D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

feminist fantasy

Extending the Proper Invitation to the Story

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Beginnings are delicate things. First line, first paragraph, first chapter all require meticulous attention on the writer’s part. They serve as layers of an invitation to the reader to join the writer on a journey, and if the invitation fails to ignite the reader’s passion, they will get up and walk away, leaving the writer behind. No matter how amazing that journey may be, if an author can’t draw a reader in, they’re gone. So where middles and even endings can survive the sin of losing their bearings now and then, beginnings must be perfect.

I am about to slash my first chapter to shreds. I generally don’t go back and read something from earlier in a book while I’m in the process of writing or editing—I am, by nature, a linear writer—but in this case I took a look at chapters 1 and 2 last night because I’ve sent those chapters to a friend. I finished up chapter 1 with “meh” and “it’s too long,” while chapter 2 garnered my thumbs up. Why? Well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

I didn’t want to dwell too heavily on it, not while I’m neck deep in a complicated rewrite of changing both the point of view (from limited 3rd to 1st) and the verb tense (from past to present). (I wrote about this a few weeks ago.) I am immersed in this and pushing to get it done, so I didn’t want to get myself hung up in perfecting chapter 1, not now, not while I’m making good progress.

But I couldn’t help it. I went to bed, sat on the mattress edge and thought about it. It was then it occurred to me. I may (or may not—the jury’s out) safely eliminate reference to a particular entity throughout that first chapter and give it its due in chapter 2. Will I be able to make it work? I don’t know. And I won’t know until I return to chapter 1 on my next rewrite. I’ve placed a large Post-it® on the cover page with some brief notes of what I want to do, and that’s going to have to be it before I get back to it.

Sometimes we have to kill our children. It’s a writer’s adage. Editing sucks, and what sucks more than anything is when amazing phrases or metaphors must be sacrificed for the sake of better storytelling and better prose. But we do it. And I’ll do it when the time comes to rip that chapter apart, throw away chunks, saving them for use in chapter 2 but knowing I’ll likely use very few of them, if any at all.

Why do we put ourselves through this torture? It ain’t the money, that’s for sure.

Celebrate the Women Part 2

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A silly start to world building

The members of my writing group are all confused. They keep expecting Lisen’s Garla, but we’re not in Garla anymore. Last week I wrote about the process of creating Garla, of what it took to make the absence of sexism, the elevation of women to absolute equality, work. This week, I’ll tell you about the creation, in the wake of that revolutionary society, of a world that isn’t a cookie-cutter imitation of Garla, a world that can stand on its own without leaving me yearning to return to that world where I spent so many years rather than staying with my new world in progress. A world called Azzur.

The story of Mari Spencer, the protagonist of my current project, begins on earth, just as Lisen’s did, but where Lisen had a destiny and her life had not begun here on earth, Mari is all human with no prophecies to bind her. I started with a magical forest. In order to move from one world to another, there must be a portal, and the forsaken forest is that portal for Mari. She also has a guide, a woman named Tula who lives within that forest. Now all of that was easy, but where could I go from there? Where was the fantasy world I wanted Mari to discover?

City of Afra with pencil notations

The world Mari ends up in is Azzur. Actually, that’s the name of a city state with Afra as its capital. I wanted something not entirely typical of fantasy settings, nothing medieval, thank you, so I settled on the fertile crescent, the cradle of civilization—Mesopotamia—as my jump-off point. That was the easy part. Plop a river down, place cities on its banks and move on from there. The physicalities were not at issue.

What was at issue was how men and women related to each other in this world. In my research, I was pleased to discover that during King Hammurabi’s time, his code may have restricted married women from participating in commercial pursuits, but many women engaged in business anyway. Property was left to them by their husbands, and they then left that property to their children. Now this may seem like a given these days, but back then, it was a very big deal.

So how was I to make this world palatable to my feminist sensibilities without simply duplicating Garla? It took a while, as it always does, but here’s what I came to. I began with Azzur having a ruler whose eldest child inherits regardless of gender. Men and women are equal in their spiritual life with the priesthood in the Temple open to both. In addition, the higher the social class, the more equal women are. But why? Why the upper classes but not the working masses?

Eventually I discovered—because world building is a process of discovery—that the existence of only female serpents (read, dragons), which are bonded to the royal family, triggered this effect. When I decided these female serpents would be parthenogenic—able to reproduce without the aid of a male—I realized this had motivated the royals into a belief that the bodies of females of any species knew somewhere deep within how to reproduce without the assistance of their corresponding males.

With their survival at risk, the male royals took their cue from the female serpents and started treating their own female counterparts as equals. The closest upper classes, including the priests in the temple, followed suit. On the other hand, the further down the social ladder a person lands, the more likely they are to think of the serpents as only a myth and—if they’re even aware of the serpents’ unique method of reproduction—parthenogenesis as part of that myth. Therefore, this equality of the sexes only goes so far, but in the upper stratosphere of Azurian hierarchy, it is a given.

If this sounds a bit contrived, it is. At this point. Book 1 of this series is in the midst of rewrite, and more will likely be revealed as I reach completion of this first story. World building is a process, with each step dependent on the last, and all steps open to reconfiguration, if necessary, until they’ve been permanently enshrined in print. We’ll see how things change by the time I publish this book.

Celebrate the Women

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The final volume of Lisen of Solsta

Okay, so since it’s Women’s History Month. And since I’m a card-carrying feminist—okay, I used to have a card, but I lost it. And since I write YA fantasy with female heroes, I got some explaining to do. How did I build the world in my Lisen of Solsta series? A world that my women’s-rights soul can tolerate? Well, let me tell you.

I began with a promise to myself. I decided to create a world where men and women were absolutely equal. Where labor wasn’t divided up based on gender-specific roles. Some might see this as easy. Just make the women tough and badass.

Uh, no. That wasn’t going to work for me. You can’t simply morph women into men with breasts. Because generally that turns into a situation where these kick-butt women wear skimpy outfits with lots of cleavage. Believe me, I’ve checked these books out. This is what proponents of patriarchy do. They have female heroes trussed up in outfits that inspire a hard-on. And that, my friends, is the easy and misogynistic way out. Let’s try again.

Garla, where Lisen of Solsta unfolds, had to represent my vision of equality. No stereotypical male or female tasks. No teenage heroines climbing trees and running down stairs to the shock of their elders. No soft ladies waiting for their gentle men to save them. But in order to make this world exist in any believable manner, I had to figure out why. And how.

I began with the most basic of questions. Has it always been this way? Or did the world evolve into this? My decision was based on a personal theory that when one “-ism” dissolves (in this case, sexism), the rest (e.g., racism) will fall like dominoes in its wake. I don’t believe societies, on earth at least, can find a way to accept all people as equal at one locus of division without coming to realize rather quickly that other divides are abstract constructs that are equally as meaningless. Therefore, no misogyny → no hatred of people of a different color or religion → the next reason to hate. And on and on and on they’d fall. This would make for a relatively perfect world, leaving little room for conflict. And what is a story? A series of conflicts. So, women and men are equal and always have been in Garla, and all other “-isms” persist.

After I made that decision, the questions became more detailed, more complicated. Physically, the women had to be taller and carry more muscle mass with compensatory changes in the men, making them of equal stature and strength. You see, in my opinion, women are at the mercy of men for several reasons, one of them being physical. Evening up the playing field would give women a chance. So I did.

To that I added a more balanced emotional sensitivity between the two sexes. But what would teach men to carry a bit more of the emotional load? (I figured, because I’m a woman, that we female types would have no trouble with barebones logic and reason, but maybe that’s just my misandry showing.)

Anyway…

The answer was simple. The nurturing of children. Put a man in the position of nurturing a child, invite him to the cradle, and he’ll pick up the load. In our world, men now participate in the labor of the mothers of their children, but that’s a social thing that’s evolving into the norm. How was I to make it something that simply happened in this world from the “beginning of time”? How could I give my male characters the natural-born instincts of a mom?

In early times here on earth, men were the hunters. They focused their skills on two goals—seek out, find and kill food for dinner and stand between the group and predators. Women, on the other hand, gathered berries and nuts, cooked the meals, sewed hides together for clothes, all while balancing a baby on a hip and keeping a toddler out of trouble. They did the nurturing. They had to be soft.

So how would I translate that to Garla?

Teach men nurturing from the womb. And there I had it. In quick order I reconfigured the method of procreation in this world, gave men and women pouches like marsupials have on earth and allowed men to be the bearers of children before birth. It sounds odd if you haven’t read the books, but it’s a beautiful process, with sometimes the mother pouching the child as it emerges from the womb, and other times, the father.

All of this figuring out took years, each solution engendering yet another question along the way. I’ve only included the most basic back story here because it would take a book I don’t want to write to explain it all.

So happy Women’s History Month, both female and male friends! Let’s continue to fight to make all persons equal. And while we’re waiting for that, ___check out Lisen’s world here.

Coming next week: My current dilemma of creating a world that’s not free of sexism the way Garla was without losing my lunch. And the week after that, I am pleased to present an interview with the inimitable Wendy Steele, author of the Lizzie Martin witch lit series.

That Timey-Wimey Thing

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That’s my mess

With first draft done on my WIP, I have begun rewrite. I totally pantsed this one. Lots of notes in a notebook with a ton of Post-Its used to tag the stuff I’ll need eventually, but no outline, no 4 x 6 cards. I love that notebook, messy as it is. It’s a window into the process and a reminder of how far I have yet to go. (And yes, that’s a Wikipedia article on Komodo dragons slipped between the pages. Let that whet your appetite.)

But pantsing presents its own perils, one of which is the fact that one often can’t paint oneself out of a corner until she’s actually painted herself into it first. Well into it. Into it to the point where there are three coats of paint waiting to dry and there’s no getting out until the true color of the paint reveals itself and allows the painter to walk out without marring the finish.

In my case, the corner was a time thing. Or, rather, two time things.

Let me state right off that my current WIP is not a time-travel story. It is a story of a young woman who travels back and forth between earth and another world via a magic gateway (of sorts). But as I wrote, time became an issue. Or issues.

First, I needed time to pass normally wherever my hero (and sole POV character) happened to be at the moment, but no time could pass where she wasn’t until she was there again. This was easy. I gave her companion—a woman who appears to have traveled through the gateway many times before the story begins—a single line which will likely show up at the beginning of the second book. “It’s as though time holds our place and brings us back to precisely when we were last.” One problem solved.

Then there was the other thing. My hero must age from fifteen to eighteen from the beginning of the series to the end, but I don’t want to write a dozen books to get there. I’ve had certain “adventures” set out for her for a while now, and I hoped I wouldn’t have to expand on them. And yet, how do I get her from fifteen to eighteen without filling her days both on earth and in the alternate world with adventure?

I was stuck. I had story enough for four books, maybe five, but needed more to fill the holes created by the extended time required to let her mature. I knew how to get her from book 1 to book 2 with a five-month gap between stories, but I couldn’t use an angry separation between my hero and another main character every time. I’m a writer. I tell stories. I have to be original.

I looked to C.S. Lewis and his Chronicles of Narnia. He succeeded in bridging time by aging the children out and using a different method of accessing Narnia in each book. I had one hero whom I planned on aging out but not until I resolved her story and could end the series. I also had one means of transporting her back and forth which I rather liked and didn’t want to change. Especially since it includes another character I want to keep.

The “gateway” perhaps?

Turning to Lewis did prove helpful, however. I allowed the gateway to become an impulsive entity, sometimes receptive, sometimes not—and, hence, unavailable until it was ready—forcing my hero to repeatedly request access over time unsuccessfully until the gateway relented. And that eliminated the second problem.

I love the muse, don’t you?

Fantasy Memoir?

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Lisen of Solsta

Like most writers, I find my characters within my soul, and I distribute my personal attributes and flaws freely but not fairly to characters far and wide. Molding the magic that makes for an intriguing character can be a complicated process, but once I know them, they become companions in the greater quest of creating and telling a story.

Lisen, my first protagonist, made her debut in the process by introducing herself to me as “Ann.” “It’s the shortened version of my full name, Ariannas.” “Okay,” I replied and proceeded to produce a story and define a character around that declaration.

The problem was Ann was boring. She’d been raised in a co-ed monastery where the hermits taught her to be obedient and passive. But after many years of working the story, I finally discovered her name was Lisen, not Ann, and she’d spent time on earth before ending up in Garla. She was 17 years old and sassy. And I realized I hadn’t liked her much before, but I really liked her now.

Writing from the point of view of a 17-year-old was relatively safe. Seventeen-year-olds sometimes think like adults, and they can certainly talk like adults. They may make unreasonable demands, but you can, at the least, talk to them. And despite what some people think, not all main characters represent the author. In Lisen’s case, she was the woman I’d always wished to be.

I finished Lisen’s story about a year ago and found myself faced with a dilemma. What next? As I cleaned up the text and formatted the final book for publication, I pondered the possibilities and made notes. I’d always hoped to write a memoir. But I’m a very linear thinker, and memoir generally requires a willingness to write on topics as they occur to you and worry about the organization later. So, how about a fictional memoir? A YA fantasy fictional memoir? What could possibly go wrong?

Well, not much has actually gone wrong. I’m approaching the end of book 1, and Mari, my protagonist, is a 15-year-old me. Of course, the fantasy situations confronting her are not what I went through at that age, but her home life, her mother and the way she relates to others is ALL me. That’s scary. But equally as scary was her age.

Hart at 15

You may not realize this, but 15-year-olds live in a whole different world. Everything is more important than everything else, and they can be a little narcissistic without it being an actual psychological diagnosis other than “she’s 15 years old—come on.” On top of that, unlike in the Lisen of Solsta series where I switched POVs between nine or ten characters with every scene, the entire book is told through her eyes.

So, I have chosen to plunge myself into mid adolescence. Again. It was hard enough the first time. But a truth burns within me that must be told, and if I can’t do it as a memoir, I will, by god, reveal it in fiction. I’ve promised Mari I’ll make it work.

The Shadows That Guide Me

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hoia-baciu-haunted-forest-romania

I am a seat-of-the-pants kind of author. I used to outline, then put all my scenes on individual cards, and only after that would I allow myself to start putting words to paper. It worked fine. It also stole a great deal of time from actually writing. To be fair, it did speed up the process of getting the words down, but there were always those scenes that ended up being something completely different from the original plan, necessitating changes in the subsequent outline/cards.

With my most recent book, Protector of Thristas, however, I had a few pages of notes and a minimal amount of 4×6″ cards when I began writing, and as I wrote, the notes grew and the cards stacked up until the entire story had unfolded on the page. I found this highly stimulating intellectually and creatively and decided that with the next book—my current work in progress—I would simply start writing, filling in the cards and the notes as the story evolved in my mind.

My muse has encouraged this behavior. She manipulates the characters and story like puppet shadows, allowing them to become real as they and their plot lines take full form on the page. These shadows swim around and through me while the story gains momentum, and I follow them, picking up their bits of ghostly threads to weave into the tale. The only downside to this method is that I spend half the story asking “How the heck does it end?” (Endings, after all, require setting up, and how can one set up what one doesn’t know yet?)

But here’s one thing I have learned about myself after writing four books—I always figure it out. Whatever “it” may be, the answer comes when it’s meant to come. And if the answer I get doesn’t fit the previously completed narrative, then I have to regroup, rewrite and run a little faster to catch up with the shadows who have moved on without me.

I love those shadow creatures, and I love hosting them as I tell the story as they’ve told it to me. Now, I’m not advising every writer to use this method. It’s chaotic as a box filled with kittens and twice as bloody if you let down your guard. But if you, like me, revel in the magic of that chaos, then you’ll understand how the shadows guide me.