Comments on: Guest Post: Ladies, Don’t Let Anyone Tell You You’re Not Awesome

By: Stephanie Dray

Stephanie Dray — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:50:40 +0000

If you haven’t already trademarked the word ‘flawesome’ you should!

By: Marilynn Byerly

Marilynn Byerly — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 16:49:41 +0000

I write and read romance as well as science fiction and fantasy, and, for the most part, romance does a much better job of allowing a certain amount of “awesome” in heroines without turning them into an adult version of the mean cheerleader or a woman who can only define herself through a man’s attention and declaration of her worthiness.

An editor for Harlequin once defined the perfect heroine as a woman who has claimed a certain amount of success in the real world be that as an executive or a teacher, has self-esteem and inner strength, and may or may not be gorgeous. She wants a permanent partner, not to redefine herself, but because it will complete what she wants out of life. Some emotional flaw in both will prove to be the difficulty the couple must surpass to deserve a realistic ending and even more awesomeness.

Young adult authors with their passive heroines like TWILIGHT’s Bella and the ones you mention would do well to read romances to see how you don’t need to start with a screwed-up and self-loathing woman to create character growth or a good story.

By: Kat Beyer

Kat Beyer — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 02:59:07 +0000

Thank you. Lovely. Forced me to think carefully about my treatment of my own characters and their sense of self-worth (or lack of it). Most challenging literary effort so far: writing about a girl in a world full of strong, positive female (and male) role models, where neither men nor women question her value (or beauty, or smarts, or right to work a certain kind of job, etc). That was tricky–half the usual plot arcs right out the window right there, I discovered.

What if we had no glass ceiling to pierce, no gender that needed impressing or proving ourselves to, no standard of beauty besides our own…? What would our girls do then?