Characters Mostly Comprised of One Gender?

I apologize in advance if this is a sensitive topic, but I would love to have an answer if any of you guys can spare your thoughts.

Is it strange or otherwise not okay for a story to have a cast of characters either solely or primarily composed of one gender? Almost all the characters I have ideas for in a story idea I’m currently attempting to figure out are male.

The roles and characters themselves all feel right as they are. And I don’t want to just chuck in one female character for the sake of being inclusive and then not give her a reason to even exist in the first place, or to have a “token female character,” such as in the original Avengers squad. Sure, they added more females later and there were some side characters, but it seemed like having only female was enough.

Keep in mind that I myself am female and I definitely prefer to write and read male characters for some reason or other. It’s easier and I tend to get infinitely more attached to them, although that could be because most of my female character crafting has been for antagonists haha.

In accurate historical fiction about war, most of the focus would be put on soldiers, who would have been primarily male. A lot of other historical movies that I have seen seem to focused mostly on romance. If a writer were trying to stay true to a long-past time period, a lot of stories wouldn't have any space for LGBTQ character representation, either.

I don't want to make useless characters. I really don't. I could create a female character that could play an important role in the past, perhaps? My protagonist's mother would work. At this point, the plot is still muddled in my head and I only have a vague idea of what I'm looking for. I'm not opposed to bringing in a female character still alive and breathing, I just don't know at this point in time where I could put her and what she would even be in the story for.

A Soldier Surrenders is a historical novel about soldiers in the 16th Century, and the only female character mentioned by name more than once is his mother, who died years ago but is stilling having an impact on the main character.

Side characters bring the world to life, so is it enough to have a few focus characters if it works for them to be all one gender, and then lay out diversity through side characters and world interaction?

 

I would not expect to find females in a story set in the trenches of World War 1, so I would not expect to find women in a story about 16th century soldiers. Likewise, I would not expect to find a lot of men in a story about 18th century French nuns.

 

If your characters feel right as they are, then I say don't mess with them. Lack of diversity in fiction is a problem when it comes from ignorance and/or lack of imagination, but that's not the case here. Within your chosen genre it makes sense for your core group to be exclusively male, so there's no sense in forcing someone into that group who wouldn't fit and would break the reader's immersion into the story.

You could definitely add some female side characters, but you don't have to. If the the plot is still vague and muddled in your head, then it's probably to early to say whether or not if would benefit from them. Figure out what your main story is, in whatever way works for you, and then you'll have a better idea of which side characters (if any!) would enhance that story. That could certainly include female family members (whether or not they appear in-story or are just remembered); there's also the classic trope of soldiers trying to get laid in their off-duty time. And no doubt there are plenty of more options. Oh, and one more thing...

There wouldn't be much room for openly LGBTQ characters, true, but gay people have existed throughout history, including gay soldiers. They would have (probably) had to hide their sexuality or gender, but that's not a problem for a writer - it's a juicy conflict, and thus an opportunity. So, if you do want to add some diversity to your core group of characters, that might be one natural way to do it. But, again, only if it feels right to you, not forced.

 

That's what I was thinking, just wanted some opinions on the subject

I feel like I could definitely create one to be an ally or an antagonist-turned-ally, but at this point I'm still unsure.

Ah, that is true. I suppose most historical fiction I've read or watched involves romance, which is, of course, a very public thing a lot of the time.

 

lik @AntPoems said, they were there. they either had to hide or their histories were pushed out of the war narrative (such is the same of minorities in the war and other time periods)

 

Check out Nora Phoenix, Episode 326 on the Self Publishing Formula podcast.

 

Of course you could. You're a writer, and it's your story. The question (IMHO the ONLY question) is whether or not you should do it. Does the story need it? If the story has to be bent, folded, spindled and mutilated in order to shoehorn in a secondary character of the opposite gender -- why do it?

 

Unless one considers the ancient Spartans who actively encouraged gay relationships in their ranks as they thought their hoplites would fight harder for their lovers...

But for @Hippophile 's question: no it is not a problem. Write your stories where your stories take you and don't try and force diversity for diversity's sake. I know it is a popular trend, especially with Hollywood right now to think they need to include one of every zebra and emu into their screenplays. It is part of the reason quite a few new shows have lost audience with fans of the original work or history buffs. Frankly, I find it insulting to the minorities relegated to token-status pandering. No matter the genre, I take the words of William Shakespeare in Hamlet "To thine own self be true". Your story will be more genuine and readers will appreciate it. So if you have a bunch of males running around your story and not many women, that is how your story was meant to be.

 

As a woman and feminist I can only agree with the other commentators.

Male (white, straight, cis, able-bodied) dominance in certain genres is more of a systemic problem, meaning, it sucks if every single story suffers from a lack of women or other marginalized groups.
But that doesn't mean that the opposite must be achieved and every single story has to have a diverse cast.
It's more that writers should be encouraged to think about why they may not have a diverse cast and whether the characters and stories might improve with more diversity. If there are good reasons for not including certain groups other than "I'm lazy" or "I don't care", then that's fine.

 

It seems like every cast of characters these days must be as diverse as possible for no other reason than diversity. Maybe it is because I tend to write shorter fiction, but I feel there is no space for anything in a story just to fill a quota. The sex of my characters is whatever is necessary for the story—not to fulfill someone else's agenda.

 

Depending on your focus - women might not have to come into it - you take movies like Bridge on the River Kwai, the Great Escape, Papillon, the gender is narrowed by situation and though the men might be thinking and talking of women that could be an aside and might not need full-fledged descriptions. But it's up to you. As for sexual diversity given the time - I'm sure there was the odd person in the group but again - what is your focus? Will it look pandering. Will it look out of place? One of my pet peeves of women's historical romance was the gall they had of pairing pirates and feminists - you had to laugh about it because you knew a real pirate would've keelhauled most of these firebrands. Some ideas just don't mesh well with the past especially if we have no imagination to conceive how they could.

I avoid the concept of diversity like the plague. If I have diverse characters so be it - but I refuse to shoehorn them in to placate people who won't be satisfied anyway.

 

@Hippophile

I’m a middle aged old white male, and sometimes get lost in the new modern gender-neutral way of thinking. I suffer from many out-of-date views and ideas. I hate retro bleaching from skewing historical facts to be more politically correct for today. On the surface your ideas of a story comprised of one gender, if male will work. If female puts most people off believing an underlying message is coming over the story.

However, I read a trilogy that utterly surprised me. I love sci-fi and this trilogy you should read whether you like the genre or not. The story is told from a Spaceship’s avatar that’s become detached. The Avatar’s AI although highly intelligent only perceives humans as females. It’s not immediately obvious, but over time certain characters you can tell are male or female.

This whole theme as nothing to do with the plot, but is beautifully written in a way that I’ve never seen before. It works without it been a focus.

ANN LECKIE

Ancillary Justice

Ancillary Sword

Ancillary Mercy

The books won both Hugo Nebula and Arthur C. Clarke awards. They tell a story mostly comprised of one gender, through the eyes of the story teller...

MartinM.

 

Yes, you can have a cast of all males. It's 100% okay and anyone who tells you otherwise is wrong. It doesn't matter your setting. All that matters is your themes.

 

I don't see anything wrong with having all of your characters be the same gender...if that's how the story is to be told then that's how it is to be told.

Some stories require one gender over another for many reasons, including historically accurate ones!

 

Well, it's not wrong per se, but you may still want to address it.

It's perfectly fine to have preferences, even very specific ones. We have to write what we enjoy writing, after all. But consider: If you really can't bring yourself to write female characters, isn't that a limitation? A weakness in your writing? Are you really okay with that?

It means you're effectively writing stories only for readers who just want to read about men. Again, that's not in itself wrong, but you're missing out on the value that well-written female characters can add to your writing: Female role models, heterosexual romances, just awesome ladies being awesome, etc. Because there are people who like to read about that stuff, see? I mean, a whole lot of them. Not being able to provide that is a serious handicap.

Also, you sure this might not be a sort of vicious cycle? I mean, if you prefer writing men and therefore don't write women, then it seems natural it should get easier for you to write men, which gives you more incentive to avoid writing women, and so on. Just a thought.

You should still try, is what I'm saying. Not because you're feeling forced to, but as a way of improving and mastering your art. Think of it as a challenge.

Awesome, but... have you tried taking one of the characters and just reversing his gender? Like, you don't have to actually commit to it, just do it as a thought experiment to see what you end up with. You already have the character finished, after all, so you're past the hard part.

I've found that this often doesn't cause as many issues in terms of plot and characterization as one might expect - at least not in settings with decent gender equality - and sometimes the results are quite interesting.

Those are pretty much the same thing, though. That's essentially what a token character is.

Anyway, I don't quite get why people seem to think not having token characters is always preferable to having them. Yes, it is a form of bad writing, but it's a step in the right direction. It at least shows a willingness to include that type of person, even if you only do so with the bare minimum of effort hoping to score some good PR. If people back in the 80s and 90s didn't feel pressured to throw in some token minority characters as lip service, we wouldn't have decent minority characters today.

Inclusivity for the sake of inclusivity is still inclusivity. As in you're still making others feel included, or at the very least not ignored. You're still doing a good thing, you're just not doing it well. It kinda scares me how some people really seem to be buying into the idea that if you attempt to be progressive but get it wrong, it proves it's not worth trying at all. That's a dangerous way of thinking.

Oh, I understand completely. I have the exact same issue except in reverse: It's much easier for me to come up with female characters and I tend to be more motivated writing them. Only in my case I started to find this tendency worrying. Annoying even.

At this point I've actually taken to deliberately making the gender ratio of my main casts exactly equal: If I have three girls, I need to have three dudes as well, and I have to account for that when writing the story. I don't have to do this, but I do feel it's making me a better writer.

 

This has been one of the most enlightening posts regarding writing I've read in a long time. So many excellent points packed into a few hundred words.

You're absolutely right. My inability to write females that I'm completely satisfied with is definitely an issue that I would like to address. I have a feeling a lot of it simply stems from low confidence, which is a whole other issue and one I can only tackle very slowly.

It definitely creates a cycle that I will need to break, and I think I'm going to do it with this WIP if all goes according to plan. I've been figuring this thing out for some time now, and it's still somehow a mess in my documents, but I'm getting closer. I have a female character planned, since she's really the only one that would make sense with story I'm trying to tell. I want to do her justice, so she's either going to be shoved to the sidelines and ignored half the time for the sake of getting the scenes with her right, or she's going to get a little more development than the others in the pre-writing process. I'm sure we can see which is preferable, and, knowing me, the latter will the end result.

I'm a little...meticulous.

We'll have to see, and I suppose I can only improve.

 

You might be interested to know (if you don't already) that the role of Ripley in the movie Alien was originally written for a man.

Actually the writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett wrote a note on the script that all the roles were written to be unisex, any of them could have been played by a man or a woman, but they used masculine pronouns throughout for simplicity's sake. I seem to remember reading somewhere that they originally wanted either Steve McQueen or Paul Newman (I can never remember which), but he was tied up with Towering Inferno (they were both in it) and wasn't available, and somebody suggested "Why not a woman instead?" Apparently there's controversy around who suggested it—I've seen articles saying it was Alan Ladd, the president of MGM Studio, and that it was Ridley Scott, the director. But it's unanimous that when they held tryouts Sigourney Weaver was the clear winner.

If you look at some older threads about this topic here on the site (it's one of the perrennial topics that keeps showing up every few months or so) you'll run into some excellent advice about how to write female characters—basically you don't. You just write good characters. You want to avoid stereotypes of either kind—the feminine woman who doesn't want to break a nail as well as the overly masculinized badass who can do everything better than all the boys and look gorgeous doing it (the Mary Sue). Think about real women you've known. Some of them obviously will fit into a stereotype, but you want to avoid that as much as possible in writing. I've known some really girly girls, some tough-ass tomboys, and all manner of in betweens. And some are sort of a mix of the two, often in surprizing ways. But it's important to think about real people you know or have known—otherwise it's too easy to fall into the trap of writing a cliche of a cliche that's been recycled dozens of times.

Let me see if I can find a few good threads...

• All you women/girls out there - quick question
• A sensitive topic....
• Feminism and characters gender
• Male and Female Writing Styles and Character Voices
• Need help on writing the perfect female romance character
  
  

 

So what?

Some might think that question is rude, but I would say it's the most important question in the universe. So what?

Is it really that important to maximize your audience base? Some would argue yes, for the sake of diversity or incision, or something, and that's all well and good. But sometimes when you make things for everyone, you, unfortunately, can fall into the trap of making something for no one. If you write a single book with all the genders and no one reads it, did you really achieve anything?

Which is better? 100 readers who are really passionate about your work or 1000 readers who only sort of like your work?

Is it better to have something long-standing, passionate, and from the heart, or something sanitized for the appeal of many?

Something to think about.

 

@Kalisto


Give Anne Leckie a go as I mentioned above. It’s beautifully written from an unreliable POV that just sees one Gender. Not part of the story, just a feature. This is why it works.


MartinM