Pages

Fighting women as main characters

Today's words for Three Word Wednesday are: clever, finish, silky

It would be stupid, not clever
To retcon finished "Hank" into "Heather".
From big, brash and brawny
to silky and tawny?
Maybe NEXT book I'll endeavor.

This was inspired by the blog post about women's true role in warfare through the ages vs. the inherited narrative of "men fight, women stay home and worry about them". It's worth reading, since it has implications about how fiction portrays women fighters.

It would be dumb for me to try to turn my current male hero into a female one, but I've already written a story about a strong, capable female heroine. Maybe the next full-length book will feature her in a starring role.

||| Comments are welcome |||
Help keep the words flowing.

4 comments:

  1. sounds good to me the women were key parts of the war working in factoriesa and other jobs while men went off to war

    ReplyDelete
  2. One must allow their heroes/heroines to emerge when the time is right! Only you and your characters know for sure when that time is.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lucky me, I've got several of those in my latest novel! But I still find this argument unmoving. We ought to evaluate what characters we want to write about, not based upon their plausibility, but their appeals into what moves us. We ought to build from there. If all that moves us is dudes fighting and girls crying, well, we might not be cut out for writing, nor be needed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If all that moves us is dudes fighting and girls crying, well, we might not be cut out for writing, nor be needed.

      The world is full of best-selling books that adhere to this model. Cardboard, stock characters, true, but the market for this kind of easily-digested stereotype writing is a strong one.

      Delete

Thank you for leaving a comment. The staff at Landless will treat it with the same care that we would bestow on a newly hatched chick. By the way, no pressure or anything, but have you ever considered subscribing to Landless via RSS?