date a selkie, but don’t hide her cloak. let her go home and visit her family now and then, knowing that she’ll come back and hang her seal cloak in the closet like she always does. trust is important.
The first time she lets the redhead take her home, she’s diligent about hiding her cloak. She folds it carefully against tears and rips and abrasions, and hides it in a sea cave whose entrance is concealed by the tide.
She does the same, the second and third and fourth times, careful, wary, mindful of her mother’s lessons. Remembers the way her mother’s hands had chafed on her soft cheeks, rough with cooking and cleaning for her fisherman husband, the way her mother’s peat-dark eyes had been tense and harsh with the lesson.
“Mind me, Niahm. Never let them find your cloak.”
The way her mother’s mouth had curved, a sickle of dissatisfaction and relief and envy, as she had escaped into the waves.
So she minds her mother’s lesson, and she takes care with her cloak.
Would that she had taken as much care with her heart.
The fifth time, she wears the cloak to the girl’s door, clutched about her throat, dripping along the darkened lanes.
She enters the home, welcomed with soft kisses and gentle touches and kindling passion. She drapes the cloak, artful in her carelessness, across an old wooden chair, the one that creaks and tilts slightly if you don’t sit just right.
When she wakes, in the wee hours of the morning, even before her lover, the cloak still rests, supple and dappled by the sea, on the back of the chair.
She frowns into the softening dawn, dons the cloak, and returns to the sea.
And again, the sixth time. And the seventh.
The eighth time, she finally breaks, prickling and hurt with longing, gripping a handful of russet hair in her hand, firm with emphasis.
“Surely you know what I am,” she says to her lover, the cool froth of sea foam and the call of gulls curling around her voice.
“Of course,” her lover responds, soft and tender in the dawnlight, throat arched willingly, pale as the inner whorls of a shell. “You taste of the sea,” the girl whispers, reverently.
She shakes her lover’s head gently, fingers tangled still in russet locks. “Why?” she demands. “Why won’t you keep me?”
A long silence that waits and fills, like a tidepool, stretches between them. Cool as a current. Deep as the Channel.
Her lover’s eyes are dark and tender. “Must I trap you to keep you, my heart? Is that the shape of love that you desire?”
She sinks into the thought, struck and stymied, remembering her mother’s harsh hands, her cold eyes. Her hand eases into russet waves, caresses where her grip had punished. Her lips press cool and damp as the sea against the arching curve of her lover’s shoulder. “What shape of love will you give to me?”
The answer is easy, quick, certain. “Myself. Only myself, whenever you should wish it. Your cloak by the door, your body in my bed, and the freedom to go, whenever you must. As long as you wish.”
It’s not an answer a fisherman could ever give, nor would think to.
The ninth time, she hangs her cloak by the door, draped in careful dappled folds next to a drying oilskin jacket.
occasionally people ask me if i think the kind of love i write about – that desperate, relentless, self-sacrificing, tender kind of romantic love in particular – is possible in real life, or if this is something that can only exist in various contrived media universes with miraculous timing and cinematographically perfect scenes and one in a million protagonists. and the answer to that is yeah, i do think it’s possible in real life. i’ve felt it in real life. i’m sure that one day i’m going to feel it again. it’s just harder to identify because there’s no one to do the translating for us: we feel these complicated messes of things under our breastbones and we never feel one thing at a time. so if and when people feel that kind of love, they also feel tired or afraid or stressed out about their jobs, or worried about their parents, or they’re also thinking about the sale going on at bath and body works or the project due friday or the last show they watched on telly. sometimes all this at once! so that big, gentle, passionate sort of love is there alongside a dozen other things, and there’s no director to tell you which one to pay attention to, and no audience to clap when you kiss, so it’s harder to understand what’s going on – so in fact love is just harder to identify than it is to feel.
but even if we’re not in love, there’s still magic in the world alongside the things we see as mundane, like sales at bath and body works, and that magic feels a lot like the way love feels, like something big and interconnected and important is going on. magic is just a trick of perspective; it’s just a question of whether you can look past the everyday and see what’s special. and i suppose the cynic would say, then isn’t love just a trick of perspective? and i suppose to that i say, so what? if love is a trick, then it’s a trick that opens my heart and opens my arms and brings light and laughter into my life, and that’s a trick i suppose i’m willing to fall for. and there’s nothing self-conscious or awkward or small about that.
I’ve been wavering back and forth on whether or not I should post this because it’s very personal and possibly not as informed as I would like it to be. And it requires a little prefacing.
I’m nonbinary.
I write nonbinary characters. (I don’t have a single story which doesn’t include at least a protagonist or love interest who’s nonbinary, usually with a number of nonbinary supporting characters.)
And these nonbinary characters come in all forms and styles and pronouns and self presentations, from humans who believe they aren’t defined by anyone else’s perception of their gender, to characters whose entire society doesn’t differentiate between male and female, to agender demi-gods who use gendered pronouns because they feel like it and their to genderfluid parents who wear dresses to the opera.
Through the process of writing these characters I’ve subjected them to quite a few beta readers. And what I see in my feedback is a consistent trend of binary readers worried over whether my portrayals of nonbinary character might come off as offensive, while nonbinary readers don’t bat an eye.
Now, I’m certainly not saying that it’s bad for people of binary genders to be critical of how nonbinary characters are portrayed, because I love having people watching out for me and my nonbinary fam.
But I’m also worried.
I’m worried that binary writers aren’t writing nonbinary characters because they’re afraid of getting it wrong.
If binary writers are worried a nonbinary writer is getting their own representation wrong, then how much more are they criticizing themselves for perceived flaws in their own nonbinary characters?
Please: Write nonbinary characters. Specifically, write nonbinary protagonists and love interests.
There is such a broad scale of nonbinary identifying individuals, who’ve all had very different experiences, who all present themselves in different ways, with different pronouns, for different reasons. We are more diverse than you can imagine.
And yet we have essentially no representation. We are dying, dying, for characters in fiction who’s similar to us. The most devastating way you can mess up is to not care enough to try in the first place.
Edit:
I’ve had this post sitting in my drafts for a day because I needed to edit it and boy. Boy am I pissed.
Just fucking pissed.
After having a binary person (one who only writes a nonbinary villain no less) attempt to call out my #ownvoice representation, I couldn’t be more angry.
(I mean, I could be more angry, as proven by that time a TERF broke into my personal messages to write me two essays on why my identity isn’t real and I actually just hate myself enough to pretend it is, but that’s a different story altogether.)
So I amend this:
Please, please write nonbinary characters. But please, for the love of all things good, don’t try to tell other writers how to write these nonbinary characters if you aren’t also nonbinary.
Write us characters but don’t fucking step on us in the process.
Hi there! I would love to! I think I’ll start out with an example with filter words and then cut out the filter words to show you the difference.
For those of you who haven’t seen my post on Filter Words.
Now, for the example:
I felt a hand tap my shoulder as I realized I had made a huge mistake. I knew the consequences would be unsettling, but I had no other choice. I saw the light of my desk lamp bounce off of the officer’s badge before I had even turned around. It seemed like I always found my way into trouble.
It was the first thing off the top of my head, so it’s a bit rough sounding….
Now for without filter words (And a bit of revision):
A hand tapped my shoulder as it dawned on me: I had just made a huge mistake. The consequences would be unsettling if I didn’t get out of this mess, but I had no other choice. The light of my desk lamp bounced off of the officer’s badge. I always found my way into trouble.
By taking out filter words, you get right to the point.
I’d also like to add a few more notes that I didn’t have the chance to post previously.
Some Examples of Filtering:
I heard a noise in the hallway.
She felt embarrassed when she tripped.
I saw a light bouncing through the trees.
I tasted the sour tang of raspberries bursting on my tongue.
He smelled his teammate’s BO wafting through the locker room.
She remembered dancing at his wedding.
I think people should be kinder to one another.
How can you apply this?
Read your work to see how many of these filtering words you might be leaning on. Microsoft Word has a great Find and Highlight feature that I love to use when I’m editing. See how you can get rid of these filtering words and take your sentences to the next level by making stronger word choices. Take the above examples, and see how they can be reworked.
FILTERING EXAMPLE: I heard a noise in the hallway.
DESCRIBE THE SOUND: Heels tapped a staccato rhythm in the hallway.
FILTERING EXAMPLE: She felt embarrassed after she tripped.
DESCRIBE WHAT THE FEELING LOOKS LIKE: Her cheeks flushed and her shoulders hunched after she tripped.
FILTERING EXAMPLE: I saw a light bouncing through the trees.
DESCRIBE THE SIGHT: A light bounced through the trees.
FILTERING EXAMPLE: I tasted the sour tang of raspberries bursting on my tongue.
DESCRIBE THE TASTE: The sour tang of raspberries burst on my tongue.
FILTERING EXAMPLE: He smelled his teammate’s BO wafting through the locker room.
DESCRIBE THE SMELL: His teammate’s BO wafted through the locker room.
FILTERING EXAMPLE: She remembered dancing at his wedding.
DESCRIBE THE MEMORY: She had danced at his wedding.
FILTERING EXAMPLE: I think people should be kinder to one another.
DESCRIBE THE THOUGHT: People should be kinder to one another.
See what a difference it makes when you get rid of the filter? It’s simply not necessary to use them. By ditching them, you avoid “telling,” your voice is more active, and your pacing is helped along.
The above list is not comprehensive as there are many examples of filtering words. The idea is to be aware of the concept so that you can recognize instances of it happening in your work. Be aware of where you want to place the energy and power in your sentences. Let your observations flow through your characters with immediacy.
Ok, sorry for the lengthy answer, I know you just wanted an example…. sorry!
If you have any questions, feel free to ask at my ask box
THIS IS SO GREAT. I dind’t even know there was a term for this (I should have figured, right, because writers have words for everything), but it’s one of those things that being aware when you’re doing it (and editing it right the fuck out) will improve your writing SO MUCH. Removing the filtering helps to draw your readers more intimately into the action of your story, and as the text above says, adds power and immediacy to every sentence. THIS IS SUCH AN IMPORTANT TIP I WANT TO SCREAM ABOUT IT.
every so often i post a few passages from this. it’s by ken liu, whose explanation of silkpunk i just reblogged, and it’s an excerpt from his story paper menagerie (linked here in its entirety; it won the hugo, the nebula, and the world fantasy awards, the first work of fiction to do so). it is not remotely an easy read, particularly if you are a child of a diaspora, particularly if you have ever struggled with assimilation, particularly if you are struggling with cultural and personal identity. it shouldn’t need to pull its punches, and it doesn’t. if you haven’t read it already, i cannot recommend it highly enough. it will not make you feel better, but it is an axe for one’s internal frozen sea, if you will. sometimes a story like this is the only way to stay alive.
willowfoot 