Writing Characters with Disabilities (ConCarolinas 2015 Writing Panel Notes)

So it's been awhile. Definitely a lot longer than planned. But when Stuff begets Other Stuff and one's world implodes just ever-so-slightly, and then one finds oneself the unfair target of several negative people in multiple areas of one's life, and then one starts to question one's own sanity, until numerous others come forward and confirm that no, one is not imagining things... well. It has been an interesting summer. Complaints have been and will be filed. And at least for one of the situations, my next filked song will be, "Screenshots Are a Gir's Best Friend".

You read the title of the post right: this is my last set of notes from 2015 that slipped through the cracks in my rush to edit a manuscript and then subsequent jetsetting, attending my sister's graduation then flying to this year's ConCarolinas and my writing group's retreat. I exhausted my spoons but still came back creatively invigorated and refreshed.

Today's topic is very appropriate, since this is nothing if not Difficult Topics week here. Coming in a few days will be my contribution to #HoldOntoTheLight, the mental health awareness initiative from SFF authors and bloggers. (Hey, might as well go for the stuff that matters.) The authors here bring their experience writing about characters with disabilities, and in some case, dealing with their own issues. This is another important facet in the movement for diverse books. Enjoy!

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Writing Characters with Disabilities

Rebecca Carter, Louise Herring-Jones, Dahlia Rose

 Moderator: Allen L. Wold

DR: Husband with PTSD

AW: Has written about disabled people; has strong opinions about this subject

RC: Writes short horror, focusing on people who are dealing with specific ailments, has a few issues of her own

LH: Writes much about people with various challenges, some with disabilities

Why would you choose to write about disabled people?

RC: It’s important to get a good read on the story. It’s hard when you can’t function the way you believe you should function. Wants to be able to relate to something.

LH: The story she wrote, the story structure, the deaf character came to her, and that diability became an ability.

DR: Husband came back from Iraq after two deployments, with a massive brain injury, and ptsd, and going to the VA, talking with other soldiers, felt like people wanted to pity them rather than seeing them as they really are. People see the scars, the injuries, and she shows in her books that they have to learn a new way of life and are not to be pitied. They don’t want a handout, they just want to learn to do it differently.

AW: The people are people, and don’t want pity.

What actually entails a disability? (Thinks it’s rude to say “differently abled”) What does comprise a disability and what are things not a disability?

RC: Anyone who has a physical or mental roadblock to be able to function the way society generally would.

LH: Skewed viewpoint, as an attorney: disability specifically defined in law, something that impairs a major life function. Not reading glasses, but yes special eyewear for legally blind. Looks at what people can do, not what they can’t.

AW: Saying something is “differently abled” is condescending to him. What about injured soldiers? Do you agree, DR?

DR: Agrees completely. Helped husband retain his right to his own power of attorney because it means more to him and her.

AW: Yes, disabilities are part of who disabled folks are. But that doesn’t mean it’s the only thing about them.

LH: The key is to write about it respectfully. If a not-nice character in your story has a certain characteristic, some readers might not like it. Everyone has logic, even if the logic is illogic.

AW: If you’re going to write someone with disability, acknowledge the disability, but that doesn’t mean you should spend much time with that disability if it doesn’t do much in the story. What is the point of the character?

How much time do you spend working on the disability in your characterization, and how much on the rest of the story (unless you’re making a specific point)?

DR: Just treats it like another characteristic. Yes he has a missing arm, but it should just be a thing, not the focal point that impacts the story.

RC: Trying to find the line, just because a little point is a fact in the character’s life. Unless that’s exactly what you’re writing about.

LH: Latest issue of Discover – about echolocation in visually impaired in the real world. Different btw people born with sight and live that way, but the earlier you lose your sight, the more skilled you are at echolocation.

DR: An accident required a corneal transplant, couldn’t see well for a few years, had to rely on other senses and found ways to work around that.

If it serves the story … how could you best portray a disability without being condescending or overly detailed?

AW: Not about the disability, but about something else.

LH: Jamie Lannister’s story arc since losing his hand, it’s the impetus for his character development.

Can you imagine a situation where a typical disability can prove to be the benefit necessary for the continuation of the story?

DR: Social awkwardness – with disabilities in general, when soldiers are scarred or injured or hurt, there’s the emotion, the anger, the self-pity, and they do lash out. You can’t just write a perfect hero, you have to write their mental and physical attributes because of what happened. Can cause destruction of a family, of a person who’s gone through it, and it’s hard to see a person who was so vital before drawing away from life in general and you’re trying to pull them out and you’re feeling a desperation. It affects the people around them, too.

How would you write folks with specific disabilities?

RC: Probably would, but what’s hard is that people can only relate to people who are different to a certain extent, and if the story’s not entirely about what they’re facing, then readers can’t entirely connect to the stories because it’s hard to understand what others are going through. You empathize the most with the people you can relate to most.

AW: If that’s just one facet of his personality and the rest of the character is interesting by themselves, you can definitely deal with that. Don’t dwell on it, but let it be a subtext that makes the character richer.

Aud: What if the purpose of your story is to open up your reader to the difficulties of a character?

DR: Sheldon is socially awkward. But as the show progresses, it shows different people opening up. Showing how nerds are just like regular people. A colour of a skin, a person’s social awkwardness, if you take a moment to learn about it, it gives your reader something to mesh with. It opens up the story to the readers.

AW: The first thing you have to do is give them only one problem and not seventeen. Limit the number. One disability, even if that’s not true, is something you can focus on and clarify, so that otherwise your character is sympathetic, someone you feel with them (not pity). So don’t layer on several things at once.

RC: Beyond sympathetic, don’t need to have too much. One thing at a time because a lot of people start to instantly feel guilt if there’s too much the person is suffering from.

LH: Not much into message literature. But there’s also a social issue of whether or not can a person of one race or ethnicity truly write about someone of another race or ethnicity? John Hartness “The White Guy” and learning to open his eyes, Alice Walker’s scathing essays –  LH disagrees, thinks it can be written. Whether it’s race, gender, ethnicity, disability, write it. Do it respectfully. And if it’s something you understand personally, then all the better.

AW: If you want people to be sympathetic to the character, having some knowledge helps you write it better.  

LH: And if you want to write something amazingly controversial, make a sff world and put those differences, and it’s amazing what you can get by with.

DR: Speaking as an African American, you don’t write them differently. You just write them as you would any other character.

AW: Portray people as people. Then if you can empathize with that character, then regardless of their disability or other characteristics, then

RC: People aren’t stereotypes. When you come to mental disabilities. The only stereotype you see of women with mental health issues is the “one type” of “crazy lady”. You rarely see women with legitimate mental disabilities.

Audience Question: What should we do if we want or need to include a person with some kind of difference? How do we portray that person: ignore it, accept it, or is it something that can affect the story? Show how they’ve overcome it?

DR: Yes.

Audience Question: Are characters with disabilities more prevalent these days?

AW: Less of a shame, less embarrassing, because we’ve been working on this for a very long time. It’s easier now to put them in fiction. If you’re embarrassed about somebody’s differences, you shouldn’t be including it in a story.

LH: A trend in calls, stories about people with disabilities, people “underrepresented previously in literature”. If you want to writer about an unrepresented population, now’s the time. Know people. Talk to people. Pay attention.

DR: Check out Michael Stokes Photography.

AW: We’re all still people, and that’s what we’re writing about. Stories with people.

Beyond the Children’s Section: Writing YA (Emerald City Comic-Con 2015 Writing Panel Notes)

Another YA panel? Yes, but just as we've learned with the sex panels, each time a writer or group of writers tackles this subject, the information rendered is unique. Enjoy!

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Beyond the Children’s Section: Writing YA

Aaron Michael Ritchey, Holly Black, Lisa Mantchev, Rachel Hartman, Arwen Elys Dayton

Moderator: John Lovett

What are the characteristics that you’ve found that make for a YA market?

AD: Wrote a book and paid no attention to genre; it happens the four main characters at the centre of the story are teens. It’s a minefield that we go through in life and a very interesting part of life to examine.

RH: YA for her has to do with the themes. The time in your life when you’re stepping out, emerging, coming out and trying to figure out who you are, all the possibilities ahead of you. As opposed to adult lit where you’ve made your mess and must lie in it.

LM: Similar experience: wrote the story she wanted to write. It just happened to be YA. Now she knowingly writes YA as a theme, the coming of age story, foundation issues for a YA novel.

HB: What defines a YA novel is a teen protagonist. Certain themes and characteristics throughout, but there are outliers that don’t have those things. It really does come down to a teenage protagonist.

AR: Wanted to write YA. Yes, it’s a teen protagonist going through teenager things, but also dealing with other things.

HB: YA didn’t used to exist the way it did now. Most people just transitioned to writing adult novels. Remember that you’re competing with adult books. You’re writing the experiences of a teenager. Otherwise, they’ll go read adult books.

AR: It’s the emotional vibrancy.

We’ve talked about the characteristics of this market. Are the characters supposed to be two years older? Are the sentences longer (as per Stackpole)?

RH: It’s not our job to plan that.

LM: It may be a 10-year-old advanced reader or their grandmother who bought it for them. Lots of people read YA. Not just kids or the target audience. Syntax, etc, are editorial decisions.

AD: People are more willing these days to talk about what happened when they were teens. But don’t write down or talk down to a teenager. You don’t dumb it down.

RH: When you were young, you were used to learning new words through context.

HB: Idea of aging up the character: most of the time, readers like reading characters a little bit older than them, to tell whether they like it or not to figure out whether a character is right for them. If you get asked to age up or down a character by the publisher, you don’t have to. And making sentences shorter. YA allows for more complex sentences. MG wants more simple sentences. And when people are talking about YA, they are often thinking about MG. HP and Percy Jackson behave like seventeen year olds in a middle grade.

AD: Problem with Harry Potter – Rowling made no distinction between MG and YA. She had the luxury of working between both.

LM: She deliberately did not choose to focus on teen issues. Partly because the aspects of being teens were not important when dealing with the world-at-stake issues.

AR: What it really comes down to is the sex stuff. You can kill, but the moment you add the sex stuff. There are no rules; what works, works.

Speaking of the Harry Potter series – YA used to be Burroughs and Tarzan. How has the YA market fundamentally changed, and how do you think the Harry Potter series has influenced the YA market, and where is it going?

HB: HP is not YA. Has changed the MG market, adding younger middle grade and older middle grade. Big series that affected things: Gossip Girl, Twilight, the Hunger Games. What we see as YA has shifted. And it’s still in flux. It’s way different than it was a few decades ago. And some YA back then would be considered MG.

LM: Write what you really want to write; don’t chase a trend. The digital revolution has now found new homes for books. As YA authors it’s now limitless possibilities as for what you want to write and how you want to get it out there.

RH: Agrees that HP is MG. But it is directly responsible for YA authors being able to publish600 page books. Twilight, too. Opened doors for longer manuscripts being accepted.

AD: YA used to be less about how old you were than what you were interested in reading. Now kids have very big books. Write what you want to write; it finds the audience.

LM: Also, YA saved the industry. Parents would still buy their kids books even when the economy tanked. YA was the one category that outperformed every age group every year.

AR: One of the reasons why is that you have this emotional vibrancy in teen fiction. You get that in YA books because it is such a vibrant part of our life. And an emotional vibrancy in the fan base. Also, the coming of age story is so great because it’s such a hopeful arc. Madeline L’Engle: If you really want to write complex stories, don’t write for adults, write for younger stories.

HB: Not just page length or series length. Release dates, midnight releases, now have become a thing.

LM: This is how big it’s become.

AD: Entirely new territory.

In the context of writing a YA novel, are there stereotypes of characters and tropes you’d suggest that authors avoid? What would be the least and most successful?

RH: Use any trope you want, but you have to earn it, own it, make it yours. They’re not bad in and of themselves. You use them and think about them and be aware of when you’re doing them. Stereotypes arise from a lack of understanding. Notice how you use these building blocks, try not to fall into the traps   before.

AD: You can’t come up with something wholly original; it’s about the story, lets it grow in its own space as its own story.

LM: Just because something has been done already doesn’t mean you can’t do it better. You get your craft to the point that you know what you can do with a story. Make it worth reading. Uses TV tropes.

HB: Write a book that you the reader would truly love. Then hope other people will love that too. Try not to write nostalgically about childhood/youth. Remember what it was truly like to be there. Write for yourself then and yourself now.

AR: It takes courage and bravery to do that. Being a writer is an act of absolute courage and daring. And what you write can have an impact on a writer. Write the books that will save someone else’s life.

Audience question: What is your research process when writing a marginalized character?

HB: It’s the iceberg. You’ll have to do a lot of research that won’t show up in your work. Make sure that you do this respectfully and well. Have folks of that marginalized group read it for authenticity. You’re creating a character with the weight of representing that. One of the ways to do that well is to hopefully not have that character be the token, only person of that marginalized group.

LM: Have your ducks in a row, use beta readers to get feedback. Some will not be offended, some will be very offended. And you will still screw up. No way to write a perfect character. And you’ll still get feedback about how folks feel you represented that character. And it’s important that you do it well because kids will see themselves in that character.

RH: Whatever their backgrounds are, it’s about extreme empathy, finding the part of that character somewhere inside yourself to be able to write them. And then, when you do receive criticism, find a way to deal with it and empathize again.

AR: And be courageous. It will happen. If you start doing stuff out of the norm, you will get attacked. We have to have diversity. It’s our job as authors to show it.

AD: If there’s someone in your life that you get to know and research it that way, great. Research with love. Once you capture that you have a fairly good chance of the words coming out right, the story heading in the right direction.

When you start outlining a story, do you focus on certain parts specifically?

AR: Goes through the 14 points in Save the Cat. Has to have the beginning hook and the climax, then follows the 14 beats.

HB: All over the place. We talk a lot about plotters and pantsers and it’s very clear but experience is that most people exist on a spectrum. Even plotters don’t stick to their outlines. Everyone has the process that they’ve come to.

LM: Everyone does it differently. No one can turn in a perfect draft. Everything good in a draft happens in revisions. All of us have files of versions of the books that will never see the light of day. Also, keep your ducks in a row for book 1 so that the details for book 3 are consistent and don't contradict book 1.

RH: Process for each book is different in each book.

NG: You never learn how to write a book. You learn how to write *this* book.

AD: A method you learn is likely only applicable to the book you are working on. Updates outline to match what she’s written. If an outline helps, go with it, otherwise throw it out. Whatever gets the book written is the process that works.

When do you share excerpts with others, who do you share with?

AD: Shares it with only a few close first readers, and watches their body language.

RH: Has two beta-reader friends.

LM: Shouts ideas through the shower to husband and daughter. If their reactons are good, that works for her. Also has done collaborations with others and working together, having someone immediately looking over your shoulder that’s as invested has been very interesting, both invigorating and challenging.

HB: Mostly shares with author friends, and formal critique group when done.

Looking Past the Target Audience (ECCC 2014 Writing Panel Notes)

And here we are, just under the wire. I saved the best for last; this panel on avoiding dated tropes, othering, and how to approach writing diverse characters in one's work was lively and intense. There's a lot of great info here. This actively extends the conversation touched on in other posts, such as Everything We Know is Sexist: Now What? and Writing Diversity. A discussion that should never end.

No, I don't normally wait a full year to post all of my notes from a convention, but I'm glad I finally have the opportunity to get these posted. Don Rocko and I are driving down to ECCC 2015 later today. In the meantime, enjoy what I learned at this awesome panel!

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Looking Past the Target Audience

Rachel Edidin, Regina Buenaobra, Cheryl Lynn Eaton, G. Willow Wilson, Andy Khouri, Sfe M., Scotty Iseri

What this Panel is About
- Brief history: This panel started a year ago because of the lack of intersectional diversity
- This is not Diversity 101. This is much more.
- Intersectionality: What it means to look at diversity from an intersectional angle

RB: Intersectionality assumes that we all live at the intersection of different identities, we’re a mix – power dynamics and struggles with various identities, not just one single identity

RE: When someone is described as from a mixed race background, assumption that it’s “White and (something).”

Panels often address one subject – the women’s panel, the queer panel, etc.

There are still a lot of stereotypes

Diversity in media and representation of characters – what does it mean to see yourselves in media? What do you look for? What do you latch onto when you find it?

CLE: Depends on age of person. When younger, visual representation was important, but as she got older wanted to find meaningful stories, creators of colour, women telling stories.

AK – Looks for intersectional characters. Lots of characters are delineated. White guy from Kansas, black guy from Africa. Willow’s Miss Marvel is Islamic American, dealing with tension that is rarely represented.

This not just about allegorical representation, but otherness, because people grow up thinking allegory is enough. Often the “different” character is used as cautionary tale. Healthy character stories, people living fulfilling lives, are never told.

AK: Example: Queer villain trope in fantasy

RE: There’s a consistent trend of queering and effeminization of male villains, even female villains – this is about moving beyond that.

RE: Geek culture – default definitions of not what a geek is, but what they look like, what their identity is, how they identify and react with that culture. What are your interactions and challenges?

SI: There have been growing pains – geek culture is now mainstream culture, cons are big, whereas as a tribe we’ve been historically downtrodden and pushed aside. But the fake nerd girl bullying is a reaction to all these new people in our party.

AK: Geek culture used to be defined as your interest in fringe tings, but now everyone has to share their experience of being into something few people used to be interested in.

CLE: By being part of a minority, it can be frustrating when you fall into different groups and those groups cut you out because of certain parts of you (coloured, female, etc).

Mandarin short on Thor 2 video: Mandarin goes to jail, and the assumption is that he is LGBT.

GWW: The impression is that when you’re in a fringe group, there’s an assumption it’s okay to other different groups. Even you’re part of a minority, it’s okay to make fun of everyone. There’s the assumption that you will find no allies in some groups. Someone even more on the outside than you are is still okay to make fun of. And then allies you could have had feel they don’t belong. There’s an unconscious need to keep the people you see as beneath you down.

CLE: It’s cute when you do it with Star Trek vs. Star Wars identities, but with these other identities, it hurts.

RE: If you ever hear someone call Big Bang Theory “nerd blackface”, tell them to go to hell. This is something you see in feminist communities, too. In one group, women who were gamers, comics fans, and yet heterosexual felt that because they were girls they had to make it clear that they were super straight. When we talk about women in comics we don’t mean “Women like you”. So, how do you change the landscape of the industry, the community?

SI – Looking for women writers for tv show, to maintain that balance in the room, but looking at narrative tropes of sci fi, not wanting to do star wars where bad guys are eerily foreign yet slightly familiar, looking to make a show with a good balance of creative talent, diverse, but anti the usual stabs at ethnicity (token character, etc) – imagine a world beyond that where they don’t have to do the Xmas ep.

CLE: Don’t have to do the Xmas episode when you have those people in the group to begin with. It’s normal, it’s natural. It’s up to the people in charge of building the community, the hiring, to make this a reality.

GWW: And as much as we talk about how important it is to have representation on the creative side, but also we need them on the editorial and executive side, because they are the gatekeepers. The conversation needs to also be, who’s on the other side of the table.

RE: Statistically, people hire other people of their own backgrounds because we’re humans and tribal and look for people like us, people we feel “safe” around. Left to our own devices, there are a lot of decent people perpetuating stereotypes.

RB: Questioning things is important. Example: ArenaNet – has 2 canon queer storylines, a pansexual race, looks for things that may speak to a different audience.

AK: There are benefits to hiring a diverse audience. The nature of the Internet mitigates a hiring bias. Not just people writing about their Xmas, but coming from different backgrounds influences the way you experience the world and the stuff you want to talk about. Maybe not to do with their personal identityy, but what they’ve discovered based on their journey.

CLE: Don’t just say “let’s have a diverse group for diverse experiences” – don’t come away assuming you can write about your culture. Your experience as your identity can write these things, but remember that the filter you were raised with will colour your story. But don’t think you can’t write about a culture because you haven’t experienced that culture directly.

SI: Having a wide variety of experiences affects us overall.

RE: We all bring our defaults and filters, they impact everything, small ways you interact with the world. Who’s doing it right, and what are they doing we can emulate?

AK: We are.

GWW: Ms. Marvel (young Muslim female superhero) – She didn’t think it would work, but she’s happy that Marvel sought it out. It’s stunning, but it’s a choice. At the end of the day, you want as many people interested as possible, but it’s rare to actually see thinking like that. And it’s not a model minority book, either; it’s a story about a girl in Jersey.

SI: Archie comics has done a good job. All characters of Riverdale are American high USA and that’s all normal, even the gay and black characters.

RE: Don’t ask why a character so demographically scattered, ask why aren’t they. With fiction, you can create that.

AK: Show Lost – a very diverse cast, each with their own backstory they bring to the present adventure.

AK: If you build it, they will come.

RE: ECCC tries to program to the audience they want to have, not based on what people who came last year liked. They’ve deliberately created space for diversity. Last of Us: main character is scruffy middle age dude. DLC and book - Naughty Dog deliberately wanted a story that people who bought the game didn’t necessarily want to see, a perspective they wouldn’t necessarily stumble on – intense teenage girl friendship, with the girls romantically involved, and this story made an interracial lesbian teenage couple the central characters. Using that is really cool and smart.

Question: What are good practices for privileged authors who want to include minorities, identities they don’t have?

RB: Ask people of those identity to read your work, review them. More than one.

CLE: Have friends of these various. The wider your world is, the wider your writing is going to be.

GWW: One also has to be psychologically diligent about the difference btw being an ally and being a savior – don’t put your idea of what success looks like into the mouths of these characters. Don’t just go with your own default narrative. An ally listens. Change your identity to allow someone else’s perspective into your life.

AK: Writing this stuff requires living and having experiences, learning about and getting to know people. Don’t just reblog what’s already out there. Go beyond what your understanding of what life is about.

SI: When asked if “is this offensive”, think, is this person going to get more of “okay” or “well, actually” – responsibility to educate rather than just being offended. Question whether it’s your story to tell. IF someone’s already out there writing that story, then give them the privilege and platform to pass it on to that person.

CLE: Mentoring also helps – allow those folks to mentor you.

Tweet other questions to @raebeta; tumblr extends conversation. This topic is waaay to big for one hour, one panel, seven people; so check out thatonepanel.tumblr.com

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.