Writing Thinkies - hobbits Soldiers Walking / Women, or a Lack Thereof.

[lenora_rose]

(If you want baby thinkies or renovation updates or the like, ask me later. There's stuff going on, to be sure.)


Getting closer and closer to the end of Soldier. And oh boy is this last segment going to need editing later.

The problem is both that a lot happens and not much happens. Contradictory? Well, yes. Right now, I have long segments which boil down to hobbits soldiers walking. I have stretches where I felt a particular character fell out of sight and needed a moment on stage again. I had stretches where I wanted to establish what the heck the pattern of the caravans and the mountain passes are like. Some will be cut. Some will be abbreviated. Some - and not always the ones I first expect - turn out essential for a character, thematic or world-building reason.

It's because of the last that I seem to have to write them all out. Because what feels essential when I'm drilling through may prove to be one of the first things cut. And what feels like extraneous rambling -- well, I'll be honest. If I think *as* I'm writing it that it's probably unnecessary, it's often cut. Sometimes before the editing (I lost a four-hundred word scene in less than 24 hours this week alone). But that's not usually how I feel while I'm writing. I'm interested in the characters, in working out their banter, in the slow travelogue bits. The fact that much of this will end up extraneous in the long run, and even the fact that I KNOW this, isn't the same as not having fun while writing it.

Once in a while, when the word count piles up, I wish I were the sort of writer who could plan it all out ahead, and write only what I need, and not have to add bits that will only get chopped later. However, when I do know, that well, what's going to happen, it turns as often as not into a bit of a slog for me. I prefer to be surprised. The little moments when someone turns around and says something that is just so true to their character in particular, or commits some small act that makes me rethink their whole personality... those can't happen if I don't allow myself to write a pile of extraneous pages of hobbits soldiers walking.

_____________________

I have another problem with this book.

I've said before that these books overall are my most heteronormative, masculine-focused traditional fantasy stories. The Serpent Prince is mostly the coming of age of a young man in a patriarchal society. I think I fit in enough women (and a few gay characters) with agency and intelligence not to have it come across too badly. However, only two characters carry over into the next book, and both are (straight) men.

Soldier of the Road does not include much female point of view or agency. Period. (It's pretty weak on gay characters, too, moreso since there's a streak of homophobia among some of the soldiers). He meets women and he treats them as humans, but most of their roles are passive. The active players are fellow soldiers and caravan guards, a profession strongly skewed masculine (Also strongly skewed to young and physically healthy males). It's not until halfway through, and a particular frizzy-haired middle-aged wizard, that we have a woman with her own active role.

Oh, and the villain and her daemon both (Though nobody knows, or considers, the gender of a huge invisible daemon-monster while its ripping their limbs off.)

I've been trying to figure out whether there are any characters whose gender I could change. But this is made especially hard with the soldiers, because the difficulty of finding someone with whom to have heterosexual sexual relations with *is* a plot point. Twice. (Since Ketan can't even conceive of trying it the other way). The two most obvious active roles that could change without hurting that plot point are both characters who get killed off, which... has its own problems. (Book one already skirts Woman in Refrigerator territory once).

At one point, I started an attempt at the opening scene from the woman's point of view, because A) I like occasionally giving an outside view of Ketan, B) I have one other section in this book from another point of view, and right now it feels structurally odd to have only the one POV switch (Serpent had three, which worked much better) and C) she could give another perspective on events at the end of the prior book which gives one a way to give a synopsis that doesn't bore those who read said book. But I didn't think it worked, in part because getting even a fraction of her story about why she meets him dragged like all the other hobbits soldiers walking, even if this time it was a farmer walking.

The other thing is, books three and four don't have this problem. Some people finally recur from the first book, and others are introduced, and at least one more woman gets a point of view. And it really is one big story in the long run, divided into books mostly for purposes of structural cohesion and commercial viability.

Which makes me wonder how much I should worry about book two of a long story failing not only the Bechdel test, but several other measures of reasonable gender balance. Since it is a long story.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Maybe just write 'em and worry about all that later?

(Sez me, who has cut twenty thousand words so far out of part one of current p--but I had to write them first)

[amy34.livejournal.com]

Re: gender balance, it is what it is, right? If it's a story that needs to be about a guy, at least for the first two books, then so be it. My first two novels were dude-centric. If they pass the Bechdel test, it would be only on technicalities. In my case, it was because I wasn't comfortable yet writing stories centered around women. But I got over that. I prefer to write heroine-centered stories now, partly because I think I'm better at writing heroines than heroes, and partly because there's a better market for stories with female protagonists, but if I had a story in my head that for whatever reason really needed to be about a guy, I'd write it.