Bouchercon Panel Report #4 - The Dark Side of The Fairer Sex

The Dark Side of The Fairer Sex

Panellists - Megan Abbott (moderator), Chelsea Cain, Sophie Littlefield, Derek Nikitas.

Megan - who was an excellent moderator - started off by pointing out that after all these years the idea of a female character is still focused on and there was no equivalent 'male' panel at Bouchercon. You can write from the point of view of a doctor, cop, serial killer and no-one says anything, but write from the point of view of the opposite sex and people comment.

Derek Nikitas said that his main characters are female and one review of PYRES said that he wrote the female characters better than the male ones. He had no good reason for why he chooses females as his viewpoint characters, he just likes to choose characters who are very different from himself. He said that one of the reasons we turn to fiction is to inhabit someone else's life.

Sophie Littlefield experiments with using male protagonists in short fiction. She felt that the idea that you should stick to your own gender is ridiculous.

Chelsea Cain has a male detective in her books. She also said that she dislikes some male written thrillers where the female detective solves a crime wearing stiletto heels (me: what's wrong with that?!)

Megan brought up the subject of female rage - the idea is really old but can still be an uncomfortable topic. She asked the panel how they treated female anger and whether they thought it was different from male anger.

Sophie Littlefield feels that people are uncomfortable around middle-aged female rage - apart from middle-aged females (me: as a middle-aged female, I'm pretty uncomfortable around any rage, but there you go). She felt that coming into your forties is freeing and liberating.

Chelsea Cain has a female serial killer in her books. She noticed that when women kill the media goes into overdrive to try and figure out why. She was very interested in that phenomenon and wanted to write about someone who killed just because she wanted to.

Megan said that Ian Rankin got in a lot of trouble for saying that a lot of graphically violent fiction was written by women.

Chelsea Cain said that her own books are pretty graphic and she had a lot of attention because of that and men seem to be very upset that she "writes that sort of stuff".

Sophie Littlefield felt that there is a continuum of comfort and we all have a place on it. Her roots are in romance and, apparently, romance writers have the same discussions about sex.

Derek Nikitas said that PYRES was violent and that the company who are working on the movie version have said that there is no way that they can film the scene which happens at the end of the book (me: you could see people feverishly writing down the title to go and get this one straight after the panel). He made a conscious decision to make violence less at the forefront in his second book.

Megan then asked the panel whether the fact that there seemed to be many more female readers than male readers affected the way they wrote.

Chelsea Cain said that it is simpler not to think about the readers. Women buy the most books, but you don't know who they are. Her grandmother comes to her readings and she censors herself as she reads when she is in the audience. Her grandmother sent her a lovely card on the publication of her first book and, obviously thinking of something nice to say she said that the book was "beautifully bound".

Derek Nikitas said that he tells his grandmother not to read his books. She came to one of his readings but he said it was OK because all the swearing was in Spanish

Sophie Littlefield said that not many people had read her book yet and she knows most of them - and they're her childrens' teachers and her church group. When it came to her first reading, she realised that the first page she was going to read contained 'f***' (me: asterisks are for my Dad), 'bitch' and 'ass' (me: I think my Dad's OK with those). When she then went to a mystery bookstore to do a reading she felt that she could read something a bit more 'out there' so she read a scene about sex toys made in prison. After the reading, she discovered that her friend had brought her parents along.

Megan asked the audience to note that she was the only one of the panellists not to have used "the F-Word". the reason for this was that her parents were in the audience.

Megan then asked the panellists who some of their favourite female characters were. Chelsea Cain said Nancy Drew, Sophie Littlefield said Megan's characters, Elizabeth George's Barbara Havers and Denise Mina's characters, Derek Nikitas said Joyce Carol Oates' female characters.

Megan asked whether villains need to have a redeeming quality. Derek Nikitas said that he doesn't believe in villains as characters. His job is to ensure that all his characters are given an opportunity to have their minds shown in some way to allow the reader to empathise with them. There are people doing bad things all over the place in his book but they are not 'villains'. Chelsea Cain said that her serial killer doesn't have a point of view because she feels it is scarier that way, and she also does not want the reader to know what is happening. Sophie Littlefield felt that villains should be layered.

Megan then asked about writing violence. Derek Nikitas said that one of the keys to crafting violence well is a sense of balance - if you have too much it loses something. Megan said that withholding can sometimes have more impact. Chelsea Cain said that she developed an insatiable appetite for thrillers and blood and guts when she was pregnant.

When asked whether there was anything they wouldn't write about, Chelsea Cain said that killing dogs, small children and cats. Sophie Littlefield said that she now wants to write that book.