If damsels in distress or heroines who only talk about their clothes and suitors make you want to throw the book across the room, you should check out PLW panel at the History Quill on February 8th.

Women were always resilient and intelligent, but authors did not portray them that way. In much of classical literature, female characters were shown as a decoration or shamed for their sexuality. But how should authors write historical fiction without making their protagonists too perfect and unbelievably modern? The PLW panelists, Edie Kay, Kathryn Pritchett, and Alina Rubin, share their ideas.

We Girls Can Do Anything

What makes a character strong? Perhaps it’s her physical build. Women had fought in wars, and even successfully disguised themselves as soldiers and sailors. They worked in blacksmithing and construction, and even participated in brutal sports, such as prizefighting, like Edie Cay’s series The Blood is Up. There were women of untraditional professions that you can base your characters on.

Two Types of Strength

Perhaps your character is strong because she achieves an impressive feat. When the author shows a character reach an almost impossible goal, a feat unthinkable for a woman of her time, the readers become inspired. She navigates a ship through a storm, performs a surgery never attempted before, fights a fierce battle against a superior army; these are the types of strength most readers recognize. It’s represented by the graphic on the left.

There also exists a different kind of strength, less visible yet equally admirable. It’s the strength required to climb out of a hole, as shown on the graphic to the right. If your protagonist starts her journey at the bottom, her ascent to reach a safe place may require as much fortitude as climbing to the mountaintop. Through the eyes of such a character, readers learn about places often overlooked. In historical fiction, those could be an orphanage, a prison, or even an enslaved person’s hut. The readers acknowledge the resilience of the survivor, who escapes a desperate situation and builds a better life for herself and others.

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

Upper-class ladies had hobbies such as sewing, playing musical instruments, dancing and painting. There were also women who sailed, climbed mountains, or fenced. Some wrote novels or recorded scientific observations. Explore what your character could read, prepare in the kitchen, or hire a tutor to learn. But there’s also nothing wrong with traditional women’s work, and it should not be dismissed. If your heroine pursues an adventurous hobby, please don’t allow her to laugh at her friends who like knitting. She can embroider and collect herbs. She can enjoy piano and hiking.

Want to Learn More?

This is only a preview of our panel that contains much more information. Will your heroines pass The Baechdel Test and The Sexy Lamp test? How many times should your protagonist fail before she succeeds? How can you weave in the stories of your ancestors into your novels? How to avoid anachronisms and still have your character be “a woman before her time”? If you want to learn more, register for the History Quill conference and attend Strong Women are not Anachronistic panel.

Your Turn!

Do you have a favorite strong woman in literature? Please share who she is in the comments!