In March I wrote a few posts about including more diversity in our stories, and specifically mentioned a goal of being able to pass the Bechdel test more often. Then I turned my focus back to my novel, where the two main characters are an eighteen-year-old boy (Zach) and his father (Mitch). With most scenes in the POV of one of those characters, or at least featuring them, it was a challenge to pass the Bechdel test even though I have a host of marvelous female characters.
To make things even worse, I realized that the death of Zach's mother (Zinnia) was an overused trope.
Silbrith and I talked about options. Could Zach and/or Mitch be female characters?
Fortunately, at the time I was about to start an online writing course through Lit Reactor, which focused on refining a novel's plot and character arc. It was the perfect opportunity to outline a variation of my plot where Mitch is the parent who died under mysterious circumstances, and Zinnia is the cop raising a psychic son.
Over the last month as I've completed the assignments for the course, Zinnia the cop has become more real to me. I'm thrilled for the possibilities.
The next challenge is rewriting scenes to swap out Mitch with Zinnia. That's when I'll really know if this is going to work. Rewriting old scenes when there are so many new scenes to write isn't the most exciting of tasks. However, I'm looking forward to reading the new versions of those scenes and have high hopes for them.
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