I spend at least a little time each day looking at social media news and new stuff and track the most useful links here. If you enjoyed last week’s Pinterest Analytics post, are interested in using that social network more effectively, and have an hour where you need something to listen to, I recommend this webinar. Among other things, I found out why people do those long tall pictures/infographics (which was obvious once I thought about it, so everyone else in the world may have already figured that out).
So here’s some thoughts after spending some time poking at an app provided by Seomoz.org, Followerwonk, a Twitter Analytics tool.
So – why be interested in analytics of any kind, whether it’s Google, Pinterest, Facebook, or Twitter? Because numbers let you know what works and what doesn’t in driving traffic to your site. Figure out what works and do more of that. Figure out what doesn’t work and do less.
Followerwonk gives you a number to track, Social Authority, that measures your influence on Twitter. Its formula is based on three factors:
The retweet rate for a user’s last few hundred tweets
How recent those tweets were
A somewhat nebulous thing that Followerwonk explains as “A retweet-based model trained on user profile data), which I believe is their way of saying, “Part of our algorithm is hidden so users can’t game it, but there’s something there, really.”
Personally, I’m wondering whether someone favoriting your tweet has any influence. Based on what they’re saying here, it doesn’t, and it seems like it should.
But you don’t want to know your social authority score so much as someone else’s. Followerwonk is intended to help you identify followers with a high social authority score so you can target them with your message.
With that in mind, here are the main capabilities:
Search Twitter bios: Identify people with specific keywords in their bios or other traits such as number of followers, age of account (Followerwonk notes about this figure: “The age of an account is an interesting way to measure value. Users who have been on Twitter for a while are early adopters, and generally more valuable than newbies. As well, there is a higher percentage of spam accounts in newer user segments (as Twitter has not yet cleared them out).”), and Social Authority. This is actually pretty powerful. You can narrow things down by geographical location and set min/max number of tweets, followers, and following.
Compare users: Compare several Twitter users in terms of the users they follow or those who follow them. It’s certainly always nice to see a Venn diagram and know those days in math class learning what they are wasn’t wasted, but I don’t know that I found this report particularly useful, except that it did indicate I should be RTing and @connecting more.
Analyze followers: Here Followerwonk lets you analyze your or any other user’s followers or who is being followed. You can see them on a map, which is nifty, and I’ve included an example of one. I learned, unsurprising, that my largest group of followers occurs in the same geographical region I’m in, but also, surprisingly, that the next largest group is in the Southern United States. Other ways to sort them includes by gender, social authority rank, follower/following accounts, tweet numbers, language, the time they’re most active, as well as a couple of interesting word clouds generated through bio information.
Track followers: Changes to your social graph are presented in this tab, but only if you’re paying for this functionality. Otherwise all you can do is see this data for the Twitter user @followerwonk.
Sort followers: Again, paid functionality, which lets you sort a follower list by social authority, tweets, number following/followed by, and account age.
Here's a map generated through the Analyze followers tab. Note that there's several caveats, including "This is an inexact procedure and so some points may be mapped incorrectly." and that it's only looking at 5,000 followers. Still, there's some interesting, if perhaps not particularly actionable, data here.
As with many tools, here you’re been given a taste in order to persuade you to cough up for the paid version. If I had the budget for it, Followerwonk is definitely worth paying for, and it’s just part of the tools from a SEOMoz Pro membership – but they run $99 a month, which is going to be outside the reach for most people working on their own publicity. For a deeper look at Followerwonk, try Gianluca Fiorelli’s How I Use Followerwonk and Why I Love It.
Other Social Media Links of Interest:
I’m looking at this tool and will be writing it up in the future: Buffer, which lets you schedule Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and App.net with the free version, and up to twelve networks with the paid version.
Are you a writer interested in finding out how to effectively promote yourself via the Internet? Sign up for my Building an Online Presence for Writers class. It’s taught online via Google Hangouts and the next session is Sunday, 9:30-11:30 AM PST, July 14.
Want access to a lively community of writers and readers, free writing classes, co-working sessions, special speakers, weekly writing games, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
Want to get some new fiction? Support my Patreon campaign.
"(On the writing F&SF workshop) Wanted to crow and say thanks: the first story I wrote after taking your class was my very first sale. Coincidence? nah….thanks so much."
~K. Richardson
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Guest Post from Anne Leonard: Writing "Strong Female Characters" in a Patriarchal Secondary World Fantasy
In Dorothy Dunnett’s sixth book, Checkmate, we get this passage:
She had been led into behaving like a female. And she was being dismissed as a female. But she had charge of his good name, although he might not know it; and she had work to do, although, like a fool she had lost sight of it.
Here we see the character of Philippa Somerville in all her complexity: determined, strong, imperfect, aware of her role in her culture and refusing to be limited by it. Philippa is a prime example of the “strong female character” existing in a patriarchal world, and although the novel is historical rather than fantasy, it and its companions have a lot to teach about writing strong women without giving up the conventions of a patriarchal social structure.
Yes, this is another post about writing “strong female characters.” I am coming to this issue from the position of someone who likes traditional epic fantasy with pseudo-medieval (or at least pre-industrial) cultures. This is my comfort read, and it is what I like to write. This is partly because that was what I grew up on, partly because I’m enough of a romantic to still have a soft spot for heroes, and partly because I like to interrogate that social structure. For me, interesting female characters are the ones who have to face social oppression ““ the same social oppression I do ““ and who fight against it within the limitations of their own beliefs about their roles. Feminist fantasy with matriarchal or egalitarian societies isn’t as interesting to me as a writer because it avoids the very problems I want to get my teeth into ““ what is a woman to do when oppressed? What if she doesn’t know she’s oppressed?
Agency
One of the problems faced by fantasy writers who consider themselves feminist but like to write about secondary worlds based on historically patriarchal cultures is the disconnect between the oppressive culture and the strength of the female characters. This disconnect is why people tend to fall into the assumption that a strong female character has to be a Brienne of Tarth, acting like a man.
That assumption leads to the argument that a strong female character is not historically accurate. Under this logic, because there aren’t lots of historical episodes of women going around acting like epic heroes, there’s no need for a strong female character in epic fantasy. Aside from the silliness of saying fantasy has to be historically accurate, the problem with this argument is that there are lots of different kinds of strong women in history. What makes a woman a strong character is not her physical prowess (though it could be); it’s her agency. The character’s agency is where the clash between oppression and strength is negotiated.
Consider The Handmaid’s Tale; most of Offred’s narrative is describing how she is being subjugated in Gilead and remembering what it was like before. She’s not fighting back or leading a revolution. No one would say she’s not a strong female character, though, because she has voice, feelings, thoughts, memories, and choices. Her agency is internal, in how she responds to the situation in which she is caught. (And if you haven’t read The Handmaid’s Tale, why not? Go read it!) Even if the character accepts the stereotypically gendered roles of her culture, she has to make decisions, and these decisions have to have consequences. This is almost a basic rule of writing, regardless of the character. Something needs to be at stake to move her story forward.
Examples
Some of the best examples of dealing with the disconnect between a patriarchal power structure and a strong female character are historical novels about real women with real power. The Lymond Chronicles (6 books, beginning with The Game of Kings) by Dorothy Dunnett are far and away my favorites.
Set in Scotland, England, France, Turkey, Russia, and some other places during the period between Henry VIII’s death and Elizabeth I’s accession to the crown, Dunnett’s books are amazing for their historical detail, storytelling, intelligence, and characters. In the fourth book, Pawn in Frankincense, Dunnett writes one of the most devastating scenes that I have ever read, leaving George R.R. Martin looking cuddly by comparison. (The books can be read individually, but the reading experience will be much richer taking them in sequence.)
The women’s stories include the growth of Philippa Somerville, a gentleman farmer’s daughter, from child to adult; the consequences of a love affair 30 years past; estrangement between a mother and her son; the unhappiness of a young merchant woman who despise herself and the people around her; and a woman who endures abuse because of her devotion to the cause of an independent Ireland. One woman is a courtesan who has considerable power over powerful men. Several women are queens or courtiers. These books show how women with power wield it (the mother of Mary Queen of Scots is described as having “the thick oils of statesmanship” oozing through her veins), and they also present women who don’t necessarily have political or legal power but have power of personality and rich, complicated lives.
Significantly, the women are not all likeable. (Nor are the male characters, for that matter.) Mary Tudor comes off as rather pathetic, Margaret Douglas is scheming and power-mad, the Dame de Doubtance is a creepy astrologer without a shred of empathy. The younger Philippa is at times frustrating to read because she is absolutist who makes some bad decisions with significant consequences. The strong female character doesn’t have to be the heroine. She doesn’t have to be perfect. But she does have agency, and her choices matter.
These women also aren’t the sixteenth century equivalent of suffragettes or bra-burners. They don’t question the sexual double standard, they don’t don armor and go to battle, they don’t talk about being oppressed or fight overtly against it. (And yes, in one sense it’s kind of absurd to talk about a queen being oppressed ““ but on the other hand, it’s quite clear that no one is very comfortable with power lying in a woman.) While some of them engage in activities that don’t fit our idea of what women did in the sixteenth century, that’s only a part of them. They are living full and complex lives within the patriarchal society, rather than rebelling. A strong female character can, like Philippa, be aware of being “led into behaving like a female” and put that behind her without questioning her internalized conception of being a female. A strong female character is something feminist readers want, but the character doesn’t have to be a feminist to fit the bill.
Dunnett is not the only writer of historical fiction with strong and interesting female characters. Here are a few recent other books which should satisfy anyone looking for “historical accuracy” in trying to decide what role women should play in epic fantasy:
Hild, by Nicola Griffith. This is based upon the life of the woman who became St. Hilda of Whitby. Set in 7th century Britain, the book is thick with historical and physical detail. It presents the life of women who are family of the Anglo-Saxon kings, including slaves and women of lower rank. Hild is a mystic who both does women’s domestic tasks and leads men in battle. She is bisexual; she is listened to by men but is forced into a marriage; she has complicated relationships with the people around her.
Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood, by Patricia Bracewell. These two books are about Emma of Normandy, who in 1002 was married as a teenager to AEthelred the Unready and became a queen of England. In many ways Emma does not have power compared to the men around her, but she fights for what she can get and she uses it. She is a survivor — she was a Queen of England for over 30 years, to two different kings.
Theodora ““ Empress, Actress, Whore and The Purple Shroud, by Stella Duffy. These two books chronicle the life of Theodora from her childhood as a sex slave to her death as the Empress of Byzantium in 548. The title The Purple Shroud refers to a speech made by Theodora which is said to have inspired Justinian to put down a revolt rather than to flee Constantinople. Theodora is an interesting character because of how she rises through the social ranks and because of her forceful personality.
Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel. Although these books are largely the story of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to Henry VIII, they include as characters Catherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Jane Seymour, and Cromwell’s wife and sister. They depict the ways women interact with powerful men. The relationship between Cromwell and his wife Liz is nicely drawn, and Liz, like Dunnett’s Philippa Somerville, is a good example of a woman on the fringes of political power who has her own agency.
Sharon Kay Penman has written too many historical novels about English royal families for me to list here, but her first, The Sunne in Splendour, is notable for its portrayal of Anne Neville, wife of Richard III, which is almost 180 degrees from Shakespeare’s portrayal of the same. Edward IV’s wife Elizabeth Woodville is also a strong ““ and unlikeable – character. Penman’s novel When Christ and His Saints Slept is about Matilda of England (Empress Maude) and her war to gain the English crown in the early to mid 12th century.
In sum, the writer of epic fantasy can keep full-blown patriarchal power structures and ideologies as part of the world-building. But history is rife with stories about women in such worlds who also have power, agency, and complex lives. Putting such characters into the epic fantasy world is only going to enrich and deepen it.
Bio: Anne Leonard has been writing fantasy and other fiction since she was fourteen and finally, after a career with as many detours as Odysseus, published her first novel, Moth and Spark, in 2014. She has a lot of letters after her name that are useful when trying to impress someone. She lives in Northern California. Her website is www.anneleonardbooks.com. She can be found on Twitter at @anneleonardauth and on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/anneleonardbooks.
Done at PenguinCon, but alas I don't have the name of the artist!It’s the last week of 2011, a year that has, like most of them, had its good and bad moments. I remain hopeful about the future, and glad to be in this world, and I look forward to seeing what happens in 2012. I plan to fill it with writing, editing, and teaching. (And a certain amount of reading and playing video games and that sort of thing.)
Speaking of the productive part of those goals, I just sent off the last batch of feedback to someone on their NanoWriMo novel. I’ll remind folks that this is the last week to do so if you want to take advantage of my editing offer for NaNoWriMo novels mentioned here: http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/2011/12/06/nanowrimo-what-now/
A couple of people have asked about my doing an edit of their stories for workshops like Clarion West or Clarion. I am willing to do a look over of the developmental edit type, where I suggest to you what needs to be amplified, eliminated, or otherwise changed, but I won’t do a sentence by sentence one, since you need to be getting in on your own merits, in my opinion.
Next week I’ll be announcing the next round of classes – stay tuned for some cool possibilities (in my opinion!)
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