Hi! My WIP's MC is a male. Like the classic character-writing advice, I based him on a real-life person, however, that boy is very younger than my character, so I'm worried that I don't have enough knowledge to write him well yet. Do you men (or women who master writing characters of their opposite gender) have any advice on writing male characters? Thank you, and I'm sorry if I posted this in the wrong category.
Hmm..... interesting question. Without more details on what is most difficult for you I'm not sure I can answer your question. But I do have a comment. I don't know if what I am about to say is "good" or "bad" for you, but historically "male main character" has been the default. I bring this up because SO much writing advice assumes the main character is male. So that could be good in that there is really no shortage of resources that tell you how to write male character (basically everything you find tells you how to write male characters unless they specifically say it is for females). But it is also bad because if you legit have an issue writing male characters it might be hard to figure out what the problem is because there is no (or few) resources specific to that, because it is just assumed everyone knows. REAL TALK: Your best bet is to write a few chapters with this character not worrying about 'is this male enough' then once you have enough pages show it to a male writer and see what they say, maybe don't even bring up the challenge with writing males, see if they see a problem. If they spend a lot of time going 'no man would ever do/say this' then you can ask for their help. If they don't bring it up you know you're doing okay there. Just a suggestion.
"Male" is too big of a category. It's like asking how to write a tall character or a black character. These are vast categories that contain multitudes of totally different character types. You need to think more in terms of character traits and personality traits. What KIND of man is he? Loud and aggressive, but underneath it well-meaning? Soft-spoken and concerned for the feelings of others? Only maybe there are certain things he won't stand for? When people cross his lines, how does he respond? Gently at first and then with increasing firmness, or maybe beyond a certain point he loses his cool and explodes all of a sudden in anger? These are the kinds of things you need to think about when developing a character. Really it's less important at this point whether it's a male or female than what type of personality they have, and what sort of character traits. As I say all the time, there are men who are very feminine and women who are very masculine, and everything in between. Are you aware for instance the Ripley character from Alien was originally written for (I think) Steve McQueen? Or was it Paul Newman? One or the other. He couldn't make it because of a former commitment to Towering Inferno (both actors I mentioned were in it, so that still does't answer which one), so they tried some other actors and ended up with Sigourney Weaver. A woman, but the best actor who showed up to audition. They didn't change a word of dialogue even though she was a woman, and that's a large part of why Ripley was such a great character and became a feminist icon. Often writers pay too much attention to maleness or femaleness when many character traits are shared between the two.
Ignore the gender and write human characters. I agree with @xotic that writers get way to caught up with the gender of the characters. If your characters are interesting, readers won’t care their gender and the ones who do probably shouldn’t read your book.
A more important thing to think about then male or female is "Is this character predominantly masculine or predominanatly feminine?" Though of course to some degree it is important if they're male or female. But it seems to me masculine traits or feminine traits are more important. I made a pretty comprehensive post about this subject on this thread some time ago: Character Development Male Perspective
Being a pragmatist I have to ask: since you chose to model your character after a real person, why did you choose a real life person who is significantly younger than your character and therefore is NOT a valid model?
Actually I can see that working, at least somewhat. I mean, one of the freewrite exercises I sometimes do is to write older or younger versions of characters to try to figure them out better. Imagine for instance writing a 12-year old version of Ernest Borgnine (one of his characters)—my vote is for The Shack from Emperor of the North, having playground arguments with Lee Marvin's A #1. And a 12-year old Cigarette (Keith Carradine). But then it probably works better to go that way (imagining younger versions of older people), because as we get older we become more of ourselves. Starting from a younger version it could be harder to see where they might end up.
Much like writing women, the answer is very much "It depends.", or "Exactly the same, except for where it's completely different." There are no traits outside of overt biological ones that you can reasonably say that "all" people of a certain gender have, and any atypical traits can feel right if they make sense for this individual. Rather, it might be worth considering the cultural trends and norms that your character will have grown up in, even if they didn't have much influence on his personality. Because they do very much exist for men. In a modern or recent-historical setting, they would include-- --Men are expected to be tough and stoic, often to an unhealthy degree of bottling up their emotions. Phrases like "man up" or "man flu" reflect this attitude that men aren't supposed to complain or admit to weakness. --Men "do" things, while women "are" things. Notably in romance, it's usually not enough for a guy to find love just by being passively nice and decent, he's expected to make some sort of grand gesture that shows how much he loves her, while it's generally enough for the woman to just say it. --Men are more expected to be violent, and violence is considered less remarkable coming from a man OR directed at a man. There's a presumption that a man who is the victim of violence, especially from a woman, "had it coming" in some way, unless he is VERY obviously weaker (very young, very old, obvious disability, etc). --"Being a man" is more tenuous than "being a woman". It's a status that can be lost if your wife cheats on you, you fail to get an erection on demand, or if you hesitate to charge out of a trench towards the enemy. --In pop culture, men are often portrayed as being sex-obsessed and generally simpler creatures than women. Bad stuff happening to men is less remarkable (see the above note about violence). The hero's girlfriend being murdered is a terrible crime that sets him on a rampage of revenge, the roomful of male mooks who get mown down in the final showdown are not noteworthy.
I was thinking about this thread (and similar ones) yesterday and here's what struck me: There's this contention people make that men (by which they really mean masculine people) don't experience emotion much, or repress it, or are out of touch with it. What I realized is when people say this they're only talking about a particular range of emotions—ones that could be called the feminine emotions, or maybe tender romantic feelings. People with classic masculine traits definitely experience emotions, and often quite strongly. Things like competitive spirit, ambition, drive, assertiveness (which can shade into aggression), determination (to achieve goals), etc. In fact these are the very emotions women are encouraged to develop within themselves, as men are told to get in touch with their inner femininity. I came up with this list real quick—some of them might more properly be called behaviors rather than emotions, but they all definitely have an emotional component to them. This list can be developed and expanded much further I'm sure. But when you think about it this way, it isn't that 'men repress their emotions', it's that they repress or simply in some cases don't experience the more feminine ones—the ones that would get them labeled sissies and made fun of endlessly. And it isn't just men (nor is it all men) who do this, it's people with a strong masculine component to their personality, including strong independent women. These kinds of behaviors and emotions can all shade into toxic masculinity (it isn't strictly a male thing) if taken to an extreme, but each of them has a range (as all emotions do) and at lower levels are very positive. And at times you need them at the highest levels (in combat for instance, or a fight, or in a courtroom where it's lawer versus lawyer). And of course the feminine emotions and behaviors also have their toxic range, leading toward what's characterized as emotional blackmail, clingy desperate neediness, and so on. It's just that as a society we have this old-fashioned tendency to characterise the feminine emotions as 'the emotions' and to see masculine emotions as 'toxic'.
