Patio Snakes and Ravioli: Exploring Characters Through the Lens of Sapphic Romance
In this post, Fay and Karelia Stetz-Waters share the benefits of exploring characters through the lens of Sapphic romance, including how to Venn diagram your way to more interesting characters and a few Sapphic romance book recommendations.
In our household someone has to hand roll the butternut squash ravioli and brown the butter for the sage sauce. Someone has to get the snakes off the patio before the cook-out guests arrive. In our household there are no pink jobs or blue jobs. Our household tasks usually fall neatly into our hobbies and habits. Karelia has loved snakes since she put them in her dollhouse (sadly without gaining their consent). I haven’t worn a dress since I was eight, but put me in the kitchen and I am the lesbian Martha Stewart (minus the obstruction of justice charges).
In our sapphic relationship we are Fay and Karelia, two halves of a real life opposites attract Sapphic romance. One of the vows we made to ourselves 25 years ago was to always remember that we came to each other, and we remain unique individuals. Karelia’s been writing Sapphic romance for years and I’ve recently joined as co-author of Second Night Stand, a romance novel about a Black ballerina and a White burlesque performer who fall in love on a reality TV show. (The term Sapphic romance replaces the more limited term lesbian romance.) In many ways, Second Night Stand reads like a heterosexual romance. We’ve got the meet-cute, the forced-proximity tropes, the third-act breakup, and the happily-ever-after.
But one important thing distinguishes Sapphic romance from its heterosexual cousin: flexibility around gender roles. No one is immune to gender expectations. They’re omnipresent and normalized. But when we put two women together, we have to challenge those expectations. Just acknowledging that society has expectations around patio snakes and browned butter loosens the stranglehold gender “norms” have on our culture.
Karelia teaches creative writing. In one exercise, she has her students develop their characters using a Venn diagram. Gender expectations for men in the blue circle. Gender expectations for women in the pink circle. The manlier the man or the more traditionally feminine the woman, the smaller the sliver of purple in the middle.
But the purple is the most interesting part. In the blue and pink, characters obey society’s rules. In the purple, they bend them.
Most fiction writers are familiar with character questionnaires. What’s the character’s favorite breakfast cereal? Can they change a tire? Even if these details don’t appear in the book, they give us insight into characters.
I recommend taking one of these questionnaires and placing a checkmark next to the questions with gender connotations. Breakfast cereal is still gender neutral. (I’m already thinking of arguments to the contrary.) Changing a tire is a blue job.
With our Venn diagrams and questionnaires in hand, we can explore who our characters would be if they stepped outside gender expectations. How do gender expectations hurt them? Help them? Confine them? Answer those questions, and you know a lot about your characters.
Check out Karelia and Fay Stetz-Waters' Second Night Stand here:
(WD uses affiliate links)
And choosing character traits that press at the edges of gender “norms” creates more engaging characters. Who is more interesting: the debutante who spends her days shopping, or the debutante who spends her days playing first-person shooter games?
And that super-manly rancher who supposedly rejects the confines of society? In fact, he’s kind of a conformist. Society’s rules bind him so tightly he’d never dream of wearing floral-printed pajamas.
But because gender expectations are so ingrained in our culture, they can be hard to see. The fish doesn’t know the water it swims in. Reading and writing Sapphic romance forces us to peek over the wall built by gender expectations. In a same-sex couple there is no rule about patio-snakes. We have to negotiate patio-snake removal based on who we are, not who we’re expected to be. Karelia’s affinity for snakes symbolizes her childhood in the forest. I show my love through cooking because my unloving mother did not.
Reading Sapphic romance (and its brother male-male romance and books featuring trans characters) can help writers envision more interesting characters and explore the emotional depths of the characters we’ve created. Ultimately, breaking away from gender expectations–or at least examining them to see if they work for us–can lead to happier, healthier lives as writers and as everyday people.
Be happier and healthier and dive into your next romance. We recommend:
That Summer Feeling, by Bridget Morrissey
Cleat Cute, by Meryl Wilsner
The 7-10 Split, by Karmen Lee
No Shelter But the Stars, by Virginia Black
Ambassadors of real-life happily-ever-after Fay and Karelia Stetz-Waters have been together for 23 years. They live in Albany, Oregon, with their pug-mix Willa Cather and a garden full of dragonflies and hummingbirds. Their writing process involves many afternoons spent at local coffee shops and brewpubs outlining scenes, going over drafts, and high-fiving each other. The process works beautifully. Second-Night Stand is their first novel together but definitely not their last.
