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Creating Strong Female Protagonists

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4036462091_b548c428b2_o I’ve been happily immersed in the new seasons of Outlander and Game of Thrones, as I’m sure many of you are. I also recently binge-watched every available episode of The Fall, a wildly popular BBC thriller.

The trio of shows have many things in common, but as I’ve been pulling together a talk about female protagonists, I noticed in particular that all three of these shows boast very powerful female protagonists, some of my favorite in recent years. Stella, in The Fall, is a British police detective, called into a Belfast police department to help solve a crime. Claire, in Outlander, is a WWII era nurse who finds herself back in time in Scotland in the 18th century. Daenerys Targaryen, in Game of Thrones, is the last of a line of of royals who ruled dragons. The dragons have been extinct for hundreds of years, and it appears her family line is going to be extinct as well. (There are many examples of strong females in GoT, but I’m going with my personal favorite.)  I’m going to use them as examples here, but don’t worry, there are no big spoilers. I’m only speaking in general terms.

What are the steps to creating a strong female protagonist? What are the pitfalls? How do men and women protagonists differ?

She has goals for herself.
Stella, in The Fall, wants to catch a serial killer
Claire, in Outlander, wants to get home

She is conflicted.
Stella is thwarted by officials, by her own nature, which we’ll go into in a minute, and by the killer himself

Claire wants to return to her husband in the twentieth century, but she also falls wildly in love with a Highlander she is forced to marry.

Daenerys faces many many challenges over time, but her first is survival, which means making peace with the barbarian king, and winning him over.

[pullquote]One of the great flaws I see in female protagonists is that they are often so very good.[/pullquote]

She acts to reach her goals.
In other words, she doesn’t just let events happen. She makes a decision to go forward and then faces the consequences of those actions, right or wrong. Claire makes bad choices for the 18th century at times and is beaten for it, but she doesn’t cower afterward and feel apologetic. No, she’s furious and stands up for her own beliefs, even when others don’t agree with her.

Stella is a complex character, but one of the things that makes her very interesting is her unapologetic sexual tastes. When she sees a detective on the street changing his shirt, she gives him her hotel room number, and he comes to have sex with her, but the whole thing is kind of bewildering to him because the culture is still quite sexist in the way Catholic countries often are. When she’s later questioned about him and asked what he was doing there, she says clearly and without apology, “Sexual intercourse.”

We don’t expect that. Her fellow officers really don’t expect it. She refuses to apologize for having the tastes she has.

When Daenerys is married off to a barbarian king, she’s nothing more than a beautiful child. But as sometimes will happen, she bonds with him, [Read more…]

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Letter to My Aspiring Writer Self

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I posted this to A Writer Afoot a month or so ago, but I'm getting ready to to to the Romance Writers of America conference, thinking about all these things, and I thought many of you would enjoy, too.   Dear New, Young, Passionate, Painfully Aspiring Writer Self: I am looking at you with great tenderness. Your passion for your craft, your hunger for publication, your commitment to continue to try makes my heart swell with pride. It is not easy, what you’re doing, writing, or rather, … [Read more...]

The Perplexing Problem of Romance

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I spent much of the winter and spring writing a non-fiction project, Writing Romantic Fiction, which will be published in November by Hachette/Macmillan. I was approached to do the project some time ago, and agreed to do it because it seemed like it would be a good exercise for me, and because it’s good to have something to offer at workshops. What I didn’t realize is how much soul-searching it would trigger, both about process and how it works and why and but also about the role of romance … [Read more...]

The Artifacts of Everyday Life

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We have lost Christopher Robin’s mother recently, and her estate and all her things must be settled. CR is back in England taking care of it. As you read this, I will be on my way.  It’s been challenging to stick to my writing schedule, worrying and feeling the upheaval, and that was my first thought for today’s blog—that I would talk about getting work done, making progress even when life turns upside down. But it would be false because I haven’t been writing very much at all. I couldn’t … [Read more...]

No Limits: The Emerging New Adult Market

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One of the hottest topics in commercial fiction is the New Adult market.  It’s on blogs and in marketing newsletters and all over Twitter.  Editors and agents are hot on the trail of the next big writer/book. The very successful trio of Colleen Hoover, Jamie McGuire and Abbi Glines just spent a few weeks touring for their new titles, and the crowds were enormous. All of this success leads to everyone trying to pin down the market, box it up neatly, pronounce it to be THIS , not THAT.  I … [Read more...]

The Creative Personality

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In modern western society, we like to pretend we love and support creativity.  It brings us innovation and entertainment, after all.  Without highly creative people, we wouldnot have personal computers, iPhones, Facebook, or movies.  We wouldn’t have great paintings or books to read or light bulbs or cars or drugs to stamp out tuberculosis. Creativity is an absolutely necessary element of society and moving society forward. In fact, however, as much as we like the product of creativity, we … [Read more...]

Default: Story

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I was recently in St. Louis and went to church with a long time friend.  As we were coming out, a mother, father and little boy were just ahead of us. The boy was about three, dressed nattily in a tie and crisp trousers, and over his mother’s shoulder, he was reaching for the church and crying.  My friend said, “Must want somebody back there pretty bad.” His mother gave a weary smile. “The drums,” she said. Marcia said, “That’s a passion right there.” Yes. Maybe even a vocation.  That’s … [Read more...]

B.I.C. (Bum in Chair)

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It is a cool, slightly overcast morning.  I’d like to be in my garden, planting more of the bedding plants I have waiting, puttering, pruning and plucking weeds.  It has been a very long wait for spring this year, and every fiber of my being is screaming to get outside, play in the dirt, create this year’s painting from the canvas of bare earth waiting for me. But I have to work. I could make the case that days like this one are rare this time of year, when the sun starts to blaze here at … [Read more...]

The 20 Minute Win

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The late great Ray Bradbury, one of my writing heroes, often said that a writer should begin writing before he lets the world in.  Before television, before conversations, before anything else happens. In my world—maybe yours, too-- this has not often been a realistic possibility.  Although I have written about one practice I use, getting up before the world to write for a couple of hours, it's hard to sustain that schedule, and on an ordinary day it’s not realistic to jump out of bed and run … [Read more...]

Day After Day After Day—Showing Up At The Page No Matter What

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There is a point in every novel I write where I am utterly miserable.  The book is a big mess, full of TKs (“to come”) and notes to myself (“fix this in line with Chapter 22”), sloppy writing and dull characterization.  It feels like it will never, ever be finished, and even if it is, it will be the biggest pile of manure to yet arrive on the literary scene. I am there now.  It usually lasts 2-3 months, and it is the reason I will procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate until there … [Read more...]

A Poem That Got Me Moving

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It’s 4:30 5:30 am and I am at my desk.  It’s dark, still, and there’s a bite in the air that tells me summer is drifting off to some other hemisphere. I have made a pot of tea, tucked under a cozy that was knitted for me.  There is a metal pitcher half-filled with milk, and a sugar dispenser and a spoon and a tub of Greek yogurt in case I get hungry. I do not particularly want to work.  In fact, I actively do not want to write.  I should have been up an hour ago, but we were away all weekend … [Read more...]

The Fire of Obsession

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Obsession is a writer’s way.  We are hard-wired for it, to collect details and study a subject with great intensity, like a four year old who memorizes all the names of all the dinosaurs in all the ages and can recite their diets and sizes and probable colors for hours if you let him.  (And if you let him, you will be his friend for LIFE.) That does not always mean it’s comfortable.  I have been crazy in love with the ancient Irish and the Black Death and Titanic, with weaving and dyeing, … [Read more...]

The Art and Power Of Interviews

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Interviews, in person, on site, can be one of the most powerful tools in a fiction writer’s arsenal.  A novelist does not need to be an expert to appear to be one, to fool even an astute reader.  We just need really, really good details—and an interview can provide more details in an hour than a dozen books on any given subject. My MIP is set in western Oregon, on a working organic farm.  I will admit that I have been struggling with one of the characters, and struggling a lot with my … [Read more...]

The Fruit of our Lives

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As I write this, it is the last morning of summer.  My yearling kittens are crouched in the garden, watching a squirrel on the fence make his way through the face of a sunflower, methodically plucking out striped seeds with his tiny hands, cracking their shells, devouring the kernels.  There are piles of hulls, here and there, through the garden, where I have tied the flower heads to the fence or a branch or a gate. Light angles at a long angle, illuminating the withering squash, the tired corn. … [Read more...]