A Conversation With Chuck Wendig

On Thursday, I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Chuck Wendig following his appearance on campus.  For those of you scratching your heads over that name, Mr. Wendig is a New York Times bestselling novelist, blogger, screenwriter, and game designer.  He is most known for his work within the Star Wars universe, penning the Aftermath trilogy.  Wendig visited campus to share his story and experiences, as well as answer any questions the students in attendance may have had.  He was warm and candid, wickedly funny, and engaging.

I centered my interview around one of my favorite aspects of Wendig’s writing: the female characters.  In the Aftermath and Miriam Black novels, he offers to readers some of the strongest and refreshingly human female characters that I have seen in the genre from some time.  I wanted to start off by asking him why he feels it is important for this representation to be so prevalent.

He shared his observations of a recent visit at Comic Con, how the landscape of that culture is vastly changing yet the material represented is still “white and male…and straight.  The audience isn’t.”  He raises a fair point.  Gender, race, everything about Comic Con is far more diverse than it was in the past.  “There’s just a wild variety of people consuming material that is not really including them in it.”  Wendig is in the mindset that we should include these groups “in the work, so they can see themselves in it.”

I wanted to ask him for some advice on how writers should best utilize their talents in speaking out and asserting feminist and social justice issues: “I would just try and read a lot of women authors and see what they’re saying and doing…I would be careful not to fall into the trap of the ‘strong female character.’”  He also stresses that the main focus should be giving these characters their own agency in the story and not simply “kick ass.”

I concluded the interview by citing an important blog post that Wendig made in 2014 called “#HeForShe: Yes, I Am a Feminist” on his Terribleminds site.  In this post, he wrote a bit on the topic of “male allies” and how unintentionally harmful this stance may be; in the sense that nothing will get done when you sit on the sidelines.  One of my favorite sentences in this post states: “The correction of the imbalance isn’t about bringing men down, but lifting women up.”  I asked him what male feminists can do to help in the lifting and he feels that it is most important to “amplify the signal as opposed to overwhelming the signal.”  We agreed that men should always strive to help, but should never overpower women’s voices.  It’s not about “helping the little ladies along,” but more so doing what we can to dispel toxic masculine behaviors and boost the signals of change that feminists are broadcasting.

To learn more about Chuck Wendig and his works, visit http://terribleminds.com/ramble/ and I very much recommend his work in the Star Wars universe and the Miriam Black series for something a little more horror-centric!

Image Source: ladygeek.wordpress.com

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