Regarding yesterday’s post

Writing about female characters yesterday, I kept trying to think of whether I could take any of the various discussions I was linking to and use them as a template for better female characters.
Frankly, no. Whatever I (or probably anyone) thinks is wrong with “strong female characters” (or weak female characters or passive female characters), I don’t think it’s something that can be turned into a checklist (Has own goals, check. Sex positive, check. Intelligent, check. Quiet inner strength, check) and then used to manufacture characters.
I do think it can be used to edit them though.
Character creation (IMHO) needs to be organic. That doesn’t mean the story has to be centered on characters, or that the characters have to be complex or conflicted or that the story springs from the characters (plenty of times I’ve created characters the story needs). Just that the character has to come out of you by whatever process you create them—and I don’t think creating from a checklist is a very good process (but if it works for you, of course, don’t listen to me).
But once the character is up and running (or the story), it’s worth thinking about whether the characters are stereotypical, cliched and how to improve them.
I think Dani in Brain From Outer Space is a strong character, but a draft or two back, I realized she was still almost entirely focused on Steve. That didn’t bother me at first, as she was a supporting character (Steve’s female partner Gwen played a bigger role and did have her own goals) but after giving her her own story in the Applied Science series, I realized that just didn’t work. She starts out strong and determined and that shouldn’t change. Which has made replotting that much more complicated, but hopefully it’ll all work out in the end.
The same applies to another story from some years back that I’ve been revising: Looking at it now, I realize that despite having multiple races, they’re all lily white. So that’s going to change too.
Minor changes, but for the better, I think.