Tag: Bechdel Test

On to talk about big characters.

I reiterate for the umpteenth time, I’m not doing this to judge other works. The scale I use for that is ‘did I like it?’ I think the BT has a lot of utility to improve my own writing though, so that’s what I’m writing about.

There are a few preliminaries to keep in mind. First, is the POV 1st person? If so, any demographic group other than the narrator will probably not pass the BT. If they do, this will require some odd gymnastics.

Take the Chronicles of Amber. The first five books were 1st Person POV by a male character, Corwin. It would be odd for him to overhear a conversation wherein he isn’t mentioned, and yet the conversation is significant enough to be included. Not impossible, but it would be odd. Furthermore, Corwin is a tremendous jackass and has a monomaniacal fixation on defeating first one then another of his brothers. He’s a bit obsessed. He’s also an immense jackass. He probably wouldn’t pay attention to anything that isn’t about him or one of his nemeses. Again, monumental jackass.

What I’m addressing is that the BT is a hammer. Don’t think all your stories are nails. POV, setting, and main character personality will influence whether this tool is useful. You can hammer in a screw, but I do not recommend it.

So I’ve got main characters Bob, Alice, and Ivan, the Face Stealing Serial Killer. Once Ivan gets introduced, he is going to dominate the plot. If Alice and her coworker Tasha are discussing the daffodils while Ivan stalks the office, they’re going to come across as loonies. On the other hand, they should have lives outside of Ivan.

So that’s fairly simple. Establishing their lives should be done before they interact with Ivan. This builds empathy with the reader, we have active motivations instead of negative, and we can do a little foreshadowing, drop a few plot hooks, etc. Later, we want to heighten the tension, but that isn’t exclusively about Ivan. It can be, but it isn’t always. If Ivan locks the doors and he’s inside with his meathook, characters can discuss how to unlock the doors, how to turn the power back on, how to put out the fires, etc.

Active motivations, ‘I want to live!’ are almost always better than negative motivations, ‘I don’t want to die!’ They’re more engaging, help me push the plot along, and when a reader wants to empathize with someone who wants to live, the reader wants to read and see if the character lives. If the reader wants to empathize with someone who doesn’t want to die, the reader can just stop reading and close the tab. Then the character doesn’t die for them. And I don’t want my readers to stop reading and close the tab.

So we have a clear timing issue. Alice and Tasha should have a conversation that isn’t about Ivan before Ivan interacts with them, or they should address some tension building facet after he’s introduced. Maybe Tasha got promoted from building maintenance, and she knows where the circuit breakers are. Maybe Alice has a gun in her desk. That’s a really good one, because most people don’t really know how to shoot guns, or even that there’s a skill involved, so the two of them could talk about how guns work. Sets up a nice contrast between ‘I’ve never even shot a gun because I feel bad for the paper targets!’ and Ivan, who murders people and steals their faces.

None the less, putting characters through the BT gives the author an opportunity to develop the situation.

Problem: Ivan’s disabled the power and the elevators don’t work. The building is also on fire. Ivan’s in the stairway.

Tasha: I can go to the power room and override the emergency brake on the elevators!

Of course something terrible will happen because everyone’s in a tiny metal box on janky power when the building is on fire, but hey, that’s drama!

As a small step, the proverbial one that starts the journey of a thousand miles, I often ask myself of smaller characters: if they got stuck in a room together, what would they talk about?

I try to do that for all the big characters too. Those ones are more likely to get stuck in a room together, so it’s not pointless.

A lot of people have difficulty writing members of the opposite sex. The Bechdel Test is a good tool to add to your toolkit.

A fairly good backstory and description can be found here at wikipedia and the basic idea is from this comic.

I’m not going to judge other work. I’m talking about using the idea to improve my own writing. As such, I sidestep some of the issues. Characters in general should have their own names, so that issue is moot. Likewise I take the comic above as, by definition, passing the Bechdel Test itself, so any argument about whether or not men can be mentioned at all is irrelevant. In the comic, ‘a man’ is mentioned. I take the comic as passing itself. Therefore, mere mention of a man isn’t a failure. Again, the idea here isn’t to judge or categorize, but to glance at my own stuff and try to improve it.

So I’ve got two characters, A and B. Specificity is good, so I’m always trying to put names to characters. Alice and Betsy are having a conversation. If they don’t have names, that’s a different issue. The characters have become generic, so I’m going to examine space, wordcount, and so forth to see if I can name them. If I’ve got 1500 words to put the narrator into a house, reveal the house is haunted, and have the haunted house eat the narrator, side characters might be lean. If I’ve got 115k words to do some worldbuilding, A and B should become Alice and Betsy.

Next, I need something for them to talk about that isn’t a man. Most authors, myself included, like to add little bits of cool ideas to the story when we can, and we’re always looking for ways to sneak a bit of texture in without bogging the plot down. Alice and Betsy are a perfect vector for it.

Alice: “Ah, I gotta go to work early tomorrow. I hate it when I have to go to work before sunrise.”

Betsy: “You must hate winter.”

Alice: “I do! It’s terrible! I want to leave Fnordia and move somewhere warm!”

Has a human being in a cold climate not had this conversation? Fnordia gains a little detail, the setting is a little more polished, and it reminds the reader of when the story is occurring.

This can be spiced up.

Alice: “Ah, I gotta go to work early tomorrow. I hate it when I have to go to work before sunrise.”

Betsy: “Why do you have to go in early? I thought you worked afternoon to midnight?”

Alice: “I do, but we’re tracking a new star that appeared in the House of the Crow. I plotted it last year in the House of Endings, so if it is the same star, that’s a bad omen. But the Crow only rises before sunrise this time of year, so guess who has to trek thought the bitter wastes to the get to the observatory before dawn?”

Betsy: “Don’t you take the bus right to the observatory?”

Alice: “And between the bus stop and the observatory is a bitter waste!”

Betsy: “We call that a sidewalk.”

So we have a little more stuff. We have some astrology of made up constellations. We have a bus. We have some character development for Alice and Betsy. We even have a little textured conflict to make the dialogue more real. For only a few hundred words (adding tags, etc.), probably a page after a little description, we’ve gained a lot. It could be longer if it fits into the plot, but it doesn’t have to be.

FYI, above I mentioned a 1500 word story as being prohibitively short. One might think a conversation like that, 133 words as written, could be shoehorned in. It’s actually really hard to do.

Likewise, Adam and Bob can talk about just about anything.

Adam: “What are you doing tomorrow night?”

Bob: “I don’t know. Why?”

Adam: “Want to get drunk and throw expired fireworks into an abandoned mineshaft?”

Bob: “Absolutely!”

There’s plot in there.

Finally, one particular point is that I often write these conversations that get cut. That’s fine. If I know Alice and Betsy like to talk about jackets, how much they hate the cold, and stars, I’ve got a few side details. That sort of backstory can be very useful. Having those bits on hand can make introducing a scene or setting a motivation easier. They’re useful little snippets in their own right.