Monday, July 31, 2017

Current Project: Idelle's Book of Fairtytales

I'm actually working on about three different projects at once (because I have problems), but I'm going to only talk about one.

To start off with, many years ago when I was experimenting with different ideas and genres of novel writing, I began to ask myself the question; Are there enough male characters in my novel?

This of course does not apply to my m/m novels, but those only make up of about half the things I write.

The other half are books driven by female characters with female friends (or female lovers). This is just an automatic habit that I have (most likely stemming from the fact that I am a female).I am not saying that I had critics/friends tell me 'you need more male characters in your novels' it was just something I thought I should have. So I began to put in extra effort into adding male characters. Maybe the main protagonist had a brother? Maybe the best friend was male? Sometimes I grew to love these characters, sometimes they just sort of became a token reason for me to use male pronouns once in awhile.

It was all honestly a silly exercise. Why should I force in male characters if I don't want them? How many novels have I read that features an all female cast with little to no important male roles? Why can't I write that myself? I appreciate balance, and the representation of all genders, but sometimes I just want to write what I want to read.

When I began writing LGBT romance, this sort of question became even sillier. I am already writing in a niche genre with a limited audience. Why try to play to the general masses when I could just write what I want? Honestly, this was the reason I joined the genre anyway. So I create my ideas with characters that make sense to me. Sometimes it means m/m or f/f or f/f/f or a mixture of it all.

Back to my current project. It is, in essence a f/f fairytale adventure. Two women, falling in love while meeting other women who also fall in love. None of the women are heterosexual, not all of the woman are even cisgendered. I decided that I wanted to write that. I decided that I wanted to explore the differences between being lesbian, bisexual, polyamorous, pansexual, and asexual. I wanted them to go on some crazy queer adventure that has a lot of romance but also a lot of fighting dragons, storming castles, and magic.

For a moment, I just had to take a step back and see that I'm planning a novel with 8 female leads and remember a time when I thought having two female leads was unbalanced.