As a person and as a writer, I’m fascinated by gender, sexuality and identity, and I put little credence in ideas about what men or women can/should/must do. Biology disposes us in ways that I think we don’t fully understand, but taking the leap from biological disposition to social- and cultural-behavior determinism seems to me… well, it seems remarkably silly. I’m not the science person in our house, but you don’t have be to a scientist to see ample evidence in the world of men people doing things in the world that men “shouldn’t” do, and women people doing things that they “can’t” do. And those people aren’t always presenting like your grandmother’s idea of proper boys and girls when they do those things.
I was having a discussion with my producer the other day about the difference between character and cliche. I’ve written a screenplay that explores gender in a heretofore unusual way for me. Generally, I create characters not beset by the usual rules of gender. I don’t apologize and I don’t “explain.” But this time, I’ve put two non-totally-standard characters into a world populated by gendered folks, people caught in their own culture and operating within their constraints as best they can. It’s a rough world. People get hurt physically and emotionally. There are prostitutes and drug addicts and mothers and children.
My producer, who is on his own road to a brand of feminism that I like to think I’ve helped with (grin), asked me why I was writing prostitutes and sexually jealous straight women and bad mothers, given my concerns about gender. Weren’t these things cliches? I could have hugged him through the phone; I cannot wait for the day when every person in my life pokes at anything that smells like cliche, the same way I cannot wait for able-bodied people to call each other out on using disabled parking spaces. (Note to those wrongheaded parkers: Well, I’m only going to be a minute! is not a valid reason to co-opt someone else’s access. Park at the end of the lot and walk your ass into the store. /rant off)
I told my producer that the point is not to avoid writing about prostitutes or jealous women: the point it to make them real, surprising, compelling. To make them human. Because some of us humans are prostitutes and jealous women and bad mothers. The cliche is not in the job we do or the relationship we have: the cliche is when that thing stands in for our entire humanity, and everybody nods and says Sure, that’s what those people are like.
I write about the Other a lot. But cliche is the ultimate othering, and it is bad bad bad bad writing. And this is why this particular screenplay that I’m writing fascinates and frightens me: because if I make cliches instead of characters, then I am an asshole and I have to go back and start again. I have already been an asshole a couple of times in a couple of scenes, and wow, there’s nothing like the stomach-drop of Oh fuck, look what I just did.
I am happy to report that I was not an asshole in my novella “Eye of the Storm,” which has recently been reprinted in the anthology Beyond Binary: Genderqueer and Sexually Fluid Speculative Fiction, edited by Brit Mandelo. If you’ve read my collection Dangerous Space, you’ve already read “Storm;” so buy this anthology for the many other evocative, provocative stories you’ll find. And take a look at this extensive interview that Nicola did with Brit about putting the anthology together.
I’m delighted to be included in Beyond Binary and pleased that there’s a whole group of stories where the others aren’t Other, they are us.
Enjoy your day.
** And if you enjoyed my musings above about character and cliche, then please consider sponsoring me in the Clarion West Write-a-thon. I’ll be writing every day, and every week I’ll send my sponsors an email account of my writing journey. The above is an example of the sort of thing I’m likely to include, along with the ups and downs of the work, the writing challenges I have, and how this writer’s life feels.
