What Makes Fantasy Epic? (Emerald City Comic-Con 2015 Writing Panel Notes)

What Makes Fantasy Epic?

Peter Orullian, Robin Hobb, Patrick Rothfuss, Peter V. Brett, Steven Erikson

Moderator: Ellen Guon Beeman

The definition of epic fantasy, how it’s evolved, and how they create their worlds.

Would you say there are specific styles, plots, or characters that make it epic?

RH: It’s a story that is world-changing. But the author decides the size of that world.

PR: Everybody does it for a different reason. Ultimately, it’s about bigness. Bigness of book, bigness of story, bigness of world. He doesn’t think he belongs in epic fantasy – more heroic fantasy. His works are big in scope of character.

PB: These genres we cram works into to place in a bookstore are useful tools, but he knows no authors bound by the rules of specific subgenres. These labels are tacked onto the work after it’s done to sell it. Broad in scope, characters go on journeys.

PR: Likes the term BFF – Big Fat Fantasy is a clear, defining label.

PO: Different labels are attached by different readers, which frustrates the marketers too. It’s interesting to think about reader response defining category as well.

SE: Epic fantasy is the origins of literature. The trunk of the tree. Everything else has branched out from that. Yet it doesn’t get the critical acknowledgement that other epics do.

PR: It’s a weird inverted hierarchy – stories are classed by their props rather than their substance. If you think about it, Stranger in a Strange Land is sci-fi because there’s a Martian, when really if you think about it now, it’s more urban fantasy. Cowboys equal westerns. It’s not about substance but about scenery. Props of epic fantasy: Horses, nobleman, prophecy, etc.

PB: Magic is the defining part of fantasy, which is why there’s such a big argument over whether Star Wars is fantasy.

PR: Can’t agree that magic is a defining characteristic. It’s a sense of the wondrous, and magic’s an easy way to achieve that.

PO: Believes that magic is a vital part.

PB: Even if there’s no palpable evidence about it. Magic can be subtle.

PR: This may be a semantic discussion. Fantasy engages with the wondrous.

SE: It’s an extension of imagination.

PR: And science fiction is a subset of fantasy.

Specific characteristics that the hero has to display?

PR: You need a protagonist. Defining characteristics – we have tropes, but those are getting hammered into gravel to the better of the genre.

PB: The hero is *stubborn*.

EGB: Persistent.

PB: Sure, if you want to be nice about it. Bossy.

PR: We have done a better job of remembering what a hero is all about. A big person. Ancient Greek definition: A great man who falls from a height with a tragic flaw who screws up everything. A lot of genres have moved away from that, but fantasy has not. Superman is an adolescent power fantasy. He doesn’t have flaws.

SE: We have infantilized our heroes. Fantasy as a genre is not immune to it; but it’s more that action films reduce the notion of the hero to sociopathic vengeance. Issues with notion of hero. He tries to dismantle it.

PR: In Smallville, who was the interesting character as the show progressed? Lex Luthor. Superman’s so perfect, it’s the villain who’s more interesting. Like Herod. The one people show up to watch.

Are writers moving away from the flawed hero?

PR: We’re all about the flawed.

PB: We’ve even taken it to having the villain as the protagonist in different books. The idea of the cartoonish villain doesn’t exist so much – people have legitimate arguments about what they want and demonize the other side to justify their path of violence.

SE: Villains don’t think of themselves as villains.

PB: One trait that connects them is they solve their problems with violence. That’s what infantilizes them.

PR: There’s an SMBC cartoon – about Superman getting confronted by various “I’m not the villain,” and Superman doesn’t know who to punch. Terry Pratchett’s stories had characters on the edge of the stories that you get to know. Characters who initially are viewed culturally as the bad guys, you realize are just guys. And not a boring story because he showed a dozen times that the people you thought were bad are actually just people. It’s a lesson the world needs to hear a dozen times before it starts to soak in.

PO: It’s a powerful thing when you see the villains do something compassionate, when you get a chance to see that side. And when you see them do this, it throws the reader for a loop, deepens the story when you show the other sides. And when good characters make bad decisions in the interest of good – character building techniques. Done more often these days and it’s good.

In terms of techniques of where to start, do you have any advice? Where do you begin?

All: Draw a map!

RH: Never started out to write all the books she did in the same setting. Never sat down and said, “I’m going to do that.” It unfolds and unfolds and unfolds. You start to see connections. A lot of our writing happens in the subconscious. It’s a game you’re playing with your own mind.

PR: In terms of where you start, we’ve dug a deep groove in the genre because Tolkien had such a deep shadow. LOTR hit and suddenly there was a huge market demand for more like that. And that led to less-than-artistic books being wrote. And that begat a third gen of Tolkien-esque, and people decided to ask, “What is epic fantasy” and they defined it upon that. Tolkien didn’t define that. He was just a geek about languages and mythology. His passions informed his world and that’s what made it so cool and appealing. PR cares about history, sociology, dead religions and writes about that. You should write about what you dig. Do *that*.

PO: It’s interesting that there’s fantasy being written these days where something doesn’t need to be punched. It’s not necessarily all large scale wars.

PB: Violence can solve some of the problems.

PO: So much in PR's books that is written is cerebral. The hero doesn’t need to be scaling toward an epic grand scheme.

PR: Different characters approach things differently.

PB: Characters can find other ways to solve the problems.

PR: Classic quote: Fairy tales exist not to tell us there are dragons, but that dragons can be beat. That’s an oversimplification – we live in a scary world and it’s easy to feel powerless. In the folk tales someone disadvantaged used their cleverness to overcome a big problem. That metaphor is so appealing and gets repeated so often that it becomes the problem.

SE: It’s almost an oversimplification to simply just look at Tolkien as the progenitor. Stuff came out of pulp fiction and noir, too. Bear in mind that he’s not the only launching point. His legacy might be that he’s holding back Fantasy in terms of criticism. And when writing a series, you can screw up your editors by saying, “No, you can’t cut that because that comes back in Book #X.”

Audience Question: When you learn the rules of thumb and agreement that they can be broken, how much can you break them once you know them?

PB: That’s a big part of being a writer. We learn the rules and then we break them. Knowing where those rules are makes the work much stronger. Easier when you understand them before breaking.

PR: Successful criminals know what the law is. (Called lawyers usually)

SE: We all know the tropes. We’re taking on the subversion of those tropes now.

PR: Do whatever you want so long as it works. Best rule, but the most useless guidance.

RH: IF you’re breaking a rule solely for breaking, that’s not okay. “This is my story. My story breaks the rule, and that’s okay”.

PO: Rule avoidance is a problem, too.

Audience Question: How much can you make an epic fantasy mundane?

RH: Depends on how much you stretch it. If you’re writing anything mundane in your world you must be as accurate as possible in those mundane things in order for the reader to believe those fantastical things.

PO: Except for traveling.

PR: Shadowfax the horse is a big part of what made Gandalf cool.

Audience Question: When do you put themes of making fantasy more grounded in reality with themes you can relate to in the real world?

RH: When he has more questions than answers, he looks at something from several different angles, not to give the reader answers but to explain the world to herself.

PB: There are two parts of the story – what happens, and how the characters feel about something that happens. And the latter is more important. And what happens takes a back seat to the adventure. Emotions should resonate with the reader.

Audience Question: How do you name things?

PB: Big book of baby names. Changes the spelling.

PO: Finds consonants and vowels that sound good together.

RH: The obit page will take back to names that have become uncommon. Also play around with language. Take a Latin-based noun and turn it into somebody’s name. Eg. Verity sounds pretty but also means truth.

PR: Not enough time to talk about it right now – this needs its own panel.

Audience Question: When using legends and myths – are things to avoid? What do you do to avoid tropes?

Legends have been told and retold.

PR: Avoids prophecy. Such BS.

SE: You can have the prophecy so confused that no one can figure it out.

PR: Cheap tension, not developing story enough.

PB: One thing is consistent: There was a time gone by previous to another time for our heroes in almost every major story he can think of. A moral guide that seems inherent in most fantasies.

PR: Legend – something happened in the past; prophecy – something happened in the future. Legend is better because it’s a mystery you’re trying to uncover. He’s morally offended by prophecy.

PO: In world development, past events can influence your world as it is today. He’s not a fan of prophecy, either, but legends can be peppered into work.

SE: You can also use prophecy to mess with readers’ heads.

Hi!

This is just a quick note to reassure folks that I'm still around, but that I've been far busier than I ever imagined. Good things, in the long run, but definitely things that take away from this.

More to follow soon, and I hope to get some notes up shortly. I, um, kinda have a backlog.

Finding the Story: Recipes for Writing Fiction (Emerald City Comic-Con 2015 Writing Panel Notes)

Hey! Want to know what's almost as stressful as moving? One's downstairs neighbours moving. Especially when they decide to stay up to all hours partying because they seem to realize, "Hey, we can't be evicted, so let's make as much noise as we want!"

*sigh* I miss sleep.

But rather than me coping by stress-eating (one thing I am *way* too good at) or writing delicious fictional scenarios in my head about how wonderful the new neighbours will be (that too), let's talk about a different sort of cooking. In his talk given at this year's ECCC, author Michael A. Stackpole breaks down several types of plots with simple recipes he's devised over the years.

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Finding the Story

Michael A. Stackpole

It’s important for him to not suffer writer’s block, so he’s developed techniques to find stories. That allows him to stretch himself as a writer. He needs to be able to judge things and then drop a story in. This is a process panel.

Listen, write it down, retain it more.

He reasons to find a story anywhere (since being blocked is frustrating). Because the worst thing you can do for yourself is agonize over being blocked.

If you find yourself blocked, if the story isn’t working and the words aren’t humming, STOP. Do not continue to push. What it means is that you do not know the characters well enough. You made a decision within 3-5 pages before the story dies that the character does something out of character, which is why the story has died.

Technique: Interview your character.
- Ask your character the same questions asked in a celeb interview in a magazine.
- The more you know about your character will inform the character’s unconscious choices.
- (e.g. Seahawks fans wear their team-themed stuff around the city. You know them by their typical default colors, etc.)
- Having these little details, even if they never make it into the story, inform the story. You learn more about your character.
- Can also apply psychoanalytical books to this (like, 4000 things you should ask your crush).
- Write down the answer the character will give, and the answer they truly think.
- How many secrets do they have in their lives, and how far will they go to keep their secrets secret?
- When you need to write a story, there is some drama or trauma in their lives.

Writers are better than anybody else!
- A lot of stories share a lot of plotlines.
- He doesn’t like the word “formula”. He prefers the word “recipe”. Different people will produce different variants on a recipe.
- This is what drives themes for anthologies, too.


Simple Story Recipes

The Bug Hunt
- The most basic story that gets told
1) Learn that the bug exists. (problem) (eg. A wolf has been stealing sheep)
2) Learn how to kill the bug.  (solve the problem) (eg. How to destroy the wolf – the protagonist learns)
3) Develop the skills and resources to learn to kill the bug. (solve the problem) (how to kill the wolf)
4) Kill the bug. (solve the problem) (or, kill the wolf, etc)
- This same four-step engine is the engine that drives every single problem in every story.
- There isn no problem that won’t work though these four steps.
- When we reach step 4, may fail. So go back to steps 2 and 3, lather rinse repeat until 4) is achievable.
- A novel is a series of these breakdowns.
- Usually linked in parallel, dealing with more problems at the same time.
- Sometimes solving this problem gives you resources and skills to solve more problems later.
- Can break any problem down into these steps.
- You always want to challenge yourself, do the more challenging thing.
- Sometimes it’s possible to have a resolution where the bug doesn’t die, but the protagonist finds other solutions. Or it may set up a problem for later in the series.
- False success; failure to kill the bug but you wouldn’t know it. The bug re-manifests. Or the heroes are tasked with killing the dragon and then the land is overrun by the orcs that the dragon was feeding on. Whether you fail to kill the bug and you know it, or you believe you did and you didn’t, that lack of success leads to more story later.

The Romance Recipe
- You want romance in your story.
- If you have characters capable of being loved, they’re capable of being redeemed.
- Having characters go through that is something we love. We love seeing characters getting together.
- If you can fit romance into your story, do it.
1) Boy meets girl (or boy meets boy, etc). Everything seems fantastic.
2) Circumstances force them apart.
- a) either a misunderstanding or
- b) a hostile third party
separates them. (Circumstances force them apart.)
3) The two lovers overcome difficulties and solve the problem to force them back together again. (Characters go through hell to get back together again. Going through hell: finding bugs, killing bugs, etc.)
- You can play with characters’ availability, obligations, partners, misunderstandings and assumptions
- Just don’t repeat the same situation as readers will see that and get annoyed.
- This will fit into any book anywhere.
- You want your characters to have emotional lives. That makes them more real.

The Murder Mystery
- Suspense, solving crime, always some aspect that can be used.
- Modern Murder Mystery
1) Someone dies.
- In old stories you run into all the characters first, all the suspects. Nowadays you just start with a body.
- Your protagonist needs to be on screen or in the story as much as possible.
- The reader needs to make sense of what’s going on, so start with the body being splattered all over the place, crime techs giving the details, hero
- As a reader’s job it’s to predict they know the ending
- The writer’s job is to throw things off and create a surprise ending
- Whatever problem shows up on the first page of the book has to be solved on the last page.
- Can dress up characters so they look like inconsequential chars and become more important and relevant later.
- Don’t toss out insignificant clues.
2) Suspects are questioned, evidence is examined, someone lies, and we learn a new fact.
- A piece of evidence shows that someone is lying. You break down why they lied. But now they’ve told the truth, someone else has lied.
- Go through the “someone is lying, break them down” process until you
3) Detectives learn facts that expose the lie
- Go through steps 2 and 3 quite a number of times.
4) (optional) Someone else dies.
- New witnesses, new clues, new cycles of steps 2 and 3.
5) After you’ve gone through enough, the protagonist knows who did it.
6) The villain is exposed and captured. (Knowing the bad guy’s identity is not the same as exposing the bad guy.)
- Technically this recipe is a more specific type of bug hunt.

With these three storylines, you can do anything.
- Basic bug hunt: about 4K.
- Beginning novelist: Be over 80K and under 120K.
- More experienced novelists: Can write the longer books.
- Electronically self-pubbed: 50K (avg. length of mysteries and sci-fis of old)
- YA: Character should be 2 years older than target audience.
- Adjust sentence length and word length. The average reader reading for pleasure reads at an 8th grade level. Average sentence length should be about 12 words.
- The human memory handles 12 words very well. Add more, and we lose some.
- The moment you hit a comma, it acts as a new sentence.
- When doing action scenes, the average should drop to 8 words per sentence.
- Use commas and conjunctions to stretch a sentence out.
- Longer sentences make the readers work.
- Use characterization to enhance the story.

Serial Fiction (ongoing story arcs)
- Individual episodes, but an overall story arc.
1. Intro (first thousand words): who the story’s about, what the problem is that will be true for the main line of the story. The problem that will be resolved in the main line of the story.
2. Main. (second thousand words continue dealing with the main line of the story).
3. A
4. Main.
5. B
6. Main
7. Main
8. A
9. Main
10. Wrap it up.
- 70% of this story is dealing with the problem only in this individual story.
- The only parts not dealing with this are A and B.
- A: Soap opera material. Stuff about the life of the protagonist. Can use romance as an idea for example. (In the first A meets someone they might be interested in). In subsequent A, develop it a little more. Key to making the soap opera work.
- If A is a positive subplot, B has to be a negative subplot. Car stolen. Romance problem. Character is in trouble.
- The A and B lines carry on to the next story. The next story, you might have the same things, but in the next story the B fills the A slots. Or we can be dealing with a new problem in the next book.
- Doing a push-pull with the character’s life.
- B is good to be distinct from A but it doesn’t matter.
- Key: Never let the soap opera stuff to be more than 30% of the story. If there’s more main, drop in more A & B.
- Otherwise, once it gets to be more, it forces readers to have to have read all the stories. (And yes, you want that, but you don’t want the story to have to make no sense if you haven’t read the previous stories.)
- A can be negative, and B positive, but you have to have one negative and one positive.
- A and B don’t have to be isolated. They can affect each other, work off another.
- You can have bits of A and B surface in Main, but must keep

Final Thoughts
If you are in a position where you are stuck, throw more characters in, do more things, rather than killing. More characters increase the options. Make it more complicated, not less.
Everything must serve the story.

When do you do the check to make sure the story works?
When working on the next draft, set it down for a bit. Then come back. If you’re yawning, fix it.

Breathing Life into Your Characters (ECCC 2014 Writing Panel Notes)

Aaand we're back, with more great notes from last year's Emerald City Comic Con! I really enjoyed the insight here in this great Q&A panel about character.

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Breathing Life into Your Characters

Emma Michaels, Marie Frances, Cornelia Funke

Moderator: Heather Reasby

With short stories: do you have tips and tricks to help add quick depth to a character?

EM: Put them into a situation that tests them. The situation and how they react to it is vital.
MF: Come in with a backstory, what character they’ve developed..
CF: The leaner you can get, the better – you can get so brilliant, sometimes do the first draft fast, rewrite it many times, then read it aloud. Keep some secrets (don’t explain too much). Have them contradictory, have a lot of fun with it, then work on the language. If the language doesn’t work, the story won’t work. Don’t think about how it would sell. Feel like a magician when you do it, and it will be fine.

Do you have any secret weapons or go-to techniques, best ways to get into characters and really develop them?

CF: A character sometimes just comes to you. Keeps a character bible by hand, images of characters she doesn’t know yet – don’t just use actors as models because it’s so dangerous, the characters are already taken and overused.
MF: Characters just come to her. Sees someone who looks distinctive and the character will come to her. Allow the character to surprise you.
EM: Don’t force it if the storyline and character don’t mesh. Do a lot of people watching. Think about the people you love, and even they have flaws.
CF: Every character has a little bit about yourself.

What are some tips for trying to understand in a way characters, especially main characters, that are very different from you?

CF: Expect that they will lie to you, surprise you. (Doesn’t believe in writer’s block, it’s just that the story tricked you and you are stymied by the surprise.)
EM: Observe, make sure the characters don’t give you illusions about them, don’t let them become more than who they are (characteristic wise). Don’t be afraid to test the limits, or to test your own limits as well. Write like only you can write.

Characters more interesting in story you put them in – how do you fix that?

EM: Don’t be afraid to not think of them so much as your friends but of yourself as an onlooker. Put them in extreme situations and circumstances.
CF: Don’t overdo plot. Find out what your style is.
EM: Don’t be afraid to have your fiction be honest. Don’t just write tailored work. Write what you’re actually feeling.
CF: Don’t expect overnight success. Also, characters are only interesting if they have an interesting story.

What comes first, the situation or the character? Tips for characters for both types?

CF: Both work. Can make the location, have a canvas on which you paint, then the location will give you the character. The richness of the location can sometimes evoke characters. But sometimes a character will step into your life and demand a story.

How do you illustrate a character’s flaws when writing young, flawed characters – especially younger ones?

CF: Don’t write the flaws down. Young characters know who they are. They’re not as masked, they’re clever. The older we get we put ourselves in a box. A child is a hundred people at the same time, and is okay with that. Grownups question everything they say, how they are perceived. Children are in many ways our better selves. Make them as clever and clear as you want. They are surprising with how clever and how much they know.

EM: Sometimes story or character comes from an object.

CF: Often it’s back and forth: story feeds into character into story. Every story is another challenge. They’re so interwoven.

Tips on making characters sound different?

MF: Listen to the characters, let them say what they’re going to say, give them the freedom to do that and evolve on their own. They’ll develop their own voices. Don’t let them completely derail the story, wrangle as necessary, but do listen to them.

EM: Choose something you know they’d be judged based off of, and show that it’s actually really beautiful, fascinating, wonderful.

CF: Watching the world from a slightly different angle is a privilege.

EM: Even getting to see the world as uglier is a privilege.

How do you approach a character with an accent?

CF: Can’t do it in German – doing so is perceived as dumb, making fun of the character.

EM: The same way the character comes to her. Also, if a different language is your first language, the order of the way you think about things, the thought pattern, is different. The character’s language can be simpler, more complex, more poetic.

HR: The devil is in the details. Look at word order but don’t throw a heavy amount of dialect to overwhelm the reader.

CF: Different speakers use word choice differently, too.

How do you convey to audience what the character is thinking, get into characters’ heads, to your audience?

CF: Complete inner monologue chapters, association, remembering, but do it indirectly but have it echo from an object or incident. Inner dialogue.

EM: You can explain things without spelling them out – a word here and there can hint at their thought process. Also, tries switching between first and third person to get the outside, the inside perspectives to see it anew and then choose.

How do you avoid writing stereotypes?

MF: Think outside the box, make characters for the fun of it. See how they evolve.

EM: Look beyond what the stereotype shows. There’s always a reason for something, something that caused something, the way things are.

CF: Sometimes people are actually a stereotype. Some people hide from themselves, wear the mask, want to be just the stereotype. Can use for comedic effect.

What about giving a villain an in-depth story?

CF: The villains are the ones she knows last. Not cliché. Voldemort is a good villain. The ones that surprise you.

MF: Loves writing complex villains with understandable motivation. Usually villains act and heroes react. Villain should be complex, more interesting, to explain why they’ve turned to those actions. The best villains she’s ever read had something redeemable about them, something likeable, so you can sympathize.

EM: Think about the villains in your life. Who’s made themselves a villain to you and how did they do it, how did they become a villain in your eyes? Sometimes it’s about them making a mistake at the wrong moment. Sometimes villains view themselves as having messed up, and working that into a villain can help you know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

CF: Sometimes we underestimate evil. You think there can’t be as much evil in the world as you hear about. It’s easy to romanticize villains. There’s a danger in romanticizing violence, evil, understanding every crime as something we all do. So when you create a character, don’t necessarily make them charismatic. Evil isn’t romantic. It’s horrible. True evil is crippled, and someone who doesn’t love, feel compassion, is a dark hole. Try to make them hateful, have the reader want them to die. Have respect for that. See the potential in evil that it is crippled and not glamorous.

CF: Write for the passion, not to trends.

The Hero’s Journey: Writing Fiction with a Female Protagonist (ECCC 2014 Writing Panel Notes)

DonRocko and I have started going to Emerald City Comic-Con (ECCC). This year was the first time I realized there were also writing panels at the convention. And wow, was there ever some great stuff to attend! The next few sets of notes will cover what I'd hoped to get to sooner ... but such is life. *sigh* For a more detailed excuse, please see my first post of the year.

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The Hero’s Journey: Writing Fiction with a Female Protagonist

Sharon Skinner, Jenn Czep

Moderator: Bob Nelson (publisher, Brick Cave Books)

“We are people first and gender comes after.” – Sharon Skinner

How does the Monomyth feed into the stories today?

The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell’s original monomyth

-          Feeds into our need for story and the way we tell story, relate to story

-          How it helps us to learn and grow

-          But Campbell was writing as a man at a time when all of our heroes were men

-          So his idea of the hero’s journey is still in many ways one-sided.

Call to adventure – takes you out of comfort zone

-          At some point you go into a new realm

-          Adventures, helpers, etc

-          At some point you succeed, and bring something back to your people

The Heroine’s Journey

-          Basic premise: the female’s inner journey is internal

-          More emotional

-          Not necessarily an adventure

What Matters Here
-          A hero’s journey needs both the masculine and feminine perspectives

-          The more balanced a hero’s journey is, the more satisfying it is

-          So it may involve internal journeys, yes, but also external journeys.

-          The most satisfying journeys encompass both the internal and the external.

BN: Jenn, Blackstrap is a female captain pirate at a time not known for female captain pirates. Want to talk about it?

-          JC: Not true. Piracy was not all men.

-          One of the first female entrepreneurial choices was piracy.

-          Women know how to run a business. But they weren’t allowed to own business, or have rank, unless they married.

-          But they had the skills, so piracy was an excellent option.

BN: Sharon, Kira comes from a very specific examination of the feminine hero. Want to talk about it?

-          Kira came as a character SS followed around

-          Her stories are very layered. A story, patriarchal norming, navigation of the established system and taking the system apart

-          Used Kira’s story for thesis in Master’s in Creative Writing

-          Fantasy and SF as resistant text for young people – resistant text that pushes back from the social messages youth are getting – gives young women a place to go

Audience Question: Resistive text: what you were reading years ago was male-based. Did that make it difficult to get inside the minds of your characters?

-          JC: started reading a balance – Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons

-          Also, reading male characters – you can relate to them, that sense

-          SS: Read a lot of Heinlein, etc, very patriarchal bases, male SFF – didn’t hurt her any, but didn’t clue her in enough when she wrote the first version of her book, The Nelig Stones. Fell into the female protagonist trap – where if you’ve been fed these messages all your life you write the female that needs to be rescued. But also still reads male character stuff. Nick Fury YA,

Audience Question: JC, when researching Blackstrap, did you have difficulty researching female pirates?

-          Yes and no. Western pirates, yes, but Eastern pirates had a wealth of information

-          Also, has a friend with a PHD in pirate history

-          Some of what the women historically did was crazier than the stuff she wrote

Audience Question: So what constitutes a strong female character?

-          A strong female character isn’t much different from her male counterpart

-          She’s someone who owns their own destiny by the end of the book

-          They have to own it and they have to be willing to own it

-          As a writer, write a character who can be tempered through the challenges of the fire they face.

-          Character needs to start in a place where they have room to grow and become that character they need to be at the end of the book

-          They have what they need to have, but need to be tempered by the fires of all of the obstacles they face

-          And the fire that tempers them is what makes them their own instrument to take on their own destiny

-          That’s the most satisfying – so what can grow into so they need to be at the end of the book

Audience Question: Do you need to be masculine to be a hero?

-          JC: Not the case at all.

-          Game of Thrones: Strong female characters are strong in every way a fem character can be strong. Even Cersei. A strong maternal character. Even if it means killing everyone else off. This is a strength women hold.

Audience Question: Masculine in the sense of being nice, instead of just being perceived as bitchy?

-          Sansa’s trying to fit into society, play by society’s rules with the cards she’s been dealt

-          About being in their environment, finding their way within the system – they can be disliked, but they’re doing what they can with what they have

Audience Question: Resistant texts – how do you write female antagonists without parroting the bad guys in society?

-          SS: Has a female character in Healer’s Journey doing what she thinks she needs to do to make her way in the world, but people hate her – what matters is that the character is real enough.

-          The key is keeping it real, and making your characters fully faceted individuals.

-          If an antagonist is too all bad, they can come across as not real. Make them real.

Audience Question: Sansa as a Strong Female Character – she has very little agency, everything’s directed by outside forces. Can you write a character who is strong despite choices being made by outside forces?

-          Can be done, but again, you just have to make them real

-          Ask yourself: whose journey is it really?

Audience Question: What typically do male authors get wrong from a female perspective, and can you think of any that get it right?

-          Joss Whedon. But he gets it all right.

-          Nowadays we’re seeing more male authors who are getting it more right.

-          Back, looking at comics, they’re not getting it right. 

-          Garth Nix – Sabriel – incredible protagonist

-          Neil Gaiman and Arthur Golden also get it right

-          Example of getting it wrong: CS Lewis – Perelanda series – “Now, because I’m becoming a real woman, I can give up my frivolous dreams and become a real mother.”

Audience Question: Do you find it harder writing internal strength, or external strength?

-          SS: It’s the balance of both matters. In the character arc, growth must be internal and external for them to become that instrument. Sometimes that means learning to swordfight, sometimes that means learning to nurture.

-          D&D books, not much internal growth – some readers like that

-          Some prefer emotional rollercoaster

-          She likes both.

Audience Question: Resistant texts – how to make a character likeable but strong – we also should read widely. Can you think of texts we shouldn’t read?

-          SS: Twilight. No real character arc. Prime example of this.

-          The Host – likewise, the character didn’t change.

-          Very escapist

-          This is a matter of taste

-          Mentor texts: You read widely, eclecticly, to learn how to do it well, and then you also read ones where you learn what NOT to do. Texts you can decipher and dissect. Go back and read those pages that teach you.

-          As a painter, you learn to copy the masters. As a writer, when she had to learn to write a battle scene, she picked several battle scenes from books she’d read and liked, then picked them apart for how they pulled it off. Copy the techniques. Example: George R.R. Martin gives an eagle view of the battle, then makes it personal.

-          Likewise if you get thrown out of the narrative when reading a book, think of it as a bad example, and *don’t* do that.

Audience Question: What do you think of writing trans* protagonists?

-          JC: Hasn’t written any, but it’s important to remember that the journey is still just as much about the internal and external journeys. It’s about being human first. Gender isn’t about what they are, it’s about who they are, so you can show what growth there is, and what character arc there is, regardless of who they are. It’s a different character arc for that person.

-          SS: It’s all about love. About being human, not being afraid to take that leap, especially when you’re going into a territory your character clearly knows, even if you don’t.

Audience Question: Exercise in gender perspective – wrote a scene with a male protagonist, then changed all the pronouns to female. The story completely changed. Is this how society views it? Or do you need to write men and women differently?

-          SS: When you’re writing a character, it’s about how effeminate or masculine you want your character to be, male or female, and the strengths you choose to give them. Not so much about gender as it is about their masc/fem sides of who they are

-          JC: The reader will read it in their own way. Pirate books – many of the characters go either way, and it’s not about sexual pref but more about power, and with one villain with a fem harem, it was about having power over others. But if she wrote that same character as male, it would be a flat character. But some will read it differently.

-          Sharon: We all see the word though our own lenses. As a writer we hope that our readers get lost in the world, but if our readers see it slightly differently.

-          Sharon: Human motivation is what drives us all. It’s all about motivation. You have to make sure the motivation behind what your characters are doing is what makes them real.

How to pull away from the tropes?

-          JC: One example: Cimorene – rebellious princess, but with mad skillz. Arya Stark, too.

-          SS: Take the trope and turn it on its ear.

-          Take the cliché character and change something drastically about them, give them some major skill or huge character flaw, an Achilles heel, and switch it up.

-          Character tests and sheets are helpful tools, but don’t let them run your life or tell you how to write or not to write.

-          The biggest tool is to write your heart out. If you don’t enjoy spending time with your characters, then you need to rethink what you’re doing.  But don’t let the rules and the tools get in the way.

-          Every book will tell you how to do it, but that’s just how the one author did it. We’re artists, first.

Messages to men when they grow up: about being strong, etc. But if you’re writing strong female characters, is it a challenge to write strong males?

-          Characters should balance each other out.

-          The difficulty was not in making the male characters weaker or the female characters overpoweringly strong – it’s about making them both strong in diff ways.

-          About being human, not about gender.

-          JC: Male characters aren’t necessarily unlikable if they’re very strong or very weak, but something should offer assistance to fem character. If they’re weaker, there’s got to be a strength within them that isn’t a physical strength. They could be mentally adept.

-          SS: Stumbled in allowing both male and female characters to be their own people – stumbled because didn’t want her character to have too much help, needed more tempering – want her to have a character arc.  Struggled with figuring out who’d the characters would be together, how their strengths and weaknesses would play off one another. Figuring it out now.

When writing trans* or intersex characters, or say aliens without identifiable sex or gender – How do you avoid problems  with them becoming just objects for traditional characters who bounce their gender issues off other characters?

-          SS: whatever issues they struggle with, temper them, put them through the fire.

-          Get back inside the head of your character and find out what that journey really is.

So what’s the key to writing a female hero?

-          SS: Butt In Chair. Make the person human. Whoever they are, whatever they are, make them human, as real as possible with strengths and flaws.

-          Make sure you throw lots of obstacles and challenges at the characters. Temper them as much as possible. Make them the sword they need to be at the end of the story.

-          JC: Pay attention to people. The realistic characters you’re surrounded by.

-          Characters are very much us, but also the people around us. If you know a strong woman in your life, pay attention to what makes them strong.