Blogging A to Z Challenge: L is for Labelling
The A to Z challenge is a challenge in which bloggers post every day during the entire month, and each day has a post starting with a different letter of the alphabet. The first day, the post features “A”, the second day “B”, and so on. It’s much better explained on the Blogging from A to Z website, so I’ll just refer you there.
Today’s post is about “L”, so I wanted to talk about labelling (or “labeling” if you want to follow the British spelling). I don’t like labelling, but we all do it. We look at a person, and we label them as “freak”, “goth”, “jock”, “nerd”, and so on. The characters from my books fall under such labels too. For example, yesterday I finished going over Reflected one last time before the publisher will release the book, and I paid special attention to the paragraphs focusing on one of the characters – Felicia.
Felicia wears black, crucifixes, metal chains – all the kids at school think she’s a wannabe goth or emo. But I want the readers to see her as more than that. I want them to see that, all right, so maybe she dresses that way as a style choice, but inside, she’s more than a label. She’s more than her clothes. She’s a person with fears and desires, with hopes and dreams.
Often, we rely on labels to classify other people, especially when we don’t know them. It’s not fair. We’re more than our labels.
All those labels are pretty scary, aren’t they? And they usually have negative connotations. Great to meet you during the AtoZ!
Thanks for visiting!
It’s so true! We label within a second. The trick is taking our characters past those labels into the realm of something more. Something real. Just like in real life, what you see on the surface rarely touches what’s in someone’s soul.
Thanks for visiting. You’re absolutely right.
Stopping by to say hi. Great post. Will be checking back. 🙂
Thank you!
No one deserves to be labeled. We’re all different.
Good luck with the A to Z Challenge!
A to Z Co-Host S. L. Hennessy
http://pensuasion.blogspot.com/
I agree! Thanks for stopping by.
As a high school teacher, I really learned not to judge people by appearances or what they wore. People do it with teenagers a lot. Just because they’re into some trend of dressing doesn’t mean they’re drug users or bad people.
I completely agree, Susan.
Thanks for visiting my blog. We’re all people deserving of respect, no matter what labels others put on us.
Absolutely agree!
Labels can be so limiting and yet for some people finding a label for who they are is also liberating. It’s when people use labels to put others in boxes, as you say, that they are unwanted.
Tasha
Tasha’s Thinkings | Wittegen Press | FB3X (AC)
Yep, agree!
Labeling can also be a thorny problem when it comes to genre. Readers may steer clear of a book marketed as “Romance” or “Scifi” simply because they read a book or two from that genre and didn’t care for them. They assume that all books of a particular genre are just boilerplate. Or that something called YA will be silly and beneath them, when there are actually some very thought-provoking books with complicated plots and multi-layered characters. Then you have the author’s quandary of how to market a book which can’t be neatly pigeon-holed. Where should the emphasis be placed? On the murder? The budding romance? The setting? What audience would be most receptive?