Next week I’m leading a 2 hour workshop at Sirens Studio, the 2 day pre-Sirens Conference workshop. AND I NEED YOUR HELP!

(if you can get yourself to Denver next week you can buy a membership at the door for Sirens Conference, Oct 8 – 11–Rae Carson, Yoon Ha Lee, and myself are Guests of Honor.)

Here’s the description of the workshop:

“It all happened TO her, not BECAUSE of her:” Writing Past Defaults.

We all carry societal baggage about gender roles into our writing. That’s inevitable. In this workshop intensive, Kate will analyze how authors (including herself!) who are consciously attempting to expand and center roles for women may unconsciously undermine their female characters by sliding sideways into stereotyped personalities or behaviors and work. Often, male characters act within the plot while women characters—even as the central figures—may be given reactive roles. We’ll discuss typical fantasy gender defaults, ways in which authors who may seem to be subverting them aren’t always, and how to turn around these insidious messages to more fully write women characters as they really are, and have been, in the world.

Here’s where YOU come in. Yes, YOU!

I’m hoping all you well-read readers can come up with examples of girl/women characters in (preferably well known) fantasy novels who

fit typical gender defaults and why

and ALSO examples who

seem to subvert gender defaults but when examined closely actually fall into some default-ish behaviors or character elements (and why)

and examples who

actually subvert gender defaults (and why)

I welcome any other comments on the subject as well. Thank you in advance, crowd-sourcing friends and colleagues! I can only do so much reading research and I want to cast through as many examples as possible.