NOTE: The following is a revised version of an article originally published on Medium, where I’ve published a number of writing advice pieces.

As someone who deliberately jabbed raw nerves on both sides of the American political divide with my dystopian novel Peaceful Quiet Lives, I have a few thoughts to share on tackling contentious subject matter in a story. I’ll freely admit I’m hardly a famous author, but I’ve had a few questions on my process of handling controversial issues in fiction, so I thought I’d answer them with this article.

Peaceful Quiet Lives is a dystopian romantic satire, about a couple who fall foul of extremist laws in both nations that rise from the ashes of America’s second civil war. Writing the novel was a huge challenge, as I didn’t mean to pen a political polemic. The intention was to satirise the absurdity of extremist fears on both sides of the so-called culture wars in America.

As a Brit, I knew I was opening myself wide open to criticism as someone looking at America from the outside, so that initially gave me pause. On the other hand, sometimes an outsider’s perspective can be more objective, so I stepped away from my usual gothic mystery oeuvre, took a deep breath, and wrote the novel. Afterwards, in preparing the book for public consumption, I undertook this three-step process, which I humbly offer for consideration, hoping it might prove useful to other authors.

Be Brave and Write It

First, have the guts to write it. Let rip and be as ruthless, honest, graphic, and contentious as you please. Do not censor yourself. Write almost as though it were a stream of consciousness that only you will see. Yes, it may reveal dark and ugly things about yourself. It may also reveal prejudices and biases (we all have them) but for now, don’t question them. Just write the first draft, knowing you will never show this raw, unpolished version of your narrative to anyone.

After you finish, leave it to one side for a while. I’d recommend a full year (my first draft of Peaceful Quiet Lives was written in early 2018), but at least wait a few months. This will give you distance from the story and make you more objective. Do not give this first draft to anyone else.

Rewrite It

After the waiting period is over, read your story again. It may need redrafting for a multitude of other reasons — plot problems, bad dialogue, unconvincing characters, prose needing polish, an infestation of adverbs — but it will almost certainly need redrafting to clarify your intentions. If dealing with contentious subject matter such as religion, racism, sexism, politics, sexuality, and so forth, you might wish to reword certain elements. Or if your story contains graphic sex, violence, and bad language, you might want to tone some of this down (or up).

In Peaceful Quiet Lives, I removed some of my protagonist’s darker sexual impulses because they were inconsistent with his character. I also removed certain contentious references to the ongoing gender debate, because I realised my novel wasn’t really about that, and I didn’t explore the subject in any detail. This stage brought focus, and I realised that whilst I wanted to explore extremist ideologies, I couldn’t cram in every extremist social or political ideology. I had to narrow my focus. On the other hand, revising this first draft also led to the enhancement of subjects I’d only touched on minimally. For example, the final version has a lot more about incel culture than originally intended. Indeed, it became pivotal to the narrative.

Where the first draft has revealed biases and prejudices, these can also be addressed, to give the novel more honesty. At this point, you might enhance certain elements you want to be more contentious, pushing the envelope further. With Peaceful Quiet Lives, I added a reference to post-birth abortion (flippantly termed a “cooling off period”) as a legal procedure in one of the two nations, because it created a more appropriately extreme satirical alternative to the laws in the other, where abortion was punishable by the death penalty.

Following this polish (or as many as are necessary), the time has come to give the manuscript to beta readers.

Get Feedback

At this stage, it is important to get feedback from people you trust, who know you well, and understand your intentions. It is important to see whether your contentious material is provoking in the way you hoped it would, or whether it is being misunderstood. I should add that interpretations and perspectives you didn’t expect may reveal themselves at this point. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Just because you didn’t intend something doesn’t make it an invalid interpretation. But you have to decide whether it is an interpretation you wish to allow for.

I am generally dubious of sensitivity readers, especially if this is mandated by publishers without authorial veto. That’s censorship as far as I’m concerned. However, it is possible to use a sensitivity reader to find blind spots, especially if said sensitivity reader is someone known and trusted. I had someone proof Peaceful Quiet Lives who knows me very well, and she was able to point out moments where I gave accidental offence instead of deliberate offence, often through poor wording. It became a simple case of: “You don’t really mean this, do you?” and was easily tweaked.

Here’s the key point: Offend by all means, but do so intentionally. Causing accidental offence is an amateur mistake. For that reason, a sensitivity reader may root out weeds that spoil an otherwise bracing, challenging work.

An Aside: Punching Down

A word on so-called “punching down”: One hears this phrase often, as a guideline to avoid hurting minorities. However, I think it is important to distinguish between marginalised individuals and social or political organisations claiming to represent them. Sometimes the latter can be militant, unreasonable, and hypocritical. As such, it makes said organisations prime candidates for satire. Stripping bare their sanctimonious attitudes and behaviour is entirely legitimate.

To illustrate this point, as a Jewish person by descent (via my maternal grandmother) I get particularly irritated when lobbying groups claim a “Jewish joke” is offensive, piously claiming to speak on behalf of all Jewish people. To me, context is everything. Not every joke about Jewish people is anti-Semitic. Personally, I think there’s nothing inherently wrong with laughing at cultural absurdities, stereotypes, and cliches, nor do I subscribe to the notion that, for instance in the case of Jewish jokes, a person has to be Jewish to make them. Again, intent and context are everything. What annoys me is the blanket assertion that “all Jewish people” would find such jokes offensive as though we are a homogenous, Borg-like collective. Some won’t. Some might. But a claim like that — especially one made by a non-Jewish person making a professionally offended statement by proxy — is absurd.

There are no Jewish lobbies discussed in Peaceful Quiet Lives, but I use the above point to explain why I sometimes consider lobbying groups claiming to speak for oppressed groups ripe for a satirical poke. I don’t consider this “punching down”, but obviously not everyone will agree. That’s fair enough, as needless to say, I am pro-free speech.

Conclusion: Brace for impact

Having taken your story through the above process, it becomes a simple case of releasing it — via a traditional publisher or self-publishing — into the world for people to find offensive or otherwise. Peaceful Quiet Lives raised a few eyebrows on both sides of the US political spectrum, and some of the criticism — of the what-the-hell-does-this-armchair-pundit-Brit-think-he’s-doing variety — was entirely expected. Both sides of the political divide have claimed the satire of their side to be implausible. Again, this is exactly what I expected. I knew I had a good, compelling tale, but I knew it would irk different people at different points.

To reiterate my main “takeaway” (a term that makes me and many other fellow Brits think of pizza, curry, or Chinese food, by the way): The important lesson with any contentious novel is to offend deliberately, not accidentally.