Babel Clash

I suspect that Ken is twin-wrangling (my twins just cleaned the house, so all that work in the early years can pay off later).  On behalf of both of us,  I wanted to hop in to say a heartfelt “Thank you” to Morgan for asking us over to Babel Clash to post (at length, being the multi-volume novelists that we are) on various reading and writing topics.

Also, our thanks to our readers, as always.  You’re the best.

Ken and I, by the way, will be doing a short West Coast reading/sign tour.  We’ll be in Seattle (University Bookstore) on Monday Oct 26;  Portland (Powells) on Tues Oct 27;  Borderlands (with a whole bunch of other writers) in San Francisco on Wed Oct 28; after which we’ll both be at the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose from Oct 29 - Nov 1.  Afterward, we’ll read and sign at Mysterious Galaxy in San Diego on Monday Nov. 2, and Dark Delicacies in Burbank of Tuesday Nov 3.  If you are in the area of any of these appearances, please come say hello.

Ken will jump in and post if he has time.

Meanwhile, I’m going to briefly address Morgan’s post in which he suggests Ken and I toss out any comments we might have about my recent and Ken’s forthcoming novels, respectively Traitors’ Gate and Canticle.

I find describing what I write rather difficult.  One reason I write novels is that I think of story in a long and sometimes digressive form, so when I to try to compress one of my stories into a brief clever description, when I think my strengths lie in character interaction and landscape (setting), I usually end up with:  “Um, uh, well, there’s this . . . well, wait, I should first mention . . . uh, okay, there are these giant eagles, see, and people like police officers called reeves who patrol on them, and then there is a theme about corruption, and also this girl and some cool soldier dudes . . .”  You see my problem.

So here’s an important thing to know about Traitors’ Gate:  it completes a trilogy.  The whole story, done.  (My Crown of Stars series, while rather longer at seven books, is also complete, finished, done, the whole story so therefore no waiting if you start it now.)  So if you’re one of those readers who likes to know the entire multi-volume tale is available and published before starting, now would be the time to start with Spirit Gate and Shadow Gate and, if you’ve enjoyed those, to know you are able to complete the tale with Traitors’ Gate.  I hit the ending I was aiming for.

KEN:

I’ve mentioned earlier the importance of television and movies in my Story Addiction and how they were the gateway drug into reading.  Since so far, we’ve really not found much to debate or argue about, being such agreeable souls, that maybe this could reveal the seedy underbelly of contention we’ve not yet discovered between us.

So, first off:  Star Trek or Star Wars?  Why?

I’m ambi here and I came to Star Trek first but Star Wars wooed me utterly and while I love both very much, if I ran into both in a bar and could only go home with one, Star Wars would be my pick.  The first trilogy.  The second has some moments I liked but ultimately, IV, V and VI were life-changing experiences for me when I was a kid.

KATE:
Star Trek.
I loved the original Star Wars movie, and I loved The Empire Strikes Back even more (although the third was a disappointment–I mostly wanted to nuke to the Ewoks).  However, I found the second trilogy unwatchable (I never saw the third of that set) for its leaden writing and cliched plotting. Overall, I enjoyed IV and V as a fabulous story, but they felt like a story, not like a real place.

Star Trek, on the other hand, is a great mimetic future that I think some people can imagine themselves in.  It feels bigger and more complex to me, therefore more interesting, and I liked the characters more.  Although, really, it is hard to beat:  “Luke, I *am* your father.”

KEN:

Second:  Which Dune?  SciFi Channel’s version or David Lynch’s?  I’m a David Lynch guy though I felt the SciFi version was more faithful to Herbert’s vision.

KATE:
Eh.  Dune.  Who cares?  (No offense intended to Herbert’s classic novel.)

KEN:

Now that we have those out of the way, how about recent movies that you loved or hated?  Me, I loved District 9.  I also liked Sunshine quite a lot.  And most recently, I saw the Time Traveler’s Wife and thought it was a decent adaptation of one my all time favorite books.  In the big scheme of things, I liked the re-make of The Day the Earth Stood Still more than the original though I recognize the original’s place in the canon of classics.  And I was fascinated by The Knowing.  I also liked Abram’s take on Star Trek.

KATE:
Sunshine:  Got bored.  Did not finish.

District 9:  I have mixed feelings.  I thought the mockumentary aspect was brilliantly done.  The last part of the film turns into a typical chase/shooting plot, which while zingy got predictable.  Also, while I understand there may be a sequel, I did not feel the world building and situation were thought through deeply enough, so that disappointed me on several levels, but this isn’t really the place to discuss that.  A good try, in some ways deeply flawed and in some ways well done.

Abrams’ Star Trek I thought had a very appealing cast, but gosh, it was so retro that it made me sad.  Forty years later, and there wasn’t a single cutting edge social idea in it?  And the same lame (and very very dated) jokes about Chekhov’s Russian accent (which has no actual reason to still exist)?  Young white rebellious rule-breaking dude unrealistically jumps the chain of command?  The gorgeous Eric Bana wasted in an under-written and generic villain role?  I was hoping for an actual reboot;  man, they couldn’t even make the Orion girl an important character–that would have been interesting!–or tried something, anything, different with the otherwise redundant Chekhov.  The single intriguing detail was in Dr. McCoy’s bad divorce (although why, in the future, she would have “gotten all the money” I don’t know;  that begs the question of whether the writers imagined that marriage and divorce laws worked no differently 200 years from now than they work today, so while it was funny it also struck me as poor world-building).  I guess I was hoping for something more in the vein of the reboot of Battlestar Galactica (whatever its flaws), not that it had to be darker but just re-visioned.  So, no, the Abrams’ Star Trek did not work for me.  Maybe he’s got better plans for the sequels.  We’ll find out.

The other three I haven’t seen.

As for me, I loved the first two X-Men films and hated the third one which struck me as horribly misogynistic (Bryan Singer, why did you abandon us?) and also badly plotted.

I watched and enjoyed the first two seasons of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and overall liked it a lot for its diverse cast and its attempts to tackle difficult questions.

I adore the late and lamented Firefly (I must have watched the series 3 or 4 times, which is unheard of for me), but while Serenity was well done as a film it ultimately didn’t work for me because it should have been 12 episodes, not 2 hours.  The character interaction that is the heart of Firefly is lost in the film because it doesn’t have time while it is racing through its plot.  Oh, well.  At least Whedon tried to bring some closure to a great series.

KEN:

I’ve enjoyed most of the comic book movies of late.  The third X-Men film wasn’t my favorite.  Iron Man and the Spider Man films pleased me greatly, I loved Ed Norton as Bruce Banner and the top prize goes to Batman Begins and The Dark Knight — both exceptional in my opinion.

I’m with you on Firefly.  It’s on our shelf and we’ve watched it many times.  I liked Serenity well enough though I agree there wasn’t enough time to tell the story well and I would’ve much rather seen them reboot the series for another season or five.  Firefly and BSG and Lost were all heavy influences in the drafting of LAMENTATION.  We also have the entire run of Battlestar Galactica.  I really enjoyed the re-imagining of it.

KATE:

Interestingly, the tv series that had the most influence on Traitors’ Gate was The Wire (HBO).  Not fantasy, but a study of people and a place.  That’s kind of what I was trying to accomplish.

KEN:

What about you?  How do you tackle novels?  You’ve published 19 novels over the last 21 years.  How was it when you started?  How did it
evolve over time?  Do you find now that you have a consistent process that works or do you still change it up from time to time?

KATE:

For me, over time, the single most important principle (beyond persistence, persistence, persistence) has been to be adaptable.  I don’t write strictly to a previously scripted outline (I’m not saying others shouldn’t, if that’s a strategy that works for them, just that I don’t).  I write up notes, often reams of notes, some filed neatly in chronological order and others scrawled on scraps of paper which I excavate accidentally months or years later from some forgotten file folder.  For Crown of Stars early on I wrote up pages for each character listing things that I knew were going to happen to her or him, these lists running to multiple pages.  Or I set up a table and make a timeline, or a calendar, and fill in what I know, and then add as I go along.  I’ve done flow charts.  I’ve kept things in my head.

So, having said never ever, what have I just done?  I’ve just written a 45 page preliminary synopsis for a book.  It’s very detailed, with some scenes sketched in and dialogue written out.  But it’s the entire book’s plot.  I’ve never done that before.  Even The Sword of Heaven, a novel I made notes on for 10 years, resided mostly in my head before I wrote the actual first draft.  Now, of course, for all I know as I start writing the actual draft I’ll throw out everything.  Or half.  Or none.  I may find that having the synopsis works for this book.  Or not.  I’ll find out as I go.

That’s key for me:  Not to feel I’m locked into any form of the process.

Yes, I’ve learned ways to work that feel comfortable for me;  I’ve learned to watch for certain signals that impede or advance my progress.  If a scene gets sludgy, that can mean that I’m taking it in the wrong direction and need to rethink or re-vision it.  If a character pops up and says something I did not expect, I need to stop and look and decide whether this is a path I don’t need to go down, or whether my subconscious is telling me that this is a better way to go.  If I hit the slough of despond and decide this book out of all my books really sucks and I ought to consider abandoning it, I need to check where I am in the draft, and if I’m somewhere in the middle, it’s probably my cyclic despair prodding me:  I  always hit a “this sucks” phase in the middle of writing a book.  Always.  Except that one time I didn’t, and then I got worried that the book really was bad because I hadn’t gone through that phase.

When I look back at how I wrote my early novels, mostly I don’t remember much about the drafting process.  The main thing I do know is that I am much better at revising now than I was then.  As a newer writer, I preferred writing the first draft and found revising an onerous and difficult chore because I often didn’t really know how to fix things.  Now, I find writing first draft much more exhausting than I did then, but I love to revise because I get such pleasure from seeing the pieces smooth out and fit together to make the story I want to tell come alive.

Ken and I have talked about writing novels and writing series.  If you have any further comments or questions, post them here and we’ll answer.

KATE:

My bad.  My spouse travels a lot — and I mean a lot — for his work, and he arrived home Tuesday evening from the Gilbert Islands (google the battle of Tarawa, if you’re interested in where he was) and I totally forgot to post.  So, here we go.

ON WRITING NOVELS

KATE:

Ken, you mentioned to me on the phone that because of various difficult life tragedies 
and stresses in your last couple of years that you have not yet had the chance to develop 
a “system” or “pattern” or “routine” for writing a novel.

As I recall, because I was transcribing your words as you spoke, you said that, “I don’t 
know how I write novels, I just write them,” and “you just keep trying something until 
you find something that works.”

As a writer, I find both these statements quite profound and true. They remind me of 
Somerset Maugham’s famous declaration: “There are three rules for writing a novel. 
Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”

What’s been your experience in learning how to write novels?

KEN:

It’s been quite learning curve.  LAMENATION was written, without an outline, on a dare in a six week binge of writing in every gap of time that I wasn’t sleeping or at the day job.  CANTICLE was outlined and interrupted by the death of my Mom and the death of my nephew, leaving me a gap of months where I couldn’t find any words.  And the outline?  Well, I wrote it out and then never opened the file again.  With ANTIPHON, I didn’t work off an outline but again, Life — or rather Death — Happened and I found work stopped cold for another chunk of months by the death of my father.   With REQUIEM, my newest Bits of Life Happening — daughters Lizzy and Rachel — will no doubt inform and impact my process.  So there’s not been enough consistency  for me to know exactly how I do this.  And I still don’t often know whether or not I’m doing it well.  I really have to trust the mirrors and drive with my eye on them.  My first readers and my editor — the exceptional Beth Meacham at Tor — are my best guides for knowing whether or not the car is on the right road moving at the right speed in the right direction.

As I mentioned in the earlier post, I do have a structural map that I work from in writing the novels and guiding the series as far as how much room to give the characters and the basic bones I’m adding the meat and muscle to.  But as far as the actual drafting — pacing scene by scene and tying it all together and laying down the words and suspense-building and character-development  — it’s largely organic and I’m writing it by ear in much the same way I’d learn a song for the guitar.  Pause.  Listen.  Write.  Pause.  Listen.  Write.

I find writing to be a heuristic process.  I try one thing and if it doesn’t work, I try another until I find something that gets me where I need to go.  For me, the act of writing is often the act of tricking my muse (Leroy) into doing his work.  I find ways to make it fun, make it a puzzle, make it a game.

What about you?  How do you tackle novels?  You’ve published 19 novels over the last 21 years.  How was it when you started?  How did it evolve over time?  Do you find now that you have a consistent process that works or do you still change it up from time to time?

KEN:

How does your process differ from mine?  Is it more organic?  Do you work from outlines?  How much of the bones of the story do you have before you start adding the meat and muscle?

KATE:

First of all, your method of working is really cool.  And interesting.  And apparently effective and efficient.  Me:  not so efficient.

Begin with the end in mind.  That’s generally my motto.  I would say that I always have to know where I’m headed before I can make a good start.  “Where I’m headed” may be an event, an outcome, an emotional catharsis, or a tonal mood, but I need to know where the ship is coming in, to mix my metaphors a bit.

I also find that I have to know what the end point is in order to understand the subtler undercurrents that should be flowing through the entire stream of the narrative (to mix my metaphors a little more).

Usually I have a strong mental architecture of what needs to happen not just to get where I’m going but to explore and illuminate the characters’ journeys.  I usually don’t write preliminary outlines;  I’m more likely to make a lot of notes, sketch out in their bones a few crucial scenes that seem very vivid in my mind (a few of which will end up never making it onto the page but some of which will appear very like my initial imagining), and then add haphazardly to those notes as I write.  I sometimes end up lopping off plot lines and scenes and put them into a folder called “next volume.”  I may draw crude flow charts, as I did with Traitors’ Gate because I had to layer in a bunch of plot lines in overlapping but correct order, like 4-dimensional knitting:  “A must come first, but C has to happen before B because it sets up F which happens after but Character 3 has to have seen Y before they feel the impetus to do X.”

I should note that Traitors’ Gate, as the third of a trilogy, was constrained by what “had to happen” to get to the end I envisioned;  I didn’t have much leeway in that book to stray from the path because I kept the path very tightly wound around the main spine of the plot.  Anyway, I call this type of writing a “Mozart” book because Mozart supposedly composed speedily and with much of the architecture of the music already in his head.

My best example of a “Mozart” book is the two part The Sword of Heaven (published as An Earthly Crown and His Conquering Sword), which is a single novel published as a duology.  I had been thinking about that novel for ten years before I wrote it, and I wrote what must be about 300,000 words in nine months because I knew exactly what I had to write.  In revisions, I added two short scenes for clarification purposes, and did the usual line editing prose polish and so on, but it remains the cleanest book I have ever written in first draft.  Ten years of letting it simmer on the back burner did wonders.  It’s a pleasure to write this sort of novel because the composition flows so naturally.  While details and scenes may change, or turn out differently than I expected, the overall whole remains coherent as I’m writing.

The other style of novel I sometimes call my Beethoven model, in which I hack and slash through the wilderness of doubt, despair, and wondering what the heck is going to come next.  These books are far harder to draft, but I don’t find that I can predict how successful a book is by whether the first draft comes easily or with difficulty.  I may make files of notes as I’m going.  A must go to XB;  meanwhile, J stumbles on the plot to kill the queen, and — oh, wait! — the queen is obviously in league with A!  In such novels, like The Law of Becoming, I may be writing ahead of myself (as it were), or discovering elements of the plot as I go (see above).  I may, as in tLoB, get hit sidelong with a huge plot point that I did not plan or even see coming but which I had clearly set up without knowing I was doing so.  As a writer, I love this sense of being blindsided by my own world-building and character development.  If I’ve done it right, then both the world and the characters will, because they have their own internal logic and consistency, create conflicts and resonances within the unfolding plot.  Still, even with a Beethoven novel, I know my end point, and I know some of the main points–certain events or imagined scenes–that I need to touch on along the way.

Beyond that, mostly I would say that I conceive of a “series” as a narrative that examines consequences.  If this happens, then what will the effect of that be on the characters and the society?  That pretty much sums up most of what I’ve written.

Tomorrow:  On writing novels.

KATE:

Ken, I had a lot of trouble while writing my Crown of Stars series with the story growing 
longer and longer and turning, eventually, into a seven book trilogy, as I sometimes 
jokingly call it.  There are a lot of good things in that series that I’m really fond of 
(and a number which I’m quite proud of), but I admit I am at some angles disappointed that it sometimes seemed to get away from me.

So I’m impressed to see you make such firm statements about how The Psalms of Isaak is a 
five book cycle.  How can you be sure?  How do you develop your narrative architecture?  
Is there something in the way you built or devised the plot that holds in check those 
plot paths that want to go off into a new direction?  I would love to hear your thoughts 
on how you create a complex cycle and keep it under control.

KEN:

In some ways, the Psalms of Isaak has already gotten quite a bit away from me in length considering it was originally imagined as four short stories that represented snapshots in the midst of the larger story.   [Interpolation by Kate:  I’m laughing hysterically here, but totally in sympathy, mind you.]

I had written the original short story with no clue that there was so much more to it.  When “Of Metal Men and Scarlet Thread and Dancing with the Sunrise” ran in Realms of Fantasy, the art they commissioned from Allen Douglas sucker-punched me into realizing it was a much bigger story.  So I wrote the second in the cycle, but when it didn’t stand alone well enough, I was strongly encouraged by Shawna and Everyone Else to go write a novel in that world.
I resisted but maintained that maybe, once I wrote all four, it could be tied up into an novella that might, someday, become a novel.

But then Jay (Lake) and my wife Jen dare-taunted me into writing LAMENTATION.  When I wrote the initial draft I thought I was looking at a trilogy but by the end, it was just plain to me that it was easily  five books worth of story if I stayed firmly in the driver’s seat.

My process so far in writing the series is to think about the larger story arc, what needs to happen in each character’s life over the course of the series and what challenges they will face.  With each novel, I try to stay in a three act structure that fits into the larger three act structure of the series and I’m told I’m a bit odd in how I tackle that.  I actually start with how long I think the book should be, divide that out by the number of main characters to see how much room they are allowed to have within the book — with the understanding, of course, that it will vary in the drafting.  I write short scenes — one to two thousand words — and typically have three scenes per chapter featuring three of the POV characters.  Some supporting POV characters get a few scenes as well, so I’m not really holding myself to a strict rule here.  Once I know roughly how many chapters a character will get for their story, I look at the three acts — 25% for the first act, 50% for the second and then 25% for the third, give or take.  Then, I set up my manuscript with the chapters and the POVs to be featured and write within the structure, always reserving the right to change my mind.  I find the challenge of fitting my tale into the boundaries and structure I create for it to be part of the fun in the process much like I enjoyed the process of fitting a short story into the size and shape that an editor wanted for their publication.

So in a way, it’s five books largely because I decided five books was a fair enough length for the story I’m telling.  I have a couple of values driving my process for writing the series.

First, I think new readers to the genre aren’t necessarily excited about large door-stopper fantasies in long series.  I like them a lot but there’s often a good amount of detail in those books that aren’t necessary to the story.  Meanderings that might be better served as novellas or short stories to seed the pond for hungry readers…or even stand alone novels that come out later featuring a return to a world and characters that readers are dying to get back to.

Second, I keep the scenes brisk and alternate POV frequently to keep the story moving quickly.  I have lots of characters so that there’s at least one or two that people can love.  I write sparse prose, too, leftover I think from my short fiction background.  Elmore Leonard’s advice “I think about the story and leave everything out that isn’t story” is something I hold to, though I do that leaving internally as a part of the drafting process.  Some have lauded that in LAMENTATION while others have criticized the lack of those familiar, sprawling sequences that many fans of epic fantasy have grown used to.

Third, as a reader I think three to seven books feels right to me for a series and I suspect that a lot of other readers would like to see those of us who write them give them tighter, more contained stories  with a better sense of when they’ll have the entire set on their shelves.  That said, if the Psalms of Isaak needed to be longer, I’ve left myself the room to write longer books (so far, each of these is less than 150,000 words) and the timeline for writing a series, especially when Life Happens, can be hard to nail down.   Add to that the occasional bog-down or burn-out that can show up in addition to Life Happening.  Spending years with the same characters as a writer is an entirely different experience than spending weeks or days with them as a reader,  plowing through the books as fast as they can be read.  So I think it’s very understandable that some series take a while to get into the hands of a reader.

How does your process differ from mine?  Is it more organic?  Do you work from outlines?  How much of the bones of the story do you have before you start adding the meat and muscle?

Kate answers, tomorrow.

Coming up next week, Ken and I will have posts “On Writing the Series” and “On Writing The Novel.”

For today, we’d like to open up the discussion to questions.  If there is anything you’d like to ask, ask away.  We’ll either answer in comments or we’ll pull the question out and give it its own post.

You can ask about writing, reading, or specific questions about any stories or novels or series we’ve written.  As always, if you ask a question about specific fiction in a way that might include spoilers, include a warning so folks who don’t like to read spoilers can close their eyes/skip over it/etc.

And if you don’t have any questions, I have one:

If you write (at whatever level), what one writing craft thing are you struggling with most right now?

(I have to think about this, but I’ll answer in comments, too.)

P.S.  In case you’re wondering why I’m doing all the posting, it is because Ken and I cleverly thought up topics ahead of time, asked each other questions, and wrote up the answers in advance back and forth via email.  Since Ken is wrangling infant twins, I’m doing the posting of the already complete posts every night because, having once had infant twins myself, I know how overwhelming it is.

KEN:

Moving from junkie to dealer in the genre has been a hoot for me.  Over the last few years, I’ve had the great gift of meeting and chatting with some of the influences that were instrumental in me moving from a reader and consumer of Story to a writer.

For me, I got hooked on SF/F as a small child, initially through television and film.  I started with Speed Racer and Batman, then quickly fell into The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants, Marine Boy, Land of the Lost,  Star Blazers, UFO, Space 1999 and Star Trek.  The Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits, along with healthy doses of the old black and white films featured on Sci Fic Theater and movies like Star Wars, Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and Logan’s Run were my mainstays until I fell into books by Jack Williamson, Lester Del Rey, J.R.R. Tolkien, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Michael Moorcock, Robert E. Howard, Andre Norton, Ursula LeGuin and an army of other influences.  Of course, I’ve always read widely outside the genre, but SF/F has been the dearest to me, a comfortable life-long companion that I love coming home to.

Bradbury convinced me to write in his essay “How to Keep and Feed a Muse” and I started slinging my type-written tales into the marketplace when I was fourteen or so.  After a long break, I came back to it as a result of Frank Herbert, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Terry Goodkind and Tad Williams and a host of others and eventually, I broke in with a short story in 2000.  Nine years (and several short stories) later, my first novel showed up.

So how did you come into the genre?  What was your initial draw and what convinced you to become a writer?  How and when did break in and what keeps you rooted in SF/F?

KATE:

I’m just a world-building geek.  Or, if you will, a world-building nerd.  Or, if you must, a world-building dork.  I can go with any of those.

Man, I was building palaces with my Lego blocks from time out of mind.  In late elementary school, my brother and I would tape together notebook paper into long strips and then we would draw a line toward the top for the surface of the earth and below that draw long science fictiony fortress mazes below ground which always, always, featured one little dungeon cell in some isolated spot with but a single entry hatch in the ceiling.  In junior high, we drew up a starship and signed up classmates for the crew (I always wanted to be the astrogator).  Soon after, I got into drawing maps of imaginary countries.  It was all downhill from there.

I have no idea why I did this.  It was before Dungeons and Dragons (yes, I am that old), or at least it was before D&D reached my rural childhood home.

Reading and viewing influences in my youth?  The Time Tunnel.  Alias Smith and Jones.  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea.  The Avengers.  The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  Star Trek (TOS), of course.  I was very young and had to beg to be allowed to stay up late enough to watch.

The first sf novel I recall reading was Robert Silverberg’s debut novel, Revolt on Alpha C, which was a revelation.  I told Silverberg that once:  “I read your novel when I was 10 years old!” to which he replied, without missing a beat, “and I wrote it when I was 16.”  For all I know, that may be true (but I don’t think so . . . ).

I really loved animal stories, but read Tolkien, Bradbury, Burroughs, and Tolstoy when I was in junior high, although I didn’t retain any of the Tolstoy beyond, evidently, a tendency to populate my novels with a cast of thousands (I was never, by the way, a precocious reader).  Notable influences in high school were Ursula K. Le Guin and Jane Austen and way too much loud rock music.  In college and post-college I moved into C. J. Cherryh, Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, and many others.  Also, I began reading extensively in non fiction (but that’s another topic).

I began to write in junior high school (aka middle school) mostly because I wanted to tell stories, but in part I also think because in almost all of these cool novels I was reading there were few or no females.  I wanted to read a story about what people “like me” could do, not just about others whose lives I would follow as if I were a spectator (I’ve never been much of a spectator).  In retrospect, I think I’ve always tried to write novels with a diverse cast because of my experience of feeling “left out” when I could see no other rational barrier to my participation except societal assumptions about what was proper or “normal.”

In that way, science fiction and fantasy as fiction always called to me:  I still love sff fiction more than any other kind of fiction, and I still adore well-done sff films.  So, like I said, I’m just a skiffy geek at heart.

KEN:

So for those of us out there in that learning curve, who are the writers who are giving us the strongest, broadest cast of female characters?  Do they tend to be female authors?  Which male authors are doing it well and what books, series or authors do you recommend to give us a more solid foundation in diversifying our own work as writers?

KATE:

I asked this question on my blog last week in preparation for this post and got a ton of interesting answers  (you all can check out the thread here if you’re so inclined).  What I noted was how easily people came up with the names of female fantasy writers who do a good job writing about complex and interesting female characters (and who have more than one or two female characters in a novel);  fewer male writers seem to be writing a diverse cast of females into their books even if/when they have a female lead or secondary lead (who is often in a relationship with the male lead).

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, I’d like to introduce the Bechdel Test.  This test, popularized by artist Alison Bechdel in reference to films, states that a film passes the Bechdel Test when it:

1) has at least two women in it
2) who talk to each other
3) about something other than a man.

Once you start applying this test, it is shocking how few films pass and, for me, shocking how many long fantasy novels also fail to pass given how many pages they have to fill.

Instead of giving my own laundry list of writers to look for (I’m hoping readers will do that in the comments below), I wanted to talk about how writers can try to find a way out of the assumptions they may be bringing to the table when deciding whether and how much to introduce female characters into their fantasy/sf novels (if that’s even a question for them, as obviously many writers will simply have characters in their novels, some male and some female).

Even in patriarchal societies of the past (and present!), women–who might otherwise have been banned by custom or law from partaking in the public life of politics, power, learning, work and so on–still had personalities.  With a little careful study of history, one might find that women found ways to accomplish things.  Maybe they did it behind a screen, or around the corner, or in the back room or in a parlor, or ran the brewery they inherited from a deceased husband, but they did.  So much of our view of what women “did” in the past is mediated through accounts written by men who either didn’t see women or were so convinced (yes, I’m looking at you, Aristotle, but you are but one among many) that women were an inferior creature that what they wrote was not only biased but selectively blind in its vision.

In reality, while women in many cultures worldwide had fewer legal rights as well as often living in constrained or deplorably oppressive circumstances, they still had minds and hearts and hands.  Weird about that.  And women found ways to use them, because people do.

In the last few decades, historical scholarship has been expanding the scope of who and what merits examination.

Writers writing stories that deal with power politics in the age of palaces would do well, for instance, to check out a book like Servants of the Dynasty:  Palace Women in World History, edited by Anne Walthall.  This cross cultural study of palace women in a number of pre-modern societies worldwide does not sugarcoat or distort the realities of women’s lives, but it also illuminates the many misconceptions people may have about women in such societies.

The scholarship on women in medieval Europe is extensive and growing, and I own too many titles to list them here, but one might start with a book like Singlewomen in the European Past: 1250-1800, edited by Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide.  I have fewer cross cultural and non-European studies specifically dealing with women’s history, although I’m expanding my library as I find new (to me) material, books like Women Writing Africa: West Africa and the Sahel, edited by Esi Sutherland-Addy and Aminata Diaw.

This kind of reading will open up story possibilities for writers who are having trouble figuring out, for instance, where women “fit” into epic fantasy.

I do want to specifically mention two 2009 novels because each does something that I’d like to highlight.

Cherie Priest’s wonderful new (and not epic fantasy but rather steampunk) novel Boneshaker features a pragmatic, plain-spoken (and not a warrior) mother who has to rescue her teenage son from, well, zombies.  Mothers simply do not get enough page time in novels where they function in their own right as tough agents making their own decisions.

Daniel Fox’s debut fantasy Dragon in Chains includes several complex, interesting, and important female characters, including one unbelievably gripping, realistically brutal, and stunningly heroic sequence in which a common, ordinary woman without power or wealth or magic or anything but the will to survive and the wits to keep moving struggles with her children and husband to escape a city in the throes of being conquered by an army bent on wholesale destruction.  Anyone who claims there are no stories for female characters in a patriarchal world riven by war should read this novel.

So, back to Ken’s excellent question.  Let me throw it out for comment:

Who are the writers who are giving us the strongest, broadest cast of female characters?  Do they tend to be female authors?  Which male authors are doing it well and what books, series or authors do you recommend?

What do you think?