Author and Journalist Resa Nelson on How IMPACT helped give her characters confidence
Award-Winning Science Fiction/Fantasy Novelist Resa Nelson is a veteran IMPACT graduate. Her most recent book The Dragonslayer's Sword was published this year. As a writer, she has worked to create powerful and self-confident characters and explains how her experience of learning to protect herself helped her develop confidence in her writing and her life. I’m a Boston-area novelist and a longtime IMPACT graduate, going back to the days when it was first known as Model Mugging. I took my first course when a security guard at work repeatedly harassed me – and after I completed that course, he never bothered me again. At the time, I was beginning to sell short fiction, but I had one serious problem. Before IMPACT, I had a victim mentality, always thinking things like “poor me” and “if only…”
A fellow writer once told me that the fictional characters you create can only be as psychologically healthy as you are, which makes sense to me. Before IMPACT, my characters were like me: weak and passive. But IMPACT transformed me. It helped me understand that I’m in charge of my own life. It made me more willing to take risks. Instead of sitting back and waiting for things to go my way, I learned how to take charge and take action.
Until I became strong and heroic in my own life, none of the characters I created could be strong or heroic, because I needed to learn and experience how someone with those traits thinks and believes and acts.
But having that range of experience – from victim to fighter – means I’m able to write novels about characters undergoing that same transformation. For example, my first novel is about a female blacksmith. When she’s a girl, she believes she’s a monster because her skin is covered in scars as the result of being chewed up and spit out by a dragon. She grows up to become a blacksmith and loves her work – but then her world falls apart and she must find the courage not only to survive but to rise up and become a hero. She sometimes finds herself in situations where she must defend herself. Even though she doesn’t have the exact skills taught in IMPACT courses, she’s resourceful, creative, and mindful of the decisions she makes when she fights.
Readers often tell me how much they love my characters. Every time I write a new novel, my characters are a reflection of many things I learned from my IMPACT training, from understanding my own worth to setting boundaries to fighting back when necessary. My mission as a novelist is to keep writing books that feature strong, heroic women.
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