Strong as Steel?

My first book.
Beamer was at least
semi-strong, I think.

It’s been over 20 years since my first YA was published. Back then and continuing today one hears frequent call outs for “strong female characters.” Hard to argue with the goal; still, I’ve always kind of wondered about this, frankly. A voracious reader once I actually started reading, I never felt the lack of strong female characters. My reading roamed over all sorts of books, fiction and nonfiction, and I was more concerned with being engaged by a good book than whether there was a strong female character.

Yes, I know…I shouldn’t extrapolate from my limited experience and decide that there’s no problem in the content of the books we create for and provide to children. But what do we mean when we say we want more “strong female characters?” Or more African-American characters? Or more LGBT characters?  We want them to all be strong, no doubt. But do we even know what we mean by that?

This post by Alyssa Rosenberg raises an interesting question about female strength in fiction. It’s worth reading.  

In re Empathy

ECU's Mock Trial Team is wrestling with a first-degree murder case this season. The students assume attorney and witness roles for the prosecution and defense in a fictional, 357 page case, sans addenda, that's chock-full of twists, reasonable doubt, and evidence--LOTS of evidence.

As a coach, I am duty-bound to help a student-witness enter a character's life--so that she understands the person so deeply that she becomes that person. Her role surpasses cheap acting or bathos. This is a nation-wide competition, and the team will compete with the "best." But, more importantly, a student learns to understand another's choices or lack of choices. In short, she practices empathy.

I tell a student (ad nauseum) that the jury must "feel and believe your story." You must live, eat, and breathe every facet of that person's life. The "witness" isn't a witness. She's a human being. She's a second victim. She's hurting. Or, maybe she's pleased with herself (her role as accessory--obtaining the date-rape drug for the Defendant is "no biggie"). What would she do? What would she say? How can you make her sympathetic? Make her real.

So, last week, I had a moment. I sat in the office, staring down a WIP and realized that I don't follow my own advice. I try. But, I'd committed a reckless failure to "empathize" with the protag. (done without malice aforethought, but still...). Then I got over myself, opened a blank page, and remembered that writing is an act of crafting argument, after argument, after argument, persuading the reader by offering evidence, so that she'll draw the conclusions about the character and her journey. The evidence must be believable. Or else, a reader, advisor, (or jury) won't buy it.

How do you choose the evidence (during revision) that best showcases your character? How much evidence does your reader need? How do you step into your character's skin (without committing battery)? Share your Getting-to-Know-Your-Character exercises.

BTW, Happy Book Birthday to Anne Ursu's novel, Breadcrumbs! Go, Anne! :0)

This post is adjourned...

Finding the "cow-ness" of our cows

Students who've made it to the University of Minnesota campus in St. Paul and seen the cow sculptures on the lawn there will recognize the huge reclining bovine here, part of a series done by Connecticut sculptor Peter Woytuk. Woytuk has said that he wanted to emphasize the mass of the bull, to make it a part of the landscape.

The other sculpture was done by a Maine sculptor, Roger Prince. I was struck when I first saw Roger Prince's sculpture and the U of M bull how these two pieces of art had captured some aspect of bovines. Neither artist had included all the details of the real cow/bull--the reclining animal doesn't seem to have any ears. Yet in its eyes, the way the head and neck are portrayed, the bulk of the shoulders, we have a sense of an animal who has an intelligence and might be sizing us up, too.

Roger Prince doesn't want his cow, small enough to stand on a side table, to be part of the landscape. He seems to want us to view her as a curious, but solid creature. He has also chosen, to place emphasis on the head and neck, to give us a sense of curiosity in this cow. And, to give viewers a sense of solidity he's made the hooves much larger than cows' hooves are. Because of those broad hooves, we don't think anyone will be tipping this cow soon.

And the photograph shows us a real cow, one of an old breed from England, called White Park. We see its distinctive horns, the black ears and nose--a real cow, not larger or smaller, not interpreted.

Each image of cow gives us slightly different information and a different impression of "cow-ness."

When we are writing our stories, whether fiction or non-fiction, we learn so much about our characters that we often want to share all that we know, the interesting little quirks of their lives, the side roads and byways that take them out of the main direction of our story.

In fact we can't, we shouldn't tell it all , we only need to select the details that give readers a clear sense of our characters and how they are moving through the story. We bootstrap ourselves along in story-making. As we know our plot, we learn which details of character we will want to include. As we figure out details of character we have more information and more plot choices.

Plucky Protags

Warning: Rant ahead
Disclaimer: My accusing finger also points back at me

I am a writer and teacher of writing. I am blessed to have just cause to spend hours a day messing around with language and story. I did not always want to be a writer; as a child my career aspirations were usually influenced by whatever book I was reading. When I was reading Cherry Ames, I leaned toward medicine. When Nancy Drews littered my bed covers I remember thinking about criminal law. I don't recall that Johnny Tremain triggered an interest in silversmithing, but then many details of childhood daydreaming have fortunately floated away into the ether.

But because most of my reading hours were spent rereading the Little Women trilogy and the Betsy-Tacy books, I often imagined myself as a writer. And Presto! Here I am.

I've published nine YA novels, and lo and behold, my protagonists have often--not always, but often--been independent, smart arts-oriented young women. This is all a long-winded introduction to the rant, BTW. One intended to establish my own guilt.

Yesterday I saw An Education, a recent movie about a teen in Britain who slips and slides on the road to adulthood. And I walked out of the theater nearly pulling my hair out. Could we please have a moratorium on plucky protags who discover that the path to heaven/adulthood/independence/LIFE is pave by books and writing? I don't care if it's true! I don't care if it's my own story! Enough!

I want stories I haven't seen before. I want to write those stories too. Make it up, imagine--tell a lie, for heaven's sake, and find the way to make it true.

Time for a walk. MQ

Take THAT!

I am sitting in a hotel room in sunny Philadelphia, where the National Council for Teachers of English is having its annual convention. Fellow Hamline prof Alexandria LaFaye put together a panel on using fantasy in the classroom with Bruce Colville (!) and me. Bruce is hilarious--though given his books it would be odd if he were quite dour in person. It's great to be around so many English teachers, but I found myself hyperconscious of the things I said. I didn't want to land in their Stinkpots.

Kerry Madden put this picture up on her blog this morning. This was done by a high school student named Rayna McGuire, inspired by Charles Baxter's advice to get your characters up a tree and throw apples at them.

Poor characters. The things they go through just to exist.

Here's a writing challenge for you!

Here's a thought. And, actually, an exercise. I was talking to another poet about writing a sonnet a day for three months. We'd both done that in the past. Way in the past for me. And we'd both enjoyed it in a masochistic way. The rules were/are simple: one 16-line sonnet per day seven days a week. But they don't have to be good. Whew! Thank God for that last sentence.

When I started this discipline, I was floundering a bit, writing what struck me as the same sort of poem in the same way. Sonnets were so, as they say, not me. And though they were never my favorite form, after a month or so I was much more comfortable with them. And they had a wonderfully astringent effect on my writing style. It was a lot harder to write a loose, lazy line of free verse when I'd been counting iambs for sixty or ninety days.

I know most Hamline students aren't poets and don't want to be, so here's a variation on that exercise: write a one-page character sketch every day for ninety days. I've had the most luck with this by putting the pen to the paper, eschewing grammar and spelling, and never stopping to think until the page is full of what this character looks like, smells like, dines on, dresses like, has lubricous thoughts about, etc.

Some writers end the third month with ninety characters! Then they go through, find the ones that call to them, and ask what it is those characters have to say to the other characters and each other! Some writers find themselves -- more or less unconsciously -- writing about just a handful of characters under different aliases! As if the facets of one character have entire personalities of their own.

It is a whole other way to write a novel. Messy and surprising.

If you try this, let me know how it works out.

RK