Do you usually write about the same gender?

That's how I do it. If the MC's a lady, then the MC's a lady. If the MC's a dude, then it's a dude.

 

Do you usually write about the same gender?

No.

 

My main characters are always the same sex as me. Supporting characters are both, but I like to think in terms of personality types rather than sex.

 

I can only write in a male POV or male third person for I am male. My stories generally have no females at all and if they do, they're basically high agility low strength characters, idk why but I've always regarded females with higher agility, and males with higher strength. I haven't had a single female acquaintance, so I cannot develop a proper female POV.

 

I have 6 female characters and 4 male characters in my first story. So no.

 

I know I certainly do that. I refer to my characters as my "imaginary friends" and I'm only half joking. Most of them are people who would interest me as friends, and while I've had many good male friends, I have generally gotten along better with women. More specifically, I tend to find women more interesting than men in the intellectual sense, which makes them more compelling people to hang out with - and makes me more curious about how they operate. Hence, the characters in my writing do skew heavily female.

I think another part of it is that I don't find the male mind particularly interesting - probably because I already have one and understand how it works (and have male friends that divulge how theirs works in some detail that obviously most women would never tell me), so I have very little curiosity about it. That, and from an art standpoint, society gives women a lot more options in terms of dress, accessories, makeup, hair, use of color, etc. I've noticed that I do start a lot of my descriptions with clothes, hair, etc - lot's of my characters express themselves outwardly to reflect their inner reality. You can do this within the strictures of how we expect men to dress (I do it in my personal life by purposefully wearing suits/ties in colors and styles that differ from my co-workers) but it's a lot easier and a lot more common for women. So in that sense female characters are a lot more easy for me to "customize" and make interesting in terms of "painting" them for the reader.

 

The main character in my second book is a male. Gender is the least of my worries. I'll switch if the story calls for it. But I'm comfortable with writing for both.

 

I am more or less comfortable with both genders, though depending on the kind of story, I lean more toward one or the other. Like any romance stories, I'll write male MCs. For any other, female MCs. I don't know WHY that would be.
Maybe a sort of "genre" revenge? It works well enough as a system for me.

 

That's really interesting. The vast majority of romances are written from a female's POV, probably because the majority (but not as much of a majority as most people think!) of romance readers are female.

 

I can't write a female main character, especially not in the first-person. I think I do this because of my sensibilities towards feminism in general. Women have lives a lot different than what I lead, and my wife lets me know this regularly. I can write about her but I can't write as her.

That said, there are certainly a lot of great things over the years written by men who have female MCs. I think my favorite is Daniel Clowes' graphic novel Ghost World. That was spectacular.

 

I'd say no, since almost all of my novels have a female character as the POV. However, most of my short stories have male POV characters...but my short stories are usually just experiments, idea farms, throwaways, etc, so I don't know how much they count.

I think for me it comes from a lack of good female main characters in my reading and my desire to create the leading ladies I feel are missing from the mainstream. Though I think that @Mckk, @jannert, and @Commandante Lemming are all onto something as well--if I'm going to spend 80-100k words with the same person, I'd rather it be with a cool female character I'd be into in the real world than with some dude. It makes a certain amount of sense.

 

After a rough calculation based on the most prominent characters in my current writing projects I seem to have a 2 male to 1 female character ratio. I'm male. I was expecting a more even distribution, but I'm not really bothered, as I'm confident I have no particular habit of making every protagonist/antagonist/sidekick/ romantic interest /mentor/boss/friend male or female. A large number of my most prominent, powerful and likable characters are female. And I have no problem with writing a story that has essentially exclusively either male or female characters if the story calls for that. 'Twas a fun topic to think about, though.

 

I'm a guy but the majority of my main characters are female.
I just like women, what can I say?

 

My WIP is 5 character's POVs. 3 Female, 2 Male. I am male. The balance is still there, but it is always a challenge to find it.

 

Sexist.

 

It's only sexist if there's sexist intent. Coincidence is not sexist. It can definitely be unfortunate, but still.

 

The truth is that it's pretty weird to condemn someone for choosing to portray certain races or genders. People complain all the time that there aren't enough x, y or z characters. It's not really the creator's responsibility to tailor to certain audiences. An author writes what he wants to. So if you recognize an apparent shortcoming, you should remedy that by writing your own book about it. That's one of the biggest motivators for writing anyway. Write what you've always wanted to read.
I lean a little to the side of my own gender, but I've had some pretty central characters of the opposite sex.

 

I think my book skews towards women rather than men. I have 4 'real' POV characters (and the occasional ones that get a random scene here or there). Of the 4 main, 3 are women, one is a man. But I've had to cut down ... at one point, I had 19 POV characters (wish I was joking), with a bit more even split (I think about 8 were male) but I cut it down to those who were most essential to driving the plot.

 

I enjoy writing from both male and female POVs, especially when they are observing the same situation. I may not keep both, but it helps me dissect the story and see why all my characters are doing what they do. I'm fairly certain I'm just observing and recording, they truly run the show...

 

Ever heard of the band, Boston? The rumour mill at the time said that they studied all the popular songs of the previous five years and put all the "good stuff" into their songs and filled an album. It's roughly equivalent to today's authors/screenwriters/songwriters/what-have-you religiously toeing the PC line.

Boston's first album was a huge hit. When they repeated the same formula for their second, it flopped like a fish in a frying pan.

 

You don't seem to have explained the relevance to this thread of what you're saying, which is about fiction and gender.

 

Okay, I'll spell it out...

Creating any kind of art to someone else's rules or expectations isn't a good idea.

 

I've done a little of both over time, but as of late I have been trying to write a more believable and realistic female character. There is a saying about male authors and it is that they create a lot of vixen, super booby, sexy characters more than anything else when it comes to female leads. I don't know if this is true or not, but I can read in between the lines to see that many people don't feel that male authors put as much into their female character's inner workings as they do their appearance. I haven't done this so far (GO ME!) but it is sort of a challenge I gave myself to see if I can do the role justice.