I am probably going to be complaining about this outline for the next couple of months, but I am getting so frustrated with the whole freaking process.
Essentially, most of my characters are women, and it’s mythology and female legacy etc. It is/was a story about women.
I didn’t really want a love interest, but if there was going to be a love interest I wanted them to be female. I was told it should be male, because the story wasn’t about ‘being gay’ and therefore didn’t justify a love interest that wasn’t heterosexual.
I wanted female friendships. I was told the best friend should be a boy.
I wanted female familial relationships. I was told there were already too many women and I should change it to a guy.
I’m surprised they haven’t suggested my protagonist becomes a guy.
So now I have a female protagonist, a male best friend, a male love interest, a male antagonist, two male familial characters, and one female familial character.
If I wrote it their way it would barely pass the Bechdel test!
& it’s not the story I want to tell. I’m weirdly angry right now, because I’m pretty sure not one of them would have said “I think that’s one male character too many, you should probably add another gender in” if it had started out about men.
I’m tempted to turn up next time with a revised outline that includes the genders and sexualities that I want.
I don’t know. I really appreciate feedback. My work improves exponentially due to it and I’m incredibly thankful that people take the time to critique my work, but this isn’t the type of feedback that I think is necessarily helpful. Mostly I think it reveals their internalised bullshit.
You are right.