Writing western women - 1870's frontier

Wow. So many questions. Once again I am obliged for input that has, I think, sharpened my view and, maybe self-delusion, put me somewhat more at ease with the women in the story.

This thing has completely run away with me. I wanted to expand a one page almost long blurb into a short story. Howls of derisive laughter from all characters. OK, how about a novella. More laughter. Well, maybe a couple of punch ups and a couple of shoot 'em ups, even let male MC take a bullet? Done. This thing still won't quit. But, dang, it sure is fun to re-read, even if I transcribed their notes.

JRR Tolkien might be trembling in his grave and the length and complexity. At least I don't have to invent languages along the way. I've "fired" formerly lesser MC's. I've removed tons of material (all still on the morgue, just in case). The d*** thing won't shrink. Outline? The thing laughs derisively. Enough whinging and puffery.

Brother - remember Ma is barely discriminating about (male - straight) sexual partners. Brother (two years older, Ma can't remember exact DOB, ditto for female MC's DOB) has one pa, probably nasty. Female MC (Anne) has another pa (possibly Italian or Greek). Brother is a non-stop abuser, drinks, hangs with The Wrong Sort. Condensing text: threatens Ma but won't hit her, not so little sister and physical (not yet sexual) abuse. Anne stops being slapped around with a boot to the groin. Ends similar attacks the same way until brother stops physical abuse. Anne learns to listen for brother bouncing off the hall walls as a warning of a coming assault. (This becomes a trigger for nightmares afterwards - a noise that sounds like bouncing off a wall starts the night terror - mercifully very rare. Male MC cannot possibly be anything but fully supporting and calming after an episode)

AFAIK there are no siblings. There was, at one time, a younger sister and a full plot line stemming from that. In part, it just wouldn't hang together later on. I was dragging, pulling, and tugging to make the story work. It just wouldn't and, as described above, the text sits in my morgue, not likely to be used. No regrets for losing IIRC Rose.

Ma was... does anyone remember "Inside Daisy Clover" with Natalie Wood. Her mother was played by Ruth Gordon (The Dealer but Daisy calls her Old Chap) - a common line from Daisy: "Now, listen, Old Chap, focus, focus". Anne's Ma was the same way, just not there if present and often "off with another 'uncle'". Nothing malign per se, just incompetent. Anne has to learn self-reliance.

So, no effective mother, always abusive brother, no known siblings, learns self-reliance out of necessity.

NB - The AW vBulletin s/w is continually logging me out. If this reply is posted, please take further silence as a consequence of the cursed DDOS attacks on AW. RBE And best regards from Anne and Charlie, who are very happy to be finding their voices

CWatts said:

Seconding all of this.
Has she been downtrodden all her life? Then sadly being assaulted by men wouldn't be new to her. Being attacked by her brother is a serious threat to her existance though - especially if her father is out of the picture so he's the head of the family. Keep in mind that in that era he had the power to do things like have her committed to an insane asylum.

That flippant "bodice ripper" quip and the idea that she is victimized because she's pretty echoes the rape culture myth that rape is about sex. It's about power. I'm sure her brother would be attracted to the richest debutante in Baltimore but he would never attack her, because he'd go to prison or more likely get killed. But the times meant he could regularly beat his sister with impunity and think he was doing the right thing. Sexually attacking his own sister is a massive escalation though and it shouldn't just come out of nowhere.

Rape and incest as drama really seem to be saturating our media (Game of Thrones, Outlander). You need to do your research on how this affects people, both in our own time and your era. Remember that it's called #MeToo because so many people experience sexual assault and they are among your readers.

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Sigh... I've pushed myself into damage repair mode.

Some basics. In this WIP (and anything I write) there is little more than a polite "fade to black" or "cross fade to later". As the MC's say "we know what parts go where" and leave it at that. With two "no more than PG" exceptions (plot specific), anybody who "knows what parts go where" can fill in the rest. Those who don't should maybe be elsewhere - no details here.

Assault as power projection - well, duh. Of course it is. My saying anything more is repeating the obvious and the reported "far too often" (means the event(s) are far too often). It may be clueless on my part, but I've got nothing new to bring to the discussion.

Downtrodden? I'm not sure how the word is defined in this context. Poor, in a tenement, reduced to sweatshop labor - if that's "downtrodden", yes. Female MC (Anne, she's got a name, let's use it), is not someone to knuckle under, concede, give in. As I said very early in this conversation, Anne has a strong sense of self. When her brother tries to attack (all physical, usually too drunk to deliver more than slaps), she puts her foot where it hurts. Anne refuses to be "only" a victim. In this context, not at all downtrodden.

She does flee Baltimore. She's experienced too much, fears seeing assailants pop out of somewhere. Why would she not? OTOH, that "hitting the road" alone is even thinkable in that (or any) era, goes back to sense of self. Leaving Baltimore for Cincinnati for St. Louis for "west" is a mix of flight and "I've had enough, I'm going elsewhere". (Yes, there is a fallacy in her thinking on the latter - far beyond the scope of WIP. This is not intended as an exploration into the domain of assault, etc.)

FWIW never saw GoT, don't even know what Outlander is. I gave up on modern TV/streaming before streaming existed, no HBO, etc., and have zero interest in changing that. I'm busy enough being me as it is. [<--- mild, self-depreciating humor?]

Jack McManus said:

The parts I bolded may be why you're struggling. What's missing may not be so much the intangibles of a generic female voice (if that's even a thing). More to the point, what are the intangibles of this female's voice? There's a lot of good advice here in this thread I intend to refer back to as I build out the women in my WIP. We are all, I believe a product of our childhood environments and each of us experiences life differently. How has your MC's past influenced who she is now, when we join her in the story?

Another thing to consider is where do you want her arc to take her. Stories are about change. How does this character overcome the obstacles you put in her way as she pursues her goals. Try/fail cycles are opportunities for a lot of internal monologue as she adjusts to changing conditions. She sounds very stubborn and determined, a perfect candidate for the meat grinder that is Story. Throw her in there and crank the handle!

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Where's the line between generic "almost no [/whatever] would ever say that" and the character can (should?) say what's in character.

A definitely afield analogy, but I think it works here. In Hunt for Red October, Tom Clancy describes in detail "how subs work" to support the story. When I first read the book, I thought, "wow! he knows his stuff". And then I saw an interview with a real-deal sub person. Clancy got a major detail 100% wrong. For me, it reads just fine. For that person, it reads hopelessly wrong. I don't want to be the one who, through ignorance, reads hopelessly wrong. If I don't ask questions, how do I learn (see my .sig)?

If (for this conversation) Anne's past didn't influence her, I should quietly put the keyboard away and go somewhere else. By the time she meets Charlie (male MC) she's literally two thousand miles from home, traveled from St. Louis to Oklahoma in a wagon train where she could "sit in a wagon, with the Rogers family. They took, what I hated but knew to accept, pity on me and let me into their wagon." And is still running.

Anne Lewis said:

It wasn’t long before everything went smash again. A man in another wagon, drunk, went looking for a“good time” and settled on me. I was good at yelling, cursing,and swinging what I got my hands on. Somebody wrapped his head up and put him in a wagon for while. He’d look at me from across a fire. He was going to take his broken head out on me and, I knew, more. I left the train in Oklahoma.

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To forestall two obvious questions... (1) Never, ever does she invite in any way or form or create a reason for an attack. Remember, she's leaving an abusive brother and two other attempted assaults behind. Invite more? Don't be simple. (2) Her general moral map is such that even after marrying Charlie (male MC has a name, too), she's nervous about getting in bed (sleep and no more!!) with Charlie, and has a brief panic attack the next morning. Anne is not a hussy, floozy, soiled dove, fallen angel, she is not "available". If she were, it wouldn't be anything I wrote. Past influence her? Gosh, yes! [/smile]

Where is she going? Hoo-whee-doggies! That is a very good question. I wish I could say I'm joking when I say this WIP has taken on life of its own. I like these people (well, boarding house lady excepted, but nobody likes her, anyway). I'm just taking notes as they go along.

The end point, such as there is, comes from why this whole thing started. Charlie says it best.

Charlie Gordon said:

Not so long ago, I started talking about how much had happened since the middle of the last century. “Well, Charlie, why don’t you write a book about it? It couldn’t be any worse than most of what holds down the bookcases at the library.” I thanked my would-be supporter for that confidence-inspiring notion. The idea took hold nonetheless.

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Anne and Charlie are still with us at the dawn of the 20th Century. (Anne DOB ~1852, Charlie DOB May 14, 1850) So, I guess the answer is "get from Baltimore (Charlie from Boston) to comfortable somewhere in their late 50's or early 60's". How's that for an answer? Otherwise, I'll let you know when they say "OK, you can put #30# to this story."

Sorry to answer questions out of sequence but I'm trying to survive this pesky DDOS-induced trashing my posting. Grrr...

Sigh... I'm going to fumble this ball. Let's start there. Please be nice and understand this isn't even "beta read" level. OK? I'm going to stick with Anne's (female MC) line and this is all very broad brush. Believe it or not, I've written a whole lot about this story (Mild humor?).

Anne's fleeing west but a "don't take no crap" person, just scared. Who wouldn't be? She lands in Clay Springs, AZ with almost nothing (robbed in last town). Hears there's a bartender who just bought a saloon, busier than a one-armed paper hanger, and barely knows the business. Broke and generally out of luck, she says "gotta do something to keep alive", walks into Wagner's and starts working behind the bar, cleaning up all the glassware, etc. that's piled up. Charlie (male MC) wonders, while pouring and so on, why he has far more glassware, etc. than he thought, finds Anne hard at work, and panics. Woman? Saloon? What?!? "Want this mess clean?" "Well, yes". He works, she works. She cusses out a couple of fools who think she's a "sportin' lady" and makes it stick.

End of day. Charlie: so what's the story? Anne: here's the story, I'm broke, I need a job, do I have one?

Charlie Gordon said:

I hadn’t planned on having a full-time employee on my payroll so soon. Hiring a woman, even I was still trying to come to terms with that, was likely to set some citizen off. I was, it seemed almost literally, damned if I did, damned if I didn’t.“Mister Gordon, I asked a simple question: Do I get paid for my work here?”
God help me. “Yes. Yes, you do.”

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There is far more to this, of course.

- - - - -
Please understand that I've just put up, excepting the quote, what amounts to notes on the back of an envelope, not meant to be anything but a very crude sketch of something far more complex.

- - - - -

Without objection, I'd like to wrap this up. I have received so much valuable insight and advice, very good cites, and much of this will take days to work through. I have, however, gotten to the point of saturation. If I take in more without something else having to move over and make room, I'm out of mental room.

Re-reading Anne's writing in her foreword, and her written marginalia and interior monologue, I think I have a tolerable starting point for resolving a great deal of what I asked about at the start of the thread. I am grateful to you for that help. I hope I can pay it forward.

Finally, without hearing Anne speak her full piece, in at least her foreword, everything is bits and pieces, out of context, and, I regret, not always carefully presented.

To anyone I've offended, again, my sincere apology. Anything written was, at worst, written in ignorance, not malice. The bell is rung, and cannot be un-rung. I can only offer my apology.

Thank you. I've spent some time back in Clay Springs, tidying up earlier notes from Charlie and Anne. Re-reading what I haven't seen in weeks, I'm at least comfortable with the voice I hear. And, for the record, according to Charlie, her spoken voice is a contralto.

Who knows, quoting Charlie quoting "that Scottish play", some day I may "screw my courage to the sticking point" and turn loose more than the few lines seen here. Watch this space. LOL


Great thanks, everyone. Now to pay it forward... [/Smile]