Ahhh, the joys of having your youngest turn official drinking age and buying her first official IPA, which is what this generation now prefers to drink these days. Does not hearken to my days of youth, since I don't like beer. But, I digress.
As per the norm as of late, here we are talking about the Average American Novel yet again. Last week, we talked about how manly our male characters were. Today, we talk about how womanly badass our female characters are and how they came to be written that way.
{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved
No updated word count as this week was spent doing the family taxes {bleech icky-poo} and the chapter I'm currently working on is the next to last chapter, where all the principals involved meet for the final showdown.
Female MC
So I've basically done a total 180 when it comes to writing my female characters. While I've latched onto the idea of "using sex as a weapon" almost from day one of writing, I've also latched, quite firmly I might add, to the idea of writing them as very strong independent {aka badass} women who will use whatever they have at their immediate disposal to get the current problem resolved, no matter what it may be.
I have met/made friends with a plethora of women who are, in varying degrees, badass individuals. They take no prisoners, give no quarters, and can compete/excel with any given scenario. So I try to write all of my female characters, from major players to minor throwaways, with those particular traits in varying degrees.
In this story, I have two such women who fall under that category: Alexia Tomas and her sister Xandra.
She is the semi-abused wife of Bradley, who has made everyone who had the misfortune of having contact with her, paying for that contact. She is also a hybrid, which is a character trait that I began exploring with this particular story, as previously I was exploring the concept of using a symbiont in my stories {got the idea from Star Trek: DS9}. The hybrid concept {half human/half animal} really took off after this story and has since become a permanent part of my writings.
Xandra is her symbiont sister who has control over her tail, talks to her sister telepathically and is basically her conscience and soul. Additionally, not only she has become a defacto tour guide to exploring who she is, but also what she is and how she can unlock/explore her hidden traits/potentials more fully.
I would like to point out that with female characters, roughly 90% of those that I've written/created are people of color {to use the current vernacular}. I don't dwell on that particular notion for any lengthy period of time beyond a brief less than a paragraph length initial description before moving on. Always felt most comfortable creating my characters as people of color and always will.
I make it a point to make sure that while the main sibling has dominant control over the body, she can at times, give up that control to her younger sibling at any time and in turn, trade places with her sister in controlling the other pertinent body parts {e.g. hair and tail}. She does that whenever she believes that her sister would benefit from some life experiences.
Basically it really boils down to finding my comfort zone in writing my characters, and the way I decide to portray both sexes/genders, with some tweaking as a particular story progresses, is what works best for me.
Time now for our weekly flashback to my 1st blog. Cedar's Mountain, and to the specific year of 2011, when my blogging was still poking its head through the clouds festooned with popularity. Today's ye olden flashback gem is from February 28, 2011, and it covers the wonderful topic of cliches. It's a bit long, as back then I used to perform free-form blogging. In my tiny world, free-from blogging is where I just get sick with verbal diarrhea and the words simply pour onto the screen, starting with the post title, which is about 17 words long.
Because I cherish the readers, casual or otherwise, that I do have, we will simply use the phrase, Cliches Are Fun, for a jumping off point. Enjoy and have a fantastic rest of the week.
Good job turning your female characters into bad asses, as they are and/or should be. Smiles.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I've always felt that my female characters, whether major or minor, should be bad ass/supremely confident individuals.
DeleteInteresting you've run with the symbiont idea.
ReplyDeleteAnd always thought Dax was hot.
Same here.
DeleteWhen I decided to start using a hybrid as a female MC, I really wanted to do something to make them stand out. The idea just came randomly one day when I was writing. I actually toyed with the idea of symbiont since it was getting tiresome having a subconscious talking all the time, but really didn't act on it until my first published novel.
Not to sound cliche, but it's basically become almost a steadfast rule for my stories to have a symbiont in some particular way.