# Is it harder to write the opposite sex?



## Jabrosky (Feb 20, 2013)

I am a straight guy, yet the vast majority of the stories I have attempted to write feature either female protagonists or female co-stars. You would expect this would give me a lot of practice with writing female characters, but in truth I still struggle with it. However, my problem is not because I don't understand how women think, as if they thought any differently from men (which I doubt).

Anyone else have similar problems with writing the opposite sex? Even if you don't, what should I do about my predicament?


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## T.Allen.Smith (Feb 20, 2013)

Your post has a bit of a creepy feel to it with the mention of "slaking your sexual impulses" and the rest. 

Ignoring that, I'll tell you that the average woman, in my experience, thinks very differently than the average man. This may not apply to characters in a story setting but in reality it's part of life.

Characters are characters and can be anything you wish, espousing whatever motivations and qualities the author wants. However, if you want to write a realistic portrayal of how a female would react to specific situations, why don't you pose the situation to females you know?

I've questioned many women I know about their childhoods, the pressures of being a teenage girl, their motivations and definitions of adult success. There is a lot of insight that can be gained.

EDIT: Thank you for cleaning it up.


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## Jabrosky (Feb 20, 2013)

T.Allen.Smith said:


> Your post has a bit of a creepy feel to it with the mention of "slaking your sexual impulses" and the rest.


Hey, I had to be honest.

Seriously, everyone both online and offline seems to call me creepy when it comes to women. I have no idea why.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Feb 20, 2013)

Jabrosky said:


> Hey, I had to be honest.
> 
> Seriously, everyone both online and offline seems to call me creepy when it comes to women. I have no idea why.



Well....can you discuss writing women characters from a male perspective without referencing your personal lusts, romantic insecurities, and how they relate to your characters?

That would be a good start to stave off the creepy vibe. As it's presented now, I find it inappropriate.


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## Zero Angel (Feb 20, 2013)

To answer the question of your title, "No, it is not difficult to write the opposite sex."

To answer the bulk of your original post, why not write fanfiction of your own work? That way you can work out what you want to do with the characters that you might not think qualify as art or isn't something you think that other people would find interesting.

Alternatively, you could try designing characters independently of their physical characteristics or not be so egocentric with your definitions. It's important to realize in a civilization that there is more than one definition of what is attractive.

I can't speak for everyone. But I think it's fair to say that most of us write stories because of a story idea or because the characters develop a life of their own. 

I would ask yourself, "Are there any internal characteristics of women that I find attractive independent of how they react to me?" and if you can answer that, then write characters that have that characteristic. Alternatively, if you can't answer that, then I don't think you should be writing from their viewpoints. Women (and men and un-gendered) are more than their outside characteristics


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## OGone (Feb 20, 2013)

Wait, Jabrosky got banned for that? It was an odd post, yeah, but he _was_ being honest...
The whole point could've been made without referencing sexual urges and fantasies, though.

I was going to answer the question but there's not much point now  
I'd just like to say if you're writing for that reason you're writing for the wrong reason.

It's hard to categorize how women think, and it's wrong to generalize. I have this problem but I'll just avoid writing characters I find overly difficult and base my female MCs on women I've been close enough with to understand how their mind works (good and bad).


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## Steerpike (Feb 20, 2013)

OGone said:


> Wait, Jabrosky got banned for that? It was an odd post, yeah, but he _was_ being honest...
> The whole point could've been made without referencing sexual urges and fantasies, though.
> 
> I was going to answer the question but there's not much point now
> I'd just like to say if you're writing for that reason you're writing for the wrong reason.



OG - I think it's more the presentation than the question, and hopefully this is something that people will keep in mind in discussing various topics. A lot of writers, particularly young writers, create characters as ideal, fantasy representations of what they'd like in real life. It seems to me the original Mary Sue is along those lines. This question could have been posed by simply saying "I'm worried that I write women as embodiments of my own fantasy, and then place them in situations to act it out." Or something along those lines. You get the point. It presents the same question without the level of personal detail that forum members might find inappropriate.


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## Sheilawisz (Feb 20, 2013)

Hello everyone, please visit the Mythic Scribes Guidelines where you can learn everything that is forbidden in our Community, including the use of sexually explicit language.

We are a family-friendly site, so I hope that everyone understands and accepts this.

@OGone: Jabrosky has received a 3-day Infraction, that's all. We do not permanently ban people unless there is a very strong reason to do it.


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## OGone (Feb 20, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> OG - I think it's more the presentation than the question, and hopefully this is something that people will keep in mind in discussing various topics. A lot of writers, particularly young writers, create characters as ideal, fantasy representations of what they'd like in real life. It seems to me the original Mary Sue is along those lines. This question could have been posed by simply saying "I'm worried that I write women as embodiments of my own fantasy, and then place them in situations to act it out." Or something along those lines. You get the point. It presents the same question without the level of personal detail that forum members might find inappropriate.



I'll say sorry first of all because I have an annoying habit of editing my messages a bunch 

And yes I understand exactly what you mean, I definitely found the original post inappropriate and the... process... odd.  BUT couldn't Jabrosky just have been warned and the post edited rather than straight up banned, seems a little harsh I mean the guy wasn't hurting anyone.

Edit: Ah okay Sheila, thx for the clarification.


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## Feo Takahari (Feb 20, 2013)

I've never really understood the concept of gender, so I typically write my characters as if they don't understand it, either. This approach has allowed me to write characters of both biological sexes that readers of both genders seem to find plausible. However, I have some difficulty writing characters to whom gender is important (most obviously transgender characters.) From this, I think the challenge isn't writing characters of another sex, but characters of another gender.

Of course, I still try to write transgender characters--I think you can learn about someone by trying to portray how they think.

(I'm not sure what was in the original post before it was edited, so I won't address it.)


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## Devor (Feb 20, 2013)

OGone said:


> I was going to answer the question but there's not much point now



The thread has been left open and Jabrosky will be back in a few days.  Feel free to respond to the edited version.


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## ascanius (Feb 20, 2013)

You want to write the opposite sex.  Create characters based entirely off women you know in real life.  Try it as practice, write your mother, sister, aunt into your story.  when you write someone you know into a story you will also give them a dignity that a writer may not give if they are a completely fantastical creation.  Take one of your characters and replace their name with the name of a sister, mom, someone very important, how does that change how the scene or character is viewed?  If you do this and that scene becomes very disturbing then maybe it should be toned down or maybe the reasons behind it need to be rethought.  sure they may not mesh completely but for practice it works and it will keep them very real.  Another thing you can do is make it a point to create female characters who are not the media standard of beauty.  The female sex is just like the male sex, everyone comes in all shapes and sizes, and is a good thing to remember.  

In my WIP my favorite character is a girl who has been horribly mutilated at the hands of another.  She is by no means what so ever the modern standard of beauty.  I have to show her inner beauty, who she is.  I'm not saying anyone should do the same.  However everyone should take their notions of what is attractive, handsome, and beautifull and throw it out the window during character creation.  Make a character fat or chubby, make another pole skinny.  Give your bad ass heroin the body of a skinny teenage boy, you can still tell she is a girl but puberty didn't work as well as it did for the other girls.  And you know what just because a character is fat doesn't mean it has to be a problem with that character, that character can be perfictly happy with the way she looks.  Maybe a character is stunning but she is short, or perhaps her left ear is higher than her right.  My point is people are not perfect, male or female, at most we are avarage when it comes too looks.

Now you cannot have everyone in the story going in extremes so before you even think about character creation sit down and list personallity traits and flaws of the females in your everyday life.  Then pick five traits at random, from then on that character is going to be based off those five poeple.  Then start building the character personality first and only when everything else is done do you worry about looks.  Do justice to the female characters in your story at the very least so you can give better justice to your story.


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## Chilari (Feb 20, 2013)

Feo Takahari said:


> I've never really understood the concept of gender, so I typically write my characters as if they don't understand it, either. This approach has allowed me to write characters of both biological sexes that readers of both genders seem to find plausible. However, I have some difficulty writing characters to whom gender is important (most obviously transgender characters.) From this, I think the challenge isn't writing characters of another sex, but characters of another gender.
> 
> Of course, I still try to write transgender characters--I think you can learn about someone by trying to portray how they think.
> 
> (I'm not sure what was in the original post before it was edited, so I won't address it.)



Writing characters who don't understand gender and people of a different gender is a good way of tackling it. I think deep down, we all find aspects of other individuals completely incomprehensible, and gender is a factor in that sometimes; I also think it is very difficult to write a character who has drastically difficult ideals and beliefs to my own in a sympathetic and rounded manner.

I applaud your attempts to write transgendered characters; I think wider sympathetic use in fiction will aid sympathies in real life by giving readers a previously unconsidered perspective. I considered it a few times but I'm not sure I could do a transgendered character justice at this stage because I don't know enough about the trans perspective and I'm not exactly sure how to work it into a fantasy novel anyway, with all the social issues as well.

I find it easier to write male characters who are otherwise like me - a bit geeky, not very outgoing, not confident in groups of strangers etc - than female characters who are very unlike me - popular, obsessed with shoes, spending weekends in clubs, etc. Because when it comes odn to it, personality is more important than gender.


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## Zero Angel (Feb 20, 2013)

Chilari said:


> I applaud your attempts to write transgendered characters; I think wider sympathetic use in fiction will aid sympathies in real life by giving readers a previously unconsidered perspective. I considered it a few times but I'm not sure I could do a transgendered character justice at this stage because I don't know enough about the trans perspective and I'm not exactly sure how to work it into a fantasy novel anyway, with all the social issues as well.



For as long as I can remember in D&D (my fantasy gateway drug), there has been a "cursed" object called the girdle of masculinity/femininity. When a character puts this on, it immediately changes their gender. The object can be removed, but the effects must be magicked off. 

Seems like either the goal of a transgender character or a way to manage it. It is reasonable in an "open" society/culture with magickal means, that they will use magick to do everything that we can do with technology in science (or even more). What's the phrase? A sufficiently analyzed magick is indistinguishable from science?


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## zizban (Feb 20, 2013)

I am a coward. I try to avoid writing them because I'd sound like a male trying to write a female.


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## saellys (Feb 20, 2013)

zizban said:


> I am a coward. I try to avoid writing them because I'd sound like a male trying to write a female.



I recommend reading more male authors who write female characters well. Philip Pullman should be your first stop, and then on to George R. R. Martin for the broadest possible representation of women responding to their own and their society's ideas of gender roles. What little I've read of Steven Brust was great, too. Beyond the fantasy genre, all of Stieg Larsson's female characters are top-notch. If you avoid writing female characters, you're only writing half a world.


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## Ireth (Feb 20, 2013)

saellys said:


> If you avoid writing female characters, you're only writing half a world.



Agreed. I'm female, yet somehow most of my characters wind up being male, and I like to think I do a good job with them. (Whether that's true is something I can't objectively find out myself. XD)


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## Anders Ã„mting (Feb 21, 2013)

Most of my main characters are girls, as I find them easier to relate to and more fun to write than guys. In the same vein, I mostly play girls in RPGs and such.

I've got no idea why this is, but from what I understand this is a preference that varies a lot from writer to writer.


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## Sparkie (Feb 21, 2013)

Ireth said:


> Agreed. I'm female, yet somehow most of my characters wind up being male, and I like to think I do a good job with them. (Whether that's true is something I can't objectively find out myself. XD)



For what it's worth, I think you do well with Cadell in Dragon's Egg.


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## Feo Takahari (Feb 21, 2013)

saellys said:


> I recommend reading more male authors who write female characters well. Philip Pullman should be your first stop, and then on to George R. R. Martin for the broadest possible representation of women responding to their own and their society's ideas of gender roles. What little I've read of Steven Brust was great, too. Beyond the fantasy genre, all of Stieg Larsson's female characters are top-notch. If you avoid writing female characters, you're only writing half a world.



I'd like to add a caveat to the Martin recommendation--he has a certain . . . tendency. I'll let Kate Elliott explain it:



> Imagine a female pov character is going along about her protagonist adventure, seeing things from her perspective of the world as written in third person. She hears, sees, considers, and makes decisions and reacts based on her view of the world and what she is aware of and encounters. Abruptly, a description is dropped into the text of her secondary sexual characteristics usually in the form of soft-focus Playboy-Magazine-style sexualized kitten-bunny-I-would-****-her-in-a-heartbeat lustrous-eyes-and-nipples phrases. Her breasts have just become omniscient breasts.
> 
> This is what I mean when I speak of the male gaze. The breasts are no longer her breasts, they have become the breasts as described by the omniscient heterosexual male narrator (in the person of the writer) who is usually not even aware that he has just dropped out of third person and into omniscient to describe her sexual attractiveness in a way that caters to a heterosexual male audience.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Feb 21, 2013)

Feo Takahari said:


> I'd like to add a caveat to the Martin recommendation--he has a certain . . . tendency. I'll let Kate Elliott explain it:



That's gotta be deliberate. How is it even possible to do that by accident?


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## Penpilot (Feb 21, 2013)

My post in this thread http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/7200-romance-gender.html#post91377 relates.

Basically, don't write Sally the Girl, write Sally the person/character who happens to be a girl. With this approach, I haven't had any of the women in my writing group complain I was getting it wrong with my female characters.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Feb 21, 2013)

Sparkie said:


> For what it's worth, I think you do well with Cadell in Dragon's Egg.


Actually, Dragon's Egg is giving me an opportunity to write from a female POV.

For the most part, I write Baldhart as a person and a mighty barbarian. In that respect, she's not a huge jump from the male MCs in my comfort zone. The first time being female had any real impact was when she challenged men to an arm-wrestling match, and the inappropriate reaction from a drunk when she won.

So based on the past two months of playing this character and writing her on the side, here are three things I recommend to a guy who wants to write a female MC well or at least in a way that seems to be working for Ireth and Nihal, unless they're just being polite and not telling me how guyish my character really is:



(Bold text = general rule; plain text = to OP)



*1) She's a person, not a girl.*

I've said this in other threads and others have said it in this thread, so it must be the most important. Uh, right? Well, anyway, that's the big one. A female dinosaur hunter still hunts dinosaurs like the male dinosaur hunters. She still has to use the same tactics and survival skills. Physical and emotional differences between her and males are as relevant as physical and emotional differences between her and other females.

*2) She may be seen as a girl, not a person, so how does she react to those it's-a-man's-world prejudices?*

Going back to our dinosaur huntress example: what are traditional roles? Are women expected to be gatherers not hunters? Do the men laugh at her mistakes or ogle her? Is her outfit skimpier, or did everyone used to comfortably hunt naked until the chief's daughter came along? If she's breaking the gender barrier because she's the chief's daughter, you have a class issue as well as a gender issue. So there's step one–we've established the prejudices in our world.

Step two is the huntress' reaction: complain to her powerful father, shrug off the chauvinistic attention, enjoy the stares and cat calls, prove her worth as a hunter, etc. Does this create tension? Is there a male ally? Is there a female ally? Does she only hunt with other women to avoid the inappropriate male behaviors? In this primitive society, does she have no choice but to accept them? Acceptance doesn't mean she likes it.

*3) She's not a sex object.*

Honestly, I'm tired of knowing all the sexy details about female characters. So here's ONE possible path you can consider: she doesn't have a sex life. I don't mean she'll never meet a guy in life, but in your story, you focus on her younger years as a huntress. It's believable that your dinosaur huntress does NOT want to get pregnant while she's out in the wild hunting monstrous creatures. It's likely that she's in a life-or-death situation and is not in the mood. This is just one path, but it can work.

And if you do try this path, know that romance CAN come into her life, but don't rush it unless the story is meant to be romantic. Honestly, if you want a story about dinosaur hunting, the romance scenes could be a turn-off unless they're done well. Hold off romance until later in the series if you think it's appropriate or is part of your character's story.

Since you said the romance scenes derail your plot, I strongly suggest this path–at least for short story #1 of a series.


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## Chilari (Feb 21, 2013)

Building upon Legendary Sidekick's third point above, I'd add that there are plenty of reasons she might not be interested in a romantic or sexual relationship with a male character. She might be asexual or aromantic; she might not want kids ever; she might be gay; she might be in a committed and faithful relationship with someone who never makes an appearance; or she might simply not be attracted to anyone during the course of the story.

I get tired of reading books where the one major female character in the story ends up having sex with someone _every single time_. It happens a lot in David Gemmell's books, with the only major female character immune to it being inhuman, as far as I can remember. In fact that's why I put Legend down when I tried to reread it last year. I have a lot less patience for it than I used to, because it's not written for me, it's written for sexually immature males. In fact I don't tend to like reading sexual stuff in novels at all. It's either really badly written (Gilbert Gottfried reading Fifty Shades bad sometimes... *shudder* (seriously, that audioclip ruined my enjoyment of Disney's Aladdin forever. Iago's first line.)), really misogynistic, obvious wish fulfillment or way out of place. Or any combination of the above.

But the root of a lot of poor portrayals of female characters is the author treating them like sex objects, not like characters. So Legendary Sidekick's third point, I think, is quite an important one.


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## Nihal (Feb 21, 2013)

Legendary Sidekick said:


> or at least in a way that seems to be working for Ireth and Nihal, unless they're just being polite and not telling me how guyish my character really is



You're doing fine with her, or at least it's my opinion.

--

I find hard to RP/write characters of the opposite sex. I don't know if it's my approach, where I try to understand the character and put myself in it's shoes, trying to feel the same emotion he/she would be feeling according to his/her logic. Their and my logic often disagree, but I can see the _"why"_ they would react a way or another, even if I don't sympathize with their actions.

I know that sometimes when roleplaying males I slip and end being too gentle, when I should be more friendly but less warm. It eventually blows up my cover during those roleplays. The other extreme can also happen, when I end putting too much rage and coldness in the character when it's not his nature. I pick similar but not-ideal ways of acting out these characters' emotions.


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## Legendary Sidekick (Feb 21, 2013)

Chilari said:


> But the root of a lot of poor portrayals of female characters is the author *treating them like sex objects, not like characters*. So Legendary Sidekick's third point, I think, is quite an important one.


I find many established authors/script-writers guilty of this. Yeah, they're published/extremely-successful and I'm not, but I can still say a female character is being objectified when she is.


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## saellys (Feb 21, 2013)

Feo Takahari said:


> I'd like to add a caveat to the Martin recommendation--he has a certain . . . tendency.



Yeah, that happened to Daenerys a lot. The idea that women spend any amount of time thinking about their breasts in the normal course of a day is pretty dumb, and pretty common to male gaze writing.  Despite that, I maintain that the depth and range of female characters in ASOIAF is unparalleled in the fantasy literature I've encountered, and for the most part the show has translated that well.


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## Jamber (Feb 21, 2013)

On the topic of writing against sexism, I'm loving the way a recent author I've read is using the 's' word... 'Sag'. (The female main character studying herself in a mirror with the critical male gaze.) She's a main character and likeable, whereas in masculine fiction a breast that sags is generally attached to someone unlikeable, even monstrous (Stephen King does this a fair bit, and not only in his early fiction -- Bag of Bones for instance). Go the sag!

In any case, maybe one way to get away from internalised sexism (if you want to) is to write a character then change the gender (but nothing else). I gather this was the story behind Ripley in Alien. Would it have been so ground-breaking if Ripley had been conceived as a 'she' then changed to 'he'?

cheers
Jennie


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## Jessquoi (Feb 21, 2013)

What scares me is that a lot of these successful male writers probably don't even realise what they're doing to their female characters. Sure, there might be some smart and/or talented ones, but they're nearly always reduced to having a love interest or relationship with someone. It's like you can't have a female character without a sexual relationship developing from her presence in the story. It's driving me nuts too. That's what ruined Patrick Rothfuss for me. I started out really loving his books, but in the end it kind of turned into 'every man's' primal fantasy where the main character is just amazing at everything (including sex) and all the females are smart sexual objects. Just because they're smart that doesn't make it OK! It's a complete misunderstanding of sexism/feminism.

I heard that in some Australian dictionaries the definition of a misogynist is no longer a 'woman hater' but someone who has a bad understanding of women's rights, issues and feminism. An interesting insight.


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## Steerpike (Feb 21, 2013)

Cersei doesn't necessarily bother me, because she's one character and GRRM has other female characters that don't exhibit behavior anything like that. Further, Cersei isn't even supposed to be a likeable character. I've known one woman who was extremely obsessed with her own breasts and her series of augmentation surgeries, to the point it got her in some hot water at work, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn of a Cersei-like obsession in some people. For almost any anomalous obsession you can imagine, there are probably some people on the planet who have it. The important thing if you include it in a work of fiction is that it be anomalous, just as it is in real life. If every female character in your book is obsessed with her own breasts, you've got a huge problem. If it is one out of a large number of female characters, the others of whom are well-written as female characters, then it won't bother me so much. The one is not meant, in that case, to be representative of the whole.


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## saellys (Feb 21, 2013)

Cersei's rise to "power" was predicated entirely on getting married to a giant philanderer; her obsession with her appearance and her threatened reactions to any female character younger or subjectively prettier than her felt entirely consistent to me. Needless to say, if that had been the way every female character in ASOIAF related to every other female character, it would have been a serious problem. Or if there had only been two female characters (which is often the most fantasy readers can hope for) and one saw the other solely as a threat and rival, that would be equally problematic. 

This is an angle where the show has been hit-or-miss. Arya tells Lord Tywin "Most girls are stupid" in season two, which is something book-Arya never would have thought or said. On the flip side, the show gave Sansa an awesome friendship with Shae, which was really refreshing in the midst of all the crap that happens to her. Disproportionate ratios of female to male nudity aside, I will conservatively say it's one of the least misogynistic shows on television! *waves tiny flag and plays a cheery tune on a kazoo*


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## MongrelChuck (Feb 21, 2013)

I find a modified version of the Plinkett Characterization Test to be pretty good for dealing with anything you are uncomfortable or unsure about writing.  For those who are unaware, the original Test is to strip away any and all representations of a character's identity based around 'what' they are, and focus on the 'who' they are.  This is a good tool for those who write any form of genre fiction as it prevents your characters from "playing the uniform and not the man".   

Let me go with a pretty universal Western example.   I might describe this individual as a person whose identity was informed by a sense of responsibility ingrained through hard work and dedication.  The individual suffers through a crisis of identity as they must wear many different masks to protect and assist those around them.  This person was adopted, and though their adopted parents inform their understanding of duty and benefit, they feel isolated from the world due to a lack of attachment to their homeland and parents.

 That's roughly how I might describe Superman using the Plinkett test.  I probably missed something (I'm not a huge fan of the Man of Steel) but you can see the point of the exercise.

Now see how stable of a character is created if you describe your character without gender.  Then add Gender.  How does the understanding that this character has this identify inform your character?  How does it enhance the story?  If it doesn't enhance or detracts?  You may want to start over.


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