Writers have until September 30th to submit long-form fiction to The Fantasist, a new online quarterly magazine of novella-length fantasy stories.
The purpose of The Fantasist is to widen the classification of fantasy, to strengthen and interweave the discussion around speculative fiction, and to amplify the role of fantasy within that discussion.
The publisher plans to publish three original fantasy novellas the third Thursday of every third month starting in December.
One thing I’ve noticed in the land of characterization is that oftentimes, a character’s profession and their personality are pretty tightly entwined. Sometimes, it seems like character is extrapolated backwards from a profession. For example, ‘they are a scientist, so they are analytical.’
While…
I definitely see what your saying here and it’s true in the vast majority of cases out there. So, let me just point out one small caveat about what I’ve noticed that when it comes to female “action hero” protagonists in Urban Fantasy, Fantasy, Horror, and YA where this one bucks the trend. Your advice at the end is important in this respect, because the inverse there has proven to be true. In the cases of the vast majority of female protagonists trying to fill the role of cop, private investigator, military (officer or enlisted), or various other types of professionally trained combatant, it’s clear that the author started with the kind of personality they wanted and tacked the profession nameplate on top of it.
There are professions out there, like the above, where the training is designed around breaking down the personality and reshaping it to suit the profession. I’ll point to cops, since they’re the easiest ones. Police and detectives, regardless of gender, have a very specific outlook on how they view the word, what they’ve been trained to look for, what violence is acceptable (within reason) for them to get away with. Everything, from the way they move to, to the way they think, to the way they dress, is informed by their profession. Female cops, especially, tend to be tougher (though not in the way they’re usually presented in fiction) than their male counterparts. The reason for this is simply that they face an uphill battle towards being accepted by their partners as an equal and as a force to be both feared and respected by the criminals. Some of them can be very stereotypically feminine when off-duty, but you’ll never know it when they’re on.
The problem is that authors conflate “violence” like pushing, shoving, general bullying, demands, and yelling with toughness and authority for these characters. It’s true that violence is a part of the job, but there’s a difference between the way a trained professional handles violence and interrogation and some untrained lout off the street does.
In some, albeit select, cases prioritizing personality (especially the personality the author wants or thinks is appropriate) over the profession and the sort of personalities the training is meant to develop is detrimental to a character’s believability. There’s nothing inherently wrong with a wish-fulfillment character and that’s what most of these protagonists are, but it’s also important to balance that desire with an understanding that there are many, real women out there who fill the same role as a character in a book. They deserves some representation too.
Divorce yourself from this idea right now, author. While I’m sure it is the narrative you’ve been presented with your entire life, I’m here to tell you that it isn’t true. Women do find building up muscles in the upper body more difficult than men, but since power does not come from the arms, it’s actually a superfluous distinction. Women build up muscles in the lower body and in the core muscles (abdominal) very rapidly.
Skill in combat is not a matter of biology, but in training and dedication. Remember, if your female character fights, she’s neither unique nor special. In my experience as a martial artist and a martial arts instructor, there are on average per class 2 girls to every 10 boys, with the female number either remaining constant or doubling as the class goes up in age. While there are fewer female combatants around than male, it’s not hard to find 20 women to every 100 men. Extrapolate that out and think about it, women who fight are not as rare as you might have previously imagined.
Here are a few things to consider:
1) Power comes from the hips.
I will harp on this until the end of time until everyone shakes the myth of punch strength being decided by arm muscle strength out of their heads. The strength of the strike comes from the pivot of the hips and guess what? Women have wider hips than men, thus a greater opportunity to generate more power and hit their opponents harder. Combine this advantage with a low-center of gravity and the ability to push that center even lower and you have a fighter capable, not just in power, but able to topple much larger opponents.
2) Women have a lower center of gravity.
This is the advantage of the short fighter, it’s the same for short men and short women, a tall woman fighting a shorter woman will encounter the same resistance as a tall man fighting a short one. I list this as a female advantage because most women will always find themselves facing larger opponents. So, it’s important for an author to keep in mind.
So, how does this work? A center of gravity is the height difference from the ground to your core, around the belly button. The shorter the fighter, the lower their center of gravity, the lower the center of gravity the closer they are to the earth, the closer they are to the earth the better their ability to generate a stable base and the harder they are to knock over. A fighter who knows where to put their feet and weight to make use of their center is a hard one to take to the ground. This is one way for women to overcome the height and weight disadvantage.
3) Women are naturally more resistant to pain and fatigue than men, have a greater potential for stamina, and can fight harder for longer.
It’s important to note: it’s not just that men cannot biologically carry a child to term and survive the birth, but if they did with their current make-up, they would die. So, you may call it the miracle of childbirth, but a woman’s body is gifted with a much greater level of resilience than their male counterparts. While these abilities must be honed and improved through training, the natural talent is already present in every woman’s body.
4) The only combatants who ever actively terrified me were women.
I’ve met a great many master martial artists from a great many different styles, all of whom I deeply respect, and can trust in their ability to utterly annihilate me. But the female black belt sparring division, my first thought on encountering those women as a teenager was: “I want to spar with the boys.”
Women live in a very different world than men do, they live in a world that is comprised of dangers even in places that are supposed to be safe. A woman cannot walk down a street alone, never mind if it’s at night, without wondering if an attack will happen. Rape and other acts of violence are very real, every day threats, and women live with the knowledge that the places they have been told to go to for protection will disregard them, laugh at them, and judge them on their worth for “allowing” these acts to happen to them. Every woman, even the ones like me who began at a young age, will eventually be faced with the realization that they may have to use what they know against another person one day. This is not fantasy assessment full of wishful thinking, but a cold reality.What if one day I have to hurt someone else? What if one day I have to kill them?The women who practice and prepare through forms of combat do so with that in mind, with the knowledge that they are the underdogs and that one day, they may have to use that training to fight for their lives.
The ferocity with which they beat on each other in sparring matches is a reflection of that. Remember, these are women who have shaken off the socially ingrained idea of ‘I can’t hurt anyone’ and moved on to ‘I will break you if you hurt me’. They follow that up with:you will never walk right again.
Unless your character comes from a very different society, this attitude will be part of who they are. Women who are trained and dedicated have the capacity to be terrifying, especially in a patriarchal society. Why? It’s not the behavior that most men expect.
So I heard that violence makes for strong female characters.
I won’t reblog most of the comments on these, but this one I’ll address. Violence is a tool, nothing more and nothing less. Violence may be required for some female (and male) characters depending on the occupation, skill set, and plot the author chooses for their character. Violence itself and the capacity for it is not actually an indicator of “strength”, a character’s strength comes from their personality, their ability to overcome adversity through challenges (emotional, mental, physical), and their willingness to take action. It should go without saying that all any female character needs in a story is to be fleshed out, well defined, and an active participant in one form or another (more or less depending on whether or not they are the protagonist).
The above are merely some thoughts debunking the usual conventional wisdom that surrounds fighting in general and women in particular. Female combatants, “action heroes”, and other characters who participate in violence are becoming more common and frankly the vast majority of those characters (while not poorly written in most cases) don’t reflect the realities of combat, respect the capacity women possess for violence especially on an even keel with their male counterparts, and hold to traditional gender stereotyping over understanding the sacrifices these characters make on a personal, moral, and societal level.
Does a female (or any) character need to be physically strong to be a powerful force in their story? No. Are the above something authors should think about, if they haven’t already, when setting out to write female combatants? Certainly. Are there other aspects on the subject that should be taken into consideration? Absolutely, which is why in the coming months Starke and I are planning on doing a ton of articles about combat psychology, personalities being reflective of occupation over gender, and other important information relevant to creating realistic combatants of varying stripe and skill.
The above is general information about how generally derided physical weaknesses in women are actually a strength. Will it cover every woman? Oh, good god no, but if we sat here discussing every possible variation and outlier in personality, body type, height weight, and personal history, then I wouldn’t be posting anything else. Accept the information for what it is (general and based on 13 years of martial arts experience), the title language for what it is (designed to encourage readership, yay, success), and the blog for what it is (a fighting and writing blog, a discussion of violence is implicit).
There are thousands of very useful writing blogs out there that will give you excellent information and advice on how to write strong (active) heroines, quite a few hundred of them are on Tumblr alone, who will be strong in their own narrative without violence ever being necessary. If you can’t find them yourself, I’d be happy to make some suggestions. But, the female combatant is an entirely different animal and there’s less information on her available. Let’s not belabor the the point with unnecessary ‘pooh-poohing’ and accept there’s room in the world for both (and just about every shade in between).
