Babel Clash

KATE asked yesterday:

Ken, I’d be curious to know if you have any thoughts about how female characters fit into 
epic fantasy, and if your own thinking on this issue has changed over time?

KEN answers:

I do have some thoughts, but I’m the first to admit that this is an area where I’m evolving as a writer.

I actually subscribe, to a degree, to the notion that genders are “wired” differently, brain-wise, in many ways but with a great deal of latitude.  There are some interesting tests over at the BBC website, for example, that help identify a brain’s gender-wiring.  I don’t know how accurate these tests are but it’s a fascinating way to spend a few hours.  Oddly enough, I test out as more female-brained than male brained, which is interesting since my wife has frequently suggested that I am the girl in our relationship.  [Interpolation by Kate:  I took one of those BBC brain wiring tests and came out dead even between “male” and “female.”  Go figure.]

Speaking of my wife,  she actually played a key role in the creation of the female characters in the Psalms of Isaak.  I based the main female protagonist, Jin Li Tam, largely on Jen.  And as she was reading (and I was writing) the first half of the book, she noted that there was an absence of women in the novel apart from that character.  Her comment led to the creation of both Queen Meirov of Pylos — a minor character certainly — and Winters, who captured my interest so thoroughly at the end of the book that I knew she needed a starring role.  In Canticle, she becomes my second female protagonist in the series.  And I love that while Lamentation’s cover features the leading man of the book riding out with his Gypsy Scouts to action, the cover to Canticle features three of the novel’s women gathering in the quiet of a winter wood to parley.  I’m delighted that Tor saw the value of featuring these characters on that cover and Greg Manchess did a fabulous job capturing the spirit of that scene.

I can’t speak beyond my own experience as a reader and writer.  As a young fellow, I cut my teeth reading lots of old sword and sorcery and fantasy written at a different time in our culture, stories written by men (or women writing under men’s names) populated largely by men solving their problems with swords and bravado, rescuing damsels in distress with all the old familiar stereotypes.  And when I tackled my first novel, I really gave little thought to gender or anything other than just getting that first novel written.  I had no idea at the time that it would sell and do as well as it’s doing…and didn’t see the lack of female characters until my wife pointed it out.  While creating Winters, I think, addressed some of that it really just showed me a blind-spot leftover from my reading life and transferred into my writing life.   I’d always intended Jin Li Tam to grow beyond her role as her father’s spy and courtesan as she became Queen of the Ninefold Forest, but adding Winters to the story arch provided a nice place for me to expand even further.  Then, in Canticle, I add the characters of Ria and Rae Li Tam.  In Antiphon, I add Ire Li Tam,.  Who knows where I’ll end up by the end of the series?  And the next series I’d like to tackle, based on my short story “Invisible Empire of Ascending Light,” will feature more opportunities for me to stretch myself in that regard.

The truth is, I didn’t really tackle writing female point-of-view characters until rather late in my short fiction days.  I was operating under that notion of “writing what you know” and I wasn’t sure I could write women well.  At the front end of the series, I felt less comfortable writing female characters as well.  I sometimes wonder if some men choose not to write female characters out of a fear of “getting it wrong.”   Still, I think it’s important and from the start, I’ve had a posse of strong female writers and readers giving me feedback on the initial drafts of the books.  That helps, I think.  And in the end, it seems that I write my characters the same whether they are male or female.  They are people, first and foremost, wrestling with internal conflicts brought about and challenged by the external conflicts that are pressuring them into action and growth.   I think our goal as writers is to help readers suspend their disbelief and a world that lacks diversity is harder to believe.  I don’t suggest for a second that writers should portray an ideal and just society  — worlds where all are equal and treated fairly — in their work though that also has its place in good fiction.  Writers should write what they wish to write.  But in my opinion the struggle for fairness and equality, the heroes and heroines that rise up and make a difference in the societies they live in, should be believable and a real voice in the story.  That said, I think it’s difficult to do and sometimes we get it wrong even when we try not to.

Tomorrow:  Ken asks who is writing with a strong cast of female characters.

KATE:

I’m not a big subscriber to the Men are from Mars Women are from Venus school of human 
nature and gender personality types. This may be because I was a tomboy growing up, 
before certain cultural changes including the widespread advent of sports for girls made 
the word “tomboy” mostly obsolete. I write epic fantasy in large part because I love reading 
it. I love its capacity to contrast the grand canvas, the panoramic vision, with moments 
of intimacy and quiet reflection. This contrast heightens the sense of both the vast and 
the intimate because they are set against their opposite.

But I also love epic fantasy for its thrilling adventure, for battles, for pennants 
whipping in the wind and the grandeur of big emotions and big events played out in wide 
screen in bold colors. I’m not the only female reader who loves this stuff.

So one thing I do wonder is why in some long epic fantasy novels I find so few 
female characters. Why are they sometimes so poorly drawn or so limited in function and with 
personalities that lack the realistic complexity that may be lavished on the male 
characters? Not all epic fantasy novels suffer from this flaw–George RR Martin is as 
epic as they come, and he manages to find room for many complex female characters–but 
for the moment I want to talk about how the sad lack of female characters impoverishes 
the epic fantasy rather than enriches it.  Not only that, but I would argue that the lack of female characters in epic fantasy is not, in fact, “realistic.”

Standard disclaimer: Naturally, any writer can write what he or she wants; I write what 
I want, so why should I impose different standards on writers who aren’t me? And I’ve 
read and enjoyed novels that were almost exclusively populated by male characters, just 
as I’ve read and enjoyed novels that were almost exclusively populated by female 
characters, in both cases when the background made those choices make sense or the story 
was just that gripping.

I personally find that big worlds without a fully engaged cast of characters feels 
lacking to me. It feels unformed, or poorly thought through, or shallow, or if I may say 
so it can feel rather immature, as if the writer was unable to fully people it because of 
an inability to see women, or to envision them as part of the plot.

Now, I note that Ken has a wonderful female point of view character in Lamentation (which I’m reading right now), but I must 
admit that female characters run distinctly in the minority in the novel. I was quite 
struck, therefore, by the fabulous and evocative cover for Canticle, which features three women and their 
retainers meeting in a snowy woods.

Ken, I’d be curious to know if you have any thoughts about how female characters fit into 
epic and high fantasy (however you want to define them), and if your own thinking on this issue has changed over time?

Ken’s answer:  tomorrow, with Bonus! brain gender-wiring!

KATE:

Ken Scholes and I have arrived here at Babel Clash to blog your second half of September. 
Ken’s second novel, Canticle (the second of a five book cycle called The Psalms of Isaak) 
is due out in October, and my own Traitors’ Gate (the third and concluding volume of the 
Crossroads trilogy) was published in August. Both series are published by Tor Books in 
the USA.

A publisher is not the only thing Ken and I share. He lives in Oregon. I was raised in 
Oregon (although I now live in paradise, but that’s another story). He writes epic 
fantasy. I write epic fantasy. What a coincidence!

I admit, he has written and still writes a lot of short fiction, while the thought of 
writing a short story is enough to make me break out in hives. As I often say, it’s far 
easier for me to come up with an idea for a novel than one for a short story.

But there’s another thing Ken and I have in common. We are both parents of twins. 
Stranger still, we both gave birth to twins (well, all right, for the purposes of 
accuracy Ken did not physically give birth; his fabulous wife did that part) while 
finishing up the third book of a series. How bizarre is that? In my case it was the third 
and final volume of my Highroad trilogy (google it; it’s out of print but available at 
used bookstores); in his, the novel Antiphon, third in the Psalms of Isaak sequence.

The third volume of the Highroad trilogy (The Price of Ransome) was due to the publisher 
in August 1989, while the twins were due in October. As it happened, the twins arrived in 
August and I was able to finally turn in the completed first draft to the publisher in 
October. Unfortunately, it was not to be the last time I turned in a book late, but 
that’s another topic.

So let me ask Ken about his experience.

Ken, I hear you just became a parent of twins. How old are they? Did you manage to get 
the first draft of Antiphon finished before the twins were born? How did that work?

KEN:

Hi Kate. Great to be here with you and big thanks to the folks at Babel Clash for hosting 
us.

Our twins — Elizabeth and Rachel — are just seven weeks old. Antiphon was actually due 
earlier in the year but was delayed by the death of my father. It became a mad rush to 
try and wrap the book before the babies arrived. They were due on August 24 and when they 
showed up a month early, I was about 1,500 words away from finishing the first draft of 
Antiphon when they arrived. Still, it took me about two weeks to nail down those 1,500 
words. But the book went in and I am now in the revision process.

And while we’re on the topic, I have a question for you. I’m getting ready to start 
drafting Requiem, the fourth volume in the Psalms of Isaak. You were at the front end of 
your writing career when the twins showed up. You already had your daughter, Rhiannon, on 
the scene when Alexander and David arrived. What tips and tricks did you use to keep 
yourself on task? What was the workload like? Were you able to keep your productivity up? 
Did you have help?

KATE:

I barely remember those days since I was functioning in a fog of exhaustion most of the 
time. What I relied on was sheer brutal stubbornness. Before I had children, I needed an 
uninterrupted four hours minimum in a quiet room or public library in order to 
concentrate well enough to write (at that time I was writing all my first drafts in 
longhand). Because I knew I would never get that again, I had to either give up writing, or retrain myself.

I retrained myself. I learned to write at the drop of a hat, in whatever 
increments of time I had to hand. Fifteen minute nap? All good. An hour? Even better. I 
learned to set myself up so that I could start and stop wherever I was in the text, no 
messing about, no waiting for inspiration. I just pushed forward. I was absolutely 
determined to keep writing because it was my way of staying sane while immersed in 
infancy and early childhood (for five weeks I had three children under the age of 2).

I should note that in that first year of the twins my mother in law did babysit for us at 
times. I also used some of my earnings to pay for a very part time babysitter, and I was 
able to make good use of the time she was in the house. When my daughter was three, and 
when the boys turned two, they began part time preschool; that was the best!

I’ve always juggled books and babies. I sold my “first” novel (actually my fifth) when I was pregnant with my daughter, but I sold it as a synopsis so I had to write it after I made the sale.  My daughter turns 22 in a few days. Traitors’ Gate is my 19th published novel. That’s my productivity over the past two decades.

No time to rest, though, as I’m working on several new projects including another Crossroads novel.

Tomorrow:  The secret of Ken and Kate’s brain gender-wiring.