Enjoy reading about strong female characters kicking ass?
Wattpad brings you a guest post from Charlotte Ashley. Read her fantasy adventure “Bazza’Jo” free on Wattpad:
“It’s field vs forest, Caster vs hunter and Raina in the middle determined to protect them all.”
Creating Love Interests for Strong Female Characters
In my time I have been called a “tom boy”, “geek”, “butch” and just plain “weird”. Why? Because I love, love action, adventure, fantasy, swashbuckling, epics and heroes. I play video games, role play, dress up in costumes in public, learned to fight with swords, and read every book I came across. I want to be the heroine of every adventure out there.
But my escapist fantasies also have to include love interests, and that’s harder to find. How do you give a strong girl a love interest who doesn’t eclipse her? They can’t just sit around at home - that’s boring, and who wants to date that kind of dead weight anyway? - but if they get too involved in the heroics, it risks becoming his, not her, adventure.
Being very hot is also a huge distraction from the action.
There are different approaches. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” used the problem to give the series serious angst. Buffy liked a guy who could kick some butt. To avoid her having to share the screen, they would take the guys away. A stable relationship with Angel would have made it the “Buffy and Angel Show”, so there always had to be a reason to keep them apart. Great, if you like your romance dark.
Yes, thank you, this.
15 years later, “The Legend of Korra”asked whether a strong girl can get - and keep - the guy. Mako initially finds Korra’s forwardness off-putting, but in time he realizes he prefers Korra’s spirit to Asami’s femininity. Korra and Mako watch each others’ backs and take turns rescuing each other, but in the end, she’s the Avatar and he’s okay with that.
Me, I like to think a girl can have her cake and eat it too. In “Bazza’Jo,” Kal helps Raina in her fight to save the day but the story, and his attention, is still focused squarely on her.
Click here to read the fantasy novel “Bazza’Jo” on Wattpad:
All Casting is controlled by Bazza’Jo, everyone knows that. But there’s trouble brewing between the settlers of Bazza’Jo’s village and those who live in the jungles surrounding them. Raina Ratherham was never much of a Caster herself, but after she meets Kal, the fierce, brave leader of the non-Casting natives and her iconoclastic, radical Master Casting uncle Septimus, everything she thought she knew about how the world works is called into question. As tensions escalate Raina finds herself fighting both sides of the battle in a bid to protect her friends, her family and her world…
Bazza’Jo is a Young Adult Fantasy inspired by the wonderful books of Philip Pullman, Kenneth Oppel, Frances Hardinge, Diana Wynne Jones and others! I hope you’ll enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!