Are you able to create a MC that is the opposite gender of you? I noticed, but I could be wrong, that women seem to be able to write male MC's better than males write female MC's. I think Stephen King does a good job writing female characters.
My MC's are almost exclusively female. It got to the point where I had to force myself to throw in the occasional male character, and then I have difficulty liking them when I do.
Yes. The most important thing is to write enough characters of the opposite gender that you can tell the difference between them. If I write a bunch of guys with varying levels of bravery, but if I only write one woman and she's a coward, then I'm implicitly saying "men are unique and I need several to show how different they are, but all women are cowards so I only need one to show this" (same goes for if she's reckless instead) In my Urban Fantasy WIP, the lead protagonist (Charlie), one of the secondary protagonists (Amy), and the lead antagonist (a vampire) are all women. Granted, all three are homicidal sociopaths – mine is a "villain vs. villain vs. villain" story, so of my 8 lead/secondary characters, the only one who isn't a homicidal sociopath is one of the guys – but I do have a wide variety of other differences between these three characters: The vampire revels in being The Bad Guy and wants to go down as a legendary supervillain, Amy personally enjoys being The Bad Guy but wishes that she didn't have as much of a public footprint as she does, and Charlie accepts that she's different from normal people but she doesn't revel in it All of them enjoy studying and learning new things, but Charlie and the vampire are far more obsessed with it than Amy is Amy and the vampire both hate playing by other people's rules, but Charlie is more pragmatic about when to submit to someone else's authority and when not to Amy and Charlie are more concerned with making a practical living, while the vampire thinks more about the grander philosophical narratives behind whatever she's doing And the fact that 4 of my 5 secondary male characters are homicidal sociopaths significantly lessens any "women are evil, men are not" message that Charlie, Amy, and the vampire would otherwise have conveyed. Makes sense. It's like how I'm a queer white guy, but I'd have an easier time writing a straight white guy than writing a queer Black guy (or a white guy who's a different kind of queer than I am) simply because I've had heterosexuality shoved down my throat my entire life by film, TV, and literature. Cis/straight people have to work to expose themselves to fiction that gives them exposure to what queer people can be like, but queer people like me never have the chance to not become experts on cis/straight people. Likewise, women are constantly bombarded with a wide variety of male role models to work from, but men have to work to find a wide variety of female role models to work from. That he does
I choose whichever gender I feel will make a more interesting character. I don't buy into the various gender stereotypes, but I know what those stereotypes are, well enough to anticipate the audience expectations. So in one story, I chose a female Buddhist character pitted against an unknown pursuer with lethal intentions, so she was forced to destroy that attacker in order to survive. How she dealt with that necessity was as important to the story as how she managed to prevail in the first place.
Female writer here! In the past I exclusively only wrote all female characters only because I had no male exposure or interaction and I thought they were mysterious other worldy creatures. These days (After the male exposure) I find they are not so different afterall and I enjoy writing male characters more than female. My current story only has 2 females and multiple male characters with more scenes. I never thought about why that is until you asked this question. So after brain storming I think its because due to my beliefs I think ladies should for the most part be quiet humble sweet ladies and sure I could write about them anyway I choose but meek females are more natural and pleasurable to me. Males on the other hand are much more diverse and I have more fun with them. and like a poster said above me, people are more forgiving of their flaws and short commings. Maybe because its still new to me but I love seeing/reading/writing how males interact with eachother
