Tagged: character

Rune Skelley’s Women in STEM

r-avatarThe future well-being of humanity depends heavily — maybe entirely — on our net proficiency in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Viewed in that light, the under-representation of women in those fields isn’t just unfortunate, it’s disastrous. Half of our potential for advancement is stymied, when the species needs all the help it can get.

Here in the writing cave we try not to be too soapboxy about stuff. Rune Skelley writes about what fascinates Kent and Jen. We don’t make those choices based on any agenda beyond “make it awesome, and then add a bunch of amazing up in there.”

With all that being said, we looked back over our projects and discovered that Rune Skelley has a damn good track record of strong female characters who rock the STEM. These ladies include an electrical engineer, a computer programmer, a geneticist, and a pair of medical researchers. It wouldn’t count for much if these were just labels we stuck on them, just part of their backstory or shorthand for “she’s a nerdy chick.” These are not walk-on roles, either. We’re talking about protagonists and major supporting characters. And in each case, if not for their expertise, depicted on the page, the plot could not move forward.

Other female characters in our novels have brainy jobs outside of STEM: an author and an investigative journalist, for example. (And a couple of them are murderers with special powers. They make a formidable group!)

The guys in our books represent too, of course. But we’re not here to talk about them today.

Our team being gender-balanced, and biased toward the geeky end of the scale, probably goes a long way to account for all this. It’s just art imitating life: Jen has a BS, whereas Kent limps by on his measly BA.

To learn more about women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, you can start here.

Substance Over Style

r-avatarOur current round of brainstorming is pointing out yet again why having a coauthor is such a marvelous thing. We’ve been kickin’ it old school, writing out notes longhand in a steno pad. It’s a great way to wake up different parts of the brain, but it’s also a great way to get a hand cramp. On those days when your fingers need a break, your collaborator can pry the quill from your gnarled fist and take over the scrivening duties. As long as you both have moderately legible handwriting, you’re saved!

A good writing partner has many uses besides that overly literal interpretation of the term. We know in broad strokes how the plot of our new novel will go, so right now we’re concentrating on fleshing out the major characters, filling in their backstories. Most of what we’ve been talking about won’t appear on the page, but it will inform the characters’ actions. We need to know who these people are and how they got that way. It’s the only way to make them feel real and fully formed. Details from their pasts often prompt plot points when we get to the outline stage.

So we’ve been flitting from character to character, having a grand old time gossiping about their secrets and what-have-you, until last night. That’s when we realized we’d been avoiding talking about the villain. He’s not a total stranger, mind you. We know several very important things about him, like his name, and what he’ll be doing in the novel. We know that he’s a very bad person, we just didn’t know how he got that way.

After chatting and throwing out wild ideas we whittled our list down to two possibilities. Option 1 has a really striking visual, and can probably be made to play nicely with the facts we already “know” about this guy and his MO. Option 2 is a bit more mundane, but opens up some really nice avenues for a character arc and some theme elements.

Obviously we chose Option 2, but the striking visual of Option 1 was very enticing. It’s over the top and gross and operatic. It represents a chance to really show off. It’s got style. Repulsive, dangerous style. Jen was having a hard time letting go, but luckily she has a writing partner. Kent was able to stuff his fingers in his ears and ignore the siren song. He argued for Option 2, for boring old plot momentum and character cohesion. And he’s right. The story overall will be much better if we opt for substance over style.

Never fear, Option 2 isn’t actually boring. It’s plenty disturbing and violent and sick. It’s just tame in comparison to the much bloodier Option 1. And we’ve filed Option 1 away for future use.

So maybe fear a little bit.

Worth A Thousand Words

At this point in our process we have most of the preliminary work done, and are simply filling in details as we get ramped up for the actual Writing of the First Draft (cue fanfare of harps). We have our cast of characters, all of whom have fantastic names, and we just need to agree about their physical descriptions so we can both write effectively.

We could just say “Mary has blue eyes and brown hair. She’s tall.” But that leaves too much room for interpretation. We could say, “Mary is pretty,” but, again, that’s too open ended. Both Cate Blanchett and Reese Witherspoon are pretty and blonde, but they don’t look much alike.

Google image search to the rescue! We like to scour the internet to find pictures of people who resemble our characters. It’s not procrastination, honest! Sometimes there’s one person who is a good match, and sometimes we have to make our own Franken-celebrity, combining body parts from several different people to make the perfect inspiration. It’s not as creepy as it sounds.

Once we have some example photos, we are able to envision the character the same way, and describe them consistently. And of course we don’t just say, “Mary looked like Scarlett Johansson,” because that would be cheating.

About 4 Elements Prompts

Before we entered into our passionate love affair with stichomancy prompts, the 4 Elements prompt was our go-to. The idea is simple, but the initial set-up takes a good bit of time.

The four elements concept turns up in many disciplines. For our purposes, the ones we are concerned with are:

  1. Character
  2. Setting
  3. Object
  4. Situation

Character is pretty obvious. You could go with “James Bond,” or “an angry child” or “the inventor of Altoids.” Challenge yourself.

Setting is where your prompted story will take place. Be as vague or specific as you like. Will it be “Canada” or will it be “the 3rd stall from the left in the women’s bathroom on the second mezzanine at Radio City Music Hall”? That’s up to you.

Object is simply an item that will appear in the scene. It doesn’t need to play a vital role, but it can. Will it be a guitar? A pair of slippers? A donut? That’s up to you, and fate.

Situation is a little more complicated. It can be the impetus of the entire plot, or it can simply be something that’s weighing on your character’s mind. “power outage” “servicing the addiction” “unplanned amputation” “new shoes today”

To prepare, you will need to spend a few hours brainstorming a list for each of these elements. You can write each on an index card or a slip of paper, or you could work with a spreadsheet. We have 4 envelopes, one for each element, each filled with little scraps of paper.

When it’s time to write, blindly choose a single entry from each element and combine all four into a perfect work of microfiction. Simple, right? Again, we tend toward humor, but there’s no rule saying you have to. There’s also no rule saying you have to keep them brief. If you’re truly inspired, you could turn these prompts into short stories or even novels.

In the coming weeks our Monday and Wednesday posts will feature the results of 4 Elements Prompts. Let us know how this method works for you.

handy dandy writing prompt generator