While I’m not at liberty to give you identifying details, I have been given permission by the author to tell you about this really interesting thing that’s going on in a book I’m editing.
In an earlier conversation with the author, in addition to my other feedback, I’d said, “There are very few women in this book. Do all the characters have to be men?”
And the author said, “Huh, you’re right, I hadn’t noticed that.” So we discussed the cast of characters, and settled on one important secondary character who could just as easily be a woman. In fact, this would, arguably, make even more sense in this particular world. (For context: the main character is a man, and the most important secondary character–who also gets a POV–is a woman. And she does pass the Bechdel test. But even with this, the novel was a bit…thin…on female characters.)
So today I was actually working on the part of the manuscript where this now-female character is introduced. And let me tell you, it is Very Weird!
I am basically changing nothing but pronouns. I’m even leaving the physical description largely untouched–down to the clothing. The mannerisms, the dialogue, the main character’s thoughts and reactions to this character: all just the same. But WOW, the scenes read differently. So much subtext is there that wasn’t there before; and so many other things are missing.
And this is ALL stuff, I realize, that I’m bringing in my own mind, as a reader. But it’s eye-opening. I’m having this whole cascade of thoughts that I can’t even articulate yet, but it’s making me think about my own work so differently.
If you’re interested, I recommend doing something like this to your own work–even as just an experiment. Just to see what stuff it unfolds in your head. And then come tell me about it. Because I think it’s FASCINATING.
We carry so many assumptions around all the time. Even those of us who try to be aware and present and awake to gender and race and privilege and bias. I see more these days than I used to–I just reread The Sparrow for my book group recently, and I sure didn’t notice on my first read how, even in the future, the women did all the cooking on the spaceship. But it leapt out at me this time.
There’s more to learn. There’s ALWAYS more to learn. Life is a practice.