KING - Losers Weepers or How To Write Serialised Fiction. (I think).
So, my attempts at World Domination via the method of gender-flip detective noir weeklies* continues!
http://www.badreputation.org.uk/2010/11/12/king-losers-weepers-chapter-four/
Writing fiction like this - is a new venture for me. I'm very used to posting short bits of writing on a regular basis, so the word generation isn't an issue, but writing a coherent (hopefully) and interesting (again, hopefully) storyline that needs to keep the readers attention is quite different from my usual style of writing. I don't produce a lot of fiction, to be honest the most I do is letter writing for my various made-up-characters who I play in LARP.
The piece started of as a bit of an experiment. I have long held the rule of thumb that if you reverse gender roles in a narrative and it looks odd or silly then this is a useful tool for revealing and explaining sexism at work in the text. This is because a lot of the ways we present gender roles can look "normal" - and therefore invisible - to us. For example, the way that female characters are often described in terms of how they look wheras male characters are not. This can often pass under the radar and by switching pronouns the differences become more obvious. In some cases they are very striking. These stereotypes are generally more prevalent in genre specific peices, particularly mainstream detective / sci fi and fantasy novels.
What I wanted to do was to illustrate this thesis through a piece of writing, and also to try my hand at writing fiction over a sustained period. More so than my usual blogging, writing fiction was hard. I generally find it quite easy to churn out a lot of words quite quickly when I'm talking about my favourite subject - me and what I think about stuff - but here I found I needed to be in the right mood, and if I wasn't I just couldn't write anything. I spent a few evenings just staring at a blank screen feeling a little silly.
I'm going to come back to this topic every now and then, but for now I'll leave you with the amazing summary that creative writing can be difficult...
* The cuts mean that there is no longer budget for my volcano lair and sexy cowboy robot minions. I'm still sulking.
http://www.badreputation.org.uk/2010/11/12/king-losers-weepers-chapter-four/
Writing fiction like this - is a new venture for me. I'm very used to posting short bits of writing on a regular basis, so the word generation isn't an issue, but writing a coherent (hopefully) and interesting (again, hopefully) storyline that needs to keep the readers attention is quite different from my usual style of writing. I don't produce a lot of fiction, to be honest the most I do is letter writing for my various made-up-characters who I play in LARP.
The piece started of as a bit of an experiment. I have long held the rule of thumb that if you reverse gender roles in a narrative and it looks odd or silly then this is a useful tool for revealing and explaining sexism at work in the text. This is because a lot of the ways we present gender roles can look "normal" - and therefore invisible - to us. For example, the way that female characters are often described in terms of how they look wheras male characters are not. This can often pass under the radar and by switching pronouns the differences become more obvious. In some cases they are very striking. These stereotypes are generally more prevalent in genre specific peices, particularly mainstream detective / sci fi and fantasy novels.
What I wanted to do was to illustrate this thesis through a piece of writing, and also to try my hand at writing fiction over a sustained period. More so than my usual blogging, writing fiction was hard. I generally find it quite easy to churn out a lot of words quite quickly when I'm talking about my favourite subject - me and what I think about stuff - but here I found I needed to be in the right mood, and if I wasn't I just couldn't write anything. I spent a few evenings just staring at a blank screen feeling a little silly.
I'm going to come back to this topic every now and then, but for now I'll leave you with the amazing summary that creative writing can be difficult...
* The cuts mean that there is no longer budget for my volcano lair and sexy cowboy robot minions. I'm still sulking.