February 5, 2010
My dear friend and RNA member, Rosy Thornton (and when she bought me that latte yesterday she didn’t tell me this was coming!) has written a very thought-provoking post for Strictly Writing today
Rosy writes romantically themed novels – and if you write romance you should take a look at her post.
I’ve quoted a bit of here that’s relevant to romance but please read the whole post – I don’t want to take this out of context.
Even though much of my work is romantically themed, I would never write a story in which a female character relied for her self-worth, her entire happiness, her ‘redemption’, upon finding a man. I would not write a moody ‘alpha’ hero who is mean and even cruel but whose meanness is portrayed in a sexy light – even though there are whole swathes of genre fiction pedalled to young women which are based on precisely this scenario. I would only ever write female characters who are strong and independent and follow their own ends, and are in control of their sexuality.
Posted by Phillipa in Uncategorized @ 5:51 am
Nell Dixon Says:
Interesting post, but people in real life as well as in fiction aren’t cartoon characters. They aren’t wholly black or white. I see my responsibility as being to write characters which are true to my fictional world but recognisable and understandable to readers in the real world.