There's So Much Riding on First Impressions

I have spent the last week stalling to avoid finishing a chapter in my sci-fi novel. it's Chapter 8, quite a ways into the narrative, and it's the point where a lot of things change and many mysteries are finally revealed. It is also the first time the reader will meet one of the most important female characters in the entire series.

And I am terrible at introductions. It's such a challenge to find the right description and the right first words for a character who, in your head, is the one that holds down your entire narrative and the one that readers (especially female readers) should see as the heroine of the whole adventure.

That's a lot of weight on the shoulders of a character whose first scene involves her hurrying onto a train dressed like a bag lady. I want to avoid the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope that has gobbled and consumed most cinematic female characters and their on-screen development, but it's become such a huge part of the collective conscious. I'm beginning to think most readers expect some type of dream girl to come along and whisk away the male lead into a new frame of mind. To be fair, there is a character like that in the following chapters, but it's a male who's roughly 800 years old.

I want this female character to be dark. She's not manic. She's dark, intellectual, and probably hates the word twee and any creative manifestation that involves cute things. She's like Ripley from Alien in glasses, or a punk rock Hermione Granger who reads history books not to learn information, but because they're full of war, violence and death.



I think I'm subconsciously afraid to bring such a strong female character into a lineup that's recently been populated by characters like Bella from Twilight and even the pseudo-tough Katniss from Hunger Games. I don't want her to be an everywoman because that's a position my lead character is currently filling. I want her to awaken feelings and directions that girls rarely see in themselves.

Again, that's asking a lot from a sixteen-year-old character. I spent yesterday hammering out her first conversation with the lead and while it's not perfect, it's a good start. Honestly, they seem to have more chemistry than I thought they would, and that makes it much easier to continue. I just have a feeling that if there's one portion of this novel that I end up rewriting a thousand times, it's going to be this one.