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- Jul 6, 2018
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I'm editing/revising my novel before I go agent hunting, and while talking with my husband today, I decided I wanted to present my thoughts over here to get opinions from people who know better than I do. I wanted to talk through her arc to ensure I, as a non-POC, am handling everything well or if I could do things better, I want to know about it. (I'm going to ignore my other POV characters' arcs while going through hers).
My main character is a 15 year old woman (16 classifies as adulthood in my world). This is high fantasy (dark, though, my editor has called my other books similar in style to Game of Thrones) filled with elves and other things like that, and Glory is what is essentially a wolf-shifter half-breed - part human, part shifter. Her father is the lord of his city, mother is the lady, both full-blood humans and white. Mother slept with one of the castle guards (handsome full-blood wolf man, black skin, black fur, totally consensual relationship), and the baby comes out a half wolf with dark skin. The lord sells them both into slavery as his lady has disgraced him and he doesn't want the child around. You never see any of the slavery. This is all prologue (3 pages long, and I have been thinking of just cutting it out depending on my beta reader feedback). Chapter 1 is just her at 15, and by the end of the chapter, she escapes slavery (kills her master), is homeless for a very brief period (half-breed wolfs are looked down on badly in this society. It's my worlds version of racism and I do explore it), a kind shopkeep gives her some new shoes and food (naive girl in the city gets mugged), and she takes a room in an inn with a sleazy owner. He gives her poppy to help her with the pain from her recent muggings when she lost her new boots which leads to a small arc exploring an opioid addiction (despite how much space this takes to type, this doesn't actually take a ton of space in the book, I think I spend 5 chapters on the stuff in this paragraph). Once we hit her rock bottom here, she meets the leader of a mercenary guild and he takes her in, helps get her clean, and teaches her how to fight, use a disguise kit, work with herbs, and generally teaches her how to be an awesome mercenary. Her intention is to go back to her father and pay him back for putting her into slavery in the first place and sending her down this dark path, a revenge arc. This all reads very dark, but she also spends the majority of her time when not trying to get revenge with her best friend, a disabled wolf who she loves and who loves her (in a platonic way) and they help each other in many ways, she has a deep soft spot for helping children, she often runs Robin Hood type theft schemes with the mercenary leader in which they steal from the rich in order to redistribute to the poor and feed the local homeless children. Her arc with the mercenaries starts as a revenge plot and turns into her learning that there is more to her life than serving others, and that revenge is just another form of serving ( because she's dedicating her life to pursuing another person and to her dedication to being her own person, to loving herself, and to finding her own way, which leads her to meeting up with the other three POV heroes who are out to stop the villain doing what he's doing.
A point - slavery is not a race thing in this world, it's a species thing. Half-breed wolves are slaves no matter what skin color they happen to be and in the same household with Glory, there are 4 other slaves, all white, 3 male, 1 female (and she's kind of red-skinned because she's mixed with a species that has red skin).
I saw on a different post in here a person saying "Why does the black, female MC always have to be a lesbian" and I was going to make her ace (asexual) because she feels best that way. She isn't interested in having a romantic arc in this story nor in having a sexual storyline. She feels ace, but then, if it's super cliched to have the black female MC be LGBTQIA+ then I might steer away from it (I'm part of the LGBTQIA+ community but I still wasn't aware of that, so it's good to have my attention drawn to it if it is a cliche).
Sorry for the long post, but I figured it was best to put her whole arc out there rather than just ask about that one particular piece of it so the whole picture is there. Ask question if you need to, and I'll be sure to answer.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. <3
My main character is a 15 year old woman (16 classifies as adulthood in my world). This is high fantasy (dark, though, my editor has called my other books similar in style to Game of Thrones) filled with elves and other things like that, and Glory is what is essentially a wolf-shifter half-breed - part human, part shifter. Her father is the lord of his city, mother is the lady, both full-blood humans and white. Mother slept with one of the castle guards (handsome full-blood wolf man, black skin, black fur, totally consensual relationship), and the baby comes out a half wolf with dark skin. The lord sells them both into slavery as his lady has disgraced him and he doesn't want the child around. You never see any of the slavery. This is all prologue (3 pages long, and I have been thinking of just cutting it out depending on my beta reader feedback). Chapter 1 is just her at 15, and by the end of the chapter, she escapes slavery (kills her master), is homeless for a very brief period (half-breed wolfs are looked down on badly in this society. It's my worlds version of racism and I do explore it), a kind shopkeep gives her some new shoes and food (naive girl in the city gets mugged), and she takes a room in an inn with a sleazy owner. He gives her poppy to help her with the pain from her recent muggings when she lost her new boots which leads to a small arc exploring an opioid addiction (despite how much space this takes to type, this doesn't actually take a ton of space in the book, I think I spend 5 chapters on the stuff in this paragraph). Once we hit her rock bottom here, she meets the leader of a mercenary guild and he takes her in, helps get her clean, and teaches her how to fight, use a disguise kit, work with herbs, and generally teaches her how to be an awesome mercenary. Her intention is to go back to her father and pay him back for putting her into slavery in the first place and sending her down this dark path, a revenge arc. This all reads very dark, but she also spends the majority of her time when not trying to get revenge with her best friend, a disabled wolf who she loves and who loves her (in a platonic way) and they help each other in many ways, she has a deep soft spot for helping children, she often runs Robin Hood type theft schemes with the mercenary leader in which they steal from the rich in order to redistribute to the poor and feed the local homeless children. Her arc with the mercenaries starts as a revenge plot and turns into her learning that there is more to her life than serving others, and that revenge is just another form of serving ( because she's dedicating her life to pursuing another person and to her dedication to being her own person, to loving herself, and to finding her own way, which leads her to meeting up with the other three POV heroes who are out to stop the villain doing what he's doing.
A point - slavery is not a race thing in this world, it's a species thing. Half-breed wolves are slaves no matter what skin color they happen to be and in the same household with Glory, there are 4 other slaves, all white, 3 male, 1 female (and she's kind of red-skinned because she's mixed with a species that has red skin).
I saw on a different post in here a person saying "Why does the black, female MC always have to be a lesbian" and I was going to make her ace (asexual) because she feels best that way. She isn't interested in having a romantic arc in this story nor in having a sexual storyline. She feels ace, but then, if it's super cliched to have the black female MC be LGBTQIA+ then I might steer away from it (I'm part of the LGBTQIA+ community but I still wasn't aware of that, so it's good to have my attention drawn to it if it is a cliche).
Sorry for the long post, but I figured it was best to put her whole arc out there rather than just ask about that one particular piece of it so the whole picture is there. Ask question if you need to, and I'll be sure to answer.
Thanks for taking the time to read and respond. <3