Okay, it’s not the first weekend of the month, but it is 1st of October tomorrow and I’ll probably have a couple of posts for you this coming month, with my next release and NaNoWriMo coming up, so here’s the monthly links a little early.
If you can spare the time from the Olympics, why not cast an eye over these useful and entertaining links?
7 Ways you give away your power and how to avoid it
Rachelle Gardner on ways writers give away their power and lose out on what they want.
It occurred to me that writers seeking publication are vulnerable to specific ways of giving away their power if they’re not careful. Here are seven ways I came up with, and some ideas for avoiding them:
So there’s this thing called Bechdel Test, named for Alison Bechdel, who illustrated it in her Dykes To Watch Out For comic strip, back in 1985.
It was originally about movies and the movie passes the test if:
1. It has at least two [named] women in it
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something besides a man
It’s also applicable to TV shows and books, and though passing the test doesn’t mean a story is some kind of feminist’s dream, it’s a useful way to assess the representation of women in fiction, of whatever form. Even a movies like The Matrix with a very powerful lead woman character can just barely scrape a pass. Even stories with strong women characters can fall down on the part about what those strong women talk about, if they ever have a conversation with each other.
After a hard day of kicking ass, Trinity liked nothing better than to eat ice cream and chat with Switch about how hot all the guys on the team looked in leather.
So why am I wittering on about the Bechdel test? Because it’s been bugging me that my books don’t pass and probably none of my future ones will! This is almost inevitable, writing m/m romance. The books are focused on the couple – who are of course, both men – and their relationship. I personally usually structure the story so every scene will be form the Point of View of one or the other of the heroes. All of this means there isn’t much space for the female characters to have a chance! I’m clinging to the hope that as the test doesn’t specify that they have to have this conversation without any men in the vicinity, I can manage to get something in, but it won’t be much.
What shall we talk about? Me kicking your ass? We could talk about that?
Probably the last time I managed to really go nuts with that was in 2007, when I wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo where the hero was a woman, her sidekick was a woman, the villain was a woman, and loads of the secondary and supporting characters were women. Hell, though I firmly believe the notion of a “reverse Bechdel test” is a load of bollocks, that story would barely pass such a test. It was huge fun to write it. Being science fiction, set in the future, none of the women characters were bound by the social conventions of the present and could just get on and do what they wanted to do, or what needed doing. Certainly they had conversations about men and their relationships with them sometimes, as women do, but they talked about other things most of the time.
So, have you noticed what a great ass Worf has? (I kid! DS9 is pretty good on the test.)
It’s a dilemma I continue to wrestle with.
I seem to have collected lots of links this month. It’s been a long, long month!
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