The Elephant in the Room: Race, Sexuality, and Social Mobility in my YA High Dark Fantasy Novel

My post today is about topics I’ve chosen to represent in my high dark fantasy novel. I would love to say this was all my own decision and I was brave enough to write this character on my own. However, a friend challenged me and I’m very glad she did.

The Challenge (this was months ago but the conversation went something like this):

Indian Friend: “… you know, I didn’t have an Indian heroine in fantasy stories when I was a teenager. Could you write one for me?”

Caucasian Me: “I don’t know a lot about your culture, I wouldn’t want to do it injustice.”

Indian Friend: “That’s like saying because I’m Indian I can’t write a white character. I’ll help you research and I’ll beta read. Give it a shot and see what you can do.”

Caucasian Me: *thinks*. “Okay, I’ll give it a shot.”

Weeks later looking at my novel, “Okay, if the main character is Indian I can’t just change her name and physical description. I don’t want to white wash this….”

Lots of conversations with my friend later and the things I changed included: some customs, fashion, naming conventions, character descriptions, actively describing various races throughout the story, and things I probably can’t even remember anymore.

This challenge has been very rewarding and helped me expand my characters in my story and in helping me represent the diversity I want in the story. I always had a multi-cultural world, this just helped give me the confidence to expand it to the main character.

The world tropes I didn’t want in my story:

Here are a few things I actively decided to avoid:

• Everybody is straight
• A social norm is being gay has to be hidden
• Everybody is white or race isn’t mentioned
• The world is basically medieval England renamed with magic

My main character is an Indian sixteen year old girl who lives at the top of a mountain, socially and economically the worst place to grow up in her community. She dreams of moving down toward the Valley Settlement and up in the social structure.

Although the book is fantasy, I’ve been trying to have Indian culture and fashion significantly influence the country.  I’ve been doing a lot of research and I have a friend coming over today to help explain traditional Indian fashion (South Asia not Native Americans). She and I had many conversations about Indian fashion and today she’s bringing her Sari to explain how it works and the differences. I owe her!

Discussions I wanted in my story:

While writing I’ve been pushing myself to have a high fantasy story that has multi-dimensional characters who deal with many of the same common issues we do:

• Social mobility
• Race and Racism: although instead of being based on skin color, it’s based on the long-lived races versus the short-lived races.
• Having homosexuality and asexuality represented without or with minimal social stigma
  • Part of this is giving me a headache because there are all new tropes I needed to familiarize myself with. I’m happy I did because it’s letting me see the potential pitfalls.
• Teenagers who don’t always trust that adults know what they’re talking about
  • I was a teenager once! Adults are fallible so I’m trying to show both kinds of adults.

When other people have asked what I’m focusing on or working on in term of cutting edge topics I mention the list above. I was speaking with a woman who is probably in her forties and talking about this. When I mentioned the main character was Indian and the parts of the story which focused on LGBTQIA social norms in the world, she didn’t ask me if I’d researched Indian culture. Instead she focused on whether or not I’d researched LGBTQIA cultures.

The answer to both is yes, I don’t rank one above the other. Both elements influence a core piece of the world but neither are exactly the same as we see them here. There is a history in the real world we must take into account, luckily in Fantasy I create that history.

So, this is what I’ve been doing while working on my novel. What have you been doing to expand you world and enrich the lives of your characters? Do you feel this kind of research and attention to detail is hindering or helpful in your own writing?

I’d be happy to expand on any of these topics if anyone is interested.

Queries, Novels, and Sequels…

I’ve nearly finished my first novel. Two friends and looking it over for any remaining grammatical uncertainties or any story issues. For better or for worse I’ve finished a query letter and a synopsis. I have a “submission package” document ready to go. To wrap this novel up I just need to look through the edits once they’re sent back and start the query process. Over the last months I’ve taken some time off of writing stories and worked on the submission documents. Anyone who tells you writing a query or synopsis is easy is lying. Or, at least in my case they are. I found creating these documents really difficult.  The multiple POV issue didn’t help! Which stories and intrinsic? What can be left out? What are preconceptions a reader might have? So much to juggle and think about…. ugh.

A few weeks ago I started outlining the sequel.  I’m using Scrivener to outline this novel. That’s something I didn’t do for the first and in hindsight I regret.  That being said, I don’t know if I would have known how to outline a novel. I never did it for papers in school so I think I needed to work through the process. For my first novel I shot from the hip and had to rewrite and reorganize. I had to create an ending, to revamp the middle, to cut and rewrite thousands of words. I want this to be more focused. I want to do half my brainstorming up front. Then, I want to hide and to write. I want to return to Agrini and my lords and ladies. I want to watch characters fall in and out of love, to see the machinations of gods and goddesses, kings and paupers, come to fruition or fail. The Shadow of the Labyrinth (oooh! title perhaps?)  is going to cover this novel. Sebelina will be stronger than in the first novel, she will rise, get knocked down, and come back all the better.

And now, a bit about our antagonist Edric and his first taste of magic from his sorceress Shira:

Shira’s already pale skin shone white as pulse after pulse of red energy shimmered down the ribbons, circling her flesh, and then reaching out toward him. He gasped, his own pale flesh stained red from the scalding touch of magic burning its way up his arm. After long moments of agony, the pain faded and he began to feel stronger, better, more. He could think of no other word. He could scarcely think. He was more.

Anyone else struggle with query or synopsis? How about a title for your novel? Do you outline or shoot from the hip?

Tension and Contests

I might not have posted since October, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing. In February I entered a flash fiction writing contest. It’s the first contest I’ve ever entered and I’m nervously/excitedly waiting for feedback from the judges. Women on Writing (wow-womenonwriting.com) hosts quarterly contests, the entry fee is only $10 to cover their costs and prizes. You can also buy a critique of the story which is another $10. So, for a grand total of $20 I’ll get feedback on my story and it’s entered in a contest.

In other writing news, I put my rough draft fantasy novel on the shelf and I am expanding the flash fiction story into something longer. I’m not sure how that’s going to change the story but it has psychological thriller tension that I’m cautiously outlining. I’m nervous about getting too hopeful because I’ve had issues with tension throughout an entire story before. It seems to be going well so here’s hoping.

When you write tension how do you track it?  I’m working with outlines but I’ve heard about people using spreadsheets and sticky notes. What works for you?

Friday Morning Ramble

When you read do you see a video playing in front of you? For better or for worse, I do.  I also fall asleep telling myself stories and watching these scenes.  Somewhere between awake and asleep is often where I fix troubled parts of my story, once the scene is clear in my mind I can write it.

How about writing, when you write what do you see then?  It’s more difficult to craft these scenes (some days I’d rather just read a great scene!)  Layer by layer a moment in a scene is built: the visuals, the sound, the texture, voices, smells, even taste can become important elements.  Some of this has been written in the first draft and some was left out.

When I’m in need of texture I walk around my apartment touching walls, wood, and other items.  I think about them, feel them, and then I write the object I need in my scene (sometimes nothing like the item I studied, but studying a single item helps my mind begin working through texture).

Happy Friday Everyone!

Paper, Paper Everywhere

My walls are covered in that sticky backed white paper – you know the kind that works like a post-it note except in a larger scale and in white, not yellow.  I’ve turned these sheets into calendars, brainstorming pages and outlines sticking them all to my walls.  Every time I hit a snag in my story I rip off another sheet and fill it with ideas.  There’s a great satisfaction to that sound – the long shzzzzup of paper as it’s pulled off.  Today?  My character Rin was the focus, a 13 year old boy first discovered by my heroine near the beginning of the story.  Who is he?  How is he important?  Why do my readers care about him?  What does he contribute to overall plot?  These are all question I thought about and worked on answering.  He’s a favorite of mine and plays off of other characters well but this is no reason for him to be in the story.  He might be cut out completely if I can’t answer these questions.  So, building him well, building him right, and ensuring he is central to the story is a focus of my time.

(And, yes, I’m watching Downton Abbey!)