Comments on: The Epic Fantasy and Female Characters, Part Two

By: repair windows

repair windows — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:08:02 +0000

Looking for a good list of free Windows XP and Vista registry cleaners? There are literally thousands of registry cleaners out there, but only a …

By: jatsaik

jatsaik — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 10:10:01 +0000

Collection of some of your personal information is essential for completion of some of the functions and activities of this Website. We will， if it is reasonable or practicable to do so， also collect your personal information directly from you. For instance， the collection of your personal information may happen when you快播电影.

By: Chau Holsing

Chau Holsing — Tue, 17 Aug 2010 00:54:31 +0000

thanks man for the great info

By: kateelliott

kateelliott — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 22:31:44 +0000

Adam, it’s interesting. I think almost every writer has *something* she or he worries about that they’ll get wrong. For me, it’s worrying that people will pick apart my prose and say, “well, she’s just not a very good stylist and she puts together words so clunkily” so I think you’re absolutely right: sometimes we just have to write it and see what happens. I’m betting you’re doing just fine with your female characters. Good luck!

By: Adam

Adam — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:41:02 +0000

Hm. I guess I’m just making it more difficult for myself. I always think that the moment a female reads a chapter that I’ve written from a female POV will spot it immediately and begin picking it to death, for one reason or another.

But I guess I just need to write it an see what happens. It seems silly to limit myself based on something so silly.

Thanks though, Kate. It’s been helpful.

By: kateelliott

kateelliott — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 22:01:53 +0000

And
2b) would it be overexposure if the character doing some manner of work we identify as domestic were male? But whose story then is drawn into the larger plot?

By: kateelliott

kateelliott — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 21:31:34 +0000

Adam, no, that all makes sense. I guess — I think — that what some of us are arguing here is two fold:

1) no matter what “role” people are relegated to, they are still people with emotions and thoughts who will try to make sense of the world and their place in it. Their “character” will still be as strong as that of, say, a “male lead” who is, forex, the prince.

2) Why would it be overexposure to recognize and weave into a plot line the life of someone whose work might be what we define as strictly domestic? See also, 1) above.

2a) People who have grow up in the modern developed world with its labor saving devices may not recognize how vital “domestic” tasks are to, well, life. How many people (in all too many places today, too) were hungry many days. Or, how tasks we now associate with “the female domestic” may have been male tasks, or tasks with a high degree of social status in another time and/or place.

Those things are all what, I think, some of us mean by the conceptual “erasing” of people’s lives, and also what I mean by certain kinds of unexamined assumptions.

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:27:49 +0000

Hey Kate,
I’m not sure. I can relate to females in a contemporary setting; I just base them loosely on people I know and I think it works alright. I’m still not 100% confident with it, but I can write it without over-thinking.

But as soon as I try to put them in my fantasy world (which is, just FYI, Greek culture inspired, rather than medieval), I get very conscious of the role they’re being relegated to; I don’t want to shove them in the background, but I don’t want to overexpose a female character whose function is to cook, or clean, or to do anything strictly domestic. But neither do I want to make them as martially motivated as some of the men.

It might be a problem of world-building, really. I haven’t thought out exactly what the society permits, for men or women, really. I just know that my confidence is poor when I attempt it. I’ve done it once or twice (I have a single chapter that I’m happy with, so far), but the flow isn’t there like it is for a male character.

I hope that was helpful and not just rambling.

By: kateelliott

kateelliott — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:51:36 +0000

I, too, think of “erasure” as something that happens at the conceptual level.

By: kateelliott

kateelliott — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 19:45:36 +0000

Adam, what have you found gets in your way when you put fantasy trappings around female characters? In what ways do you feel you struggle? Is it in their roles? what they can and can’t do? How they think or react? Can you expand on the statement that it becomes much more difficult? In what ways do you think you need a strong female culture to have women rather than a book filled with dudes? I’m genuinely curious, because I think there might be ways to figure out where assumptions are getting in the way of writers.