Have you ever written a Short Story or a Novel with the narrator as a different sex than your own? It’s not that new, quite a few men write romantic fiction but most disguise their sex by adopting female names. The Bronte sisters also chose male names to stand a chance to get published in the 1800s
I won't take a look at the excerpts because I'm fairly sure they'll be moved to the workshop or removed - to answer your question though, yes I've written with a narrator of the opposite gender, I find that if I look at all my longer projects and short stories it's about half-and-half. Having said that even when I'm writing a novel with a male protagonist, if it's in third I'll still write from the POV of female characters sometimes. It's doable and not out of the ordinary at all - as long as you write it well, it will come off well. A little more challenging, but that's a good thing.
You mean, like when writing a story in first person? Sure. Sometimes I write in first person, sometimes I have a female protagonist, sometimes the two coincide. No biggie. If you mean changing the sex of the narrating voice in a story written in third person, er... I'm pretty sure my narrating voices are blankly genderless, but I've never really thought about it.
Hi @John12 - I'm one of the forum moderators here. You've asked a very good question, but I'm afraid I needed to remove your excerpts, as you are not allowed to post work for feedback here on the forum EXCEPT in the Workshop section. You will be able to do this once you have been a member here for 2 full weeks, made 20 posts around the forum AND have done two constructive critiques for other people in the Workshop area. In case you haven't seen them yet, here are two links you should look at, which should explain the situation more fully : New Member Quick Start Forum Rules I have deleted your excerpts, but have saved them and will send them to you in a private Conversation. You can put them into the Workshop for feedback after you have fulfilled the initial requirements for Workshop entry. No harm done. And the question itself is worth replies.
Kazuma Kamachi has written lots of female main characters as a man, but it's not for anyone who's new at writing or frequently arguing with the opposite sex. Narration requires you to think like the character and truly agree with the world view, not just mimic prose from real life. There's lots of subtle biases in perception from how you lived your life and enough tell signs eventually make it obvious. Most notable is the bias in vocabulary where women uses highly specific words for horse and cloth related topics. Women's books often put high value on neat aesthetics. Men's narration is usually more to the point and structures the story around facts with emotions as a final decoration. Men writing about women tend to glorify mean but attractive females as just being dominant (Shokuhou Misaki) that would be total assholes in a story written by a woman (Lily Allen lyrics).
I'm not sure if you mean a story's fictional narrator being a different sex from the author? Or do you mean an author pretending to be a different sex via use of a pen name? Or maybe both? In The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills and The Last Enchantment. Merlin is the first-person male narrator throughout, but the books were written by Romance author Mary Stewart. Mrs Stewart did not disguise the fact that she was a woman writer, but her narrator character was a man. However, Charlotte Bronte's novel, Jane Eyre, narrated by a first person female character, was first published under a male author's name—Currer Bell. This was done to disguise the fact that Charlotte Bronte, a woman, had written the book. So the two things are a bit different. But both are perfectly permissible.
I never write in first person, as I dislike the process of writing thoughts, as they are so incomprehensive that writing them feels messy to me. I prefer writing in third person limited, and even then, all of my main characters are male, despite me being a female. I have always found females more difficult to write as, where as writing as a male has never been a problem for me.
I was thinking about this. It can be done well, but it can also be done incredibly badly, even by "successful" authors. One of my biggest gripes on the matter is Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. This particular set of word diarrhea has lots of female characters - and they're all exactly the same. They're cardboard cutouts who are all quite powerful, generally angry, supposedly "strong" women with the same personalities and no character development whatsoever. I mean, there are a lot of other things that are wrong with the series, but that's one that stands out.
Well, Robert Jordan has been dead for a long time. The modern books are written by Brandon Sanderson. I wasn't sure which one you're talking about here.
Never first person narratives. Not because I never want to, if I decide to write the second book of my Z-Years zombie horror-comedy, I plan to do like every other chapter switching between the first person view main couple in my story. So one chapter the narrator is the husband and then the next it's the wife. But that doesn't mean I've never done a different gender for stories. I have had stories where pov characters are female. Such as my sci-fi Wildcat Squad which is currently on the back burner. The mc is a woman.
No, it doesn't, but his depiction of women was how a lot of writers wrote back then. People from the future will likely look back at us and think we were weird too.
I can remember a lot of fiction from around the same time that didn't depict women like that. And more to the point - Jordan depicted ALL his women like that. With *exactly* the same personality.
I agree with you. It shouldn't matter what a person has between their legs or on their chest. Changing the gender of the narrator shouldn't drastically change anything. Men and women are humans and we all experience the same emotions.
