5 Secrets of the Kickass Heroine

Kickass heroines are all the rage. But it’s tricky to do right. I’ve read some books that do a terrific job… and others that aren’t convincing.

1. Less Talk, More Action

The first time we meet Katsa in Graceling, she is knocking out guards, breaking into a dungeon and rescuing a prince. A quick flashback shows her accidentally killing a child-molester with one blow when she was only eight years old–the first time her Grace showed up. Since we have seen her amazing martial arts skills and innate ability to defend herself in action, her position as Utterly Badass is secure.

However, I’ve read other books where characters keep talking about what a badass the heroine is… without much evidence. They mention that she trains or that she “could beat any guy here” but when we finally see her in action, she’s sick at the sight of blood, or doesn’t want to kill. Huh?

2. Morality is Relative

A badass heroine needs to be strong, even ruthless, without being devoid of compassion. This is true for a hero as well as a heroine, but the fact of the matter is that readers are less forgiving of a unforgiving heroine than a hero. People even complained that Katniss was too hard, although her character was perfectly consistent.

To try to make a heroine sympathetic, some writers will try to emphasize how she hates what she’s doing… killing disgusts her, or blood makes her sick. Pushed too far, however, and these kinds of reactions make it hard to believe she would make much of a fighter.
The key is to remember that if she is fighting someone much, much worse…or to defend someone much more innocent… she will come across as strong yet heroic rather than cold and unfeeling.

3. Defeat Lesser Baddies First

There are two opponents who will typically throw the Badass Heroine for a loop. One is the Big Bad. Naturally, he / she /it has to be pretty crazy awful or the final battle will be anti-climatic. A Big Badass deserves a Big Bad. But… don’t have them fight all at once. Because the first time, the Big Bad is going to wipe the floor with the heroine, and it has to be clear this is because the Big Bad is THAT POWERFUL not because the heroine is a timid little girl.

The other one who will nix the mojo of any hotblooded heroine is the Hot Guy. He may be her equal of the field of martial arts or he may defeat her by some other equally powerful but totally different kind of talent or he may freeze her with Pure Hotness.

To truly display her awesome, a badass heroine needs to easily dispatch lesser threats before she meets a threat — or a boy — that she can’t immediately overcome. In Paranormalacy, we see Evie bag a creature, and understand this is ordinary business for her. Only after that does she encounter a bigger danger than she can handle…  an invisible boy.

4. Juggling Gender Roles

Another issue that always faces a badass heroine (but not a hero) is how much her society approves her martial prowess. Even if she is a contemporary urbanite or a futuristic soldier, she may encounter people who think a woman “shouldn’t”.  If she is from a feudal, quasi-medieval world, or from a sexist, quasi-medeival dystopia, she’s going to have to oppose everything her people believe in to fight for herself. It has to be convincing that she could learn to fight, want to fight and have the opportunity to fight.

It might help if she belongs to a subculture or has a “special” circumstance that works against the majority culture. But if she, alone, out of all the world, has contemporary feminist values, that’s going to be pretty hard to believe.

5. Opposites Attract

Traditionally, the strong, silent gunslingling cowboy had a soft, peace-loving but verbally sharp female to stand beside him. Now that the heroine might be the strong, silent gunslinger, it makes sense that she might fall for a peace-loving, verbally sharp guy. Right?
Sure… but this is tricky because of the lack of symmetry when it comes to switching gender roles. As unfair as it is, when you say a girl is boy-like, it’s a compliment, but if you say a boy is girl-like, you insult the boy. And unfortunately, one place this rule still holds sway is in Romance stories. (Even more in stories than in real life.) The ideal Romance hero is still an Alpha male… and if the heroine falls for a guy she has to physically protect, rather than someone who protects her… some people still have a problem with that.
If the hero has feminine strengths, never play it for laughs (even though three thousand years of literary convention will encourage this). Show those strengths as power. As they should be. In the three examples I’ve mentioned, Graceling, Hunger Games and Paranormalacy, the heroes possess many traditionally feminine strengths, such as empathy, and are often in need of protection from the heroine. But they are still an equal and a match to her.

Guest Post – Happy New Year – Flash Fiction

Gumyaria was a sad, sad place.  Full of Gumyarian poets who had not wriggled the bon-bon-boofa in decades.  Full of girth, but dearth of mirth.  Whole towns devoted all of their time devising ways to escape Gumyaria.  Even the Doobulinger missionaries planted a do-not-visit beacon to warn off fools who read in outdated field guides about the great bon-bon-boofa wriggling orgies held there on annual quarter-moon-and-a-half festivals. Alas, those were sodden, wrung-out dreams of of the past.
But for its misery, Gumyaria had one wonderous thing that nobody else did, one thing that did not exist anywhere else on their joy forsaken planet. The one thing that kept all those unemployed Gumyarian poets sane. An internet connection.

Guest Post: Speech Patterns

Rayne Hall has published more than forty books under different pen names with different publishers in different genres, mostly fantasy, horror and non-fiction. Recent books include Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel), Six Historical Tales Vol 1, Six Scary Tales Vol 1, 2 and 3 (mild horror stories), Six Historical Tales (short stories), Six Quirky Tales (humorous fantasy stories), Writing Fight Scenes and Writing Scary Scenes (instructions for authors).

 
She holds a college degree in publishing management and a masters degree in creative writing. Currently, she edits the Ten Tales series of multi-author short story anthologies: Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Scared: Ten Tales of Horror, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft, Spells: Ten Tales of Magic and more. 
 
Her short online classes for writers intense with plenty of personal feedback. Writing Fight Scenes, Writing Scary Scenes, Writing about Magic and Magicians, The Word Loss Diet and more. 
For more information about Rayne Hall go to her website.
Every character speaks differently. They use different phrases, according to their age, education, background and personality.
Whenever one of your characters says something – even if it’s just a greeting or thanks – let their personality shine through.
Here are four different characters talking about the same things:
Annie is self-centred. 
She begins everything she says with “I…” The words “me”, “my”, “mine” also feature a lot in her conversation.
“I’m sorry I’m late. I had to wait a precious hour in a queue, as if I didn’t have more important things to do.”
“I tell you, I’ve never been so frightened in my life. This was my home, my shelter, my everything. I stood there watching my belongings go up in flames, and my memories with it. My husband was as helpless as I. I’m just glad my kids are safe.”
Barbie is insecure, indecisive and weak.
She uses qualifiers and excuses. Her conversations contain “rather” “quite” “somewhat”, “I would like to say”, “maybe”, “On the other hand”, “If I may say so”, “Forgive me for being so outspoken, but”, “This may sound strange, but”, “I think that perhaps”, “More or less”, “sort of”, “possibly”, “or so”.
“I’m sorry I’m rather late. There was quite a queue, maybe an hour.”
“The fire was quite fierce, and spread rather quickly. We all got out more or less in time, but if I may say so, we were somewhat shaken.”
Claudie is gushing, effusive, and highly strung.
She talks in superlatives: “the cutest”, “the worst”, “the most terrifying”, with additions of “absolutely”, “totally”, “completely”, “utterly”, “ever”, “never”, “forever.”
“I’m soooo sorry I’m late. The queue there was absolutely appalling, and I had to wait forever and ever.”
“It was absolutely horrifying, the worst nightmare. There was this unbelievably tremendous heat, the hugest flames you’ve ever seen, and the biggest column of the darkest smoke. It went on forever and ever, and I lost absolutely everything. It was utterly devastating.”
 
Dorrie is a bossy charge-taker.
She phrases almost anything as an order: “Do this.” “Take that.” “You mustn’t think like that.”
“Don’t think I’m late on purpose. Imagine standing in a queue for an hour.”
“Imagine the flames, the smoke, the heat. Believe me: nobody could have saved anything. Never let your own kids play with matches.”
Beginners sometimes invent speech patterns and graft them on the characters. The result can be clunky and unnatural, and call attention to itself. Instead, think of how a character’s personality trait shows in the way they speak. That’s subtler, funnier, more realistic.
Exercise
Choose a speech pattern that reflects an aspect of a character’s personality. Apply the pattern to something the character says. Perhaps you can post a “before” and “after” version as a comment so we can see the difference.

Author Interview: Paul Dail

Today, Paul D. Dail, author of The Imaginings, joins us to answer questions about his fiction.

1. Describe the flavour of your fiction in six words.

Thought-provoking, unpredictable, spiritually ambiguous, darkly humorous.

2. What do you enjoy most about writing horror fiction?

Absolutely everything. I’ve loved horror movies and books since I was little, so while these days I enjoy reading almost any genre, when it comes to writing, I’m happiest when I’m writing horror.
Oh, and I love the opportunity to give someone the creeps. I recently read a story of mine to my classes that I thought was fairly innocuous, but was pleasantly surprised when many of my students said it was “freaky.”

3. Many people enjoy reading stories about undead creatures – ghosts, vampires, zombies.
What do you think is the appeal?

I think these three examples appeal on different levels. If I were to oversimplify, I would say people like ghosts because it gives them a sense of something beyond death. Vampires is a desire for immortality. Zombies… well, for that one, I think it’s more about the characters other than the zombies that has the appeal. People want to believe that in a zombie apocalypse, they would be able to survive.

4. Have any of your stories been inspired by mythology?

Actually, yes. My story “The Interview” was heavily influenced by mythology, specifically the story of Phineus, a Phoenician king who was blinded by Zeus for his ability to see into the future.

5. Your story “Another Oldie But Goodie” in Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies (edited by Rayne Hall) starts with a retirement home resident hearing music nobody else can hear, and leads to raising a long dead person from the grave. Where did the ideas for this story come from?

This was originally a flash piece for the Vamplit Publishing blog. The theme for the week was “Love in the Cemetery,” I think. Then it was kind of a perfect storm of events that brought the actual story together, the biggest of which being when my 99 year-old grandmother, who doesn’t move very fast but is still sharp as a tack, informed my father and I one day while we were visiting that she had been hearing the song “Ave Maria” at various points throughout the day where no one was actually playing it. At that point, I started putting together the story of the nursing home resident, and I knew it was her dead husband that was singing to her (don’t worry, this comes out in the story pretty early). From there it was a matter of picking out the song, something fitting for the time. And the rest of the pieces just fell into place, especially the ending.

Thank you for joining us, Paul. May 2013 be a year of many more creative ideas and fantastic success.

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About Paul D. Dail

Paul D. Dail is the author of The Imaginings, a supernatural/horror novel, as well as several other horror short stories. While he will quickly tell you that the people he has met in the many places that he has traveled have been the best schooling he could get, Paul received his formal education in English with a Creative Writing emphasis at the University of Montana, Missoula.
In addition to his fiction, he has had a non-fiction submission published in The Sun magazine’s Reader’s Write section entitled “Slowing Down” about the birth of his daughter.
Currently Paul lives in southern Utah, amid the red rock, sagebrush and pinion junipers. He teaches Language Arts and Creative Writing at Tuacahn High School for the Performing Arts.

Blog and Additional Contact Info:

www.pauldail.com  A horror writer’s not necessarily horrific blog
www.amazon.com/author/pauldail  Amazon Author Central page
@PaulDail  Twitter

Author Interview: Douglas Kolacki

Douglas Kolacki writes exciting fantasy stories, often with a Christian flavour, about zombies, pirates and almost normal people. Today he tells us about his writing pleasures and inspirations.
1. What do you enjoy most about writing fantasy fiction?
 Remaking this world into a place more to my liking, where all the rules change and fantastic things come to life.
 2. Many people enjoy reading stories about undead creatures – ghosts, vampires, zombies. What do you think is the appeal?
 I think that in the case of ghosts and vampires, it’s the mystery of it all–who hasn’t been intrigued by ghosts and the undead? In the case of zombies, there’s a sense of adventure in combating all these people-turned-monsters that can’t be parleyed with, bribed or placated; you have to use your wits and whatever you can scrounge, do or die.
3. The story selected by editor Rayne Hall s for the anthology Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies features a human who adjusts to life in a zombie body. Where did this idea come from?
 I wanted to tell a story from the zombie’s point of view, and not only that, one that has a conscience. What if, as one of those who’s been “initiated” into that kind of existence, he’s seen how they get that way, and along with that comes a possibility of gaining your eternal rest at last? Most zombies don’t have the awareness anymore to understand it, but this guy does. He determines to do something about it.
Thank you, Douglas. We wish you and your stories a successful 2013.
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About Douglas Kolacki
Douglas Kolacki has lived in Australia and in Naples, Italy, where he began writing. His specialty is creating fantasy worlds out of everyday modern life. He currently lives and writes in Providence, Rhode Island. His novels are Elijah’s Chariot and On the Eighth Day, God Created Trilby Richardson. His stories have been featured in Weird Tales, Dragons Knights and Angels, Big Pulp, The Devil Eats Here, Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts, Bites: Ten Tales of Vampires, Cutlass: Ten Tales of Pirates, Undead: Ten Tales of Zombies and Spells: Ten Tales of Magic.
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