It's also possible for any author to write a weak female character and not just men. The Twilight books and 50 Shades of Grey have been criticized by many for having weak female characters, or so the readers thought. Those books were written by females though. One critic I remember thought that Scarlet O'Hara of Gone with the Wind was weak, and that was also written by a woman author. As a guy though who likes to write though and want to get better, even though women are also people, there are certain ways they may behave compared to men. For example, in certain types of work environments or situations, a lot of women do behave differently compared to how some men would, unless you want a more peculiar woman character.
I've always had the same hang-ups as the OP about writing women, but I think you make a great point here. I'm guessing that (with obvious exceptions) a passage could be picked at random from most books, and the 'he's' be replaced with 'she's' and it still sound fine. In fact, you could do just this and see for yourself. Pick up a book now, find some action and make the swap. See how it sounds.
I want to thank you for posting this up, because this is the quote that completely changed how I depicted characters of the opposite gender. I used to have male characters that were flat and uninteresting. Almost brain dead. When I read this internet meme, I decided to write like they were normal people with goals, motives and conflicts: in other words, just like I write my female characters. Now they were being written with intelligence and could act, not just sit there and drool, but as believable characters. And what's more, they actually have major roles in advancing the plot, rather than just being the person the girl bounces thoughts off of. A lot of times, they even know more and can be more capable in certain areas than my MC! Now I more than just like my male characters. I love my male characters.
I write male characters the same way that I write any other sort of character that I have not actually been, I am not a mother or full time teach yet, nor do I live in Utah, but my current main character does, so I observe characters and real life people alike who are more like her, their behavior, their attitudes, their speech patterns, than I am and mesh that with my own personality (or whatever sort of personality I'm going for) and then I write
There are two issues here, one, how you portray the character's traits, and two, how you portray the character's story. Twilight didn't suffer from poorly portraying Bella. She wasn't a flat character, she was compassionate, likeable, not pretentious. Where the character failed was in her story. She was college bound with no career goals, besides self sacrifice for her mother's benefit, her claim to fame was having a boyfriend. Her accomplishment was supposedly giving up her human life for eternal life, young, beautiful, rich... Meyer tried to make it look like a big sacrifice, mainly because she wouldn't be able to have kids and grow old (your family would die before you) and Edward was convinced his soul was lost (it wasn't convincing). The bottom line, Bella was not the best example of a good female role model. The book I'm currently reading (Winner's Curse) has the character gender down OK, but the characters read as being older than they are supposed to be. It's like the author chose 17 and 19 because that was the going age for YA, but the characters act like they are in their mid-twenties. There have been a few sexist tropes like the guy wins the game the gal was supposed to be very good at, but it's smoothing out a bit. I'll withhold judgement until I finish it. If you pick the right character for the story, that's half the battle. If you pick the right story that you think represents the character's gender as you want to write it, that's the other half. Then all you have to do is write a believable, three-dimensional character and the gender will likely take care of itself. I don't agree with the mantra, just write the character. Men and women do differ, sometimes subtly, sometimes more profoundly. We differ in our struggles, I can guarantee you my struggles differ from those of most men. We differ in how we approach things, and we can differ in what we want in life though on that one there is more overlap than on the first two. But writing any character requires you get out of your skin and into theirs be they older, younger, a different gender, different culture, you name it. We are always writing characters that differ from us. That they are a different gender may not be any more difficult than writing a character that is not your age.
That's an excellent point, and spot-on, in my opinion. Unless you're writing a fictional autobiography in first person, you will need to assume the voice of somebody who is not you. Your characters can be of a different time period, a different age group, a different race, nationality, social class, profession, personality ...or gender. All of these differences from yourself will take research, and all of them can be turned into believable characters if you're observant, and if you recognise—and dump—any stereotypes you might hold dear.
I simply think of all characters as being one of four personality types. The ones I learned bear a striking resemblance to those found on the workAwesome site. We're trained from the time we're little to think certain genders have an exclusive on certain personality types, but it's just not so. Think about Summer Glau, Goldie Hawn, Sandra Bullock and Lucille Ball. Four very different personalities. Then think of Jim Parsons, Nathan Fillion, Leonard Nimoy and Robin Williams. Same four personality types and in the same order as the women I mentioned in the first set. The first four may be all women and the second, all men, but Glau and Parsons are far closer personality-wise than Glau and any of the other women. Same for Hawn and Fillion, Bullock and Nimoy as well as Ball and Williams. Where gender comes in is in deciding what's important to the character. For those things, you can resort to stereotype because if you're filling in the rest of the character with one of the personality types and sketching in sound motivation, no one will really care.
That is so true. As an INTP male, I have a much harder time putting myself in the shoes of an ESFJ male character than an INTP female character.
That's where observation comes in. You know people of each personality type; I guarantee it. Figure out which of those people in your life are which personalities and observe how they react to various things. This is best done as a pure observer rather than you throwing things at them to see how they'll behave. Keeps you out of the line of fire, too.
Personally. I always sort of see gender as a vacuum at first. I create a character with a point. I then think what aspects did they have to naturally reach that point. Then with sort of a beginning and an end for them. I ask what are the natural assumptions I would make about this person? I usually assign gender last based on what I mentally picture. I say this because I think the question of "What would a woman do in this situation" is a leading question in a very bad way. I am a male. As far as I am aware you are a male. Yet there are hundreds of situations in which I bet we would react differently. The gender aspect seems to me to hold very little weight. Though I will admit that people of different genders are treated differently and taking those differences into account is important but the question I think should still be more "What would this character do in this situation?" Questions about gender should be in a different tone if you ask me. Such as "Would this character have been treated this way based on her being a girl?" Is also a fair question. Since the character is a girl asking if people around her treat her differently based on that is a fair question. If those differences cause her to behave differently in a situation are also fair but I consider it important to remember all these steps other wise you can get stuck in the idealism of treating a character as a stereotype rather than a person. Which is the problem I think you are talking about. If that makes sense?
All of my characters, whatever gender are people I know or have known, or a blend of people that I know or have known. So if the character is female, she is a composite of women I've known. My guess is that we all do this, whether or not it is on a conscious level. But for me I actually have someone or several people in mind while visualizing and creating my character. I would venture that a writer's ability to create a character of whatever gender is based largely on observational and empathetic skills.
Step 1. write a male character. Step 2. make that male character female. The only people who would complain about a woman being "too masculine" are staunch supporters of gender roles or man-hating feminists who despise masculinity, neither of whom should be catered to.
Write what you think is correct then have your sister, a female friend, co-worker, etc. have a look. They'll tell you if your spot on, somewhat close, or off the reservation. Just don't get stuck, it's incidental at the moment, right? Keep writing and when you have a chance to bend a female ear, do so. For a moment there, I summoned the powers of Ann Landers, I think.
Well there is the Melvin Udall approach in As Good as it Gets: Receptionist: "How do you write women so well?" Melvin Udall: "I think of a man. Then I take away reason, and accountability." Though that probably is not the way to go. Just write them as a person. If you get stuck ask a woman(or women) to read the parts you get stuck on. To see what they think about your portrayal of their gender in your writings. If that fails then I guess you should be like Melvin Udall.
I'm going to step out of writing for a second and say this is a very misinformed post. Men and women are different. Not just in literature but in the real world. I'm not talking about gender roles, but how they think. This is a fact. It is science and science is not politically correct. It is not support of gender roles to say this, nor is it supporting man-hating feminism. In research of this very question I asked here I have done a lot of research on the topic and have found heavy science behind the differences between the genders. And as for literature, it is supposed to reflect reality and in reality there are people who support gender roles and man-hating feminism. If these are ignored in literature it feels less real, breaks suspension of disbelief, and becomes flawed.
Hi tans, I think the original question was related to "how does a man write a woman character"? Your post only points out the difficulty of such a task, not a resolution. So, given that I am a man (the pig that I am ), how can I better write of and speak for a female character without letting my piggish way come through. My thought was to let ( the girl: 1) Be powerful, 2) Not clumsy -- she doesn't fall when she runs (like in horror movies), 3) Have her retorts be as brutal as a mans, 4) Have HER have a self-interest -- not always be relegated to some nurturing position. This could be that she uses men for her own sexual pleasure. Or she dominates in other ways, 5) Have her have her own voice, -- don't pigeonhole her into what a man thinks she might say, 6) Not think of her as weak -- but engage her strengths. 7) And, finally, don't let her need rescue ----
But that research shows general trends in the way the different genders think, in very specific cultures (in which the study was carried out) at a very specific moment in time. They are not very useful for predicting how one particular individual will react in a situation. This is especially true if your story is set in another world or another time. In my opinion, it's much more important to think of our characters as products of their environment rather than hard-wired to react a certain way. Boys and girls are treated very different by society from the moment they're born, and that constant reinforcement of certain expectations shapes us far more than biological differences. When considering how a character would react to something, you think about their past experiences and their motivations in life and their relationship with the other people involved in the situation. You don't look at a scientific journal to see how 71% of men react in a similar situation.
For my fiction I like a strong, silent woman with big hands, thick jaw-bone, and she works in construction. My construction woman lets actions do the talking. But guys, they just sit around, watch soap opera, reality TV. They make me sick, match stick men tend babies in the crib, losers. 'Get out the house,' I say, when I gets back from construction, 'and get a job.' Then I has me a beer, play with my titties and my X-box.
I always just focus on their personality, the sort of person they are. When I'm writing a male character, I don't focus on his penis and what it means to have one. I just focus on his personality. Thusly, I write my female characters the same way. They have breasts, big whoop. They don't care, they don't think on it. I don't care either. Unless they were breastfeeding a newborn, the fact that my female characters have breasts doesn't really matter. And this is just me being modest, but I shy away from describing private parts. Which is why I'm probably never going to have a female character who is breastfeeding her newborn children. I would like my readers to not suddenly be focused on her breasts thank you. I remember a site long ago that critiqued Paolini's books chapter by chapter. In one of the chapters, he kept describing a women's breasts, how it heaved, her placing her hand on them, etc. He focused a lot of her character development around her breasts. The critic's response was, “Yes, Paolini. We get it, she has boobs. Now how about a bit of her personality?”
I like your response in regards to a certain kind of protagonist, but it sounds very limited. If I write a story with fifteen people in it with this criteria, won't it seem a bit limited? Not women mind you, but people, both men and women. Out of those fifteen men and women, what are the odds they are all powerful, not clumsy, and brutal speaking? Also, if that is the female protagonist template expected of authors, wouldn't that start to seem cookie cutter? And the part I bolded. That one has always bothered me. In certain kinds of story a rescue is needed, that's just how it is. A kidnap, a murder mystery, action/adventure, fantasy, horror, bank robbery, whatever. Based on scientific limitation of sexes, you only have two options on what sex will be rescued. By today's politically correct standards only a man can need rescuing apparently or you will accused of being a sexist author who writes 'damsel in distress' stories that propagate the weakness of women. But in reality, it doesn't matter how strong a person is , it doesn't make them weak to need to be rescued.
I think it's absolutely fine to have a woman be rescued by a man, as long as she couldn't rescue herself. If she's just sitting around crying and the man whirls in and saves her, ugh. Good protagonists need to do whatever they can do, within mental and physical limitations, to help themselves. If she can't get out of the situation despite her best efforts, and there is something different about the man that means he can, I think that's fine. Even if that thing is being physically stronger.
Exactly, if there was some obvious reason why she couldn't get herself out, and the rescuer happens to be a man, that's fine. If it's, as you said, her sitting down crying her eyes out when she could be trying to escape somehow, or the man barges in and acts all 'IM A MAHN WATCH ME SAVE JOO!!', then no. Don't go there. Protagonists sometimes need to be saved, be they a man or a woman. It just has to be done well so no one wonders why the protagonist couldn't just save him/herself.
I'm pretty safe there, but mostly because those are cliche more than any kind of worry about sexism. I've raised a feminist, married a feminist, and was raised by a feminist. Three, all from different generations, and very distinct and different views and goals in regards to feminism. The odds of me writing a "damsel in distress" are fairly slim, my worries that prompted this thread in the first place don't lie in that direction. Instead I just worry that a character I write, powerful or not, won't seem female to the reader. I've read too many books from authors who obviously just write a character without regard to this kind of thing and just slap a sex to their character. It may be perfectionism or a vain worry, but there you go.
True. Admittedly, I'm one of those authors because I care more about having strong characters and a plot rather than what sex parts they have. Not all men and women are the same. I've got plenty of female and male characters who aren't big badasses who spouts classy one-liners before unleashing a can of epic assbeating in addition to said epic badasses. With the characters, I focus more on the personality, their skills, their interests/hobbies, their experience, etc. Remember, these are supposed to be people, not cardboard cut-outs. That said, my fantasy novel does open up to my female badass assassin MC discussing perfume smell with another female character. Make of that what you will.
