. Have been doing so much with so little for so long,
We are now qualified to do anything with nothing.
Depends on the drugs and reason...
illicit/illegal drugs I've used as props in a story, but never have a character take them voluntarily "on screen". Even with the more permissive stance on pot, it doesn't show up (I'm deathly allergic to it).
Beer, wine and distilled spirits still show up on occasion, but never to excess. I've seen the real world results of excessive drinking and drunk driving (three people in a wedding party burned beyond recognition, and the fourth a paraplegic, after being broadsided by a drunk driver). Not pretty and I don't need to aggrandize it in a story.
Okay, looks like no drugs
We'll do theater instead.
Imagination
I feel about drugs in fiction about the same way I feel about them in my daily life. This is because I use imagination as best I can to visualize and experience the events I am reading.
Some people turn to drugs to get through their lives as best as they can. I can’t judge as I have my own addictions. So long as what they are doing harms no one else, all I can do is walk away in sadness.
Some people use drugs as a weapon to destroy other people’s lives. As an example, date rape drugs were mentioned in another comment. Since a reader can’t do much to alter events in a fiction story, I will sometimes bail out if things start getting too heavy with no resolution in sight.
But then there are the smokers who, like Roger Zelazny, have all their characters smoking, too. Remember what I said about imagination and experiencing the story? Opening up all the windows in my apartment does not provide the ventilation such a story needs.
This is not about judgement, it is about respiration. Nicotine, whether emanating as smoke from smoldering tobacco, as vapor from the nozzle of an insecticide sprayer (nicotine sulfate is more toxic than most organophosphates), or from the lungs and pores of an addict, makes me strangle. The tobacco industry marketing smoking as a way to express dominance by means of low-grade chemical warfare (and the multitudes who buy into the lovely idea of making small enclosed spaces too toxic for other people to inhabit…or blowing smoke right into someone’s face) only adds another layer of toxicity.
Fortunately, it is usually easy enough to just go elsewhere. Likewise, it is also usually easy enough to find something else to read. So, that’s what I do—and usually without comment, unless someone asks…or puts smoking on board a space station or space ship.