Fire, wisdom and Bechdel

I confess that this entry was a hard one. It has been quite a while since I wrote anything at all, so it was always going to be odd coming back to it. Nevertheless, I return to my prehistoric story and find that I am writing something that I never planned. I wanted to write about music in the mountains and communities of itinerant men on journeys sharing skills and ideas but, instead, I found myself writing about tribes and women in nests.

Before anyone gets going, it's not about women being home-makers. At least, I hope not. It is centred on a meal though, because in my experience anything worth anything is centred on food. If I write about anything without food then that is when I am at my least realistic. It was partly inspired by reading some posts and blogs about women in history and how they tend to get ignored. How our perceptions of the modern era seem to inform what we consider to be realistic and authentic in SF and Fantasy novels.

I was also struck by Bechdel and that thing about women who talk together and don't talk about men. I have failed in that regard because the child of the piece makes reference to the male of the story in her petulance. This vaguely upsets me. However, I have, apparently, found a way around the female nomenclature - we have Falcon and Leaf on the Breeze as names. I dunno, they kinda work but I'm still not completely satisfied, they don't break the mould as much as I would like given my Moon Dancer and Shadow of the Stag names that came out of nowhere and instantly seemed to fit.

So, to the analysis provided by 750words.com as usual:


Rating: PG (violence[?])

Feeling mostlyself-expressive, and concerned mostly about food and drink - figures, given the setting

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

34 minutes at 43 words per minute

So NSFW it's untrue

I recommend that you don't read this at all if you are in a place that would track your internet usage. I haven't written for a while, work stuff, and I wanted to get back into the swing of things. I also wanted to get back to St Avril and, obviously, that didn't happen. Since when do I write what I actually set out to write? Instead I ended up thinking of the Prehistoric setting and trying again to get into the head of my female protagonist. I think I have Moon Dancer now and I think I know how he works and what I would like to do with his part of the story, at least insofar as I understand what the story is.

No, with the females I am less convinced. So... I wrote my very first sex scene. Well, no, not quite. I wrote one at the age of 16, when on exchange in Germany, and as angsty teen it was was unrealistic and ended in a murder. The woman kills the man, just because. I never did work out why, it was brutal and angsty and... well, I was a teen. Anyway, it turns out to be really difficult to write feelings in sex in actual words. I did my best.

Rating: R (sexual content, violence[?] and swearing[?]) The first I get, the rest I don't.

Feeling mostly upset(?) in a dead heat with happy, and concerned mostly about religion

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch; Us and Them: Them

37 minutes at 44 words per minute

Group Dynamic

Well, despite having some big discussions with some friends in real life concerning the non-existence of left and right in aboriginal tribes; the harmonics of circular breathing when playing the saxophone and Turkish having two past tenses for events seen by oneself and events that were not, I ended up writing the next section of St Avril.

In my original story there was a single protagonist. However, one of the main issues that story always had was the boredom in the beginning despite the threat. For reasons that will become patently obvious, the threat could never be too close, and so a sense of urgency was lost. The mystery was not enough to carry the early scenes on its own either. Also, I once ran the story as a form of role playing game with some friends, who theoretically gave me more characters to play with. In the spirit of using my writing time to play with things a little more I decided to expand the character list for this piece and came up with this. It follows on from this post.

I have no idea if I have managed to maintain that post's strength of voice.

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com.

Rating: PG (sexual content) - well, probably yes.

Feeling mostly upset and concerned mostly about success - interesting.

Mindset: Extrovert - Negative - Uncertain - Thinking (but only just in each case, apart from thinking)

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Touch (no option for smell then); Us and Them: Them

41 minutes (39 actually typing) at 39 words per minute

First Draft: An Attack

I was feeling a bit dry tonight for my nightly attempt to write. So, I started up some Shamen and East 17 (yes, so sue me) and tried to write what came to me. The strange wolf-suited people came back and... well, let's just say that this is probably my worst writing yet on this project. I think I have a handle on the relationship between my female protagonist and her companion better now, but trying to avoid cliche and the modern trappings of gender roles was... more difficult than I thought.

Really struggling with names too. I don't want 'feminine' names per se but I also want to stress the differences in roles within the group. We know that my males have a coming of age where they choose a new name, what about females? I suspect that 'first blood' would be the coming of age... I think I need to write one of those and see what happens actually...

It's been relatively easy to write a more sensitive male character - I just go through ideals - but writing female characters that have agency in the midst of an attack is hard without making the female characters fit tropes for male characters. The little I've read of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has warned me off that as a means of writing 'real' females. Equally, in avoiding fighting and showing awe and fear at the command of fire in this scene, it seemed as though I was writing women that needed saving - which was not the point.

Why is this so hard?

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com - who probably deserve a bit of money from me by now...

Rating: PG - violence (check)

Feeling mostly upset, with anxious following, and concerned mostly about relationships

Mindset: Introvert - Negative - Uncertain - Thinking
I think if the last one had been Feeling I would have nailed this

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Hearing; Us and Them: Them

29 minutes at 37 words per minute.

Secrets that men keep

Tonight I fill in a section. I realised today that Moon Dancer doesn't eat or drink on his quest for about four days. Okay, that's fine, I guess, but there's no way he can't drink in that time. He'd be mad with thirst, something I haven't even mentioned. Okay, the lack of hunger is fine, I guess, but the lack of thirst? Unforgivable!

So, tonight I thought to simply edit that section a little and then move onto new stuff. Instead we have an additional discussion in which I learned more about how males operate in this society I am creating. Also, a little about how the sexes are viewed by men, I hope that came out right. Anyway, another conversation that I hope retains enough of the poetry of previous entries to stand with them.

Analysis from 750words.com as always:

Rating: PG (sexual content) - not sure where that is. I guess one of them is naked?

Feeling mostly self expressive and concerned mostly with religion

Mindset: Introvert - Positive - Uncertain - Thinking (very male?)

Time: the Future; Primary Sense: Sight (damn); Us and Them: You

22 minutes at 36 words per minute

Shadow of the Stag

So, apparently I am attacked once again by the Prehistoric thing. And tonight I was shown how a boy becomes a man. I was also shown a little bit of the nomenclature that I had been so missing. Up until tonight I had no concept of the naming of people. I now have some knowledge of naming and how it is going to go, some idea of how the society works and, apparently, two ways in which the males of this setting can be aligned. It follows on from this post.

There is a poetry in this section, I hope, certainly I felt it as I wrote. I was writing mainly to the tune of Victoria Lucas by Moby, and that may show through too. For at work today I had a moment alone with no one else around and I danced in a way that I haven't for a good few years. It felt good to dance. It felt good and probably looked terrible. But it felt good. That may have influenced what I wrote tonight.

Analysis, as ever, from 750words.com who are brilliant. If sometimes a little strange in their analysis.

Rating: PG-13 for swearing, sexual content and violence (I'm going to go ahead and say here that I see none of that in what I wrote).

Feeling mostly self expressive (with upset as a side-order) and concerned mostly with religion (with leisure as a side order)

Mindset: Extrovert - Positive - Certain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Hearing; Us and Them: You (with a side order of them)

36 minutes at 43 words per minute.

St Avril: A Sci Fi interlude?

Well, for one reason or another, the Prehistoric stuff isn't flowing and, instead, I was set upon by a rewriting of an introduction to a sci-fi story I once wrote. Back in 2001 I had a very vivid dream about a psychic who wakes up without knowledge of what is going on. Of course, I wrote it down and reworked it over the next six years into a finished novella-style piece about 45k words in length. And there it has lain ever since.

Tonight, the opening attacked me in first person. So I wrote it.

Analysis courtesy of 750words.com, please support what they do, because it is awesome.

Rating: PG-13 for sexual content (bu-wha?) and violence (again, bu-wha?)

Feeling mostly upset (apparently) and concerned mostly with money (huh?) or eating and drinking(?)

Mindset: Introvert - Positive - Certain - Thinking

Time: The Past; Primary Sense: Hearing (hmm); Us and Them: Them (surprising, it's in first person)

27 minutes at 54 words per minute