#silverheroine

After the events of these past six weeks, I’ve come to realize that now more than ever it’s time for women to write our own stories. To create our own heroines, to allow them to be complex, dark, dangerous, powerful, ambitious, and unapologetic. Allow these women to fall and to seek redemption, because really, how many heroines you know have been allowed redemption?

I want to use this anger, resentment, hurt, frustration, whatever it is you are feeling and focus it into something useful, something that can not only help us work our way through these murky waters but to help us create something solid and lasting. I don’t want to just be upset for a moment, just to let it go until the next moment we find ourselves disappointed because we’ve allowed others to tell the stories we want to hear.

With this in mind, I’ve decided to create “The Silver Heroine Project”. What exactly is a Silver Heroine? Symbolically silver is defined as (https://symbolism.fandom.com/wiki/Silver):

“…representative of moon energy and is the balance between black and white. It is the color of the Greek goddess Artemis (Roman aspect: Diana). It is symbolic of purity, strength, clarity, focus, and the feminine energy. In alchemy, silver is one of the noble metals.”

We all know the tropes for female characters and most of them fall either on the light side or the dark side of the archetypes spectrum, but the in-between is a murky area where few heroines are allowed to reside. I think it’s time for the anti-heroine to rise, for the fallen heroine to be redeemed, I think it’s time women stopped being held to different standards. We fight for equality in our everyday lives, it’s time we fought for equality in our stories.

The Silver Heroine Project is a repository of short-stories (or comics, poems, songs, or however you chose to express your story) that will showcase the flawed heroine. I want to collect these stories not only to entertain us but also to inspire us. A place to go back to and remind ourselves that these types of heroines exist and that they are worthy. What I have in mind is for us to create original stories, with original characters whose stories have meaning and whose endings aren’t beholden to the current expectations of what a heroine should be.

So, what am I looking for? I’m looking for volunteers to help with the project and storytellers. I have already created a blog to serve as our “headquarters” for now thesilverheroineproject.tumblr.com. You can write/create your story however you wish, the sky is the limit. I want to clarify that these heroines can appear in any genre:

Thriller

Horror

Mystery

Comedy

Romance

A romantic tale is not a requirement and a male partner isn’t one either. I think our heroines would benefit from a diverse world where sometimes love is part of the journey and sometimes it’s not. However your Silver Heroine appears to you, that’s how you should create her. I will ask that you reflect on the common tropes assigned to female characters and make an effort to break out of those tropes to find a new path for your heroine to walk.

Silver Heroine Appreciation Week

June 23-29, 2019

To get things started we´ll begin with a challenge!

The Silver Heroine Project will be hosting a week-long appreciation for our beautifully flawed heroines. We are hoping that you’ll join us and participate and will share your creation with all of us. 

With the intention of reaching as many people as possible, the week will have different prompts for each day so everyone can participate. It can be stories, edits, poems and songs, metas and anything else you can create or come up with.

We’ll be posting the prompts later next week. 

We’ll follow the tag

#silverheroine, #thesilverheroineproject, and #silverheroineappreciation2019. We’ll be reblogging your creations. 

P.S. Thank you to @adecila for being so amazing!!! <3

Silver Heroine Appreciation Week

The Silver Heroine Project will be hosting a week-long appreciation for our beautifully flawed heroines. We are hope that you’ll join along; participating and sharing your creation with all of us. The first even Silver Heroine Appreciation Week will run from Sunday, June 23, 3029 through Saturday, June 29, 2019.

With the intention of reaching as many people as possible, the week will have different prompts for each day, so everyone can participate. You can create anything from stories, edits, poems and songs, metas, and anything else your imagination can come up with.

This is your opportunity to create diversity in female characterization and diversity in world-building, which are both sorely needed in storytelling. 

Here are the prompts:

DAY o1:   Redemption // Revolution // Remorse 

DAY o2:   Revenge // On the Run // Role-breaker

DAY o3:   Young Leader // Dark Fairy Tale // Not Like Anybody Else

DAY o4:   Troubled Childhood // Steampunk Spy // Priestess 

DAY o5:   Gifted // Be Careful What You Wish For // In The Shadows

DAY o6:   Cursed // Black, White, and Grey // Rule-breaker

DAY o7:   Double Standards // Hunter and Prey // Free Choice

For more prompt inspiration follow this tag #silver heroine prompts. If you need more information on what is a Silver Heroine, you can find it here. 

Send us a message if you have any questions concerning the week itself, the prompts, etc.


We’ll be following and reblogging the following tags:

#silverheroine

#thesilverheroineproject 

Bridget at Now Novel 

Gone are the days where female characters in novels tended to be simpering, dependent and virtual cardboard cutouts. To celebrate the strong – but also the not-so-strong, the complex and vivid – women in fiction, this week we’re talking about 7 great females characters and what they can teach you about better character writing.

However, before examining the character development of strong female characters, it’s important to define what is meant by a strong female character. Writers have grappled with this definition and cautioned that it is important to allow a strong female characters to have weaknesses. Developing a strong female character doesn’t simply mean creating a protagonist who defies prescriptive gender expectations. It means developing a character who is well-rounded and real. Most importantly, perhaps, a strong female character is one who acts rather than one who is acted upon by societal and other pressures that revolve around her sex or gender.

The female characters below all exemplify good character development:

Writing characters who have a strong sense of self: Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre

We can reach back to the classics for one of the novel’s earliest strong female characters. Jane Eyre survives an abusive childhood, first in the home of the family charged with caring for her and later at a boarding school, only to find herself working for a man who has his own complex and disturbing relationship to women [no spoilers here].

One of the most remarkable aspects of Jane as a character is that she is, in one sense, a victim of circumstance, of the time and place into which she is born and her station in life, and yet despite that she seizes agency and makes her own choices even when those choices are very limited. This begins with her rebellion against her cruel relatives, continues in her care for her fellow students in the abusive boarding school and culminates in her rejection of Mr. Rochester.

A lesser writer than Charlotte Bronte might have written a similar book in which the same series of incidents unfolded and showed Jane as passive in the face of those incidents. Yet it is her resilience, her determination in the face of suffering and her own sense of self that stands out in this novel. The lesson from Jane Eyre is that your character will be engaging and interesting if she has the agency to choose her response to things even when that response changes little or makes the situation worse, as is often the case for Jane.

Other strong female characters also find a way to thrive in gender-regulated societies:

Isabel Allende’s generations of vibrant women

Critics have described Chilean author Isabel Allende’s novel House of the Spirits as a kind of woman-centred companion or response to Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which foregrounds the historical experiences of mainly male characters. Allende’s novel examines the lives of women amid upheaval wrought by men, but it is always the three generations of women that provide the vibrant core of the novel. Clara Trueba is the matriarach of the tale, but her daughter Blanca and granddaughter Alba are just as strong.

Unlike some of the other female characters discussed here, all three of the Trueba women are strong characters and strong women who defy oppressors in more traditional ways. However, their commitment to causes such as education and health care are shown to be ultimately more effective in securing change than the revolutions the men carry out.

The lesson from the Trueba women is that strong female characters do not necessarily have to refuse or abandon all characteristics or roles seen as traditionally ‘female’ or ‘feminine’. For these women, these roles actually turn out to be the most effective ways for them to remain strong and bear up under the suffering they endure.

The heroine’s journey: Lauren Olamina and Octavia Butler’s Parable novels

In her classic science fiction novels Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, author Octavia Butler gave her character a disability. Because of a drug her mother took when she was pregnant, Lauren Olamina suffers from a condition known as hyperempathy in which she feels whatever a living thing near her is also feeling. However, in most other ways, Lauren’s character arc follows one that is traditionally depicted as predominantly male. She becomes a leader for her people and founds a new religion.

There has been some criticism of Joseph Campbell’s study of the hero’s journey as a distinctly male construct. Lauren’s character arc from a teenage girl to the leader of a new society demonstrates that there are no character arcs or paths of development that need to be reserved exclusively for male or female characters.

When developing your own strong female character, there is no reason she cannot command an army or rise to a high position of influence just as a male character might. It’s always good to remember that you can write the world you want, not merely the world you have.

Some female characters are so memorable that fans feel they should have been the main characters in their books:

Brains over beauty: Hermione Granger

Many readers of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter fantasy series love Hermione even more than Harry. Hermione is probably the smartest pupil in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and she’s also loyal and brave. But she isn’t perfect. She can be a know-it-all. She talks too much. She is sometimes bossy.

Hermione’s negative traits are as essential to her existence as a strong female character as her positive traits are. In a world where girls are often assumed to have the most value if conventionally beautiful and adept at social interactions, Rowling created a girl who is described in the books as somewhat less than beautiful and often socially awkward. Yet Hermione remains one of the most beloved characters of YA literature.

The lesson from Hermione is that it is important make sure your strong female character has flaws, and it is even better if, as is the case with Hermione, some of those flaws are inextricably connected to the characters’ strengths. After all, the reason Hermione is a know-it-all is because she very often is the smartest person in the room or the only one who is correct about something. If Hermione is bossy, it is because sometimes the people around her need to be bossed.

The unlikable heroine: Katniss Everdeen

Some readers find Katniss Everdeen a hard character to like. However, Katniss lives in a hard world that only gets harder as the Hunger Games series goes on, and it is that hardness that saves her. Katniss is also a reluctant heroine. She steps up to fight in the first round of hunger games to save her sister and the second time because she has to. Katniss does try to protect the helpless, but she does so on an individual basis. She has no desire to become to face of the revolution and is pressured into the role.

Katniss possesses many characteristics that are thought of as traditionally male, and to some degree, she was criticised for characteristics that would be much less likely to be singled out if male characters had them. Whether or not Katniss is entirely likeable — and plenty of readers adore her — the lesson for writers here is that they should focus on writing people first and genders second.

Katniss would have been a very different character and the Hunger Games series a very different set of books if their author, Suzanne Collins, had felt pressured to make Katniss worry about her looks or fret about boys. A second lesson is that authors should be unafraid to make their protagonists into characters who are sometimes difficult to relate to, as real can be.

A change of view: Cassie Maddox in Tana French’s The Likeness

Tana French’s character Cassie is a particularly good example. The reader first meets her in the crime writer’s first novel, In the Woods. Cassie is the best friend and colleague of homicide detective Rob Ryan, but the novel is written from Rob’s point of view. When we next meet Cassie in French’s second novel, The Likeness, the story is told from Cassie’s point of view. Therefore, we get a fascinating look at character development from two different angles. A further complication is that Cassie spends much of The Likeness pretending to be someone else.

Cassie is well-developed as well. A policewoman, she exhibits courage and intelligence, but the challenges she faces in The Likeness uncover unexpected vulnerabilities.

The women of speculative fiction: Margaret Atwood and Offred

Margaret Atwood’s unknown narrator in The Handmaid’s Tale is another fascinating example of how a writer can develop a strong female character. Because the dystopian world Offred lives in is so restrictive, Atwood does not have access to many of the usual tools a writer might use to develop character. However, she manages to develop a character who rebels in small ways under oppressive and degrading conditions.

The narrator known as Offred remains nameless and we learn very little about the typical aspects of her life that we do with other characters. From reading her story, we can learn how to develop a strong female character without access to information about things like friends, career and leisure time activities.

Writing strong female characters is a matter of understanding that these characters should have weaknesses as well as strengths. By reading the stories in which the characters listed above appear, you can study the variety of approaches that writers use to develop characters and get a sense of the diversity of fully realized female main characters that exist.

Who is one of your favourite women of fiction?

by Rae Elliott

The “strong” heroine is becoming a cliche, one-dimensional character women can’t relate to or don’t find realistic.

So it’s time we toss the “strong/kick-butt heroine” out and replace it with a more satisfying character: the complex heroine.

Fab fictional femmes like Shuri of Black Panther, Rey of Star Wars, and Eowyn of the Lord of the Rings, have raised the bar high for female characters. And, as writers, it’s time we meet that bar.

So what characteristics should your complex heroine possess in order for readers to freak over her?

Competence

Flaws/weaknesses/failures.

A noble cause she stands for.

Let’s talk about how you can use these traits in your own character crafting process.

Competence

All the ladies I spoke of aren’t strong. No, see, the adjective that better describes them is competent. That means they carry their own, they hold down the fort, and they make use of the beautiful brains God gave ‘em- in brilliant ways. See, being competent allows for strength in multiple areas, not just one.

Just wanting your heroine to be “strong” isn’t enough of a goal for her. Women possess many qualities that make them unique, honorable, and resilient. So focusing on strength alone narrows her possibilities. Focusing on creating a competent heroine, however, gives her more dimension, depth, and allows her a variety of goals and abilities.

Shuri, princess and younger sister to T’Challa, wasn’t just sitting on the sideline as her brother changed Wakandan history. She helped him change it- and not just through fighting, either.

Through the use of her awesome brain, Shuri created gadgets, weapons, and teched-out outfits to help her brother’s goal (really, the nation’s goal). She represented her family, her brother, and her people well by giving to it in valuable ways. And although she’s just teenager, Shuri has focus and direction, thereby producing the best works science has ever seen.

Rey survived on her own as a scavenger for years. She defended herself both mentally and physically against countless attacks, including the most fearsome attack from Mr. Prince Emo bad boy himself. Rey was also a quick learner and intuitive with the Force, which made her an excellent mechanic and pilot.

Eowyn, shieldmaiden of Rohan, burns at the fact that women cannot defend those they love. Yet she teaches herself how to handle a sword and hold her own anyway.

Ultimately moved to pull a Mulan and enter the war undercover, Eowyn successfully makes her way to the front. There, she faces the ultimate test of bravery: a smackdown with the Witch King of Agmar.

After the clapback of the century, Eowyn defeats the Witch King in defense of her mortally wounded uncle.

Notice a pattern here? These ladies are all self-taught in some way. Rey, alone most of her life, learns to fend for herself and scavenge to survive. Eowyn, unable to defend those she loves openly, teaches herself the ways of the sword in secret and enters the front in disguise. And Shuri, although she had the best education Wakanda could offer, created these gadgets on her own- always improving where need be.

So here’s the ultimate goal of a competent heroine:

To be a gal that’s got brains- not just brawn.

To have the opportunity to be self-taught, or a self-starter, in at least one area of her life.

To defy the odds and beat expectations.

Flaws, Failures, and Weaknesses

“But why should my heroine have flaws or failures, Rae? Won’t that just make her appear weak or incompetent?”

No, beautiful unicorn, it won’t.

Why?

Because no one can relate to a perfect heroine, a flawless heroine. I don’t know one woman who hasn’t made a mistake in their life (ahem, I’m looking at you, girl in the mirror).

Although the Force was strong with Rey, she still had weaknesses and honest desires gone unfulfilled. She longed to discover who her parents are and find her place in the world. Even though she had discovered her calling, she felt lost nonetheless and wanted, more than anything, for someone to help her find her place in the war. Those powerful, real desires made Rey a believable, relatable, beloved heroine.

As valiant as Eowyn was, she wasn’t without flaws. Her naivety bears down hard on her when she faces the horrors of war. This flaw also leads her to heartbreak, when Aragorn friendzones her hard. But we feel for Eowyn and relate to her struggle to find love in a world overcome with war.

To give your heroine a desire to find love and be loved is not a weakness, it’s a relatable quality.

Clearly, to bear a significant weakness or to fail in some way only makes heroines more relatable, realistic, and complex. Readers want to connect to characters, to see a bit of themselves in the heroine, so make sure you don’t just show her best side.

The point about flaws/failures/weaknesses is this:

Readers will find your heroine relatable and realistic.

They add depth and dimension to your heroine that readers will appreciate.

Standing for a Noble Cause

What does she stand for? What belief does she live for? Would she die for it?

To be apart of something bigger than ourselves gives us great purpose, gives us a wider worldview and perspective outside our immediate needs. Give your heroine that same purpose. If she doesn’t stand for a cause greater than herself, she’ll flatline.

Rey decidedly threw herself into the fight for the rebellion. Even though she lived on the outskirts as a mere scavenger, when the opportunity “rolled” itself into her life, she made her choice. Rey’s beliefs were greatly tested, yet she came out the other side an even more capable character.

Shuri used her talents for the greater good as well. She helped support T’Challa and bring Wakanda to the level of ingenuity it became legendary for. Her works weren’t just a trophy to hang on the wall-they had real purpose, and as a last resort, she used her weaponry in battle herself.

Eowyn wouldn’t stand idly by as Middle Earth fell into the hands of Sauron. She courageously took on a battle no other woman had before. Fighting for the world of men, and even taking a hard hit from the Witch King in the process, Eowyn took her stand valiantly.

Here’s what you need to take away from heroines who stand for a noble cause:

Readers admire and respect a heroine who stands for something bigger than herself.

Fighting an internal or external battle to defend that belief, no matter the odds, helps cement their identity as a beloved heroine.

Let’s be clear about something real quick: your heroine doesn’t have to fight in a battle to be strong. She doesn’t have to swing a sword or battle ax to be considered worthy of our respect.

(In fact, read more about my belief that we need more diverse female characters here)

There are many types of heroines and that’s okay. But if you want to create a complexheroine readers will appreciate, then remember these three keys:

Make her competent

Allow her to use her brain

Let her be a self-starter or self-taught

2. Give her flaws/failures/weaknesses

She doesn’t always have to win every battle (and she shouldn’t)

Failures make her relatable and more beloved to readers

3. Give her a noble cause to stand for

Standing for something greater than herself gives her a purpose readers appreciate

Defending that belief despite great opposition builds her character

Women Are Delicate

"A woman's duty is not to control or take charge.""Women's nature is passive."— A couple of

Neo-Confucian

proverbs.

This is an Omnipresent Trope. It can be assumed to exist in every form of media unless otherwise stated. In most forms of human society, the assumption is that women are the more delicate of the sexes or are more suited for nurturing and/or looking pretty than the more active roles undertaken by males of the species. Women tend to be physically smaller than men and possess less musculature, and these things, amongst others, have created the assumption that women are less "hardy" than men.

The Stereotype takes two forms:

Unilateral: Women are inherently delicate, incompetent, unstable, dependent, vulnerable, ineffectual, unreliable, lovely, precious or sensitive.

Bilateral: Women are more delicate than men. In this form, even if women have toughness, competence, strength or stability, it's less than what their male peers are capable of.

Writing Advice by Mette Ivie Harrison

Writing a strong heroine can be a tricky thing, and not just for male writers. The problem is that if you write a heroine exactly like a hero, then it may seem unrealistic or "unfeminine." But you don't want to use stereotypes, either, because those are a cheap shortcut and don't make for a genuine character. I will admit that I tend to prefer the heroines that are written by women, but there are plenty of counter examples. Jim Butcher does a great job with strong heroines, even though Harry is the protagonist of his books. Guy Gavriel Kay. George R.R. Martin. John Scalzi. Orson Scott Card. Joss Whedon. I don't feel like I have a preconceived notion of how a heroine must be strong. It doesn't have to be physically, though it can be if it is explained well enough. I think the problem is more often that there aren't any heroines at all. Now there are books that are going to be about a man's world, but you know what? I'm not going to like it as much as one where there are hints of the women surrounding that man's world.

Mistakes that I see writers make too often:

The heroine's part in the plot is not an important one. Perhaps you will say that it is impossible to make more than one character absolutely essential to the plot, but I think this is untrue. If you are writing a story and you want the hero to be the most important character in the plot, you have every right to do that. But I will like your book more if the heroine also has a big role to play. She might not have to do it in the climax of the book, although she could. But please don't pander to female readers by pretending that she does something important (by having the hero tell her how important she was to his mental well-being or some such crap) when she doesn't.

The heroine's part in the plot is to give up herself. I know that this is a common device in Western Literature. I studied it plenty in grad school. "Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan" was a quote I learned early on, from Goethe. It's from his play Faust, and is about the eternal feminine that leads men to a higher plane. Yeah, only in Faust, Gretchen is abused by Faust and commits suicide. She comes back in spiritual form to help him. Um, this isn't what I would call a strong female character. A woman who throws herself into the well of evil to save all mankind is dramatic, but is there some other way she can destroy the evil? If not, I don't know what to say. I may just not like your story that much, or your world view. There is something noble about giving up one's life for another, but it seems like women do it a lot more than men in novels. Men tend to figure out some other way, or they just are not put in the same position. Women also give up their lives to save their children. Again, I would do this as a mother if I had to. But I would try not to be put in this situation. My children need more than just my giving them birth. They need me to remain alive in order for them to grow up well balanced. And a mother's job is not to be swallowed up completely in her children's lives. At least, that's my belief. Again, your view of the world is going to change what you choose to write in your books.

The heroine is recovering from abuse. I've used this myself. It works on occasion. Unfortunately, the world is full of women who are recovering from abuse as children. But not every heroine needs to have this as her background story. Some women are loved and treated as queens. Some are neglected in other ways, just as terrible.

The heroine sits around a lot, moaning about her fate, waiting for the hero to rescue her. Sure, women are physically weaker than men, and in a realistic novel, there are going to be some realistic limitations for women. But just be careful of this as a device for heroic action. Maybe your heroine can get herself out of that tower and go help the hero fight the evil hordes. Or maybe she isn't going to sit in that room spinning gold just because some king told her to do it and she'll get married.

Which leads me to -- the heroine's reward at the end of the book is marriage. Romances end this way traditionally, and I have no problem with a happily-ever-after ending. But be careful that the marriage is a reward for both the hero and the heroine, and that there are other rewards, as well. One of them being self-esteem, or perhaps some other tangible reward like a sword or a crown or even a big drink of water after a terrible battle with very dry evil.

You may be surprised by this, but I wish there were fewer heroines who disdain all things male. I get tired of this, really. I consider myself a feminist of sorts, but when the heroine has to go out of her way to say that everything she does that is traditionally male is stupid, that is offensive. Let her think some things are stupid, yes. But give some balance.

Heroines who fall in bed with the hero as soon as it is convenient for him. Come on, this is just school boy fantasy, isn't it? It's not the way real life is, and I think it makes for bad plotting, along with the other problems I have with it. It's as if the hero has problems in every other part of his life, and so he deserves (?) to have a little sex thrown his way to give him some relaxation. Need I say how much it offends me when female characters are used merely to be toys for the heroes? They have lives of their own and motivations of their own. I love how in Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind, the hero is always trying to find the heroine and he can't. She is mysterious and has her own motivations, which he can only guess at, and he tends to guess very wrong.

OK, now some of the things I think I would like to see more of in heroines:

Heroines who have unusual skills. Your heroine doesn't have to disguise herself as a boy and learn how to fence in order to be interesting. But think about the stereotypes you are perpetuating when you choose your heroine's area of expertise. Is she a good seamstress? Does her magic come from tears? Or from dancing? Or from beauty? You might want to choose beekeeping (like in Robin McKinley's Chalice) or reading or filing papers or using a hammer in interesting ways. On the other hand, it is fun to twist around expectations, so that if a villain expects the heroine to make him dinner, she can poison it because she is really good at gardening and recognizes that those mushrooms growing outside his window are not what he thinks they are.

A heroine who refuses marriage. I liked it in the new book Gradelingwhen the heroine decides it isn't for her. I am a married woman with children and have a traditional life, but I like to see other choices offered to young girls, and marriage isn't the only way to happiness.

Heroines who are mothers and go on to become great political powers. I love Bujold's Barrayar because it is about a woman who deals with all the difficult realities of being a mother and giving birth, but still stops a civil war on her planet all by herself. Well, with help. But she is the force behind everything, and she takes her own risks. I love Bujold's women, by the way. Even more than Miles Vorkosigan, who some say is a woman in disguise.

Heroines who think for themselves. Just because someone tells a heroine something doesn't mean she should believe it. Heroes are always bucking authority and get rewarded for it by the plot, but for heroines, it often seems the reverse. They have to be good little girls, obedient, staying in their place, and they can work from there. Yes, that can be done and done well. But it isn't very often.

Heroines who beat the heroes in some area of life. I've read plenty of novels where I see female characters do things that are just unbelievable. That annoys me, too. But I wish there were more of them who out-thought the men, or at least teased them and brought them down to size. I think one of the problems with the Vorkosigan books was when Miles found his beloved Ekaterina, how could Bujold write a romance with anyone equal to Miles? She certainly tried, but I'm not sure it turned out well. Miles runs roughshod over her life and the thing she does best he uses to entrap her. I don't know if that is ever fully forgiven in the books. Miles is Miles, and well, he gets what he wants in the end.

Well, that's a start. There is a difference between good writing, which is clear communication of what you want to say and writing that has something to say that I like. I'm not saying you have to have strong heroines to have a successful book. Clearly, you do not. There are men who won't notice and even some women. But there's no reason you can't do everything, is there?