OW: Failing the Bechdel Test

I’m thinking that as I go through this process of writing with intent I’ll stop every once in a while at write about writing.  For one thing, I like writing about writing as much as, if not more than, I like writing itself.  For another, it seems like a good way of keeping myself accountable.  Or creating excuses not to do the real work.  Either way.

So, tonight I’ll start with a bit that I just wrote.  It’s a writing exercise that won’t actually make it in to the final book, so I feel completely comfortable posting the entire thing right here on the blog.  I also feel completely comfortable making it the inagural post in a series I'm ever-so-cleverly calling "On Writing."

I learned a long time ago that it’s good to write character sketches.  I have a book right now that’s partially written because I kept seeing scenes in my head and seeing the characters moving through them but didn’t yet have the sense of what passed between the scenes.  Over the course of working through that I radically changed the way I was writing the book.  Which brought up a whole host of other problems and explains why I haven’t gotten anywhere close to finishing that book.  Well, that and the fact that I’m a lazy, lazy bum…

In that other book there was originally a female character named Ellie who served a central but peripheral role.  The main character was Jack.  Ellie appeared in Jack’s life and Jack reacted to her.

Over the course of setting up my random collection of character sketches I wrote a pair of opening chapters in which I told Jack’s story and Ellie’s story using the exact same structure.  I loved it.  Until I realized that if I wanted to write the book that came from those two chapters I would have to write the entire narrative in parallel.  I believe that as the writer I have to choose a narrative voice.  For the story I was working on the narrator had to be limited, aware of only slightly more than the perspective character.  If I wanted that Ellie chapter at the start of the book she would have to become a perspective character.  So I nearly scrapped the idea.  It seemed hard.  More importantly, I hadn’t conceived of an Ellie who existed outside of Jack’s perception of her.

When I hit that realization I felt incredibly foolish.

All else aside, the re-write of Second Chances will not be nearly so audacious as that.  I already know the basic narrative flow of Second Chances and I have no urge to mess with it.  Still, I have realized that puts a different level of pressure on me.  I, as the writer, still need to know where the other characters are even if my perspective character and, therefore, the narrator does not.

It also seems to me that after being gone so long it would be a good idea to re-introduce myself to the characters.  So, without further ado, I present the first character sketch.

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    “I don’t understand why you’re in such a hurry to get rid of this place.”
    “Other than the fact that it’s sitting here, empty?”
    “So?” Emma shrugged.  “Look around.  It matches everything else.”
    “And has it occurred to you that this might be a reason why I’d like to get rid of the place?”  Ruth turned from the old house to face her niece.  As she did she put her left hand on her hip.  It was her, “this conversation is over,” stance.  “Who’s going to buy a house out in the middle of nowhere?”
    “I…”  Emma looked at the ground and kicked a rock.  “I don’t know.”
    “Look,” Ruth dropped her hand to her side, “I know this is tough for you.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Don’t try that crap on me, honey.  You’re the one with the fancy degree in psychology.”
    Emma raised an eyebrow.  “What does that have to do with anything?”
    “Nothing.  Other than the fact that it means you think you’re a lot smarter than your old aunt.”
    “No I don’t.”
    “Honey, I’m the closest thing to a mother you’ve got.  So if you think you’re gonna get away with lying to me right to my face then you’ve got another thing coming.”
    “Honestly, there’s nothing going on.”
    “Bullshit.”
    Emma took a half step back.  Her aunt used profanity so infrequently that the words themselves tended to hit with an almost physical force.  “Well what do you want me to say?” she asked after a moment.  “You want me to tell you that, no, I don’t want to see the house I grew up in plowed under so some farmer can plant another couple bushels of wheat?  Fine.  I don’t want to see that.”
    “You never come out here,” Ruth replied.  “It’s not like you ever see the house you grew up in.  And I have to do all the upkeep on the place myself.”
    “Fine.  I’ll come out here and help more.”
    “No,” Ruth shook her head, “You won’t.”
    “What makes you say that?”
    “The fact that we have this conversation every three months or so and you still never come out here to help.”
    “I’m here now, aren’t I?”
    “Because I told you I’m going to have the place torn down.  It’s the only thing that’s gotten your attention since…” Ruth trailed off.
    Emma’s bottom lip began to tremble.  She bit down on it, then turned away from her aunt and the old farm house to fix her eyes on a spot just on the other side of the gravel path optimistically named Leonard Road.
    “Look, honey,” Ruth said after a long moment.  “I know it’s tough.”  She sighed.  “I hate to sit here and watch you live like this.”
    “Like what?” Emma asked, voice barely above a whisper.
    “Like a woman consumed by fear.”
    Emma looked back at her aunt.  “Of what?”
    “The world.”
    “Oh.”  The faintest glimmer of a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth.  “That old thing.”
    “I know this used to be the only place you felt safe,” Ruth put her hand on her niece’s shoulder.  “Roy’s been offering to buy the land ever since you and…ever since you moved out.  But I could never do it.”
    “Well since you put it that way, I feel pretty foolish.”
    “Don’t.”
    “Maybe it’s for the best, then.”
    “I’ll call Roy in the morning.”
    “Okay.”
    Ruth wrapped her arms around her niece and pulled her close.  “Then maybe you can finally decide to move on with your life,” she said, her voice so low even she could barely hear.
    Emma didn’t respond.  She gave no indication she’d even heard.

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As I wrote this I realized something.  This is not the Aunt Ruth who appeared in the first version of the book.  That Aunt Ruth was bitter and took it out on Emma.

Of course, in the original version of the book Aunt Ruth was an angry ex-Christian who had lived through a lot of hardship and blamed everything on god.  She was, dare I say, something of a strawman.  So that’s interesting.

I also want to say that this is a different Emma, but I’m not so sure.  It’s certainly a different first view of her than the one offered in the book, but that doesn’t mean this is a different Emma.  Not by a long shot.

So enjoy.  I’m off to re-introduce myself to another character.

Comments

[Personal Failure]

*mind blown*

Two women having a real conversation. Even in books written by women, that's a rarity, and don't get me started on movies/TV shows.

It's really frustrating, and the excuse I see is, "Well, I'm a man, so I don't know what women talk about when men aren't around." Um, we're people, so we talk about stuff people talk about.

In fact, now that I'm all Lyrica friendly, I've had the following conversations with the other women at work:

The nuclear situation in Japan, the weather (a serious topic in northeastern Pennsylvania in early Spring), college basketball, dogs we have known and loved, appliances breaking and why whenever the one woman's daughter has a game scheduled, it always snows. We have no idea, but we all wanted copies of her schedule so we'd know when to break out the snow boots.

Not once did we talk about men, either specific men or men in general.

[Michael Mock]

You know, even if this never makes it into the book, I'm impressed. I think you're better at this than I am.

[Geds]

PF: Yeah. I don't get why it's so hard, either. I mean, even though the original version of this book would have failed the Bechdel Test, it was because the test itself fundamentally doesn't work on every single bit of entertainment. And because I was an impatient writer who didn't bother to figure out out how the peripheral characters should be involved as anything other than cardboard cutouts. Since my main character is a man and my narrator is tied to him, that means there's always a man in the scene. Many of those scenes involve only two people. Ergo...

But they don't talk about relationships much at all. It's primarily this story about two people coming to terms with the fact that the world does not work the way they'd thought.[1] One is running away and the other is hiding and, somehow, in all of that, his headlong flight takes him to her sanctuary.

I find that when introducing a character it's important to ask a series of questions. "Who is this person?" is the first and, "Why is this person the way they are?" is number two. From there the question becomes, "How does this second person perceive the first person and why?" But we cannot answer the third and fourth questions without first answering one and two.

It's important to start with a ruthless application of one of my primary rules of life: "Women are people, too." Since women are people, that must mean women behave in the way that people behave and react to things in the way that people react. Last I checked, people have to pay taxes, buy groceries, and deal with the deaths of loved ones. That means that people talk about paying taxes, buying groceries, and the mourning process. That means that women talk about paying taxes, buying groceries, and how much they miss Grandma Beth. Often times they talk about such things with other women.

The conversations practically write themselves!

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MM: Y'know, when you put it that way, I'm not sure whether to say, "Thank you," or, "I'm sorry."

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[1]Weirdly, the story is pretty standard, gender-role-in-storytelling-wise. Nate is on a pretty standard Hero's Journey. Emma has ended up as an Armless Maiden or Sleeping Beauty variant. Fundamentally, I am okay with that. Nate does what he does because he's Nate, not because he's a man. Emma does what she does because she's Emma, not a woman. And because they are Nate and Emma, they react to their respective situations as Nate and Emma, not as a generic man and a generic woman. I could reverse the roles and write a book that makes just as much sense. But there is an underlying point of social commentary that works from this direction. The interesting thing is that it was there all along.

[Michael Mock]

Eh, don't mind me, I'm feeling a bit mopish - and for no particularly good reason that I can see. In any case, it was a compliment.