![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Breaking Dawn
Aug. 3rd, 2008 08:40 pmSo, I am continuing to amuse myself with all the Breaking Dawn hullabaloo. No, I don't plan on ever reading the book, but what I will say is this... most of the people here on LJ are writers of some sort. And I hope that after all this has died down, we all take up pens and create a new influx of YA novels, addressing whatever issues we had with Twilight or Harry Potter or whatever the next big series is.
The biggest problem I had with Twilight was that I found Bella utterly impossible to relate to. She isn't like me, or like I ever was and she had no traits I ever wanted for myself. But at the same time if you look at most of my non-fanfic writings, 90% of the characters are boys. My movie? Has one small part for a female, who has little in the way of character development. The short story I recently wrote is about two boys. The comic book idea I have is dominated by men, and of the dozen or more characters needed only two are women. Clearly, I'm not helping to add to the range of female characters any.
I've learned my craft in fanfiction circles as much as I have university courses, and I think it's helped my style and grammar and characterization tremendously, but I think it's caused me to have an irrational fear of writing women, lest they be labeled a Mary Sue... which in some circles seems a greater crime than bad grammar or spelling (Stephanie Meyer clearly does not have this problem, but I digress). So I'm torn... on the one hand I feel a need to write characters like me because I feel underrepresented (seriously, Title 9 was YEARS ago, but when's the last time you read a book where a girl played a sport?), but I've been taught never to write a character too close to myself. Which, I think, means I tend to write boys, which I usually find easier to identify with than most girls anyway. But every time I do, that takes away one more tomboy heroine that could be in the world.
I think what I'm saying is that other people being paid handsomely for EPIC FAIL makes me want to write, but writing about girls like me seems so self-indulgent somehow.
Questions? Comments? Does anyone else feel like this? Anyone got any suggestions on how to overcome it? Or reasons not to? What scary creature is going to *sparkle* in YOUR YA fantasy novel? I'm leaning towards Bigfoot.
...who will of course be portrayed by Jared Padalecki in the movie.
The biggest problem I had with Twilight was that I found Bella utterly impossible to relate to. She isn't like me, or like I ever was and she had no traits I ever wanted for myself. But at the same time if you look at most of my non-fanfic writings, 90% of the characters are boys. My movie? Has one small part for a female, who has little in the way of character development. The short story I recently wrote is about two boys. The comic book idea I have is dominated by men, and of the dozen or more characters needed only two are women. Clearly, I'm not helping to add to the range of female characters any.
I've learned my craft in fanfiction circles as much as I have university courses, and I think it's helped my style and grammar and characterization tremendously, but I think it's caused me to have an irrational fear of writing women, lest they be labeled a Mary Sue... which in some circles seems a greater crime than bad grammar or spelling (Stephanie Meyer clearly does not have this problem, but I digress). So I'm torn... on the one hand I feel a need to write characters like me because I feel underrepresented (seriously, Title 9 was YEARS ago, but when's the last time you read a book where a girl played a sport?), but I've been taught never to write a character too close to myself. Which, I think, means I tend to write boys, which I usually find easier to identify with than most girls anyway. But every time I do, that takes away one more tomboy heroine that could be in the world.
I think what I'm saying is that other people being paid handsomely for EPIC FAIL makes me want to write, but writing about girls like me seems so self-indulgent somehow.
Questions? Comments? Does anyone else feel like this? Anyone got any suggestions on how to overcome it? Or reasons not to? What scary creature is going to *sparkle* in YOUR YA fantasy novel? I'm leaning towards Bigfoot.
...who will of course be portrayed by Jared Padalecki in the movie.
