Hello everybody, I may come today with a singular question for you (as a white heterosexual man) : how to create "inclusive" characters for your novels ? My question may look weird but one of my alpha readers wrote me this about my draft : "The men drink and are adventurous while women are sensible and caring. You should try to twist that"... which hurt a little but I fully agreed. My problem is how the hell am I suppose to do it ? Do you have some ideas for me to start with ? I am reading and watching documentaries on the subject (from Suffragettes to Ecofeminism) but I am still not comfortable with it. I mean, shaping interesting women characters without being in their shoes is not easy... Bonus question for women : What would be your ideal woman character ? The one you'd like to read about in novels ? Thanks in advance PS: the reflexion can be extend to lesbians, gays, queers...
Just write fully-fleshed out, complex characters and stop with this identity politics BS. Nobody with a brain gives a damn.
Focus on the character, not why you are including them. There are plenty of books about characters who are x, especially in the LBGTQ+ community. As a reader, I want more stories were whatever makes the character inclusive is secondary to the plot or completely irrelevant. I want books about people, not what makes them stand out. As a personal example, the protagonist of one of my novels is a navy lieutenant who is bisexual and in a poly relationship. The plot is about him trying to survive after the loss of the ship and nearly everything else, followed by some of his men being court marshalled for mutiny. That's what it's about, not his sexually or romantic choses. In the vein of female characters, I'd like to see more who are feminine, but not teased about it. A female firefighter who enjoys jewelry or reading romance novels, but is never teased about either. Not the best example, but it was the first that came to mind. I hope you find this helpful and I am available to talk with if you want more help or feedback. Best of luck with your writing.
Define what an "inclusive" character is. "You should try to twist that" implies the reader doesn't really find any issues with it, they are just irked by the portrayal of societal expectations. Rest assured you could grab another alpha leader from elsewhere who'd pass the opposite critique if you had changed up stuff a bit. Adjusting your writing to woke culture is a dead end. You don't inherently want it, it's not how you wanted to write stuff, and as more and more woke advice is shoveled on you eventually you'll break and say enough, then end up cancelled anyways despite all your efforts to appeal to them. Best course of action is to just ignore the twitter crowd and realise they're a very loud minority.
One very simple way—take one of the male characters and make it female. Ditto for one of the female characters—make it a male. Without changing anything else about them. Did you know that the Ripley character in Alien was originally written for Steve McQueen? He was unavailable due to his commitment to Towering Inferno I think, so they started casting for other actors, and Sigourney Weaver was just such a great actor they suddenly thought Well, why couldn't it be a woman? And it worked out great. They didn't change a single line of dialogue if I remember right. I've known lots of women who aren't feminine and girly, in fact some act more like badass truck drivers or oil rig workers. Some of the coolest people I hung out with as a kid were tomboys. I've also known lots of guys who didn't like playing sports and came across as somewhat feminine. There's all kinds of people all around us, just look around, think about people you've known who don't fit the stereotypes. But try to avoid the other stereotypes too—the ones from the last 20 years or so—the standard female action hero who can beat the crap out of 6 burly guys without breaking a sweat and still look amazing (and do it all in high heels and an evening gown). Because a woman does some guy-type stuff doesn't mean she loses all her femininity.
Here's a post I did about masculine women and feminine men some time ago that covers this pretty well: https://www.writingforums.org/threads/male-and-female-writing-styles-and-character-voices.166257/#post-1865012
I see this question come up a lot, not just on this forum but Reddit and other forums I am on. Here is my take on it: your gender, melanin level and sexual preference have nothing to do with how you write a character. I have never ever in my life tried to write an "inclusive" character; I write interesting characters. You can be a straight white guy writing a trans non-white protagonist, a lesbian Asian woman writing about a straight Native American man, ect. It doesn't matter as long as you do your research and make them engaging. Depending on what you are writing, sometimes it can be your setting that puts a category in a pigeonhole. Certain periods of history in particular locations, races and sexes could/would be treated differently. Women might have been expected to be sensible, caring homemakers, not running around playing Joan of Arc and any abjuration would bring about social ire and dire consequences. This might be off putting to some readers but unless you are willing to sacrifice the believability of your story to history-savvy readers, you are going to have to take the criticism and move on. Remember that not every book written is for everyone. For example I find Robert Jordon's Wheel of Time to be so well written that sometimes I read a page twice just to drink in his immersive text. Other people read a page and close the first book and never go back because they find it over-descriptive and immersion-breaking. You will never please every reader and you will go crazy trying. Currently my WIP has my main characters, a father and his two sons, live in an extreme northern province of the empire. They are from the south but both boys have lived in the north most of their lives and adapted to the tribal culture of the province. One of the customs, stolen from the real life Scythian culture, is that to join the tribe as a full warrior, you had to marry and both husband and wife were expected to fight together as equals. These women are cold as the steel they carry and hard as the rocky soil they call home. Contrast this with the imperial capital far to the south where women are expected to be arm candy and party hostesses but little more. Men dominate the power scene and when they marry, it is generally a form of social ladder-climbing currency with little thought of love and none to equality. I am sure if I were to write a story revolving around just the imperial capital and/or the southern parts of the empire, I would have the same faults in my story as your alpha readers pointed out in yours. But if I were to do so, and stay honest to my worldbuilding, I would have to take the criticism with a grain of salt because I, the author, know the bigger picture.
I'm with the consensus that you write interesting characters, regardless of gender, sexuality or ethnicity. And I'd add a couple of points. It sounds to me like your reader took issue with your depiction of male and female characters, that your men were fun and your women sensible. The trouble with stereotypes is the conflict when people don't fit with the conventions set out for them. The traditional gender roles of man going to work and woman raising children can well be portrayed in fiction, but, in my opinion, won't convince if those stereotypes are just reproduced as authentic when, truthfully, those preordained roles resulted in a lot of conflict and disquiet. People are more complex than that. Gender and sexual identity change through generations and you'll wreck your own head if you're writing to keep pace with it, not to mind what future generations will think. So write your characters as they make sense to you and, if your beta gives this kind of feedback, consider your gender attributes and whether they truly represent fully formed personalities or reflect unrealistic stereotypes. Then decide how you want to deal with the feedback.
There's really nothing specific other than I don't like poorly written, unlikable characters. I'm fine with domestic, emotional, caring women the same as I'm fine with masc, adventurer, dominant women. A woman however, should not be defined by her role. She needs depth and character. She needs to be concerned about things that aren't her family and dinner. And if sensible is a nice way of saying she's always "bitching" then that is bordering into offensive territory depending on how you write it.
really like anything in writing it starts with research... its not inherently any different than learning about someone from another culture or a profession you have no background in... if you want to write a rounded woman try to meet a bunch of women in a similar role, and if you can't meet them at least talk to them, read their blogs, read articles about them and so on. a red flag to look out for in your writing is when one sex or the other are all the same... there's nothing wrong with writing a hard drinking man, or a woman who's emotional and feminine, but when all the men in your book are hard drinking macho men and all the women are feminine and emotional then you've been to the stereotype mine.
Great points. A couple of books ago now, I wrote a trilogy about two lesbian characters. It didn't mean a damn thing to the story. They never suffered because of it. It was just a part of who they were and nobody else cared. People are people and it's the people who matter, not their immutable physical characteristics. Unfortunately, we live in a largely shallow world where people can't get below skin deep. Instead of writing complex characters that just so happen to be... something, they can only write something and expect that to pass for complexity. It's not fooling anyone, at least no one with any substance.
What it sounds like they're really saying is that your characters are generally all the same with pretty much the same characteristics and then they proceeded to give you about the worse advise in the world in order to fix it: which is forcing a personality into a character, which never works. You ever hear people say, "Wow, my character is really taking on a life of his or her own!" Why does it feel that way? Surely, they aren't taking a life of their own literally. No, they feel that way because the writer is allowing the character to develop organically. They're in a "zone" so to speak, where they're abandoning dialogues, plot points and story lines that are inconsistent with their character's personality. This is actually what you want. Characters with individual personalities that feel real and organic instead of flat and generic. So how do we get there? First thing STOP LISTENING IDENTITY OBSESSED IDEOLOGUES AS A TEMPLATE FOR STORY WRITING!!!! Those ideologies are meant to tear down and make people question themselves, instead of build up and unite. They do nothing good for writers, particularly for those who are actually trying to write diverse characters, as they encourage "othering" and "grouping" as well as terrible stereotypes instead of actually viewing people through the only lens you should view people as: as individuals But on another topic, the George R Martin had it right when he said that he just writes women like they're human. Which is pretty much it. So, let's write them like humans. The real way you should be forming characters, male and female, is to start with the very basics: what is their goal, what is their motive, and what is their conflict? Because everyone in the world has their own wants and needs, own reasons for wanting that, and their own obstacles that stand in their way. Once you figure that out, it's a matter of figuring out what each character would be willing to do to see their goals met. If all the women want the same exact thing for the same exact reasons and have the same exact obstacles and face the obstacles in the exact same way, then don't be surprised when there's nothing in their personality that distinguishes them from each other. Sometimes characters will have the same of these three things, but then make wildly different choices in seeing their goals met. Others will have different goals that clash with one another. So take these female characters down to their studs and figure out these three things and do it again for the male characters. You do it for the gay characters or the trans characters. All the major characters really. But wait! Kallisto! Are you actually suggesting that I write my... my... "other" characters like I write my straight male white characters? Yeah... yeah I am! Imagine that! We might all be different genders. Different races. Different religions. A lot of things. But we really are all human. When you go throughout the world, the human hierarchy of needs is the same, regardless of race, class, gender, or whatever else. And when we build characters based on where they are in that hierarchy of needs, we let our imaginations out as to what they might do to see those needs fulfilled. We start to see at what point will they break rules of society in order to see those needs met. Or what things they don't fully understand. Or where they might be the bad guy in someone else's story. The characters start to form flaws, not for its own sake, but in a natural organic way. Good intended characters start to become victims of their own vanity or ignorance. Confident characters might come to self doubt. Normally kind characters might start to become disillusioned and broken. You start to see how friends begin to clash with one another as each attempts to get what they need. Or even people with nothing in common, might start to come together as they realize things bigger than themselves.
Actually, sounds really interesting thanks ! It remind me the famous sentence : "Showing is better than telling." And your example is good btw. So if you have advice on the how to, I am interested
Inclusive in a way that people can identify to. For example, if I just use clichés to describe women or homosexuals (as I am not one myself), identification won't gonna work (I guess).
I will make a test on a couple. The result can be either amazing or funny, so definitely worth to take the shot ! Good point I will keep in mind. Gonna read it later. Thanks for it
I may start going down this road and... you're right I should probably take the next exit I will if I am convince I have to. For my first one, I indeed accepted some and refused other (I just need to have an opinion on it to do so).
Maybe I unconsciously used too much stereotypes. Maybe I just have to accept everybody don't fit with my characters and go on. Probably the right answer is somewhere in between (as always...) Humans are so complex and contradictory... studying us amaze me ! But, create good ones from our lonely mind is something else (so yeah, let's forget the next generations or I will end up crazy).
I will, I promise. As mentionned previously to Moose, I will investigate. So thanks to remind me the methodology to use that I tended to forget. And more generally, thanks to everybody cause your answers are really helpful !
I like characters that are true to their heart, male or female. i.e. I am female but have a profession that consists to 90% of alpha males. Still, when I sit down in the evening with them to talk shop, I spend time with their wives as well, discuss their kids and new diet. With the males, I love it when they take me to the garden shed where they DJ and drum to their hearts content. Or when I accompany them when they fetch their teenaged kids from school and then tease them on their new dating habits. Or when I watch the kids wrestle each other for hours, shrieking and laughing all the time. The point is that we are all multi-facetted people and each of us have habits/hobbies/emotional needs that don't conform to a sweeping definition of 'gender' or 'sexual orientation'. If you include these kinds of traits in your characters, you'll be fine.
I don't really pay attention to the feminist ideology when I write the text and introduce some character there. I clearly understand whether it will be a man or a woman, transgender, etc. All this is already in my subconscious and I select the gender of the character, depending on those life circumstances and the nature of the events around. If, for example, this is military action, I will most likely make the main character a woman, because her experiences during the war are more interesting to me.
Nobody knows who or what you are and nobody of quality cares. The only ones who are going to whine impotently are the social justice warriors and who gives crap one about them? Write your story well. Stop caring what crazy people think. Stop worrying so much. You're just getting in your own way.
I don't know how many people identify with characters based solely on their sexual orientation or looks; I'm definitely not one of them.I identify far more with the troubles and plight of characters, especially if they resemble mine. This is mainly the reason why just switching a character's sexuality to something else doesn't work; it creates the illusion that it's not relevant. Better understood in reverse - someone marginalized will not identify with a character simply because they carry the physical traits of a marginalized community, they will identify with them if they represent values held high by that community, if they overcome struggles that blighted that community and if they make a stand. Yet once more upside down, it won't matter what looks your characters have, what gender or sexual preference they have or what community they are part of - if and only if you find a situation and a plight people can identify with. This is pretty much why underdog stories work, we all were pushed around and belittled at one point and naturally side with the underdogs. So tell me, which do you think will make your book inclusive: Taking a noblewoman in a fantasy realm and describing their skin colour with obnoxious food words. Taking a noblewoman in a fantasy realm and portraying an inner struggle where whatever they achieve is contributed to their liege lord, but if they don't do anything they see their lands wither away into irrelevance and infighting. Thus the woman is ever-torn between swallowing pride and allowing another to shine from their achievements or calling it quits and allowing the realm to fall. The noblewoman persists and the Queen finally notices her struggles and offers her aid, eventually helping her replace the inept liege lord.
