I am writing a book so I need to make some female's, but I never been good at writing females. They all come off crazy or sluttly and thats not what I want. Any idea's on a 'how to make' female char. background. It funny I am female, but I can't write one for beans!
background? That is just a series of events, so keep that simple. Had a good family, went to school, I know it is boring. But boring is not crazy or slutty.
I have said this before: A gender is NOT a person! You can find almost any kind of personality in both genders. Think of your character as a person, not a gender, otherwise your writing wll be very limited. Focus on getting your female characters a personality first, then create a background that would suit that kind of character.
Put yourself in the characters' heads, imagine that you're them, discover their personalities and ways of thinking, and write them as the characters they are--not constrained by the label "male" or "female." If you create a character using the mindset, "This character has to act this way or that because they're FEMALE," then you'll of course end up with a stereotype (crazy, slutty, whatever). Do you create your male characters with the mindset, "This character must act this way because he's MALE"? Just write your female characters as individual personalities who just HAPPEN to be female (being female isn't the total of their existence and doesn't necessarily determine how they will act) and they should turn out fine. I'm female, but most of the time I don't act in ways that could be called "typically female" OR "typically male." I just act the way I act because it's who I am. *shrug* ETA: Anyone notice how much more often people ask, "How do I write a convincing female character?" rather than "How do I write a convincing male character?"? Like females are so much more enigmatic!
*clears throat* As a guy I just have to raise my hand and say that girls are weird. Also people tend to believe that men only think about two things, sex, and hitting people, which is why it's so easy to write a believable man.
Having raised children of both gender, I feel males are far simpler in their reactions to the world around them. I still shudder when I am surrounded by my wife and daughters because I never know what is coming next . . . but it usually involves criticism of my hard core male attitudes about the world or they lobby me to take sides in some inane argument about something of absolutely no importance. On the other hand, when I get together with my son and sons-in-law, there is no game-playing. Guys say what is on their minds and if it offends another guy one quick flip of a finger settles the dispute. I am an advocate of equal pay for equal work, fairness in promotional opportunities and women having the same rights as men. I can go topless at any beach in American . . . all women should too! (Well, except my wife and daughters. LOL)
No offence, but speaking on pure statistics, your family wouldn't be enough even for a high school survey assingment to try and come to such a conclusion for an entire gender. It would take a very high amount of samples from all kinds of different backgrounds, ethnicities and such to be able to say something like that with any certainty. I've seen females who are more shallow then a kiddie pool and extremely complex and unpredictable males, and vise versa, and even then I wouldn't base any sort of "on average" for either gender in terms of personlity.
No offense taken. My post was meant tongue-in-cheek to add a bit of levity to the thread . . . sorry if you didn't pick up on that. Truth is, writing ANY convincing character relies more on the evolution of the plot, than on gender-based preconceived notions. Such gender-based characterization is more likely to produce a clichéd character, rather than a fictional person with believability.
My MC is a female, and all I say do is write the character as a person, then add a few female characteristics. In Kate's case, she has some disdain for men, but that's due to her slave background; however, there really is no "true womanlike" tendencies she does..she's just who she is, and it just happens to be a woman.
I like this article about writing female characters, although I was really looking for a better article that I followed in from the links on that site. (I'll post it here when I find it again.) But this one written by a feminist who (in the blog at least) targets sexism in fiction and especially comic books (ergo, some visual suggestions like "Is she wearing that skimpy outfit for herself, or for the readers?) But basically, like everyone else said, gender is not a character or at least it shouldn't be. If you have “geeky guy”, “strong guy”, “goofy guy” and “the girl” "the other girl" "the third girl to balance out the population"... of course they'll come off a little flat. Having another female character there who is not identical to her and have them talk about something other than a guy, I think is just an example of fleshing that out (defining a character by foil, and exploring their interests and history-- not only their behavior as in slutty or crazy.) Maybe you can make that a writing exercise. Or, instead of making a new female character only because you think you've gotta have a girl there, maybe take some of the characters you've already been designing (sounds like they're likely to be male,) and just change their pronoun. You might be surprised at how little changes. Like if one was laconic, logical and curt, then keep that. You don't have to start raising their voices and have them giggle or throw insane tantrums just because they have breasts. Hope this helps!
Just make a character, add the proper pronoun and you've got it. It's really easy. Just stop thinking that it's a girl.
people write what they know. maybe you only know crazy/slutty girls. get out and make some new friends.
Wait, so does that work both ways? Does that mean that when a man is talking to a beautiful woman he might not be thinking about how to get her into bed?
