I am working on a short piece of writing for Shadowrun in which I am speaking from the voice of a specific character giving a report. This is the style I am most comfortable and familiar with in this type of Shadowrun writing. What I have noticed is that when I write these things the characters traditionally default to female. I still wonder why that is. It could be because I was in a graduate writing program that was mostly female and the authors I read were mostly female and the students around me believed that I could and should not write a female narrative.
Challenge accepted.
As regular readers know, my life is built on a series of challenges which will eventually end in Houdinian fashion with me attempting to beat death like some spiritual escapologist and… well, I don’t want to give away the ending. I do want to be more mindful of why I do things though. I thought about why I was making the character female and challenged myself to make the character male. It threw me for a loop. Turns out my male characters are quite stereotypical. So, here is the new challenge. Make this one different.
Some Thoughts:
- It is really important that I move this 10 minute rule back towards where it was born: in the mold of writing about the writing. I used to use the space to work out my thoughts on story as well as life, but I talk story less and less in this forum and I write story less and less. The blog is a canary in the coal mine of my mind.