The Continuing Adventures of My Heroines
In a couple of earlier posts, I stated very firmly that my heroines are not ME and put this down to a supportive passivity that most of them exhibit. I’d like to expand a little on that. Many people read the book for the MC, to imagine themselves as him or her. Most authors also, if only unconsciously, do give the MC experiences they relate to or have had themselves. My style of writing is a little different in that I don’t view the MC as important. In almost all my stories, they truly are narrators only—a framework to hinge the story around so we can watch it unfold.
This is what makes them appear so passive. They don’t usually state a lot of their own opinions on anything because their job is to be a placeholder. Somebody has to be voicing the story, otherwise it will get too disorganized. The story is what you should be looking at, not the heroines. In fact, when I post on individual heroines I am trying to talk about the story behind them, not the girls themselves. So if people have been looking for the story in my heroines, they’ve been looking in the wrong place. The heroines aren’t clones because the stories aren’t identical. But in most cases they remain quiet, relative to the other characters.
That doesn’t mean that I am a passive, supportive person. I actually have a temper (something my characters never exhibit) and broke hinges on drawers that the man in the home improvement store said were almost impossible to break. (I grinned and thought, “whoopsie.”) I threw books at the wall when I was mad and the dent is still there, covered by a calendar to this day. And I certainly had opinions on the people around me. I just felt the best way of expressing those opinions was to show what the people are actually like as a world, as a functioning group, rather than to create a heroine who said what I thought.
Saying that makes me supportive and to be treated cavalierly is as stupid as saying Bilbo Baggins is supportive of Gollum by agreeing to the riddles game and not killing Gollum later. He’s supportive of the plot, not Gollum. If he doesn’t do these things, which are important to the story, he’s not a feisty, strong character. He’s a useless character. I have a reason behind what I do, as do my characters. And that reason is the opposite of passivity.
And there will be more updates.
This is what makes them appear so passive. They don’t usually state a lot of their own opinions on anything because their job is to be a placeholder. Somebody has to be voicing the story, otherwise it will get too disorganized. The story is what you should be looking at, not the heroines. In fact, when I post on individual heroines I am trying to talk about the story behind them, not the girls themselves. So if people have been looking for the story in my heroines, they’ve been looking in the wrong place. The heroines aren’t clones because the stories aren’t identical. But in most cases they remain quiet, relative to the other characters.
That doesn’t mean that I am a passive, supportive person. I actually have a temper (something my characters never exhibit) and broke hinges on drawers that the man in the home improvement store said were almost impossible to break. (I grinned and thought, “whoopsie.”) I threw books at the wall when I was mad and the dent is still there, covered by a calendar to this day. And I certainly had opinions on the people around me. I just felt the best way of expressing those opinions was to show what the people are actually like as a world, as a functioning group, rather than to create a heroine who said what I thought.
Saying that makes me supportive and to be treated cavalierly is as stupid as saying Bilbo Baggins is supportive of Gollum by agreeing to the riddles game and not killing Gollum later. He’s supportive of the plot, not Gollum. If he doesn’t do these things, which are important to the story, he’s not a feisty, strong character. He’s a useless character. I have a reason behind what I do, as do my characters. And that reason is the opposite of passivity.
And there will be more updates.
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