There Are No Girls on the Internet

I mostly talk about writing here, but I'm not just a writer. I'm also a girl who plays video games. The two topics are more related than you'd think, as video games are nothing more than a slightly fancier, more interactive means of storytelling than your typical book. And so I think about storytelling and characterization in video games quite a lot.

I'd been meaning to do a post about heroines, and what actually makes a strong female character. Then this article popped up, and made it almost imperative, because while I understand the need to assert yourself as a woman in an almost exclusively male genre/community, I feel like she's got it completely wrong.

I don't care what characters look like. I'll admit, I was pretty amused a few years ago to read an article suggesting that an inordinate number of YA novels features redheaded sidekick characters compared to the number of redheads in the population, as well as to those that feature redheaded protagonists. I understand that for some people, the way you interact with a story can depend on how closely you identify with the characters, and that it can be frustrating if you never, ever see a character depicted heroically who looks anything like you. Oh, believe me, I know. I grew up fat. But the thing is that it's still characterization that's more important to me.

I see these lists of "Top 10 Ass-Kicking Female Characters" on video game sites, and they make me sigh a bit. Because in response to the complaints about depictions of females in games, most companies have decided that if they depict women who are physically powerful, they've addressed the issue. And besides, if they're that well-muscled, they'll look really hot in whatever you decide to draw them wearing. It's not the outfits that bother me. It's the lack of nuance.

You know who my favorite female characters are? Kitty Pride. Kaylee. Willow. They're all women who are powerful in non-standard ways, and they all look different. They're not super-sexy, but they're not your typical Mousy McSit-in-the-corner female geek character, either. I can't stand Penny, or most of Felicia Day's characters, for that very reason.

I really feel like the woman who wrote that article about Mass Effect is missing the point. For one thing, I find it hysterical that the only difference between the two comparison screenshots she uses, claiming that one is much better than the other, is the haircut and color. Same body, same face, even. She's claiming that people are shallow for picking the blonde when all she's done is discard it for the exact same reason in reverse. I agree with Tycho. It's still Shepard, either way. And because female Shepard and male Shepard are identical in terms of story options, I frankly think she's one of the best deals going at the moment for people who want heroines.

Maybe I'm taking it too personally. I'm blonde (blame my northern European descent), and I have inordinately straight hair (blame the Native American descent that nobody in the family will talk about). Her suggestion is therefore that I must be a bimbo. I've grown up all my life making blonde jokes about myself (being a percussionist as well didn't help), and I've never really been offended by them. But to see someone who's claiming an interest in gender equality immediately dismiss a section of her own gender due to personal prejudice? Not cool.

Judge character on character. Write good characters, and nobody should give a flying flip what any of their physical characteristics are. We're all just sentients.

Religion as a motivating factor: When is it too much?

With the release of The Nativity of St. Genevieve immanent, and with me hoping that my short story "Witchcraft" will be taken up for the second Machine of Death collection over at Dinosaur Comics, I feel like it's time to talk about something that's been worrying me a bit in both stories.

Religion.

I knew from the start when I set out to write Genevieve that I was going to catch flak for it. If Rowling gets people upset at how supposedly satanic Harry Potter is, I know I'm in for it. Then again, if I get even a 20th of the attention that Harry Potter did, I'll be ecstatic enough to deal with the trolls. Genevieve is set in a universe that is remarkably like our own medieval Europe (hah, how surprising is that, since I'm a trained medievalist?), except for the fact that magic is real and it's controlled by the Catholic Church, who train all natively-born magic users into monks and nuns so that their powers can be explained away as miracles. This was inspired by stories of miracles that I ran across in my graduate research (such as nuns randomly being surrounded by columns of blue flame whilst singing in Choir one day) that sounded to me a lot like descriptions of typical fantasy magic. The thing is, that what with my insistence that the magic is actually a natural power and not what the Church claims, and with the depiction of the Catholic Church as an institution that's trying to take away free will for these people, I know I'm going to get people thinking I'm anti-Catholic. Especially since as close as I get to a villain in this first book is the village priest.

This is a problem for me, because what I really want to show is nuance, and what faith is capable of inspiring in people. Father David does what he does because so far as he knows, it's the right thing to do. He makes choices that are very difficult for him, but he always errs on the side of his faith. The same thing is true in "Witchcraft". The main character, a traveling revival preacher named Haggerty, continually puts himself into what he knows are dangerous situations because preaching and salvation are what he's taken on as his mission in life.

I'm not afraid of people thinking that I'm anti-religious. That, I can deal with. What I'm more afraid of is people thinking that I'm too religious. I'm not really certain how to get out the message (other than hoping people see this here) that religion and faith are simply serving as handy motivators for me, ways to put the characters in the situations I want them in, to make them do the things that they need to do. While it's interesting to me to see the things that faith can drive a person to do, I'm equally as interested in other motivators like lust, or greed, or True Love. Yes, True Love has capitals. Go watch the Princess Bride. My own personal opinions on faith and religion are my own damn business, and nobody else's, and I don't want what I've written to be taken as standing in for them.

The only reason I'm worried about this is simply because the first two stories that I hope to have any kind of wide impact are fairly similar in that faith is one of the main themes and motivating forces. I don't want people to think that I'm someone who writes about religion all the time. In talking with friends about this dilemma, most have told me that I don't really have anything to worry about. I hope not. But that's part of why I'll be releasing another collection of short stories as soon as I can, one that doesn't feature any stories with religious themes.

I don't object to people who want to write religious or inspirational stories. But those books need to be advertised as such, and they're not what I do. What I do is write about people, and why they do the things they do. Religion is just one of the many things that makes us more than monkeys, and it's fascinating as a motivating force. So are lots and lots of other things, so forgive me for not using it in more moderation, at least at first.

Event vs. Character driven stories

Why do some books seem to get bogged down halfway through, or meander around aimlessly, or simply fail to grab the reader's attention in the first place? There can be a lot of reasons, from poor plotting to a bad narrative structure, or even just because characters didn't wind up as interesting as the author intended them to be. There are a lot of things for an author to keep in mind, but it's come to my attention lately that one huge point of potential derailment isn't even on most writers' radars. That point is whether the story's plot is meant to be driven by characters or by events.

Imagine a book, or a series of books, where the main character(s) go through various adventures, have all kinds of wild things happen, but come out of it fundamentally the same people, reacting to things in the same way, so that you know the issue will be just as much rollicking good fun. That, my dears, is what you call an event-driven story. So far, we've seen them primarily in thrillers, mysteries (Sherlock Holmes is a classic example), and other genres that tend to feature serialized copy about a single protagonist or group of protagonists. As a writing style, it also used to predominate in sci-fi, back in the days of Phillip K. Dick and Asimov and Heinlein's short stories, which were all about exploring how completely interchangeable human beings reacted to the new technologies emerging around them. Truth be told, though, it's easier to maintain an event-driven writing style over a short story than an entire novel.

The alternative is something that's character driven, where the story focuses on the internal struggle of the character; where the main driving force of the plot consists of watching the character's evolution from one state into another. As writers, most of us are more familiar with this style: we put our characters through hell so that they can become beautiful butterflies. And the writing process is all about coming up with new and more inventive ways to do that, and trying to figure out what events would induce the changes that we need and want to see. This style of writing is more prevalent in genres like fantasy.

The real reason that I want to bring these differences up is because although they're something we internalize from reading stories written in the different styles, I don't think most authors are capable of articulating the difference between them very well at all, and that can lead to problems. Especially if an author who is more used to one style tries (knowingly or unknowingly) to write a story in the other style.

This is something the steampunk writing community needs to be aware of. Most of us are coming out of fantasy or sci-fi, both of which are currently quite character-driven genres. But while character-driven steampunk is possible and can be quite good (c.f. Stephen Hunt), the models that we're trying to match, books by authors like Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard, were almost exclusively events-driven.

Some authors are trying to match that and doing it well. George Mann's Newbury and Hobbes adventures manage to evoke the Holmesian events-driven feel that most London-fog steampunk authors are looking for. Others try to match it, perhaps without realizing what exactly they're doing, and without the knowledge to guide what they're doing, it just falls flat. Much as I hate to pan a book by an otherwise excellent author, I feel as though this is much of what happened with Cherie Priest's Dreadnaught. Her Boneshaker was quite good, but Dreadnaught feels like it can't decide which is more important - the train and the politics surrounding it, or the people riding it. It feels like she's tried to make it a character driven story, and there are some clear attempts at showing Mercy's evolution and growth. The only problem is that Mercy is such a flat and opaque character to begin with that any changes occurring to her seem disjointed and rather random. She grows over the course of the story, but it's in an unpredictable, unfathomable way, and the reader is often left wondering whether the scene that just occurred was meant to be important or not.

Every scene in a book should be important, and every scene should feel important. If you don't know what or who is in the driving seat of your story, though, this gets supremely difficult to pull off. Having multiple foci adds depth to a story when done well, but diffuses and mystifies it when done poorly. Just like sci-fi, I think that steampunk is going to divide (or possibly already has) into hard and soft sub-genres. And like sci-fi, the best hard steampunk will be events-driven, while the best soft will be character driven. Authors need to know what they want to write, and what that means they're getting into before they start. I hope that this brief disquisition will help with that.

Apologies

It's been a crazy month.  I'm trying to get Nativity out the door, though it looks like I'll be delayed a few more weeks as my beta reader flaked on me (this is why you should never use friends and loved ones, no matter if they're wonderful editors and have the best narrative sense of anyone you know; it's entirely too disruptive to domestic harmony if something doesn't go right).  I'll be taking steps to amend that soon, but there are a couple of changes I know have to be made before anyone else can see it, and I need to find the time to make those changes.

Hopefully it'll happen this week. I intend to ask for volunteers on twitter, and get the files out to them as soon as possible. The only thing is that I'm not entirely sure when I'll have time to get serious writing done; I start a new job today and I don't really know yet what my schedule will be like.  I'm happy, and excited, because it's better than the old one, but really anything would have been, and things aren't ideal yet.  Well. They won't be really really ideal until I'm a famous bestselling author, but back-up plans are important after all, and since my MA in History is making it hard to get a real job at the moment, my intent is to supplement it with an MLS in a few years and become a subject librarian, or an archivist.  Over the next year, while I'm waiting for the application/acceptance cycle to come back around again, I'm working.  This new job is better than the last, but the schedule is still going to be somewhat erratic, so I may have to learn to write at different times of day.  I'll manage, but it means things are somewhat erratic at the moment, and will be for another couple of weeks as I settle in. 

It's kind of struck the blog as well, I know, and being under stress I haven't been as active on twitter as I probably should.  Working on it.  I already know what my next post will be, I just need to find the time to sit down and write it. Again, that's going to depend on this schedule that I don't rightly know yet.  Not the best thing to have happen right while I was trying to publish a book.  Things happen, though, and we deal with them.  Nativity may be delayed a little bit into July, but it's coming.  And so are a few other things I have up my sleeve, which hopefully will please and delight.  I'm looking forward to sharing them soon! 

Bad-assery part two: The Villain equation

So the other day when I was at Barnes and Noble I finally picked up a copy of The Osiris Ritual, since it's come out in paperback (I know, I know, what kind of e-author am I that I don't own an e-reader? A poor one.). I'm not done with it yet, but between it and having re-read Dune last month, it got me thinking on the topic of villains.

I've seen other authors talking about how fun it is to write really over-the-top villains. Guys that you love to hate. And it seems to me that they're quite common in steampunk as a genre. No steampunk story seems to be truly complete without some megalomaniacal monstrosity pulling the strings to send their Legions of Doom (tm) at Our Heroes (also tm). I've seen it in both of George Mann's lovely books, in The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack, in Boneshaker, and in pretty much all steampunk made for TV or the movies. Not that I mind. There's a certain pulp-fiction aspect to steampunk that can be quite appealing, depending on what kind of story you're looking for. Somebody once described steampunk to me as "A cross between Jules Verne and H. Rider Haggard," as good a definition as any I've heard, and which you must admit calls for something pretty special in the villain department.

The thing I'm wondering (and slightly worrying) about is, is this necessary? Can you write a good steampunk novel where the villain is just a normal person who happens to be acting in a way that brings them into conflict with your protagonist? Where conflict is driven by something other than the stuff in the last three chapters of a college Psych textbook? For example, I have to admit that I really didn't like Dreadnought as much as I did Boneshaker, despite their being by the same author and set in the same world. Is it because there's no central villain in Dreadnought, no force that Mercy has to fight against except social pressures and environmental conditions, happenstance? I feel like Mercy is a much flatter character than Briar is; is that because the conflict just isn't arranged in a way to show her to her best advantage? I have to admit I'm not entirely sure.

I'm concerned about it because I'm still in the planning stages for my own first steampunk novel. I intend for the antagonists to be Union and Confederate generals, along with (possibly) a rich businessman trying to protect his vested interests. I suppose there's room there for making one or more of them into a slightly insane mechanical monstrosity for the sake of making the story more 'steampunky', but I kind of quail at doing that just because I think it's what the audience expects rather than because I'm convinced it would improve the story. I suppose that's the problem with writing in historical periods as someone with historical training; I dislike changing things just for the sake of change. Maybe it's something I had better get used to. Goodness knows I'm not above changing political history - not in a world that contains the Union, the CSA, the Republic of Texas, the Mountaineer Free State, and the Cherokee Confederacy, among others.

It's something I'll be putting a lot of thought into over the next few weeks, as I get my outline pulled together. Does steampunk require a supervillain-type antagonist? Will it help the world attain that feeling of adventure and uncertainty that I'm aiming for? Would they even train cyborgs at West Point? Or should I go with my gut and feature a world that has slightly less extraneous tech, people on a more human scale, but still plenty of steampunky gadgety goodness?

We'll see. And I'll keep y'all posted.

June Update: Publishing and other Future Plans

It's a new month, and I have a lot of things flying around in my head that need settling down. May was my first full month of twittering, blogging, and social media excitement - I think it went well, and although 100 followers in a month may be a bit slow, I'm really excited to hit that milestone, given that, well, frankly, I haven't the faintest clue what I'm doing. I've had a few ups and downs already, and I've made a few decisions about the direction that I'm going to be headed from here on out that I wanted to share, so here's what's happening:

1. My Kickstarter campaign failed.

This isn't too big of a deal. While I would've preferred to go through an e-publishing house like Lucky Bat, I know lots of people have success with Smashwords, and that's the backup route I'm planning to take.

2. Genevieve will be coming out later this month.

I need to run my final set of edits and add in chapter headings, but my goal is to get The Nativity of St. Genevieve uploaded to Smashwords and published before my birthday, June 25. With a deadline that important, I'm going to make it, come hell or high water.

3. I will not begin work on the sequels to Nativity once it's published.

Nativity was envisioned as the first book of a trilogy, but it stands on its own fairly well. I likely will finish the trilogy eventually, but in the time I've spent on twitter so far, the number of people who've shown interest in a medieval fantasy novel has been minuscule compared to the number of people who are interested in the work I've done/am planning to do in an Appalachian Steampunk setting. So my current plan is to focus more on that setting, and hopefully deliver something that readers will be more interested in.

4. My next project is a collection of steampunk short stories, all set in the Appalachian Mountains.

I have plans for about ten stories; three are already written. My biggest question/concern here is whether I should release the stories as I write them, and follow them up with a discounted anthology once I have all ten, or if I should release the anthology first, and then make the stories available individually shortly afterwards. I'm honestly not at the point where I really want to spend the money on cover art for ten separate stories, though I may have to accept that as a necessity at some point. If anyone with some experience in the matter would like to offer advice, I'd be most grateful.

5. I'll be beginning work on my second novel soon, the first in the Mountaineer Free State series.

This is my steampunk setting; I have plans for at least two novels, though I'm not sure how many after that. However many I come up with, I suppose. I don't have a working title yet, but this book will be set in Chattanooga during the American Civil War. I seem to recall once saying that I really didn't want to write Civil War steampunk, but somehow I'm really excited anyway, and I promise it will have a distinctly Appalachian flair to it.

I'm excited that I'll finally have some work out there by the end of the month. I've been feeling rather like I'm all talk and no show, and I want people to get a better idea of what I can do and what I'm all about. I'm also really excited about the idea of bringing forth Appalachian Steampunk as a genre. The mountains are my home, for all that I'm currently stuck in the lowlands, and I want to share their culture and spirit with as many people as I can, especially since the mountaineer spirit matches well with the core ethos of steampunk. I love them both, and I think I can meld them in a way that will make people understand why.

In defence of bad-assery

I think one of my favorite pieces of writing advice was delivered by Steven Brust. He suggested that in order to keep a reader's interest, an author's attitude towards his or her work must always be "And now I'm going to tell you something awesome!". I find from experience, though, that this attitude, while a good one, necessitates that the author walk a very careful line - if your character and the things they do are too amazingly awesome, the reader will often get bored and frustrated. If there's no chance the character can fail, there's no tension, no drama, and no story. In the online role-playing community, we call characters like these Mary-Sues, and frankly, nobody wants to play with them.

Today I want to talk about how this balance between awesomeness and vulnerability can be maintained, mostly via example of the author who I think managed it the best that anyone ever has - Frank Herbert, in Dune.

Paul and Jessica are amazingly bad-ass characters. They're essentially super-heroes, but unlike most modern depictions of super heroes (outside of some of the X-men lines), they've been extensively trained in their powers and know exactly what they can do and how to do it. Paul especially is super-human in about three different ways at once, being a Mentat, having a good proportion of the Bene Gesserit training, and his future-sense. You would wonder, then, how on earth (or Arrakis) anything could threaten them. Boring story, right? And yet it isn't. I know a lot of people who still consider Dune to be one of the most amazing epics they've read this side of Lord of the Rings.

What I find most interesting about the story is that the conflict doesn't necessarily come from another character. Baron Harkonnen got them into the situation they wind up in via his various cats-paw maneuvers, but in a flat fight, he stands no chance against Paul or his family. The story fascinates me, and I consider it particularly well done, because most of the conflict is environmental or internal, not interpersonal. That's tough to pull off, but I think it's one of the best ways to deal with characters that are that strong - the only thing that's strong enough to present a challenge to them is something as massive and impersonal as an ecosystem, or just their own strength. Most of Paul's conflict, both in Dune and throughout the series, comes from fighting against his future-sense, and what he comes increasingly to see as fate. He doesn't want to be the instrument by which the things he sees come to pass, and so he tries harder and harder to escape. Whether he ultimately succeeds, I think, is a decision that's up to the reader. These are ways to deal with a character so bad-ass that they would blow away any human opponent, and yet still make them seem human themselves.

Interestingly, though, before I end I want to point out that even with all of these precautions in place, ways to deliver conflict against a super-human character, to show them as being weak and vulnerable, it still happens sometimes that a number of people will take a dislike to the character because they're perceived as too powerful, too privileged. I've seen this in some of the cultural awareness of Dune - this is terribly unscientific, but in all my years of playing online games, I've seen scores more gamertags that are based on derivations of Feyd-Rautha then Muad'dib. I think the reason behind this is that although Feyd-Rautha honestly doesn't have many redeeming qualities as a character, there's an inclination on the part of certain readers to see him as parallel to Paul, and an underdog. This makes him infinitely more interesting to root for, even though Herbert clearly didn't intend for him to be a sympathetic character in any way. It's a reaction that authors should keep in mind, nonetheless.

So what are the lessons we can learn from Dune? Well, honestly, they're myriad, but the ones I want to take away today are that bad-ass characters are great, and will really pull readers in, but they need to have weaknesses and real human traits in order to remain interesting, and to allow a story to progress. Pitting two bad-asses against each other may seem like fun, but that can develop into an over-the-top Clash of the Titans that will leave readers cold. Environmental and internal conflict are a good way to deal with characters like these. And always remember, no matter how much you like your characters, there will always be somebody who likes the bad guy better.