{"id":31752,"date":"2018-01-05T10:07:32","date_gmt":"2018-01-05T15:07:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=31752"},"modified":"2018-01-05T10:07:32","modified_gmt":"2018-01-05T15:07:32","slug":"tansy-rayner-roberts-five-things-i-learned-writing-girl-reporter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2018\/01\/05\/tansy-rayner-roberts-five-things-i-learned-writing-girl-reporter\/","title":{"rendered":"Tansy Rayner Roberts: Five Things I Learned Writing Girl Reporter"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

From the award-winning author of\u00a0Cookie Cutter Superhero\u00a0and\u00a0Kid Dark Against the Machine\u00a0comes a brand new novella about girl reporters, superheroes, and interdimensional travel<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In a world of superheroes, supervillains, and a machine that can create them all, millennial vlogger and girl reporter Friday Valentina has no shortage of material to cover. Every lottery cycle, a new superhero is created and quite literally steps into the shoes of the hero before them–displacing the previous hero. While Fry may not be super-powered herself, she understands the power of legacy: her mother is none other than the infamous reporter Tina Valentina, renowned worldwide for her legendary interviews with the True Blue Aussie Beaut Superheroes and her tendency to go to extraordinary lengths to get her story.<\/em><\/p>\n

This time, Tina Valentina may have ventured too far.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Alongside Australia’s greatest superheroes–including the powerful Astra, dazzling Solar, and The Dark in his full brooding glory–Friday will go to another dimension in the hopes of finding her mother, saving the day, maybe even getting the story of a lifetime out of the adventure. (And possibly a new girlfriend, too.)<\/em><\/p>\n

I still have a lot to say about superheroes.<\/h2>\n

I talk about superheroes a lot, in my everyday life. My kids and borrowed kids have grown up in a world of superhero media and my longtime love of the genre has grown a lot over the last decade because of that.<\/p>\n

When I wrote \u201cCookie Cutter Superhero\u201d for the diverse YA anthology Kaleidoscope, I felt like that was my superhero story. It said a lot of things that were important to me, particularly about the role of women in super teams. It was short and punchy and done. Then I started to get comments about how much people wanted it to be a novel, which\u2026 okay, it\u2019s lovely, I\u2019m not going to whinge about that feedback. But I didn\u2019t want to write a novel about superheroes. That\u2019s why it was a short story.<\/p>\n

Then the Book Smugglers slipped under my defences, with their Year of the Superhero short story theme and it turned out I had one more superhero story in me: Kid Dark Against the Machine, a love letter to teen sidekicks.<\/p>\n

I was done. I was totally done. But then Ana and Thea asked me if I could write a novella set in the universe and\u2026 well. Okay. I still have a lot to say superheroes. But this time, I wanted to write about the women who report on superheroes, the love interests who don\u2019t actually get to punch robots. Friday Valentina and her mother fell into my head as if Lois Lane herself had thrown a typewriter at me.<\/p>\n

I may never be done writing about superheroes.<\/p>\n

Everyone has a little smashed avo to unpack.<\/h2>\n

I\u2019ve been making fun of the \u201cMillennials are killing\u2026\u201d memes for almost as long as they\u2019ve existed. Australia literally invented the story about how eating decadent brunches involving avocado toast was the reason that 20-somethings weren\u2019t starting mortgages as early as their parents did.<\/p>\n

A big part of Girl Reporter was about showing the generational divide in media\u2026 comparing an old school broadcast journalist\u2019s career to that of a young vlogger with all the social media at her fingertips.<\/p>\n

But I went too far. My editors pointed out that I had written myself into a binary corner in the first draft, with too much separation between new and old media as if they are different things (spoilers: it\u2019s all media). Worst of all, I\u2019d had Friday falling into the same habits as the older generation, sneering at the contribution of the younger women coming up after her.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d done the thing I usually criticized in others, going for the easy joke based on a stereotype. So that was embarrassing.<\/p>\n

Rewriting is a pain, but it feels good to make the universe better, even when it\u2019s your own fictional universe. Lift as you climb<\/em> became Friday\u2019s mantra.<\/p>\n

Sometimes you have to steal from yourself.<\/h2>\n

Readers of my fantasy novel Ink Black Magic will laugh at me when they get to the scene where our heroes are transformed into retro parodies of their own superhero costumes. I didn\u2019t realise I\u2019d copied myself until it was TOO LATE to take that scene out because I loved it too much.<\/p>\n

Kill your darlings? Pfft. I will defend my darlings to the death, even against myself. Fight me.<\/p>\n

Sex is easy\u2026<\/h2>\n

When my editors asked me to add a sex scene to tie the story up at the end, that part was easy. I adore writing sex scenes, and I wrote this one in a single sitting, without hesitation.<\/p>\n

I once read a \u2018how to\u2019 guide on writing sex that said a scene can either be sexy or funny, not both. I have pretty much made it my mission in life to prove that advice wrong with everything I write. You learn so much from characters when you see how they turn each other on, and you learn even more when you find out what makes them laugh.<\/p>\n

\u2026but Romance is hard.<\/h2>\n

Writing romantic storylines are agony for me. I admire romance so much in other people\u2019s books, but there\u2019s something in me that always wants to undercut the moment, to leap over the tension and tropes and pretend they don\u2019t exist. To skip to the good part, where the relationship is established and there are inside jokes and someone\u2019s making a cup of tea.<\/p>\n

Writing romance embarrasses me in a way that writing sex doesn\u2019t, and I don\u2019t know what that means about me as a writer! I\u2019m still working on it.<\/p>\n

What I do love to write is unromance. The characters that hook up because it\u2019s convenient and need an intervention to figure out they\u2019re genuinely into each other. The ones who aren\u2019t ready to make the leap of faith yet (and oops, too late, the story\u2019s over). The ones who admit they want to kiss each other right away, because who can be bothered with \u2018will they, won\u2019t they?\u2019 Given a choice between star-cross\u2019d lovers and the friends who stand on the sideline making fun of the star-cross\u2019d lovers, I\u2019ll take Beatrice and Benedick every time.<\/p>\n

The central emotional relationships in Girl Reporter are about family \u2013 Friday\u2019s baggage about her busy mother and unknown father, her intensely platonic \u2018you\u2019re my brother now, live with it\u2019 friendship with Griff. Her romance with one of the female superheroes sneaked into the margins of the story, playing it cool, pretending it was no big deal.<\/p>\n

(Turned out, it\u2019s kind of a big deal!)<\/p>\n

(I fell in love with them anyway)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s another sneaky romance in Girl Reporter too, which also manages to be both sweeping and epic. Trust me. You\u2019ll know it when you see it.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/p>\n

TANSY RAYNER ROBERTS is an award-winning writer of science fiction, fantasy, feminist essays, and humour. She lives in Tasmania, Australia, with her husband and 2 superhero daughters.<\/em><\/p>\n

Tansy Rayner Roberts: Website<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Girl Reporter: Amazon<\/span><\/a> | B&N<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the award-winning author of\u00a0Cookie Cutter Superhero\u00a0and\u00a0Kid Dark Against the Machine\u00a0comes a brand new novella about girl reporters, superheroes, and interdimensional travel In a world of superheroes, supervillains, and a machine that can create them all, millennial vlogger and girl reporter Friday Valentina has no shortage of material to cover. Every lottery cycle, a new […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-31752","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-8g8","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31752"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31753,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31752\/revisions\/31753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}