Gayle Roper is a multi-award winning author and a popular conference presenter. Among the honors she has won are a RITA, a CAROL, three Holt Medallions, two Inspirational Readers Choice Awards, a Lifetime Achievement Award, and she has finaled three times for a Christy. Gayle has won special recognition from numerous writers conferences for her work in training Christian writers. In addition to teaching at writers conferences, she speaks at women’s events across the nation and loves sharing the powerful truths of Scripture with humor and practicality. She is also one of my personal favorite writing teachers. Gayle will be teaching a continuing session at the May 15-18 Colorado Christian Writers Conference on “Fiction for Women.”
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Q: How does “fiction for women” differ from other fiction? Don’t women have a wide and diverse interest in books? Is there anything special we need to take into consideration when targeting the women’s market?
Yes, women read everything from romance to speculative fiction and all genres in between. We LOVE story in its many forms. We love rich characters and strong plots and most of us like happy and satisfying endings (probably because real life is often hard and beyond our control). We all like to read about strong women who face their problems with grit and who grow as they resolve whatever issues they face. The thing I love about fiction is that it models life for us as readers. We see what happens when choices are made, both good and bad, and we can learn how to avoid the pitfalls and make the good choices from reading what happens to fictional characters. Don’t tell my non-fiction writing and reading friends, but I think fiction does its teaching with more style than non-fiction with its pointed words of wisdom.
Q: I’ve met characters in your books who struggle with hardships created by their own choices, or have a tough time recovering from one or more of life’s unexpected interruptions. Their behavior provides rich insight into their personality and makes them seem real. Will you help us find ways to add the same kind of depth to our characters?
We’re going to look at specific things we can do to make our characters as alive as the women down the street or those who work with us. Personality, problems, pressures, traits, quirks, warps, gifts, talents—all these work together to make real people, and we’ll work to use these same qualities to create our fictional people.
Q: How can we integrate tough issues (unwed pregnancies, spousal abuse, etc.) into our stories without making it sound preachy? Will you show us examples of this in class?
Today we can write about any topic we choose—as long as all the information, actions, thoughts and reactions come out of the characters, not the author. Once the author inserts herself into the issue at hand, she’s killed the authenticity of the discussion. To talk about any hard topic in a novel means all sides of the issue, even the sides the author doesn’t agree with, have to be aired through the various characters. I’m reading a WW II story now in which IRA sympathizers present their reasons for hating the British and blowing up innocent people as passionately as the British authorities present theirs for bringing down the terrorists. Both sides are organic to the story.
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Thanks Gayle and Donna. Watch for Part 2 next week.
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