Fun with Writing Challenges
I now have my latest Odd Prompts writing challenge, and I'm seeing it in terms of the novella I'm working on. And as I'm planning out this segment, I'm seeing one little problem -- how to make it clear that Sierra's parents are dysfunctional, rather than her being rebellious and creating her own problems.
It always seems like it's trickier with young female characters than young male characters. In fact, I think I've read about experiments in which the researchers took a YA story with a male character striking out on his own and rewrote it with a female name and pronouns. Almost all the readers had a less positive view of the female character, especially if there were any sort of confrontation or argument with parents or other adult authority figures that resulted in a breach. Readers were more likely to view a female character as being unsympathetic and having created her own problems, even when every word except name and pronouns was identical.
OTOH, it's also possible that, unlike the short story I'd originally started with, the novella is not Sierra's story, but Roger's. Then all that matters is that Roger see Sierra's parents as being unreasonable by treating her as perpetually nine years old, as though she stopped aging after the accident left her little more than an isolated brain.
However, since I see it more as a spinoff than a segment of Phoenix in Cyberspace, I really feel like it should be Sierra's story. And the fact that it is cyberpunk, where we expect a certain edginess and cynicism about Authority, maybe it won't be a problem that Sierra knows her parents are dysfunctional, refuses to apologize for them, and is determined to claim the rights and privileges that her chronological age should entitle her to.
It always seems like it's trickier with young female characters than young male characters. In fact, I think I've read about experiments in which the researchers took a YA story with a male character striking out on his own and rewrote it with a female name and pronouns. Almost all the readers had a less positive view of the female character, especially if there were any sort of confrontation or argument with parents or other adult authority figures that resulted in a breach. Readers were more likely to view a female character as being unsympathetic and having created her own problems, even when every word except name and pronouns was identical.
OTOH, it's also possible that, unlike the short story I'd originally started with, the novella is not Sierra's story, but Roger's. Then all that matters is that Roger see Sierra's parents as being unreasonable by treating her as perpetually nine years old, as though she stopped aging after the accident left her little more than an isolated brain.
However, since I see it more as a spinoff than a segment of Phoenix in Cyberspace, I really feel like it should be Sierra's story. And the fact that it is cyberpunk, where we expect a certain edginess and cynicism about Authority, maybe it won't be a problem that Sierra knows her parents are dysfunctional, refuses to apologize for them, and is determined to claim the rights and privileges that her chronological age should entitle her to.