This – in the words of Jassy Mackenzie in an email – is ‘girl power week’. On Monday it was Margie Orford on SA krimi exports, yesterday Joanne Hichens wrote about her altered ego and in her column today Jassy writes about thriller heroines. Tomorrow Crime Beat will post a discussion on misogyny in crime fiction that has been heating the temperature in a number of blogs. But until then some tips for writing the deadly fems.
DEADLIER THAN THE MALE
Thriller heroines are a breed apart. They’re tough, gung-ho, straight shooting girls who, if they do have a weakness, have to keep it carefully concealed. For this reason, there are certain rules that apply to female leads in crime fiction. Here are a few of the most important.
Food
Heroines should be, if not carnivorous, at least omnivorous. Biting down on a gristly roadhouse burger is OK. Faffing about with scrambled tofu and bean sprouts will cause your heroine to lose respect in the reader’s eyes.
Make-up
Not recommended. The main woman has to face the baddies down without the help of Lancome or MAC. If your crime fiction heroine slathers on the mascara and lipstick, she is either Stephanie Plum, or Arabella from The Greek Tycoon’s Virgin Bride who has been wrongly filed in the bookshop shelves.
Women’s magazines
This is like Jack Reacher settling down with FHM – inconceivable. A heroine that reads fashion tips and dating advice is straying dangerously close to the domain of chick-lit. Trinity Luhabe can do it, but Jade de Jong and Clare Hart can’t. They can’t follow fashion either. No searching through a well-stocked wardrobe and pairing a Dior coat with a cream Gucci scarf before heading off to the shootout. Clothes should be functional, understated and preferably no-name brands that can simply be thrown away when they get blood or bullet holes in them.
Sport and exercise
A heroine who runs, cycles, kick-boxes, gyms, mud-wrestles or practices martial arts is quite acceptable. Team sports, however, are venturing into dangerous territory. Playing left back in the local hockey team is not going to get the reader’s adrenaline racing. And sports like synchronised swimming or aerobics are best avoided altogether.
Fears
Modern heroines don’t have to be fearless. It’s perfectly acceptable for them to have fears and phobias, as long as these do not reduce them to snivelling wrecks. Having your heroine weeping in terror, trembling and balancing on a chair because there is a spider in the room is not cool. Having her yell in panic, swear at the hero and order him to get his ass inside and deal with the spider, is cool.
Jassy Mackenzie is the author of My Brother’s Keeper and Random Violence.
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October 28th, 2009 @08:13 #
Crime chicks and their habits. Jassy hits the spot. Creating a crime fiction heroine is a tricky business because it is a very masculine genre - and the type of hero has been built up over decades of fiction and film. He must be single (at least in his head) he must eat on the run, he must drink (or wish to drink) and cigarettes are the glue of the plot. So what to do with a woman? and what do women (in crime fiction) want, to lift from Freud. Because this is uber-Freudian territory this. And female leads exist in this strange gap left to them by the femme fatales of all classic noir-boy-hero-crime and the boy-heros. So when you write a Clare or a Jade or a Kay Scarpetta or a Tempe Brennan you walk this tightrope of desire: that the women of the fictional crime world be inaccessible and irresistible and perfect to look at. And now, that the play the lead, that they can smoke and drink like one of the boys. Because they are the Johnny Come-latelies and have to prove that they have balls.
So with fancy food and make-up and the team sports are out. BUT these are not fake men. What is interesting about crime fiction heroines is precisely that they aren't men, so you have to do little tricks when you write them damaged. Because women crack along different lines to men and their faultlines are going to produce different results. I have struggled with this over three books - and now writing the fourth Dr Hart, letting her slowly emerge on the notepaper that will turn into the fourth book, I am starting to feel that she's owning the territory I have put her into. She has certainly taken possession of a section of my brain - and maybe this time around she'll own the little section of crime fiction that I have created for her. Because she certainly interests me, lurking as she does in the land of Real Men. I have the feeling that she's going to unravel something and make it all a little murkier, a little less clear. That's the think with women like her. You can't take your eyes off them for a moment. Because as Jassy says, the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
October 28th, 2009 @11:51 #
The female indeed can be deadlier than the male - she is at least as capable and as tough, but has a vulerability which makes her most appealing. So here's to more women sleuths of all sorts in crime fiction! Nice one, Jassy! I do think a dab of gloss to the lips, though, is just fine - why should the female protagonist not capitalise on her sensuality?
October 29th, 2009 @21:47 #
If you want to keep your heroine in the mainstream she also can't be a lesbian. As soon as she starts fluttering her eyelashes at the ladies, she takes a big sideways step into the ghetto of lesbian detective fiction.
Patricia Cornwell realised this with Kay Scarpetta, and managed to make her the most lesbianish non-lesbian in crime fiction. Scarpetta's niece is the official lesbian of the piece, but Scarpetta herself skates on very thin heterosexual ice. She is also annoyingly precious about food - whipping up authentic and healthy Italian dishes at the drop of a sundried tomato.
October 30th, 2009 @08:29 #
Girl-on-girl action is good though. hetero-porn fantasy girl on girl with boy watching. And maybe getting a turn later...
October 30th, 2009 @08:35 #
But isn't that why all lesbians really do what they do, Margie :-) At least in the fantasies of just about every male on the planet!
October 30th, 2009 @08:57 #
What about a black crime fiction heroine in a South African novel written in English? It happened in "Red Ink". Is it ever going to happen again? I challenge you ladies to make it happen.
October 30th, 2009 @09:07 #
I'm planning on doing exactly that with my next book, Fiona, and I even have the title already finalised: Trinity and the Missing Millions!
October 30th, 2009 @09:23 #
Oy!