Over on
The Swivet, agent Colleen Lindsay's blog, is a guest blog
post by Courtney Summers, soon-to-be-published author of
Cracked Up To Be. Go ahead and read it; I'll wait.
One sentence particularly stuck out to me when I read her post:
"I decided the next novel I wrote was going to be a total uhm... balls-out experience and it was going to be everything I wanted it to be."
The reason this particular sentence struck such a chord with me was because this was exactly what I decided to do with the book that was eventually picked up for representation. I was afraid at first to make a heroine who was cold-blooded, efficient, didn't hesitate to squeeze the trigger. Much of the female-oriented action I'd read had heroines afraid of guns, or in the process of giving up the business because it bothers them, or very uncomfortable with the role they had in life.
But characters in movies often engage in acts of violence without remorse, without regret. I thought to myself, what if my heroine didn't hate her work? What if she knew exactly who she was and still liked herself? What if she didn't waste her time trying to avoid shooting the bad guy and just...shot him?
Would she still be a likable character? I still liked her. But would anyone else? I decided I didn't care. This was the story I wanted to write. This was a story I wanted to read. Even today, having read both Phaedra novels about twenty times each,
I still like reading them. The books are dark, though often funny (well, they're supposed to be, anyway), but most importantly, they're books I enjoy.
I knew
The Harrison Files (the novel I signed with Janet on) was the
one. It was the first book I wrote where I felt
it.
It was my "balls-out" writing experience. It showed, too, and the book garnered much more agent interest than any of my previous efforts. It eventually led me to sign with one, and it told me there is a market for people who like their fiction hardcore, violent, and unapologetic.
If you find you're holding yourself back, trying to write a character a certain way because you're afraid other people won't like her, let yourself go. Take the gloves off. Let it all hang out and see if you don't make a character who comes alive on the page.