Agency as a Writer's Tool

[SimonDoom]

You’ll have to justify it somehow within the story. That’s what good writing is. It’s not about the premise, or the content, it’s about making it feel like it could happen that way. Verisimilitude, I think the word is.

I'm glad you explained this, since this is, after all, your event. I think this explains it as well as anything can.

 

[Omenainen]

I'm glad you explained this, since this is, after all, your event. I think this explains it as well as anything can.

Ah, but I didn’t say that stories need to be well written for my event, just that the women should make sense. I welcome crappy writing with open arms as long as an honest attempt is made. I’ve also offered my help on the subject in form of beta reading, not because I’m the pinnacle of wisdom, but because my time is all I can volunteer.

This is also something that I salute @Lifestyle66 for: he made an honest attempt to participate last year. I beta read his story and offered my input, and we discussed it, and he took my advice and both of us agreed that the story was better for it. He had a go at discussing the topic of female empowerment on the event thread, and I am all for discussing things openly. This year he decided to sit this one out, and not come poking in the event thread, and again, I think this is a valid decision and a good way to go about things. This is what I wanted when I founded this event, for authors to consider how they portray women, and he has done that.

My advice to anyone concerned about qualifying for my event is (still) to write a lesbian story. If you manage to write a story about all women so that none of them has any agency nor make sense then I salute you.

 

[Lifestyle66]

As to me saying you don’t write as well as you think you do. What I meant, and still stand by, is that as an author you’re supposed to sell ideas to the reader so that they’re somehow plausible. Yes, real people make all kinds of unbelievable decisions and have very unlikely events happen to them, but it’s not good fiction to write about them with the footnote of “this really happened so you have to believe it!” You’ll have to justify it somehow within the story. That’s what good writing is. It’s not about the premise, or the content, it’s about making it feel like it could happen that way. Verisimilitude, I think the word is.

I do listen and grow with my stories.

Within the context of this thread about agency, and after reading the examples, I believe everyone reads a story from their own perspective and their own biases. As you've said of my MFC, Jan, you just don't like her. So, regardless of what I write, you will dig deeper to explain why it's a bad story with bad characterization.

Taking your direction "why would she though", I have written that "Why" for both my main characters in two different stories explaining their pasts and reasoning. Chapters 11 and 13 are all about their "why" or explaining their current philosophies and total about 20K words mostly to get there. So, incorporating those 20K words into every story I write is unreasonable, and I merely incorporate those portions I think are needed for context. But even before those two chapters, I tried explaining "why", as in the strip club story: as an 18-year-old, Jan saw a movie, "Flashdance" and always wondered what it would be like to have what she considered power over men just by getting naked.

Even if you read those two chapters, you'll still hate Jan because she's not like you. You will find Ted as an unbelievable character because he doesn't react in an emotional manner as you believe ALL people DO. But those of us who grew up in emotionally austere families DO NOT react as you think we must! And that will always make mine bad stories to you.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I would agree with the point about freedom, but not necessarily about wisdom.

In horror movies, people make stupid decisions. They have the power of choice, and they choose wrong. They go down the stairs into the dark basement, and everybody in the audience screams, "Don't do that!" and they get skewered by the psycho killer. In horror movies, having the power to choose foolishly is a big part of the appeal.

As well as that, horror movies are very often about people making moral decisions. (Or more often, immoral decisions...)

Sometimes those decisions are part of the premise: the protagonist/s do something selfish and then the rest of the movie is about them paying the price.

Sometimes they're in response to the danger: the protagonist can escape the curse, but only by passing it on to somebody else. What do they do?

Sometimes they're genuine moral dilemmas with no clear right answer: one of your crew poked the alien egg and now he's unconscious with a weird thing stuck to his face, do you leave him to die or bring him inside and try to help him?

 

[Parhelical]

Within the context of this thread about agency, and after reading the examples, I believe everyone reads a story from their own perspective and their own biases. As you've said of my MFC, Jan, you just don't like her. So, regardless of what I write, you will dig deeper to explain why it's a bad story with bad characterization.

I don’t like Daisy in the Great Gatsby and I definitely don’t like Tom; in-fact I don’t think that I like any character in it. It’s about the pursuit of narcissistic self-fulfilment to the subordination of everything else and its cast are cut commensurate to that. It’s also one of the greatest novels ever written.

In terms of the personality type of the characters you’re writing you’re not miles off Fitzgerald. Broken people from broken childhoods navigating a world in which they feel unfulfilled and seek to redress that by pursuing the unattainable. Desire is all; a vainglorious orgasm of excess, the pursuit of an ever-receding horizon of fulfilment.

The difference is that Fitzgerald realises that he’s writing this, you don’t. At the end of the Great Gatsby, Daisy doesn’t face camera and say: “Well there it is folks, I’m a woman in a man’s world and I win, and if you want to win too you better get onboard with me, now I’m going to dance the shimmy you dumb assholes.”

No, Daisy retreats, she vanishes, we’re left to imagine she’s broken. Everyone loses, all positions collapse, Nick has an existential crisis on the edge of America.

The point is that you can either get real with the characters you’ve built, or your writing will remain weak.

"He said he put a five-dollar bill on your naked crotch!"

"Yes. I could have told him to put a twenty there, and he would have done it! Don't be so naïve. And don't fall for other women taking advantage of YOU that way either! ... 'Weaker sex, my ass!' I had that whole room full of guys drooling over me ... to see something a hundred other guys have seen at a nude resort."

This isn’t strength. This is someone having a breakdown. You don’t even have the good sense to have the son react rationally, no, naturally he laughs it off.

Flip the ending. Son refuses to drive home with his parents and calls his mother a whore before storming off back to college. Husband and wife don't talk on the drive back, an uncomfortable silence mounts, the wife begins to cry. Now you've written something authentic.

Otherwise, it’s a silly fantasy in which the author dominates every character to communicate some ham-fisted message. I can see you holding your puppets, your hands make them all look the same, its tired.

Now if you want to write silly fantasies that's perfectly fine, just don't hold them up as somehow 'empowering'. At best it's laughable, at worst it comes off as a sinister attempt to teach women about themselves.

And finally, stop talking about stripping, this is not a story about stripping. Things have plainly spun way beyond that. There are at least a dozen different sex acts performed publicly, was that in the plan? Was that Jan’s fantasy? Why is everyone okay with that?

See what I think is that Jan’s fantasy was lost the moment you, the author, decided it would be arousing if there was a gangbang. And then it's all over, because you’ve lost your characters. You can keep hanging your hat on this ‘people hate stripping’ bullshit, but it’s not a story about stripping, it’s about an ad hoc, protracted, no-holds barred orgy.

 

[Lifestyle66]

...You don’t even have the good sense to have the son react rationally, no, naturally he laughs it off.

Flip the ending. Son refuses to drive home with his parents and calls his mother a whore before storming off back to college. Husband and wife don't talk on the drive back, an uncomfortable silence mounts, the wife begins to cry. Now you've written something authentic.

Otherwise, it’s a silly fantasy in which the author dominates every character to communicate some ham-fisted message. I can see you holding your puppets, your hands make them all look the same, its tired.
...

You come from the "glass half empty" tired view that those who don't think and act as YOU do are failures and deficient.

I read stories here to LEARN how others might act, with the authors vision and characterization leading the way. I'm not gay, not a feminist, not a lesbian, and not a woman. But I read such stories with an open mind to learn more about how such people might think.

When YOU dictate how the son SHOULD have reacted, you approached the story with your biases and judgmental attitude and glass-half-empty. The father pointed out earlier when sending his son off for the private dance "You know how your mother is always saying ..." The son grew up KNOWING how his mother is, and he doesn't turn his back on the mother who raised him. He chastises her, and she responds with her own defense as a parental teaching point to her son. She is not ashamed of who she is! But you would deprive her of the very agency she demonstrates by making her dependent on her son!

I believe you and many others appreciate stories in which you can see your own reflections. Lacking that reflection character, the glass is half empty.

 

[Parhelical]

When YOU dictate how the son SHOULD have reacted, you approached the story with your biases and judgmental attitude and glass-half-empty.

If it's judgmental to think that a mother should probably not have a public orgy involving a friend of her son while her son is present then yes, I'm judgmental. And if it's ridiculous to think that doing that would not have consequences then colour me ridiculous.

The behavior of your characters stretches even the most charitable reader beyond tolerance. You might as well have aliens from the planet Orgilon initiate first contact when Jan leaves the strip club, then they can all fuck her too, why not, we're already gone, who cares anymore.

 

[Lifestyle66]

If it's judgmental to think that a mother should probably not have a public orgy involving a friend of her son while her son is present then yes, I'm judgmental. And if it's ridiculous to think that doing that would not have consequences then colour me ridiculous.

The behavior of your characters stretches even the most charitable reader beyond tolerance. You might as well have aliens from the planet Orgilon initiate first contact when Jan leaves the strip club, then they can all fuck her too, why not, we're already gone, who cares anymore.

Consequences ... for the MFC demonstrating her agency?

Would that be like a Loving Wife tale of a husband expecting his wife to abide by her marriage vows, then "burn-the-bitch" as a consequence for her choice to cheat? Or is that a misogynistic husband denying his wife her agency?

How about a story where a feminist becomes pregnant TWICE ... by the same guy she knows nothing about (ie. he's already married) ... both times from broken condoms? (One of last year's stories.) Does she demonstrate ANY agency in a realistic manner in her goal to NOT become pregnant? Does she make any realistic sexual choice to achieve her goal when she gives up the birth control method to the man?

You really should get out in the world more and meet people outside of your judgmental circle. I personally know one woman who says she DOES enjoy gangbangs (not my wife, BTW), and that woman has a boyfriend and a daughter who is well aware of her mother's fetish!

Not everyone thinks as you do, and many are quite happy in their own dysfunctional worlds! Try meeting some of them. But they won't tell you their fetish as long as they know you are so judgmental!

 

[Parhelical]

Consequences ... for the MFC demonstrating her agency?

I can't imagine any son being fine with his mother doing that when he was present. That reads like the backstory of someone with a freezer full of human heads. At least if the aliens from Orgilon do land we can all breathe easy knowing that the author gets how silly it is. If anything that would help situate readers, we would know we're in a world divergent.

And now we've gone from:

As I said, these were my WIFE's goals and fantasies'

To it transpiring that your wife doesn't 'enjoy gangbangs'. So then it isn't her fantasy is it, you're tacitly admitting you've bled through and hijacked 'Jen's' story. Your characters have fallen, it's all just you. You stole the agency of your character to have a sex scene that you, the author, wanted and then removed the agency of her son to achieve an easy resolution.

 

[IWillEndYou]

Don't turn this into a personal discussion. The mod may not approve.

Don't interfere right when it's getting good. This is exactly why I lurk here

 

[Parhelical]

Don't turn this into a personal discussion. The mod may not approve.

I'm responding to a story he posted in the thread and information he introduced within his posts.

In any case it all relates back to character agency.

 

[Lifestyle66]

I can't imagine any son being fine with his mother doing that when he was present. That reads like the backstory of someone with a freezer full of human heads. At least if the aliens from Orgilon do land we can all breathe easy knowing that the author gets how silly it is. If anything that would help situate readers, we would know we're in a world divergent.

And now we've gone from:



To it transpiring that your wife doesn't 'enjoy gangbangs'. So then it isn't her fantasy is it, you're tacitly admitting you've bled through and hijacked 'Jen's' story. Your characters have fallen, it's all just you. You stole the agency of your character to have a sex scene that you, the author, wanted and then removed the agency of her son to achieve an easy resolution.

You conveniently skip/ignore the example I gave of a WOMAN I KNOW who says she enjoys gangbangs, and her daughter knows it!

My characters are not one-for-one real life people I know. I listen to people and mix and match the traits I need for the stories. My wife is NOT Jan. But my wife has expressed her desire to get on-stage, she DID visit a strip club with our son along (just didn't get onstage or bang anyone there), and she is a controlling bitch! She even proudly and confidently says "But I'm YOUR bitch!"

Future chapters I write will include characters with traits I've heard from the gays, lesbians, and trans PEOPLE I KNOW, but none of my stories will include any specific person I know.

If you read my chapter 11, it describes Jan's mother as being driven crazy by the trauma of her son's death, and that is the reason Jan grew up with the attitude "Get over it!". Her mother devolves to crying whenever she thinks of her son/kids, including her daughter. That particular "crying forever from trauma" comes from my experience dealing with a woman who was assaulted and never got over the nightmares! (I've held an "interestingly" wide variety of jobs in my long life.)

So, get off your soapbox demanding everyone show you perfect reality that only YOU can recognize in your limited experience. This is fiction, based on real life experiences which YOU will never have in your insular world.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think one issue I'm seeing is that some people regard agency as a binary state, characters either have it or they don't and as long as they do everything is golden, whereas others view it as a spectrum. I'm happy my female characters meet a basic sniff test (except maybe in some earlier writing) but feel the concept of agency in fiction is still a bit too slippery to put it to work improving my stories.



To be clear I'm discussing the NonCon example because I believe that to truly understand a concept you have to bend it to breaking point. Can you write an abduction story where the victim finally decides that captivity is what she wants and still get to call that agency. It sounds like bullshit to me, but what if we include 3k words of psychobabble about how unhappy her childhood was?

Not quite the same thing, but as it happens I'm currently re-reading a book (Ruthanna Emrys' "Deep Roots") where one of the characters is a powerful mage who's chosen to live as a disembodied mind in a jar for the last century-plus, losing her magic and everything but the powers of sight, hearing, and speech, because she doesn't like who she is when she's in her body. (The magic comes with a curse of psychopathic madness.)

She's only a minor character, but she's still quite memorable and definitely displays agency, mentoring and persuading others, and taking an interest in the affairs of her extended family.

She's in the jar by choice - if not much of a choice, for somebody who doesn't want to become a monster - and it's not a sexual story, but it does demonstrate that even a character with very limited freedom can still act on drives of their own.

A little, but maybe not much up the spectrum, we had a poster earlier arguing that a submissive story met the criteria because 'she choses to submit'. Well fine I guess, but maybe not for this competition. Does it matter if (in a 10k story) she submits within the first 500 words or do we need 9000 words of indecision first?

Some authors (not me) can fit a great deal into a few words, but I think most would struggle to adequately develop a character's agency in 500 words for that kind of story.

 

[SimonDoom]

Not quite the same thing, but as it happens I'm currently re-reading a book (Ruthanna Emrys' "Deep Roots") where one of the characters is a powerful mage who's chosen to live as a disembodied mind in a jar for the last century-plus, losing her magic and everything but the powers of sight, hearing, and speech, because she doesn't like who she is when she's in her body. (The magic comes with a curse of psychopathic madness.)

Interesting. This reminds me of Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun, an anti-war novel in which an American soldier in WW1 wakes up in a hospital and gradually comes to realize that he has no arms, legs, mouth, eyes, nose, or ears, but his brain works perfectly, so he's trapped in darkness and silence for the rest of his life. The way it's written, I think you'd have to say he has agency, because he has the ability to form his own thoughts about war and its implications. On the novel's terms, he has more agency than someone who goes off to die in war but never thinks about what's happening.

 

[TheRedChamber]

I just want to read more about Emily, her love life, and her experience as a female Robin Hood.

I suspect that through this thread, I may have somehow accidentally committed myself to actually writing this. The idea of a Jane Austin style hero turning highway robber is not my own however - I couldn't find a link to a full episode but this, this, and this was what I was initially thinking off. Though in deference to the seriousness of the competition, my version of the hero probably won't announce himself with a cry of 'Sausage Time', although my heroine probably will still be played by Miranda Richardson.

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

I want a Jane Austin style hero turning highway robber having her victims mansplaining to her the right way to highway rob people as she highway robs them.

"Young lady, you clearly know nothing about highway robbery! I swallowed my rubies so you would never find them. You didn't ask if I hid them up my ass and you didn't even think to check there. You'll never make it as a robber."

"Good to know." She said before stabbing him in the guts, his gem filled intestines spilling out onto the dirt road.


Maybe something like this

 

[Britva415]

To have agency, the character must have meaningful options.

To have a meaningful option, it must further one or more of the character's motivations.

To have a dramatic story, the character's motivations can be diverse and not necessarily all compatible. This is when exercising their agency to choose among can't-have-everything options seems realistic and interesting.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

My advice to anyone concerned about qualifying for my event is (still) to write a lesbian story. If you manage to write a story about all women so that none of them has any agency nor make sense then I salute you.

I'm writing a lesbian story as it happens - turns out I've never actually written a story in LS which has done well, as my good f-f sex has been in other categories.

But I'm now tempted to try a second story, of women displaying no agency or sense...

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm writing a lesbian story as it happens - turns out I've never actually written a story in LS which has done well, as my good f-f sex has been in other categories.

But I'm now tempted to try a second story, of women displaying no agency or sense...

Senselessness and Insensibility?

 

[stickygirl]

Senselessness and Insensibility?

Little Women who know their place

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Senselessness and Insensibility?

I was thinking more lowbrow. Banging Bambi's Boobilicious Body Boobily.

 

[Lifestyle66]

...But I'm now tempted to try a second story, of women displaying no agency or sense...

If you intend to submit the story in Feb for the challenge, you'll need to address O's test question: "Why would she?"

I was thinking more lowbrow. Banging Bambi's Boobilicious Body Boobily.

You might try writing such a story seriously answering: "Why would she?"

I realized that although many people don't like my characters, I actually answered that question of "Why would she/he?" in chapter 5 in a discussion with their swinger mentors:

"What did you think of the [swinger] web sites?"

"We started with the one you recommended," Jan said. "After reading profiles, I said 'Wow! I thought those were only found in porn movies!' I never realized people actually want to do some of those things ... for fun!"

"Don't think everything you read is always true," June said. "And even if it is true, some are not really into some fetish for wants or fun. Some people are a little damaged, and have needs, whether to feel it or inflict it. Focus on getting into this with the attitude 'You're here for you, not them.' Don't get pulled into doing anything you don't like. The rule is always 'No, means NO!' And try to keep Ted near you. Protect each other and walk away from anyone who says otherwise."



This is why I wrote my "Demons Past" to describe Jan's (my main female character) story of dealing with a PTSD damaged mother and learning to just have fun with the attitude "Get over it!" And my own attitude in accepting almost all characters comes from discussing fetishes with others, as I realized "It takes all kinds!"

 

[Kumquatqueen]

If you intend to submit the story in Feb for the challenge, you'll need to address O's test question: "Why would she?"

I've got a half-done story for the challenge, of two women plausibly choosing to fuck. I have no problem with 'fun' or 'horniness' being a key motivator - most of my characters are polyamorous or just enjoying casual sex.

But the idea of a story which tells a motivation but doesn't back it up with the characters showing any consistency could be interesting, whether Omen chooses to list it in the challenge or not.

 

[Omenainen]

But the idea of a story which tells a motivation but doesn't back it up with the characters showing any consistency could be interesting, whether Omen chooses to list it in the challenge or not.

Just to be clear, the event isn’t vetted by me in any way. Any story meeting Lit’s normal criteria and adding the note to admin will be included in the list.

 

[ArdentHemingway]

To have agency, the character must have meaningful options.

I'm trying hard to think of options other than go/no-go in most situations.
What options did Luke Skywalker have? Go with Obiwan or stay on the farm?
Or think about, did Harry Potter or Katniss Everdeen have any viable options?
Well, Harry shouldn't have gone to the Department of Mysteries.
Katniss was never going to let Prim become a tribute, but she still had to step up.

I think, in many cases, it comes down to, "do I do this, or do I risk regretting not doing it for the rest of my life".
Choosing to do a thing usually works out better than choosing not to do it in the long run (unless you die). YOLO.