# On Writing Women. Looking for honesty...



## Heliotrope

Ok, I'm going to preface this by being honest.

I never finished reading Lord of the Rings.

I also never finished reading Dune.

Both have been sitting on my shelf for twenty years or more, pages turned down. Never finished.

This bothered me for a long time. I felt like something was wrong with me. They are so famous! They are the pinnacles of fantasy achievement! Why could I read The Mists of Avalon and not these books?

I recently read this interview by Philip Pullman (The Golden Compass):

A Conversation With His Dark Materials Author Philip Pullman (and His Daemon)

And I know we have some rules now about how much we are allowed to post, so I will just do the tiny bit that hit me:

_When I think of literature—Dickens, George Eliot, Joseph Conrad—the great novelists found their subject matter in human nature, emotion, in the ways we relate to each other. If that’s what Tolkien’s up to, he’s left out half of it. The books are wholly male-oriented. The entire question of sexual relationships is omitted._

Bam. This was it for me. This was the reason why I couldn't finish those books. It was finally explained in a way that resonated with me. Both Lord of the Rings and Dune were so male-oriented. All the main characters were males doing male things. The only women in the books were hyper idealized virgin-esque, almost angelic beings that I could not relate to as a pre-teen girl growing up. The women did not have any of the struggles, passions, interests, or desires that I had. They were sparkling, glittering card board cut outs.

Women readers... did anyone else have the same troubles with these books as I did? It was only when I finally found fantasy books that utilized real female characters that I could actually get into the genre.


----------



## goldhawk

IMO, both the Lord Of The Rings and Dune are long winded. They are boring in many places. I'm not surprised people cannot finished them. In fact, Dune became know as the book nobody finishes on their first read. But their movies keep to their ideals, so one can watch them instead.


----------



## Heliotrope

goldhawk said:


> Dune became know as the book nobody finishes on their first read.



Ha! Good to know.


----------



## Annoyingkid

goldhawk said:


> But their movies keep to their ideals, so one can watch them instead.



The same movies that show trembling and confused eleven year old boys being given swords and armour in order to fight 10,000 hulking Uruk-hai, while the fully trained, grown ass women are sent to the caves to weep and cower.


----------



## Demesnedenoir

Could be true, could be false. Many of the non-fantasy classics are very male oriented. Did you have trouble with Treasure Island? Three Musketeers? Been a long time, but even the Count of Monte Cristo... pretty much a testosterone fest. A Christmas Carol. Most Dickens as I recall. Twain too. 

My knee-jerk reaction would be this is a misdiagnosis. While it could be a piece of the issue, I expect there's something more. Part of this will be generational, when I was a lad, the selection of fantasy was atrocious and thin. Now days, its mostly atrocious but a helluva lot of it, heh heh.

But then, I am a dude who read Dune straight through the first time (err, close to 3 decades ago?)... book 2, no, I didn't make it past book 1, LOL.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

And Eowyn's role is significantly diminished in the movies, unfortunately.

The Silmarillion at least has the Tale of Beren and Luthien, wherein Luthien does most of the rescuing instead of the other way round.

Speaking of The Mists of Avalon, I finally have all three books in the trilogy. One issue I had with the 'first' one was that all of the characters were so multi-dimensional, perhaps too much so, that I found it hard to sympathize with any of them.

Also, so far, all of my protagonists are female. I really don't have much experience with writing male characters...


----------



## Heliotrope

I did struggle with Treasure Island. And the Three Muskateers (Never read it). All the old testosterone fests. I read Anne of Green Gables. When I look at it, I loved A Wrinkle in Time (female lead character). I loved Wizard's First Rule because the women characters were real women, with urges and sexual desires and passions and hopes beyond just "being a warrior" or "being angelic beings."  

When I look at my book case, all the books I love are not testosterone fests. I'm simply wondering if other women feel the same?


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Oh, oh, The Old Kingdom series has female protagonists. They're some of my favourites. Also, Diana Wynne Jones has some very feisty female characters in her books. [Fire and Hemlock is my favourite of hers. I could read it over and over again.]


----------



## Heliotrope

I even struggled with Name of the Wind because there wasn't a single normal girl in it. It was pure machoism again. By the end I hated it. Now I'm seeing a pattern....

I'm wondering if the fantasy section at the book store needs to be re-named to "Male Fantasy". lol. I'm kidding.


----------



## Heliotrope

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> Fire and Hemlock is my favourite of hers



Ordering this now.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Though the first and third Earthsea books by Ursula le Guin are male-orientated, the second and fourth are not, and all four are worth a read. The fourth one, Tehanu, is my favourite of all of her books.

Claymore is my favourite manga, mainly because it has an all-female cast [except for three important male characters].


----------



## Heliotrope

Demesnedenoir said:


> Most Dickens as I recall.



Dickens had some fantastic female characters who were "real". I'm not talking about "the strong female character". I'm taking about women who feel like real women. Dickens was amazing at creating female characters who felt like actual, real people. Estella Havasham from Great Expectations. Not a testosterone fest. 

Nancy from Oliver Twist.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Other recommendations from my bookshelf are:
Seraphina [features unusual dragons and a half human half dragon protagonists] and its sequel, Shadow Scale.

The Enchanted Forest tetology [the first three have very strong and determined female protagonists who refuse to let men boss them around, though the fourth does not].


----------



## Nimue

Yes, and more than that, I gravitate heavily to female authors as well. My introduction to fantasy was Patricia Wrede, Tamora Pierce, Robin McKinley—Garth Nix is the exception here, but as Crystal says, his Old Kingdom books have great female protagonists.  My favorite authors now are still a majority women—Lois McMasters-Bujold is my absolute favorite.

Books with a female protagonist, authors who write women as often as they write men...there’s an unconscious litmus test there for me for whether I’ll enjoy those books.  The focus and the characterization tends to be different.  Of course, there are plenty of men in these books, and they tend to be written perfectly well.  I’m not sure if it’s a bias so much as it is seeking the _absence_ of a bias...


----------



## Tom

Huh. This thread is interesting to me because it's making me wonder how being a trans guy has influenced my reading. I read LotR and the first Dune book for the first time back when I thought I was female, and I...didn't really think about the lack of good women characters. I mean, once I got into fandom discussions online I began to realize that a lot of fantasy had a problem with this, but on my own I didn't see it.

I didn't see myself in female characters even when I thought I was a girl, instead identifying with the male protagonists. I wonder if any other trans men have similar experiences.


----------



## Heliotrope

Nimue said:


> I’m not sure if it’s a bias so much as it is seeking the _absence_ of a bias...



Exactly. I love male characters too. I love all characters. For me it was coming to this realization of a pattern after reading Pullman's interview of why I struggled with LOTR, and I was wondering if other women felt the same.


----------



## Ban

I don't have much of an opinion on this as I am a man and I have no knowledge whatsoever when it comes to gender-based psychology/sociology/whatever-other-field-of-study-applies-here, but this does make me wonder how I might make my main story more appealing to a female/feminine audience. My story is heavily focused on a fictionalised, but close to reality version of the Italian-American mafia, who did and do not have any female members in their heavily patriarchal sub-society. For important reasons my main characters are not in any stable relationship either, so that makes me wonder what I could do? Perhaps I could subvert this somewhat by focusing the theme of my story more on how the lack of feminity and its associated characteristics in the lives of these men affects their worldview and way of life. 
Just something to think on for me, so thanks for indirectly causing me to ponder on it.


----------



## Heliotrope

Banten said:


> I don't have much of an opinion on this as I am a man and I have no knowledge whatsoever when it comes to gender-based psychology/sociology/whatever-other-field-of-study-applies-here, but this does make me wonder how I might make my main story more appealing to a female/feminine audience. My story is heavily focused on a fictionalised, but close to reality version of the Italian-American mafia, who did and do not have any female members in their heavily patriarchal sub-society. For important reasons my main characters are not in any stable relationship either, so that makes me wonder what I could do? Perhaps I could subvert this somewhat by focusing the theme of my story more on how the lack of feminity and its associated characteristics in the lives of these men affects their worldview and way of life.
> Just something to think on for me, so thanks for indirectly causing me to ponder on it.



I think considering your audience is important. If you are writing for dudes (or woman) who enjoy that sort of male centric mafia stuff then I wouldn't worry too much about it, really. People love LOTR. People love Dune. People love all sorts of stuff. Write to your audience, not to please everyone.


----------



## Heliotrope

I'm just more on this path of self discovery right now and wanted to share and see if others had insights to offer


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

<I just don’t like the conclusions Lewis comes to, after all that analysis, the way he shuts children out from heaven, or whatever it is, on the grounds that the one girl is interested in boys.>
I agree with this point, from the Philip Pulman interview. That's one of the many problems I have with the Narnia books. It's not that I dislike them so much as I keep poking holes in them, which started after I actually understood the allegory and realized that the Telemoran "god", Tash, was far more interesting to me than anything else in the entire series, and I was confused as to why a Hindu-esque raven creature was seen as a horrific beast.

I apologize for getting slightly sidetracked. I've never told anyone how I feel about the Narnia books, come to think of it.


----------



## Heliotrope

Oh man I'm so glad you read it and found the quote! I was going to go there next. 

I think this is really what bothers me the most about the way female characters have traditionally been portrayed in fantasy... like these sort of a-sexual beings... either too interested in being angelic and virginal, or so focussed on being "the strong female character warrior who hates men and is not interested in sex". 

It feels so unnatural. Sorry people, women like sex. We have desires and passions and we make mistakes and we like boys (or girls) too. Even as a youth I knew this felt weird. It wasn't that I was hunting out sex in books, it was more that I wanted to see women portrayed as real people, and sex, or at least some resemblance of normal human emotions, is a big factor with that..


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Since I am asexual, all of my characters are, too, but then, my books take place in another universe that isn't much like Earth customs and so forth. Though there is plenty of romance!


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Hmmmm 

I've always been more "masculine" in manner and interests than my female peers. Growing up, most of my friends were boys. I still have a lot of male friends. And most of the characters I relate to the most in books are male. So I guess i never was very bothered by this. (I really really loved LOTR.) 

It deserves mentioning that I hated, was apathetic toward, or flat-out refused to read most of the usual "girl" books. Little House on the Prairie? Blech. Anne of Green Gables? I guess it was okay. I had to read Caddie Woodlawn for school and my not so humble opinion was that it was shit. I especially loathed books where the tomboy girl grew up by the end of the book and started to like hoop skirts and girly things and accept that she was a woman or whatever. (Caddie Woodlawn. Excuse me while I retch.) Tomboy characters were about the only way i saw myself in female characters and to treat it as a phase that would be matured out of or even as a character flaw to be overcome was disgusting and alienating to me. (FYI, i never grew out of or overcame any of my basic character traits. Whatever magic wand that passes over every female teenager and gifts them with obsessions with hair, makeup and nails mysteriously passed me over.) 

On the other hand, I love to read about badass women, complicated women, strong women, conflicted women, women of all types. Heck. My WIP is 60,000 words in and the sole male character hasn't arrived yet, The cast is almost entirely women. It's a very diverse, mixed bag of women of every color, shape, size and personality. 

I guess i don't necessarily *need* female characters in books. I'm probably more likely to relate to the guys anyway. But maybe that's because females like *me* aren't common.


----------



## Nimue

Tom said:


> Huh. This thread is interesting to me because it's making me wonder how being a trans guy has influenced my reading. I read LotR and the first Dune book for the first time back when I thought I was female, and I...didn't really think about the lack of good women characters. I mean, once I got into fandom discussions online I began to realize that a lot of fantasy had a problem with this, but on my own I didn't see it.
> 
> I didn't see myself in female characters even when I thought I was a girl, instead identifying with the male protagonists. I wonder if any other trans men have similar experiences.


I’m sure that’s a shared experience... Imagine if you had been able to read some great fantasy with trans men protagonists as a kid! I hope the new generation of readers has more of those opportunities...  As a small bookish white girl, I didn’t have to go so far to find stories that spoke to me, but still, a little out of the mainstream.  Tolkien’s writing and world is beautiful, but it never lodged close to my heart, and perhaps that was part of it.  I certainly noticed and chafed at the lack of involved female characters.

I’ve never read Dune, or Name of the Wind, or Wheel of Time, though I’ve tried.  I couldn’t even get past the first book of ASoIaF.  Epic, sprawling, military or political fantasy just doesn’t interest me as much as small, personal, deep-diving stories with a bit of romance, literal and poetic, do.  I wish there was a sub-genre for that, but until then, I have to look for women writing female-led stories.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Wouldn't it be great if there was a fantasy story in which trans people were culturally accepted as normal *writes note to self*


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Dragon: You would probably like Claymore a lot; all of the characters in it are, to censor myself, terrible-donkey.  Did I show you a link to it already? I can't remember. Here it is, anyway, for anyone who's interested:
Claymore 1 - Read Claymore 1 Online - Page 1


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Wouldn't it be great if there was a fantasy story in which trans people were culturally accepted as normal *writes note to self*


I'm way ahead of you on that, kind of. I have several gay/lesbian characters, genderless characters, and a hermaphrodite character, but not a trans character [yet].


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Oh, wait, what am I saying, I do have a trans character, in my second book. Well, sort of. Since everyone's asexual, the character in question didn't really change his sex, but rather gender.


----------



## Nimue

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> Dragon: You would probably like Claymore a lot; all of the characters in it are, to censor myself, terrible-donkey.  Did I show you a link to it already? I can't remember. Here it is, anyway, for anyone who's interested:
> Claymore 1 - Read Claymore 1 Online - Page 1


Heh, I suppose the same thing holds here... When I went through a phase of reading manga, Claymore was one of the series I got deepest into...until the story started getting mushy, which happens in most long-running forms of media.  Why I don’t watch much television, really—those poor overstretched story threads.


----------



## Tom

Nimue said:


> I’m sure that’s a shared experience... Imagine if you had been able to read some great fantasy with trans men protagonists as a kid! I hope the new generation of readers has more of those opportunities...  As a small bookish white girl, I didn’t have to go so far to find stories that spoke to me, but still, a little out of the mainstream.  Tolkien’s writing and world is beautiful, but it never lodged close to my heart, and perhaps that was part of it.  I certainly noticed and chafed at the lack of involved female characters.
> 
> I’ve never read Dune, or Name of the Wind, or Wheel of Time, though I’ve tried.  I couldn’t even get past the first book of ASoIaF.  Epic, sprawling, military or political fantasy just doesn’t interest me as much as small, personal, deep-diving stories with a bit of romance, literal and poetic, do.  I wish there was a sub-genre for that, but until then, I have to look for women writing female-led stories.



It would have been amazing to read about trans heroes as a kid! It does seem like the literary world is diversifying, and I'm starting to see more kids' books and YA with trans protagonists, which is incredible. I only wish some had come out 10 years earlier. But yeah, I was pretty oblivious as a kid/young teen about the lack of female characters in most of my favorites, though I did read books with great girl protagonists as well. (Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke was one I loved a lot, as well as the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.) 

I never made it through Name of the Wind or Wheel of Time, though it was more to do with my beef with their plots and styles than anything else. I loved the first two ASoIaF books, but I burnt out from their sheer size, lol. I do wish fantasy had more room for personal stories. I still like big, sweeping, political stuff, but it means nothing to me if there's not a person driving it at its core.


----------



## Tom

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> I'm way ahead of you on that, kind of. I have several gay/lesbian characters, genderless characters, and a hermaphrodite character, but not a trans character [yet].


I'd like to point out that the modern terminology for people who exhibit ambiguous sexual characteristics is intersex. Hermaphrodite is an outdated term that a lot of intersex people are uncomfortable with, since it was used by the medical field for a very long time to dehumanize them.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Etymologically, there's nothing dirty or dehumanizing about the term, but I do understand your point.

But, then again, what do I know? Nothing.


----------



## Tom

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> Etymologically, there's nothing dirty or dehumanizing about the term, but I do understand your point.
> 
> But, then again, what do I know? Nothing.


Etymologically, yes, but given its historical use it is pretty dehumanizing. I was just pointing it out because I used to use it too until an intersex person asked me not to.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

What do you call an intersex character who has no...sex, then?


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Sorry for derailing the discussion again.


----------



## Heliotrope

Ha! It's all related, actually. I think so, anyway. It's about discussing the male-dominated tradition of fantasy, and how other people of a variety of sexualities (including hetero-women) have been so badly misrepresented. It's all good.


----------



## Tom

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> What do you call an intersex character who has no...sex, then?


Like an asexual intersex character? Or agender? Either way, intersex people relate to their gender/sexuality in much the same way non-intersex people do.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Now I'm confused.


----------



## Heliotrope

Intersex is when you have sex organs that don't fit the "standard" definition of male or female. They are still sexual beings and can still feel arousal.

Asexual is when you don't have any sexual feelings or feelings of arousal, regardless of type of sexual organs.

So you can have someone who is asexual intersex, which would be an "intersex person with no feelings of arousal".


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Tom said:


> It would have been amazing to read about trans heroes as a kid! It does seem like the literary world is diversifying, and I'm starting to see more kids' books and YA with trans protagonists, which is incredible. I only wish some had come out 10 years earlier. But yeah, I was pretty oblivious as a kid/young teen about the lack of female characters in most of my favorites, though I did read books with great girl protagonists as well. (Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke was one I loved a lot, as well as the Enchanted Forest Chronicles.)
> 
> I never made it through Name of the Wind or Wheel of Time, though it was more to do with my beef with their plots and styles than anything else. I loved the first two ASoIaF books, but I burnt out from their sheer size, lol. I do wish fantasy had more room for personal stories. I still like big, sweeping, political stuff, but it means nothing to me if there's not a person driving it at its core.



I'd like to add to your comment about personal stories in fantasy because I find those important too. In planning one of my projects i found that I was utterly unenthusiastic about writing about a war and the changes wrought upon the world during it because it seemed too...big. Impersonal. I always want to write about characters and their relationships. 

ASOIAF has never really interested me. Maybe because of that.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Heliotrope said:


> Intersex is when you have sex organs that don't fit the "standard" definition of male or female. They are still sexual beings and can still feel arousal.
> 
> Asexual is when you don't have any sexual feelings or feelings of arousal, regardless of type of sexual organs.
> 
> So you can have someone who is asexual intersex, which would be an "intersex person with no feelings of arousal".



Also i'm pretty sure that asexuality is about attraction/desire for sex and st least some asexual people do experience arousal and have sex. 

But, not being asexual, maybe i shouldn't comment.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

^I thought it was the other way round, that being asexual meant that you have no desire for sex whatsoever. Maybe I'm wrong?


----------



## Tom

I thought I was asexual for several years (turns out it was just baggage from being trans) and it's a pretty complicated identity. A lot of asexual people experience no arousal, some do, and it seems there's not a single concrete definition of asexuality. It's a very fluid, individual thing.


----------



## Tom

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> ^I thought it was the other way round, that being asexual meant that you have no desire for sex whatsoever. Maybe I'm wrong?


Thought what was the other way around?


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> ^I thought it was the other way round, that being asexual meant that you have no desire for sex whatsoever. Maybe I'm wrong?



There's a spectrum. A lot of people experience it in different ways.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

So..is there any word that concretely means = no sexual desire nor sexual organs?


----------



## Tom

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> ^I thought it was the other way round, that being asexual meant that you have no desire for sex whatsoever. Maybe I'm wrong?


Generally that's what it means, but there's a lot of wiggle room in the term. It can vary from people who are like "no, I don't ever want sex, and I feel no sexual attraction" to people who experience kind of a gray area.


----------



## Tom

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> So..is there any word that concretely means = no sexual desire nor sexual organs?


Not that I'm aware of. Asexual generally means no sexual desire, and intersex is a blanket term that covers people outside of what we'd define as "male" or "female", ranging from chromosomal variations to ambiguous sexual organs or none at all.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

My characters aren't human and don't have any sexual organs, so calling them asexual is kind of redundant.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> My characters aren't human and don't have any sexual organs, so calling them asexual is kind of redundant.



All these terms were made to refer to humans, so maybe there needs to be a new term for non humans?


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

^Agreed. I'm not sure what, though. 

If I were to write a book with a male point of view character, I am not entirely sure how I would write it.

Of course, now that I've said that, this could easily escalate into discussions of what makes a woman a woman and what makes a man a man, which then could veer into potentially dangerous territory, so I might stay quiet on that.

Although, given all of the other topics in my books, asexuality would be the least of the moral guardians' concerns.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Dragon: There is a term for how the characters' give birth through energy fusion, so perhaps I can make a suitable term and add it to the dictionary in my second book.


----------



## noob of the north

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Hmmmm
> 
> I've always been more "masculine" in manner and interests than my female peers. Growing up, most of my friends were boys. I still have a lot of male friends. And most of the characters I relate to the most in books are male. So I guess i never was very bothered by this. (I really really loved LOTR.)
> 
> It deserves mentioning that I hated, was apathetic toward, or flat-out refused to read most of the usual "girl" books. Little House on the Prairie? Blech. Anne of Green Gables? I guess it was okay. I had to read Caddie Woodlawn for school and my not so humble opinion was that it was shit. I especially loathed books where the tomboy girl grew up by the end of the book and started to like hoop skirts and girly things and accept that she was a woman or whatever. (Caddie Woodlawn. Excuse me while I retch.) Tomboy characters were about the only way i saw myself in female characters and to treat it as a phase that would be matured out of or even as a character flaw to be overcome was disgusting and alienating to me. (FYI, i never grew out of or overcame any of my basic character traits. Whatever magic wand that passes over every female teenager and gifts them with obsessions with hair, makeup and nails mysteriously passed me over.)
> 
> On the other hand, I love to read about badass women, complicated women, strong women, conflicted women, women of all types. Heck. My WIP is 60,000 words in and the sole male character hasn't arrived yet, The cast is almost entirely women. It's a very diverse, mixed bag of women of every color, shape, size and personality.
> 
> I guess i don't necessarily *need* female characters in books. I'm probably more likely to relate to the guys anyway. But maybe that's because females like *me* aren't common.


Yeah, I agree. I look for female characters who relate to me a bit, and they can be hard to find. I was raised by a single father, and I don't relate to the romantic girly girl, or the Sex and the City-type women (Pretty well-written show, but I never really related to any of them the way other people did: "O, I'm just like Charlotte!". Heck no.) I also like the tomboyish characters (especially more adult tomboys) who aren't necessarily putting a romantic relationship on top of their list of priorities, but still are very interesting characters, and warm and caring when it comes to friends or animals. They don't have to be the stone-cold warrior type women, just ordinary people who don't necessarily like what a lot of people call "women's stuff". I don't mind if characters like that stuff, that's fine, but I find the adult tomboy girl a bit rare in fiction. I like Veronica Mars, and Claire in "Six Feet Under", and Darlene from "Roseanne". That sort of character, but they're all teens or just about. I guess that's why I write, to try and make some adult tomboys.


----------



## Mythopoet

Well, in my opinion Dickens, Eliot and Conrad are all extremely overrated and nigh unreadable. And I am really struggling to figure out how this description, "All the main characters were males doing male things. The only women in the books were hyper idealized virgin-esque, almost angelic beings that I could not relate to as a pre-teen girl growing up. The women did not have any of the struggles, passions, interests, or desires that I had. They were sparkling, glittering card board cut outs." could possibly apply to Dune. Are you reading some book called Dune other than Frank Herbert's Dune?


----------



## Heliotrope

Nope. It was Frank Herbert's Dune. The Princess was very Tolkeinesque. Superficial. Lady Jessica was a mother archetype, not a real person. It just felt like the women were not fleshed out to me. They were set pieces.


----------



## Mythopoet

I feel sorry for you.


----------



## Heliotrope

Mytho, why do you feel the need to get personal? Contribute to the discussion. Offer your thoughts and opinions. I would love to hear some insight. ^^ Getting personal is not helpful.


----------



## noob of the north

Heliotrope said:


> Exactly. I love male characters too. I love all characters. For me it was coming to this realization of a pattern after reading Pullman's interview of why I struggled with LOTR, and I was wondering if other women felt the same.


I struggled a bit with LOTR, and even though the Peter Jackson-movies were supposed to be more women-friendly (the scripts were written by two women) I wasn't all that satisfied with the female characters in the movies either. My favourite female book characters are however Weatherwax and Ogg from Terry Pratchett. Not only are they pretty decently written, they're hilarious, and everytime I get slightly miffed by female characters in fantasy, I turn to them for comfort.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

noob of the north said:


> Yeah, I agree. I look for female characters who relate to me a bit, and they can be hard to find. I was raised by a single father, and I don't relate to the romantic girly girl, or the Sex and the City-type women (Pretty well-written show, but I never really related to any of them the way other people did: "O, I'm just like Charlotte!". Heck no.) I also like the tomboyish characters (especially more adult tomboys) who aren't necessarily putting a romantic relationship on top of their list of priorities, but still are very interesting characters, and warm and caring when it comes to friends or animals. They don't have to be the stone-cold warrior type women, just ordinary people who don't necessarily like what a lot of people call "women's stuff". I don't mind if characters like that stuff, that's fine, but I find the adult tomboy girl a bit rare in fiction. I like Veronica Mars, and Claire in "Six Feet Under", and Darlene from "Roseanne". That sort of character, but they're all teens or just about. I guess that's why I write, to try and make some adult tomboys.



This! You finally articulated it. Adult tomboys are rare. It's a state that's acceptable among girls but unacceptable among women, to be matured out of. I never did...or at least I haven't yet. If anything i've gotten to be more tomboyish. 

That was why I hated Caddie Woodlawn...everything about her identity i related to was abolished when she "matured." As of rejecting her tomboyishness was the last stage of her character development. Ew.


----------



## Svrtnsse

noob of the north said:


> My favourite female book characters are however Weatherwax and Ogg from Terry Pratchett.



How do you feel about Tiffany Aching? I like to view her a bit like Pratchett's version of Harry Potter, except more bad ass, but maybe that's just me.


----------



## Heliotrope

See, for me characters don't have to be bad ass, or gender bending, or tom boys, or super smart.... flawed yes, and "human"... I don't know how to describe it? Like Svrt, I love the concept of your story about the bear because the MC sounds so _normal _to me. Normal girl faces some extraordinary stuff. She isn't super bad ass. She has no intension of "rebelling against society, man," she isn't a super genius. She's just a woman character. I love that. I wish there was more of that. I see so many authors try to create these "bad ass woman characters" like Sarah Connors or Ripley, which is cool, because I like all kinds of characters, but I wish there were just more "normal" women. They always seem to be tropes. It seems like there are more "normal" guy characters... even a Hobbit is somewhat normal, to an extent.


----------



## Heliotrope

Like, it seems like in fantasy it is totally okay for "simple farm boy to save the world." But there are never just "simple farm girls." They are always princesses, or priestesses, or goddesses, or queens, or mothers or supernatural, or have crazy kick ass combat skills, or are super brilliant scientists or are otherworldly beautiful. Where are the normal girls doing awesome stuff? Just normal, flawed girls being awesome? I could care less if the simple farm girl was into soccer or tea parties or smoking a pipe in her rocking chair. I just want to see a normal girl being the hero.

*Note, Svrt, that is one thing I like about your style in general. Even Lost Dogs feels very "human" to me, like you have mastered that ability to make characters feel like real people, even when they aren't.


----------



## noob of the north

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> This! You finally articulated it. Adult tomboys are rare. It's a state that's acceptable among girls but unacceptable among women, to be matured out of. I never did...or at least I haven't yet. If anything i've gotten to be more tomboyish.
> 
> That was why I hated Caddie Woodlawn...everything about her identity i related to was abolished when she "matured." As of rejecting her tomboyishness was the last stage of her character development. Ew.


Haha, I will definitely stay away from Caddie Woodlawn. I get more tomboyish with age too, and more open about it probably. It's just that most of the time, as a woman, my goals in life are shown as much less valid than my peers', especially in media (and still some of those peers get offended by my choices, go figure). Wanting to find stories which talks about _us_ in some way is part of the draw with stories, and it's sad that I mostly find it in male characters and not female adult characters, to the point where I've stopped looking and just write them myself.


----------



## noob of the north

Svrtnsse said:


> How do you feel about Tiffany Aching? I like to view her a bit like Pratchett's version of Harry Potter, except more bad ass, but maybe that's just me.


Ah, I've heard nothing but good things about Tiffany Aching, and those books are definitely on my reading list, I just haven't gotten to them yet. Being a Pratchett-version of Harry Potter, and more badass, is definitely a strong selling point.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Heliotrope said:


> See, for me characters don't have to be bad ass, or gender bending, or tom boys, or super smart.... flawed yes, and "human"... I don't know how to describe it? Like Svrt, I love the concept of your story about the bear because the MC sounds so _normal _to me. Normal girl faces some extraordinary stuff. She isn't super bad ass. She has no intension of "rebelling against society, man," she isn't a super genius. She's just a woman character. I love that. I wish there was more of that. I see so many authors try to create these "bad ass woman characters" like Sarah Connors or Ripley, which is cool, because I like all kinds of characters, but I wish there were just more "normal" women. They always seem to be tropes. It seems like there are more "normal" guy characters... even a Hobbit is somewhat normal, to an extent.



would totally read a story about a shy, introverted girl dragged on a quest when she just wants to go back to her hobbit hole and eat food 

Bilbo is so relatable.


----------



## noob of the north

Heliotrope said:


> Like, it seems like in fantasy it is totally okay for "simple farm boy to save the world." But there are never just "simple farm girls." They are always princesses, or priestesses, or goddesses, or queens, or mothers or supernatural, or have crazy kick ass combat skills, or are super brilliant scientists or are otherworldly beautiful. Where are the normal girls doing awesome stuff? Just normal, flawed girls being awesome? I could care less if the simple farm girl was into soccer or tea parties or smoking a pipe in her rocking chair. I just want to see a normal girl being the hero.
> 
> *Note, Svrt, that is one thing I like about your style in general. Even Lost Dogs feels very "human" to me, like you have mastered that ability to make characters feel like real people, even when they aren't.


I adore this.


----------



## noob of the north

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> would totally read a story about a shy, introverted girl dragged on a quest when she just wants to go back to her hobbit hole and eat food
> 
> Bilbo is so relatable.


Please write this.


----------



## Heliotrope

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> would totally read a story about a shy, introverted girl dragged on a quest when she just wants to go back to her hobbit hole and eat food
> 
> Bilbo is so relatable.



Exactly. Where are these girls/women? Why are there so many boy characters like this, but not girls? Why have women in fantasy been put on a weird pedestal for so long, where they are hyper idealized, but never feeling.... real? Normal?


----------



## Svrtnsse

Heliotrope said:


> *Note, Svrt, that is one thing I like about your style in general. Even Lost Dogs feels very "human" to me, like you have mastered that ability to make character



This is definitely what I'm trying to do. I'm very anxious to see how it pans out among people who don't have any connection to me though. I've got high hopes, but...

Anyway, it's grounded in my thoughts on world building. By creating characters that readers can get familiar with, it's easier to create a sense of wonder when fantastic and mysterious things happen.

(Typing on phone)


----------



## Annoyingkid

Heliotrope said:


> Oh man I'm so glad you read it and found the quote! I was going to go there next.
> 
> I think this is really what bothers me the most about the way female characters have traditionally been portrayed in fantasy... like these sort of a-sexual beings... either too interested in being angelic and virginal, or so focussed on being "the strong female character warrior who hates men and is not interested in sex".
> 
> It feels so unnatural. Sorry people, women like sex. We have desires and passions and we make mistakes and we like boys (or girls) too. Even as a youth I knew this felt weird. It wasn't that I was hunting out sex in books, it was more that I wanted to see women portrayed as real people, and sex, or at least some resemblance of normal human emotions, is a big factor with that..



Does the SFC often stay a virgin though?

Doesn't the "strong female character" typically sleep with the male MC at some point, and act as his "reward" at the end and submits to him afterward? In a fantasy of being able to "tame" the strong woman through "corrective" sex.


----------



## Heliotrope

Yes, this drives me crazy too. How about "strong female character" sleeps with male MC because she wants to, and she has desires and is a whole person.


----------



## Steerpike

Heliotrope said:


> Yes, this drives me crazy too. How about "strong female character" sleeps with male MC because she wants to, and she has desires and is a whole person.



Monza Murcatto in _Best Served Cold_, though I don't know I'd describe anyone in that book as "whole."


----------



## Russ

As a long time ardent feminist, I agree with  your analysis of Spec Fic Helio.  Despite its many claims to push the boundaries and to promote new ways of looking at the world the field has also been a reflection of the society it was written in and produced a lot of material with very stereotyped female characters.  There are a few examples that defy that conclusion, but they are swamped by the bulk of the works.  This problems exists in other fields as well, if that is any comfort.   I was at a panel discussion about women in thrillers last year, and things go really out of hand.  So I guess the stereotypes still carry a lot of weight.

If you want well developed characters, including trans and gay, in the spec field I would suggest you look at some of the real cutting edge work of the SF guys who formed "the new wave" a couple of decades back, and that you run, not walk, and start reading Nalo Hopkinson, particularly her short work.  

PS- concur with you about Dune as well


----------



## Heliotrope

Thanks Russ! 


Russ said:


> run, not walk, and start reading Nalo Hopkinson



Will do! Now I have Christmas reading


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Heliotrope said:


> Exactly. Where are these girls/women? Why are there so many boy characters like this, but not girls? Why have women in fantasy been put on a weird pedestal for so long, where they are hyper idealized, but never feeling.... real? Normal?



i just feel like female characters aren't as authentic to the diversity of humans; they slide neatly into tropes. warrior. princess. etc etc. nobody gets to be socially awkward or complicated or having weird obsessions or someone who screams when they see a puppy or constantly wants to stuff their face hole w/brownies. 

especially YA heroines feel weird and manufactured because they're all "strong female characters" who don't have any individual qualities really. 

Writing Red Nights made me realize that because all the characters are female, and every role in my diverse cast is a female one. I ended up writing women in ways they typically aren't written.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

noob of the north said:


> Please write this.



It sounds fun


----------



## Heliotrope

Yeah. I mean it is everywhere still. Look at Stranger Things. A group of five _normal_ boys try to stop an evil force. The only two girls in the show are either super crazy good at video games (better than the boys), or have crazy telepathy skills. The only normal woman is the mom... but there is the old "mom" trope again. lol.

There has to be a reason why it wasn't _five average girls_ trying to stop an evil force... why? What is that reason? Why can't girls be average? Why is the go-to always boys?

Could an average Hobbit woman have set off to Mordor? Would it have changed the story? Was Tolkien worried the Dwarves wouldn't be able to control themselves?


----------



## Ban

Heliotrope said:


> Yeah. I mean it is everywhere still. Look at Stranger Things. A group of five _normal_ boys try to stop an evil force. The only two girls in the show are either super crazy good at video games (better than the boys), or have crazy telepathy skills. The only normal woman is the mom... but there is the old "mom" trope again. lol.
> 
> There has to be a reason why it wasn't _five average girls_ trying to stop an evil force... why? What is that reason? Why can't girls be average? Why is the go-to always boys?
> 
> Could an average Hobbit woman have set off to Mordor? Would it have changed the story? Was Tolkien worried the Dwarves wouldn't be able to control themselves?



Haven't seen Stranger Things, but isn't that whole show a homage to the eighties? At least part of the reason for the boy cast could be because that's how similar 80s coming-of-age stories were (I hope that's what this show is..)


----------



## Annoyingkid

To me it makes no sense that the strong female would be anti sex with the male MC  being the only exception. It's either one or the other. Some people are against sex. But it's really insulting to asexuals or celibates to have them then do it because they just "met the right man", because that's what these groups of people hear all the time in reality. "Oh you just haven't met the right man".


----------



## Devor

Banten said:


> Haven't seen Stranger Things, but isn't that whole show a homage to the eighties? At least part of the reason for the boy cast could be because that's how similar 80s coming-of-age stories were (I hope that's what this show is..)



Insomuch as the discussion is about Stranger Things or Narnia or LOTR on their own, there's a lot that can be said in defense of these works, but I don't really get the impression the point here is to single them out for attack, so much as a broader point about what's missing that they would like to see in general.


----------



## Heliotrope

Yes, I LOVED Stranger Things, don't get me wrong. And yes, it totally was meant to be homage to the 80's (Goonies, etc). I'm just using it as an example to explore my random tangent here 

Why no average girls? Actually, now that I think about it, maybe Wendy from Peter Pan was one of the earliest "feminist" characters, lol. She was pretty average. She learned she didn't need Peter to look after her. She learned she needed to grow up and go home eventually. She had no special powers.

It seems easier with little girls maybe. Children's lit seems to have less stereotypes. But I think that brings us back to asexual women characters. Little girls are easy. It's once women hit puberty it's harder to write them for some reason?


----------



## Ban

Alrighty then Helio and Devor. It sounds like a show I might like, perhaps it's time to start watching.

Aaaand now the topic's derailed fully


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

A Tales of Two Cities is one of the only books to ever make me cry. But, that's kind of irrelevant.


----------



## Steerpike

Heliotrope said:


> Yeah. I mean it is everywhere still. Look at Stranger Things. A group of five _normal_ boys try to stop an evil force. The only two girls in the show are either super crazy good at video games (better than the boys), or have crazy telepathy skills. The only normal woman is the mom... but there is the old "mom" trope again. lol.



You also have Nancy (the sister), who is normal and turns out to be quite important to the resolution. But they could have done a better job in how they included female characters in the show.


----------



## Mythopoet

Heliotrope said:


> Mytho, why do you feel the need to get personal? Contribute to the discussion. Offer your thoughts and opinions. I would love to hear some insight. ^^ Getting personal is not helpful.



Well, alas, I am a person and as a person I honestly feel sorry for you if that is the way you see the female characters in Dune. But since this is all a subjective issue I don't see any point in debating it. 

I will simply say that, as a woman, I do not see your point of view at all. I'm all for fleshed out female characters, but if you see Jessica Atreides as flat then we have nothing to say to each other on the subject.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

As a kid, I liked the book Little Women better than the book Little Men. 

I loved Dissension, by Stacey Berg. Published in March, 2016, it's currently #244 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Literary Fiction and #272 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction. It doesn't hit you over the head with its LGBT-ness. Not sure what people here would think of the female protagonist, but I enjoyed her character. I have yet to read the sequel, but plan to eventually.

My WIP has three POV characters, all of them female. My main antagonist is female. Several supporting characters are female (more of them than male). Some of the female POV characters try to save a male character from the antagonist -- and from himself.  The female POV characters have some special abilities, so they aren't exactly "normal," but they aren't as powerful as actual wizards in the setting. The primary female POV character wants to go back to her childhood home, so she can dance with guys -- none of the guys in the town she has moved to will date her, because her benefactor is a powerful wizard (the antagonist), and the guys are afraid of doing something wrong and being turned into frogs.

I enjoy reading female characters, and I hope I have done my female characters justice in writing them. I worry about writing female POV characters as a male author, but it's what I want to do, so that's where I'm going, and hope I'll find some readers who will go along with me.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

I'm very irritated by Stockholm Syndrome 'heroines'--that is, heroines who are captured by their future 'love interest'. and slowly succumb to his charm or wiles or good looks.


----------



## skip.knox

Fantasy is a bit of a special case, isn't it? Sort of by definition we are dealing with extraordinary people. Even with the simple farm boy example, the farm boy never turns out to be simple. He's always predestined, super powerful--it's just that at the start of the story he doesn't yet know this. With LOTR, both Frodo and Bilbo are unusual. If anyone is "average" it would be Samwise. But those are all males. Tolkien indeed gave little room for women. I really like Eowyn, but what happens to her is just plain low down and ham-handed.

I would love to see a simple farm girl story. Seems like an easy (and obvious) one to write. Steampunk has plenty of female leads, but they are almost without exception, exceptional. Urban fantasy has much the same. 

I'm hard-pressed to think of how to construct a fantasy tale about unexceptional people, regardless of gender. There's a bit in that direction from Thomas Burnett Swann. I guess if I were looking for stories about ordinary folk in extraordinary situations, I'd look to a different genre. Cozy mysteries spring to mind.


----------



## skip.knox

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> I'm very irritated by Stockholm Syndrome 'heroines'--that is, heroines who are captured by their future 'love interest'. and slowly succumb to his charm or wiles or good looks.


Ugh. Me too. If I see signs of that coming, I flee.


----------



## Steerpike

skip.knox said:


> I would love to see a simple farm girl story.



You guys should all read _Sheepfarmer's Daughter_, by Elizabeth Moon. You'll get that wish, and also a great story


----------



## pmmg

Heliotrope said:


> Bam. This was it for me. This was the reason why I couldn't finish those books.



Well, I can’t say that was not the reason you did not finish those books, but another reason could have been just because they were boring. I am one who finished LOTR, and 4 books of the Dune series. And guess what, I think LOTR is pretty dull. But I am not sure I can attribute that to a lack of female characters (Heck, Wheel of Time has female characters and I did not really enjoy that one either). I found Tolkien just wasted a lot of my time with histories about the lands, but did not really draw me into any of the characters.  (In my mind, all the hobbits just blended into one. Same for all the Dwarves in the Hobbit). I also read four of the Dune books. I liked each one a little bit less than the last (Book 4, God, Emperor Dune, is probably the most boring book I have ever read), but I enjoyed Paul and Jessica very much in the first book--but I know, you already said ‘Mother trope’, though I am not sure why that would be a problem…

I think we are in a current trend of almost everything female, and kick ass babes are all over the movies and stories of late. And yeah, I do enjoy them to a large extent, but I also think a lot of this can be summed up with the phrase ‘only in the movies’.

You are asking why no average girls? I think the answer falls along the lines of this is much harder to pull off and make believable. A group of girls undertake to destroy the one ring while all the men wait at home for their triumphant return? I think to carry that off you would have to make a big leap between believable depictions of the genders. Men don’t really take to sitting idly by when there is something that needs to be hit a lot with a sword. And there are a lot a reasons why this would more likely fall towards the men to accomplish than the women, falling along the lines what everyone thinks of women as warriors, gender roles in various societies, and the psychologies of everyone involved, which I am sure everyone has an opinion on.

But in fairness, I can point to a number of depictions where I think this has been accomplished. Ripley from Aliens, Leia from Star Wars, Katniss from Hunger Games…they were all kind of average girls. No super powers that I am aware of. I thought C’nedra and Polgara were good depictions in the Belgaraid series. I never doubted them. (Oh, and how could I leave off Xena? Yeah, she was the daughter of Ares, had some small powers, but Lucy Lawless totally sold me that Xena could do it all.)

I am not sure it is fair to pick on Tolkien or Herbert though, even for Mr. Pullman, cause after all, Tolkien wrote in a different time and did not have the same body of works to build upon. Pullman had Tolkien to react to. I am sure as time goes forward, there will be more and more of these to come along, and some of them will stand out as not being the well-worn depictions. Isn’t that why we are all here. To write some things less written by?


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

One thing to keep in mind is that Tolkien was drawing on all of the classic mythological tales and epic stories/poems, and basically creating his very own.


----------



## skip.knox

I'm currently writing a story with a female lead, with a female friend. She's not average by any means, either in background or ability, but I try to curtail or deflect that in various ways. For example, she has magical powers, but they aren't at all spectacular. Her chief ability is that she can fly.  At one point she jokes that her main contribution to combat is that she can fall down on someone.

Where I think this is relevant is that, to me, her story is interesting because it's about her figuring out who she is (she gets rather conflicting information along these lines). It's about a young person trying to take command of their own life, discovering the possibilities as well as the limitations of that. I'm not sure a character has to be average or typical in order for her to have a wide appeal.

At least, that's what I am telling myself. Mostly I just want to tell her story.


----------



## skip.knox

Steerpike said:


> You guys should all read _Sheepfarmer's Daughter_, by Elizabeth Moon. You'll get that wish, and also a great story



I could give Moon another try. Read one that was volume one in something and had to force myself to finish it. (looking at Sheepfarmer's Daughter, I recognize the book I read was from later in that same world).


----------



## Steerpike

skip.knox said:


> I could give Moon another try. Read one that was volume one in something and had to force myself to finish it. (looking at Sheepfarmer's Daughter, I recognize the book I read was from later in that same world).



I like the Sheepfarmer’s Daughter trilogy. I don’t care for Moon’s space opera, which is what she’s better know for. Tanya Huff does much better space fiction (the military SF Valor series, and Torin Kerr, the protagonist from that series, is a great female character).


----------



## skip.knox

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Tanith Lee yet. _Birthgrave_ was my introduction to her.


----------



## Steerpike

skip.knox said:


> I'm surprised no one has mentioned Tanith Lee yet. _Birthgrave_ was my introduction to her.



Me too (re: Birthgrave). I Love Tanith Lee. Ever read Red As Blood?


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

I've never read any of her books. What are they like?


----------



## Devor

Heliotrope said:


> Yeah. I mean it is everywhere still. Look at Stranger Things. A group of five _normal_ boys try to stop an evil force. *The only two girls in the show are either super crazy good at video games (better than the boys)*, or have crazy telepathy skills. The only normal woman is the mom... but there is the old "mom" trope again. lol.



I bolded a line here because there's something about this that really hasn't been sitting right with me, and it's not about arguing over Stranger Things.

She isn't average because she's the town champ at arcade games? What? By that standard there aren't any average guys in fantasy books either because the farm boys and hobbits are all a little weird about something or another. Most characters have some "exceptional" distinction however small that makes them a little more interesting to write about. I wouldn't say it makes their overall personal experience less....

I'm sorry, it's probably not a big deal, but for some reason this one notion is really getting under my skin. What does it take to be average or exceptional here?


----------



## Steerpike

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> I've never read any of her books. What are they like?



Her early stuff is fairly dense. The Birthgrave was nominated for the Nebula. Red as Blood is a re-telling of Grimm fairy tales. Dark fantasy. Not quite on the level of Angela Carter's re-tellings, but who is?


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

I might check them out. Thanks.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

LotR does not win in this category. I didn't think it won with anything other than with the familiarness of the hobbits, Gollum, the fact that it sort of started the genre and the perfect ending it has.
I found _Dune_ to be disturbing. It was a good book, but not enjoyable. I guess the complaint discussed here could be part of it. I tried to read _God Emperor of Dune, _ also, as I found it lying around, and it was just torture.
This is not just a problem with fantasy, but with all literature. Women are scarce, truly normal people are scarce, and normal women scarcer.
 It actually annoys me when female authors write male-dominated books, because they are in the best position to balance things out, and yet many of them don't.
It also annoys me when male authors use female characters in undeniably female ways (not things that are just about 'being people') because I feel lied to.
I know he is a big part of this thread, but Phillip Pullman does not annoy me at all with his Lyra, and neither does Terry Pratchett with Tiffany, because I can relate to their characters as people, I could say "Yeah that's me", or "I'd've done it differently" as if I were standing where they are in the books, and yet I always know they are female.
I know this is being blindly gender binary, but I expect there to be a difference between male and female characters, and  if I feel a character is in the wrong body it irks me as well.


----------



## Svrtnsse

Steerpike said:


> I like the Sheepfarmer’s Daughter trilogy.


Me too. It's a good story in an interesting setting. I also copied a lot of the paladin concept for my own paladins.


----------



## Chessie2

Steerpike said:


> You guys should all read _Sheepfarmer's Daughter_, by Elizabeth Moon. You'll get that wish, and also a great story


She's totally a Susie Q though. Lovely story. But the heroine was too perfect.


----------



## Heliotrope

Devor said:


> She isn't average because she's the town champ at arcade games? What? By that standard there aren't any average guys in fantasy books either because the farm boys and hobbits are all a little weird about something or another. Most characters have some "exceptional" distinction however small that makes them a little more interesting to write about. I wouldn't say it makes their overall personal experience less....



I know. I'm not articulating myself well because I am seriously flying by the seat of my pants and thinking out loud about all this. It may not be the best example, and it is totally true that there are TONS of characters who are all special in their own way. I guess it's just that she feels a bit like a token? Like Elle wasn't going to be there with them for a lot of the season so they needed a token "girl" to balance stuff out? But Lucus doesn't have to have any special abilities (other than being the token black kid, I guess), and Dustin certainly doesn't have to have any special abilities (other than being supernaturally stupid, perhaps)... lol. It just sort of feel unbalanced to me. Lots of testosterone.

But I LOVED the show. So I'm not complaining, merely pointing out something I am now paying more attention to.


----------



## Devor

Heliotrope said:


> I know. I'm not articulating myself well because I am seriously flying by the seat of my pants and thinking out loud about all this. It may not be the best example, and it is totally true that there are TONS of characters who are all special in their own way. I guess it's just that she feels a bit like a token? Like Elle wasn't going to be there with them for a lot of the season so they needed a token "girl" to balance stuff out? But Lucus doesn't have to have any special abilities (other than being the token black kid, I guess), and Dustin certainly doesn't have to have any special abilities (other than being supernaturally stupid, perhaps)... lol. It just sort of feel unbalanced to me. Lots of testosterone.



Okay, I can get that. I don't know about "token" and all the baggage that comes with that word, but it was pretty transparent that they were replacing El. In season 1 the team was three boys and El. In season 2, with Will back from the Upside Down, it's four boys, and El's away. I don't think anything would've made her inclusion for that reason any less obvious. But honestly, what else could they have done?  I don't think the video game thing makes any real difference.

I'm sorry, though, I didn't mean to derail the thread. These conversations have a way of getting sidetracked by arguments over the examples people use. There was just something about that one line - but nevermind it all.


----------



## Steerpike

Chessie2 said:


> She's totally a Susie Q though. Lovely story. But the heroine was too perfect.



I don’t agree.


----------



## Chessie2

Steerpike said:


> I don’t agree.


That's fine. You don't have to.


----------



## evolution_rex

Heliotrope said:


> Nope. It was Frank Herbert's Dune. The Princess was very Tolkeinesque. Superficial. Lady Jessica was a mother archetype, not a real person. It just felt like the women were not fleshed out to me. They were set pieces.


To the book's credit (sort of), I felt most of the characters weren't very fleshed out.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

evolution_rex said:


> To the book's credit (sort of), I felt most of the characters weren't very fleshed out.


The only thing that was fleshed out in _Dune_ was the violence and cruelty. I think Herbert was trying to say that it was the natural state of things, or maybe he just hated his characters, but just about everything in the book felt like a backdrop to Paul Atreides, either to make him brave and powerful, or to justify what he did, so maybe it just happened to be that way because that was the way the main character demanded it.


----------



## Russ

Heliotrope said:


> Yeah. I mean it is everywhere still. Look at Stranger Things. A group of five _normal_ boys try to stop an evil force. The only two girls in the show are either super crazy good at video games (better than the boys), or have crazy telepathy skills. The only normal woman is the mom... but there is the old "mom" trope again. lol.
> 
> There has to be a reason why it wasn't _five average girls_ trying to stop an evil force... why? What is that reason? Why can't girls be average? Why is the go-to always boys?
> 
> Could an average Hobbit woman have set off to Mordor? Would it have changed the story? Was Tolkien worried the Dwarves wouldn't be able to control themselves?



Not sure I totally agree about Stranger Things.  While the central cast is very male heavy, I don't see Max as heroic, the skill in video games is really just character colour and does not give her any advantages in the plot.  I think she was written that way, Tom boyish to give her a way to relate to the young male stars, who are at an awkward age with girls and would have trouble relating to more traditionally feminine characters.   I am hoping her role will be expanded in the next season.

But with Eleven, well...she is who she is.  And I think she is amazing.


----------



## noob of the north

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> It sounds fun


It clicked with me in a major way and I was slightly nibbled on by a plot bunny army approaching on fellbeasts. I'd read the crap out of something like that. What if I beg and sing "The road goes ever on"?


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

noob of the north said:


> It clicked with me in a major way and I was slightly nibbled on by a plot bunny army approaching on fellbeasts. I'd read the crap out of something like that. What if I beg and sing "The road goes ever on"?



I will write it down and try to see if i can make it come to life! The only thing is, I am in the middle of a WIP and several short stories and have like twelve story concepts gestating, including a couple graphic novels and a novel in verse O_O


----------



## glutton

I'm a straight male but I always had a thing for heroic female characters and feel sad when in fiction female characters "sold" as being awesome often lose their relevance and end up playing second fiddle to males. That's why I've tended to take more inspiration from video games than books, when there are _playable_ female characters they tend to be able to handle the monsters and big bads on par with male heroes (since, you know, the player playing as them would be dissatisfied otherwise). Case in point:






Little girl with a mace as big as her torso knocking monsters 5-10 times her size high in the air and off the screen, juggling them, crushing them with a move called "Gigant Hammer" etc. for the win!


----------



## Chessie2

I think what this comes down to is that art has to speak to our individual humanity. Even the best works will miss the mark on someone, mainly because it's impossible to reach everyone.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

^Well said.


----------



## Heliotrope

Chessie2 said:


> I think what this comes down to is that art has to speak to our individual humanity. Even the best works will miss the mark on someone, mainly because it's impossible to reach everyone.



Hmmmmmm, yes. I think this is it.

I think it's the lack of variety that bugs me. I'd love to see more individual humans (*cough cough* women) in speculative fiction.


----------



## Nimue

That is it, but there’s more to it than that.  Half of that humanity (and more) has been systematically overlooked...  It’s not about laying blame at the doors of individual authors or works, but rather recognizing that, particularly when it comes to classics, books have been biased by publishing houses, editors, marketing boards that valued one picture of life over any other.  Anyone can prefer to read what they want to, what resonates with them.  But when the makeup of an industry is biased, particularly at the executive level, not all readers’ desires will be met.  I’m glad this has been changing.  I benefited from what I think was a wave of “girl power” YA fantasy in the 90s—if I hadn’t read Dealing with Dragons and Sabriel I might never have gotten into fantasy, though my dad read me Tolkien from a young age.  I hope the genre becomes more and more inclusive as time goes on, and there are great signs that it is.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Speaking of, we have a female Doctor now. I'd say that's something to celebrate.

If no one has any idea of what I'm talking about, that's okay, too.


----------



## Alora pendrak

No even as a girl gender never mattered to me if the characters and plot are interesting that's enough for me. This whole i couldn't relate to the character mentality never made sense to me since if the writer was good i could slip into the skin of someone else easily and their pain, fear, desires i understood them even through i never was in their situation becuse they like me had emotions. I actually read many fantasy books with girl characters  Enchanted Forest chroncicles, books with girls raiseing dragons i don't remember the names of,Artemis fowl, Harry potter, Percy Jackson ect........ so to me their are lots of girl characters in children's books.   The problem is once you get to YA Fantasy and then adult its mostly self inserts due to writers realizing thanks to Twilight its an easy copy and paste fomula that sells and the general backlash aginst female characters due to this whole girls cann't be this or that becuse it reflects badly on women mindset.   
I honestly hate average characters boys and girls   they bore me have little to no defined personalities and honestly are never actually average or the outcasts they pretend to be. Wendy Darling from the Peter Pan novel is a key example of an aggravatingly average but everyone fawns/obsesses over her for no reason character ( i think JM Barrie had severe mommy issues so the idealization of her makes sense from an author standpoint).  I personally never saw Wendy as leaving Never land as any kind of realization that she didn't need peter or wanted to grow up. She just seemed freaked out over the through of her parents forgetting her and was fine useing peter to get away from her mundane life once a year during Spring Cleaning. i honestly think she was still trying to get Peter to grow up so she could marry him, the whole time until she actually grew up and gave up on that idea. Then again i see Wendy as the girl version of the nice guy, so i'm biased although Hook and the 2003 movie versions don't help Wendy's case.  

Am i the only one who hates the female warrior character? I blame the book two princesses of Bamarie, which i loved becuse the cowardly, shy more  girly  sister Abbie  had to save her brave, cocky warrior sister Mytle from dying from an illness and Myrtle the bad ass sister tries to keep her illness from running her life, by doing the opposite of what it wants.  Mytle even breaks down crying at one point but then pulls it together and says " Its fine crying is part of the adventure" She even gets nasty and viciously pushes her sister away and later admits she wanted it to be easier on Abby when she finally died. Mytle isnt even the hero of the story, but her love for her sister and unwillingness to give up without a fight is what inspires Abby to become the hero, and even when the battle is about inner strength Mytle fights to the end dispite the fact deep down she's a scared teenage girl who's faceing the fact she's most likely going to die.     Since then i cann't get behind these leather clad, ass kicking posers who manage to take out ten guys without breaking a sweat, have everyone bow to them, put other women and men down for not being as strong as them and rarely haveing any personality. There  are a few exceptions but usually these female characters seem to be to girls what Wolverine is to boys a mix up of things people think are bad ass like fighting authority when really it just makes you a pig headed jerk with little respect for others. Even the game of thrones warrior ladies who i liked in the books were turned into these stone cold anti non warrior women anti intellect, disrespectful machines for the tv show.
Believe it or not older  fantasy has some pretty awesome female characters if you know where to look that often get overlooked becuse there's this assumption female driven narratives  are a new thing. The vilkings and Greeks have powerful goddesses, there's a Chinese myth where the princess was captured by the dragon becuse she caused him problems, she has to be rescued but depicted as an respected male ally aiding his female general afterwards they both team up to take out the dragon. Molly Whuppet is about a girl who tricks an oger to save her and her sisters.   fairytales  pre brothers Grimm were actually a lot more interesting in terms of women being clever/saveing themselves there's versions of Cinderella, Little Red Ridding hood where they outwit the villian's no hero required.   Even the Brothers Grimm have stories like Clever Manka and stories where the rescued Princess keeps the witch at bay while her and the hero run. Even in Hansel and Gretle, Gretal saves the day not Hansel. Also everyone overlooks the fact Rupunzel was abandoned by the witch in the desert while pregnant and still managed to survive despite liveing her whole life in a tower,Rupunzel is the most hardcore fairy tale princess ever in the Grimm's version. Also Hans Christian Anderson's the Snow Queen and Little Mermaid not to mention all the female fairies and monsters that exist throughout fantasy.


----------



## Annoyingkid

The thing about romance/sex - and this applies to any gender by the way.

If you have a relationship between two people that is a friendship. The question is, inevitably, why are these people friends?

Maybe they have the same ideals.
They like who they are on the inside. They see fundamental goodness in each other.
Their personalities are compatible, they get along, which in itself all carries alot of subtext.
They go through alot together and/or develop together.

etc.

But then if you make it romantic, then lust for each other's bodies becomes part of the equation.

So one is left asking, at least I am, just how much of the equation is it? Would things have went down the same way if there wasn't sexual feelings in the air? How much does having a hidden agenda change the morality of the character. It seems as if the non sexual things I listed above becomes more incidental to whether they would have been close or not. It's loses power when hormones becomes part of the reason or interpreted as the underlying reason they're drawn to each other. Do close feelings cause the romance or does the romance cause the close feelings?


----------



## FifthView

I'm coming late to this and haven't read much further than the first few posts....but wasn't Lady Jessica in Dune far more than a wilting flower needing protecting in a cave somewhere? Irulan also plays more of a role, albeit mostly as historian in the extra matter.

But perhaps a little more on-topic...it's an interesting issue. I tend to gravitate more toward male-dominated stories. But I'm a male. Gay, yes, but male. Perhaps I myself simply identify a little better with male characters? I don't know; I only know that, historically, I've tended to favor male protagonists over female protagonists in my reading. Even so, I'd call it a tendency, only. I've enjoyed female protagonists also.

I will say however that when I read blurbs on Amazon and instantly discover that the main protag is female, and the whole story basically circles her story, I almost always pass on it. This is different than reading a blurb that mentions both male and female characters; i.e., a story involving main characters, receiving equal weight*,  of both sexes, which might interest me more. But if I read a blurb that focuses on a single male protag, I'm more likely to be interested than a blurb focusing on a single female protag's story.

But I think this is something personal for me, my own tastes.

*Edit: Forgot to continue that thought, heh. It's not always possible to know how much weight, exactly, every character will receive when reading a mere blurb. 

And I also think I've only skimmed the topic, because I focused my comments on protags and not whole casts, so there's that.


----------



## Chessie2

Heliotrope said:


> Hmmmmmm, yes. I think this is it.
> 
> I think it's the lack of variety that bugs me. I'd love to see more individual humans (*cough cough* women) in speculative fiction.


Believe it or not this has a lot to do with reader expectations. When it comes to genre and tone, readers expect a certain type of person as their hero.

I think this is why Y.A. tends to sell really well in the fantasy genre. The heroines are active, in UF often sassy, possessing grit and sex appeal alike. I don't read Y.A. but I know many writers who write it/read it and this seems to be the consensus. From the little Y.A. I have read, too.

Far as adult women goes...don't kill me BUT this is probably the main reason why I dislike Game Of Thrones. I don't feel like arguing about it but I think Martin does a disservice to women by making us all look like whores. We went from one extreme to the next. (Gotta eat lunch so cutting myself off)


----------



## FifthView

Heliotrope said:


> Yeah. I mean it is everywhere still. Look at Stranger Things. A group of five _normal_ boys try to stop an evil force. The only two girls in the show are either super crazy good at video games (better than the boys), or have crazy telepathy skills. The only normal woman is the mom... but there is the old "mom" trope again. lol.
> 
> There has to be a reason why it wasn't _five average girls_ trying to stop an evil force... why? What is that reason? Why can't girls be average? Why is the go-to always boys?
> 
> Could an average Hobbit woman have set off to Mordor? Would it have changed the story? Was Tolkien worried the Dwarves wouldn't be able to control themselves?



So....flipping through some of the pages of this thread, I came to this, and it's peculiarly serendipitous for me because I've been listening to a recent Mythcreant podcast dedicated to a discussion about _Stranger Things_:  147 – Stranger Things

The thing about the Mythcreant podcasters, for me, is....they become somewhat socio-political in some of their commentary on various issues, and the podcast on Stranger Things is no different.  For instance, there's some discussion about how the "macho" man, Hopper, is portrayed as a "bad father" in Season Two—which is, according to them, stereotypical. There is also lots of discussion of the male-dominated cast.

And I'm of two minds about this.

First, I'm more and more aware of the fact that I just don't look at the movies, television, and books that way, and I've a suspicion that maybe I'm just missing out on something.  Others feel very strongly about these things, and when you get a group of them together discussing the topic, and they all mostly agree or at least understand exactly the issue being discussed (even if not in full agreement), I feel like I'm paleolithic. It's a weird feeling.

It's not a social issue for me (in my normal mode of operation) but it _can _be a personal issue when I encounter characters in a book that are so obviously, boringly stereotypical, male, female, hero, villain, whatever. I can groan (metaphorically or literally) when I encounter those characters. But I don't have a built-in, automatic reaction to these things—or long-developed awakening, which might be the case—and don't think/speak in those terms.

So for instance, take the macho-man-who-is-obviously-going-to-be-a-bad-father. Yes, I can see how that may well be a stereotype; but by golly, there really are macho men who are bad fathers, heh. I guess I don't recognize how including a particular character, who may well be realistic, means that I'm automatically "teaching" the wrong things or automatically ignoring all the other macho men who are great fathers.  That sort of thing.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

FifthView said:


> So for instance, take the macho-man-who-is-obviously-going-to-be-a-bad-father. Yes, I can see how that may well be a stereotype; but by golly, there really are macho men who are bad fathers, heh. I guess I don't recognize how including a particular character, who may well be realistic, means that I'm automatically "teaching" the wrong things or automatically ignoring all the other macho men who are great fathers.  That sort of thing.


Off topic, I know, but I don't know what you mean by "macho". My understanding is that it means almost the same thing as "b*tch". It is not possible to constantly demand all the attention and the best of everything and insist that you are the best at everything all the time _and _expect to be a good person.
About the "readers expectations" bit, you may be right, but I don't think I feel the same way, and my opinion *should* be more skewed than yours, because not only am I male, but I am straight as well.


----------



## FifthView

Dark Squiggle said:


> Off topic, I know, but I don't know what you mean by "macho". My understanding is that it means almost the same thing as "b*tch". It is not possible to constantly demand all the attention and the best of everything and insist that you are the best at everything all the time _and _expect to be a good person.



I think the term "macho" was used by the podcasters.  Basically, they set up a comparison of Hopper and Bob in the second season. I don't think we need to define macho, necessarily, hah, but maybe just look at some of what was meant generally.


----------



## Heliotrope

FifthView said:


> there really are macho men who are bad fathers



Yes!!!! This is it though. There really are macho men who are bad fathers. My issue is that often times in speculative fiction the women would NOT exist in real life. They are not given the same flaws and "humanism" that the men are given.



FifthView said:


> wasn't Lady Jessica in Dune far more than a wilting flower needing protecting in a cave somewhere? Irulan also plays more of a role, albeit mostly as historian in the extra matter.



Yes, my issue is not with Lady Jessica being a wilting flower, it is with her perfectionism. She is no different than the women in Tolkien. Perfect, almost angelic, supernatural creatures. The princess Irulan is the same. We can argue that Princess Buttercup was no wilting flower either, but she was still inhumanly beautiful and a princess.

This is my beef. Chessie is right, women in fantasy went from being inhuman, angelic type creatures, all sparkle and brilliance and perfection, down to all whores and ruthless fighters.

Men get characters like Hopper, who _could _be real. Who could, though stereotypical, exist in real life with his beer gut and bad hair. Women don't get the same treatment. Make her ruthless, but then make her beautiful. Make her ugly, but then make sure she has a super brain or another super skill.  I feel like we are getting WAY better in regards to representing women in a realistic way, but we still have a long way to go.

My issue really just started with asking if other women struggled with LOTR like I did, and has exploded to cover speculative fiction in general, which was not my intent... but whatever, the conversation grew, lol.

But my issue is not with women being portrayed as wilting flowers, it is with women not being portrayed in realistic ways.

And I'm NOT ragging on Stranger Things. I loved it. Seriously. Joyce was a fantastic, real woman.


----------



## FifthView

Heliotrope said:


> But my issue is not with women being portrayed as wilting flowers, it is with women not being portrayed in realistic ways.



I think this is one of those areas I may have more difficulty seeing, heh.  I'm not saying I think there is no issue, but only that my own brain may be a little biased. It's like having blind spots in my perception and appreciation of stories. I'd like to say that it's because, well, spec fic. If a character in some fantasy world is X, what makes X unrealistic?



Heliotrope said:


> Yes, my issue is not with Lady Jessica being a wilting flower, it is with her perfectionism. She is no different than the women in Tolkien. Perfect, almost angelic, supernatural creatures.



Like Lady Jessica. I've never met a Bene Gesserit, let alone one who has defied her order and produced a mega-powerful son, or who can use the weirding way. (But there are some aspects of her personality, from what I vaguely remember, that remind me of my mother, so...?  ) She loved her husband, was blind to the existence of a family betrayer, was sometimes frightened of her son and of what she herself had done in giving birth to her daughter. She took the step to become a Reverend Mother even knowing that she shouldn't while pregnant. I didn't experience her as being some kind of perfect.

But I suspect this is an issue of "male gaze" although not the sort that hypersexualizes women. I mean, my own brain didn't experience the lack of a spectrum of....being? Actions, reactions, feelings, thoughts? Other things that would be common for a female experience? (Although I'm extremely hesitant when it comes to trying to label some common "female experience" shared by women. I don't know how I, myself, can ever resolve that question on my own.)

Was Paul more realistic than Jessica? I don't know, hah.

Edit: I just want to add that I recognize that others don't experience Dune or other books as I've experienced them. It is an odd thing that I don't understand—because I love Dune! So I'm not trying to argue a point so much as being honest (re: title of this thread) about my own experience.


----------



## Devor

FifthView said:


> The thing about the Mythcreant podcasters, for me, is....they become somewhat socio-political in some of their commentary on various issues, and the podcast on Stranger Things is no different.  For instance, there's some discussion about how the "macho" man, Hopper, is portrayed as a "bad father" in Season Two—which is, according to them, stereotypical. There is also lots of discussion of the male-dominated cast.



I disagree that he even is a bad father in Stranger Things 2.




> So for instance, take the macho-man-who-is-obviously-going-to-be-a-bad-father. Yes, I can see how that may well be a stereotype; but by golly, there really are macho men who are bad fathers, heh. I guess I don't recognize how including a particular character, who may well be realistic, means that I'm automatically "teaching" the wrong things or automatically ignoring all the other macho men who are great fathers.  That sort of thing.



I'm going to switch examples to Order of the Stick because the artist in this case has actually talked about why he changed the way he was portraying female characters in the comics. And some of your comments go into it.

In particular, the issue was the trash talk between female characters who ended up fighting each other. I think the punchline at one point was, "I've missed saying three little words.... sneak attack bit**."  In another scene the character mocked the other's hair and wardrobe during the fight.  Since the party was three male characters, one female character, and Vaarsuvius (deliberately gender ambiguous), trash talk was a good percentage of the ways women talked to each other in the comic.  There were some other issues - this is the one that stands out to me now.

The artist, in talking about the trash talk, said that he was just trying to be realistic and think about the ways people he knew might talk in those situations. Those people deserve to be represented in fiction, too, right?  But Order of the Stick got to be kind of a big deal - the first Kickstarter to break a million dollars, for example - and it became more important to him to represent characters who weren't just realistic but could be rolemodels, who said something positive about the way women respected each other.

A more recent fight between some of the same female characters featured very little trash talk, another woman helping out the hero, and an ending with the characters talking like adults (sort of).


((edit))  I fixed a little language and the second link, which was accidentally the same as the first.


----------



## pmmg

Heliotrope said:


> My issue is that often times in speculative fiction the women would NOT exist in real life. They are not given the same flaws and "humanism" that the men are given.



It would seem to me that many writers actually quite enjoy their characters flaws more than their virtues, and such things give them a good place to work at in making them more human. I am not sure why that would be different for any particular author when writing any particular gender. I think part of the goal is to write believable characters and that would go along with it. Though, I will say I do see a lot of women portrayed in ways that has me thinking 'only in fiction' (Pakksenarion was one of these for me, I saw her come up a bit earlier). But that is also true for the men. Many men are portrayed in ways that men don't exactly live up to. Conan is a bit idealized. I just started watching Punisher last night (see our current article about), I think he is a little idealized as well, in spite of the many flaws they try to put upon him, he does not quite seem functionally effected by them. I think the thing is, we have to just accept that some stuff is kind of in the realm of only fiction, and some hits on the real human condition of people. If you are not seeing enough of it in what you are reading, then it would seem to me that there is an opportunity to be had.

The current trend, IMO, is kick ass women, but they are not real. Perhaps it is on writers like us the evolve the trend and bring to where we would like it to be. I don't mind Conan, I think he had some great adventures, but he is not real either. I think there is room for him though, and many many others, and they can rest on the whole scale of pinnacle to just a big mess. Thing is, characters like Conan, they do not serve as something I can be, but they help me see goal posts of things I might like to become. Why should there not be idealized women characters who can do the same?

But we all have a great gift. We can write them anyway we like. Write them, and then they will be there. And maybe someday a bunch of writers in a future hence will say why are all the women full so many flaws in these stories, cant we have more like supergirl and wonderwoman? Galadriel or Lady Jessica?


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

<The current trend, IMO, is kick ass women, but they are not real.>

Tell that to my sempai. She'd prove you wrong in 2 seconds.

After that, Samus Aran, Tifa Lockheart, Laura Croft, and many more want to have a chat with you.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Devor said:


> I disagree that he even is a bad father in Stranger Things 2.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I'm going to switch examples to Order of the Stick because the artist in this case has actually talked about why he changed the way he was portraying female characters in the comics. And some of your comments go into it.
> 
> In particular, the issue was the trash talk between female characters who ended up fighting each other. I think the punchline at one point was, "I've missed saying three little words.... sneak attack bit**."  In another scene the character mocked the other's hair and wardrobe during the fight.  Since the party was three male characters, one female character, and Vaarsuvius (deliberately gender ambiguous), trash talk was a good percentage of the ways women talked to each other in the comic.  There were some other issues - this is the one that stands out to me now.
> 
> The artist, in talking about the trash talk, said that he was just trying to be realistic and think about the ways people he knew might talk in those situations. Those people deserve to be represented in fiction, too, right?  But Order of the Stick got to be kind of a big deal - the first Kickstarter to break a million dollars, for example - and it became more important to him to represent characters who weren't just realistic but could be rolemodels, who said something positive about the way women respected each other.
> 
> A more recent fight between some of the same female characters featured very little trash talk, another woman helping out the hero, and an ending with the characters talking like adults (sort of).
> 
> ((edit))  I fixed a little language and the second link, which was accidentally the same as the first.



I agree with you on this; the way most of the female characters acted made me rather irritated. But, as at least one of them [Haley] started showing some character development, she grew on me a little.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

<But then if you make it romantic, then lust for each other's bodies becomes part of the equation.> 

Is that all romance really is? Not every couple wants sex, or has those kinds of desires.


----------



## Annoyingkid

I don't like it where the men have to be incompetent to make the female character look good because that's a strawman. 

I'm not a fan of her belittling or embarrassing other characters unnecessarily. Aka when the reaction is disproportionately hostile. Unless there's a higher thematic point being made. 

I don't like it when they're more qualified but have to play second fiddle to the male MC for vague or non existent reasons.
On the other hand I don't like it when there are people more qualified, who should be given the role over the SFC. For instance, in the Inheritance Cycle, Arya was given the dauthdaert over an older, more experienced elf for no reason.

It's eyerolling when SFC's hold female companionship in disdain and avoiding other females completely. Especially if they have no problem interacting with males.

If she's defeating many men in combat hell even two men at once, and she;s only human, at least tell me why that is in a way that makes sense. In a way that's believable. 

Having a chip on her shoulder about men. That keeps men as the centre of her worldview and makes her insecure. Insecurity isn't a bad thing per se, but it's just not *fun*   for her to be angrily lecturing nay sayers both in and out of the story about how she can fight as well as any man and not like other girls. As if fighting like a man is her gold standard. 

Keeping her humourless is  done to keep her mysterious, unfathomable, exotic, and above all else, silent. A SFC often says very little because pin ups are not heard, they are seen. This is why the quiet, cold SFC's body is always described in extensive, detail, with great beauty emphasized.


----------



## Annoyingkid

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> <But then if you make it romantic, then lust for each other's bodies becomes part of the equation.>
> 
> Is that all romance really is? Not every couple wants sex, or has those kinds of desires.



It's very rare that a romantic couple is sexless in fiction. They at least kiss.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Oh. I guess I've been reading different books than most people.


----------



## Annoyingkid

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> Oh. I guess I've been reading different books than most people.



Yeah. You're talking about romantic asexual relationships. I'm specifically talking about the implications of turning a relationship sexual because the topic creator was asking about why alot of female characters are portrayed without sex lives.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> <The current trend, IMO, is kick ass women, but they are not real.>
> 
> Tell that to my sempai. She'd prove you wrong in 2 seconds.
> 
> After that, Samus Aran, Tifa Lockheart, Laura Croft, and many more want to have a chat with you.



Not real??? Dragon who trains Krav Maga three times a week over here hopes that is far from the truth.

(and if it is the truth she will take care of that)


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

btw, i think y'all would like my current WIP. Lots of varying, complex women dealing with their pasts and traumas in different ways. 

A character can be deeply flawed, be sympathetic, be kick-ass, and have realistic emotions and desires all at the same time.


----------



## Chessie2

Given that I write romances, my approach to writing characters is going to be different than another author catering to a mostly male audience. Let's face it: that's just the way it is.

I write mostly to a female audience, and I have to be very careful as to what issues and insecurities these characters deal with. They tend to be heavy because it's what I love exploring. My heroines usually have deep issues that stand in the way of their emotional fulfillment (the last one had daddy issues). But given that it's romance, this sort of character exploration is expected. Is it in an epic fantasy? Like, the kind some of our members write? I'm thinking of Skip who writes his historical fantasy novels with goblins. Would a young woman with daddy issues be a character male epic fantasy readers would want to read? Uh...probably not. They'd call her a whiner and be over it. Now, put that same character in front of a romance reader who wants to see this heroine's daddy issues NOT keep her from love with the man of her dreams. It turns into a conflict that drives the story. It wouldn't be so if Lila were a character in Skip's book. See where I'm going with this?

I think Helio's main concern can be explained by this: you were not the target audience for those books. Since you like your female characters a certain way, and like to learn things when you read, then those books won't satisfy you as a reader. They don't satisfy me much either. I do love Tolkien, but he's about the one exception besides C.S. Lewis.


----------



## Heliotrope

Chessie2 said:


> Given that I write romances, my approach to writing characters is going to be different than another author catering to a mostly male audience. Let's face it: that's just the way it is.
> 
> I write mostly to a female audience, and I have to be very careful as to what issues and insecurities these characters deal with. They tend to be heavy because it's what I love exploring. My heroines usually have deep issues that stand in the way of their emotional fulfillment (the last one had daddy issues). But given that it's romance, this sort of character exploration is expected. Is it in an epic fantasy? Like, the kind some of our members write? I'm thinking of Skip who writes his historical fantasy novels with goblins. Would a young woman with daddy issues be a character male epic fantasy readers would want to read? Uh...probably not. They'd call her a whiner and be over it. Now, put that same character in front of a romance reader who wants to see this heroine's daddy issues NOT keep her from love with the man of her dreams. It turns into a conflict that drives the story. It wouldn't be so if Lila were a character in Skip's book. See where I'm going with this?
> 
> I think Helio's main concern can be explained by this: you were not the target audience for those books. Since you like your female characters a certain way, and like to learn things when you read, then those books won't satisfy you as a reader. They don't satisfy me much either. I do love Tolkien, but he's about the one exception besides C.S. Lewis.



Ha! Mic drop. 

Yep. This is exactly it. I can totally call myself out as a self indulgent idiot. I have no ego, lol. 

It is not written for me. This is so totally true. This is why I have only liked a really narrow sub sect of fantasy and most of the big name genre stuff has not interested me. 

Chessie OMG you nailed it! 

Ok, so question, is it that no one is writing the stuff I like? Or that publishers are not publishing it, as Nimue mentioned earlier?


----------



## Chessie2

Heliotrope said:


> Ha! Mic drop.
> 
> Yep. This is exactly it. I can totally call myself out as a self indulgent idiot. I have no ego, lol.
> 
> It is not written for me. This is so totally true. This is why I have only liked a really narrow sub sect of fantasy and most of the big name genre stuff has not interested me.
> 
> Chessie OMG you nailed it!
> 
> Ok, so question, is it that no one is writing the stuff I like? Or that publishers are not publishing it, as Nimue mentioned earlier?


Not sure if you'll like my answer but to the people who snub Indie books: you're missing an entire world of raw art out there. Traditionally published works go through a major process of vetting. Not so with Indie books. The quality is high if you know which authors to read. And a lot of times, Indie works are indistinguishable from trade works. I'm not certain what kinds of books you're looking for...but Indies are strong in Urban Fantasy. (Here's looking at you, A.E. Lowan!)


----------



## skip.knox

Heliotrope, did you get your original question answered? By women, that is? I'm curious about the answer now, too.

I noticed a bunch of us guys chimed in, unasked. Typical male.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

skip.knox said:


> Heliotrope, did you get your original question answered? By women, that is? I'm curious about the answer now, too.
> 
> I noticed a bunch of us guys chimed in, unasked. Typical male.


Why does being male make my opinion here worth less?
I believe Heliotrope started this thread with a link to an interview with Philip Pullman, who I believe is also male.


----------



## skip.knox

It doesn't. Nobody said that. 

But if you read the OP, the question was aimed specifically at women. 

We weren't asked.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

True. Now how do I delete all my posts?


----------



## Heliotrope

skip.knox said:


> Heliotrope, did you get your original question answered? By women, that is? I'm curious about the answer now, too.
> 
> I noticed a bunch of us guys chimed in, unasked. Typical male.



Ha! Yes, I think so. Some women felt it was a bit of a snub, others aren't bothered by it overly much. Some feel very strongly that we are represented in weird ways, some couldn't care less. I think Chessie is right, I think I'm perhaps just not the audience for a lot of the older, more "epic" fantasy. That is as much a truth as I'm going to get, I think. That is fair. _Honest_, which is what I asked for. 

I got some great recommendations of other places to look where I might find something I relate to on a deeper level. That was much appreciated. The debate went so beyond my original post, which tells me that this is a very open ended question with a lot of layers to it. The discussion was enlightening for me in a lot of ways, not just of how women are represented in fantasy, but for a lot of people who identify in a variety of ways. 

As far as guys jumping in, oh gosh! I love that! The more the merrier. 



Dark Squiggle said:


> Why does being male make my opinion here worth less?
> I believe Heliotrope started this thread with a link to an interview with Philip Pullman, who I believe is also male.



Thanks Dark Squiggle, but I think Skip was being a bit tongue in cheek there. It was funny.


----------



## skip.knox

Thanks, Heliotrope. Every reader is different. Gee, ain't I profound? But the ways in which we differ, that's where things get interesting. These conversations are immensely worthwhile, both as a reader and as a writer. I can't say that I encounter them anywhere else, save on writers forums.


----------



## Heliotrope

skip.knox said:


> I can't say that I encounter them anywhere else, save on writers forums.



Ain't that the truth...

"Gee, nice elderly lady in front of me in the grocery store, what are your feelings on the way women are represented in traditional fantasy fiction?"

or,

"Thanks everyone for coming to my Christmas party. Now, lets all sit in a circle and discuss how a variety of sexualities are misrepresented in fantasy fiction. Specifically, traditional epic fantasy."


----------



## Svrtnsse

Something that often comes up in association with this type of discussion is the question (often from male writers) of how to write good female characters. It's a bit of a can of worms to open up, but it may be interesting still. Why is it that so many male writers seem to think it's so difficult to write females, and why do they worry so about it?
Or is it just me seeing that, and has it changed - it's been a while since this came up last?


----------



## rhd

I couldn't finish Dune and had to plod through LOTR. I did love The Hobbit though.  I only read books like that because my dad and brothers were avid readers and were pretty intellectually sexist (the massive age difference didn't seem to matter). So I read a lot of historical romance because of the female characters. Also pretty much every boy I met was either violent or said some really sexist $hit to me or to some other girl way into college and after, and if I met one who was polite, I used to wonder why he wasn't saying or doing something mean. Now, of course, I don't put up with any crap. The result of all this is that I take my male characters very seriously and take great interest in adding layers and depth to them. It's funny but the sexist, shallow caricatures of men in my stories are based off of real people, heheh.


----------



## Russ

Heliotrope said:


> Yes, my issue is not with Lady Jessica being a wilting flower, it is with her perfectionism. She is no different than the women in Tolkien. Perfect, almost angelic, supernatural creatures. The princess Irulan is the same. We can argue that Princess Buttercup was no wilting flower either, but she was still inhumanly beautiful and a princess.



First off I should take a moment to say thanks to Helio for what a great question she posed and what a great thread this had turned out to be.

To understand why people are the way they are in Dune, I think you have to understand what the book is about at its core and what Herbert was writing about.  To my mind Dune is about Messiah and the things that flow through it and from it.  Lady Jessia is the mother of the Messiah, or Messiah to be and thus has to have certain characteristics, since she seems to be standing in for the Virgin Mary.

Dune is a highly symbolic work about large issues, not really one about ordinary people in any regard at all.   You are right to say that there are no ordinary well developed women in Dune, but one should not expect to find them there.


----------



## Annoyingkid

Svrtnsse said:


> Something that often comes up in association with this type of discussion is the question (often from male writers) of how to write good female characters. It's a bit of a can of worms to open up, but it may be interesting still. Why is it that so many male writers seem to think it's so difficult to write females, and why do they worry so about it?
> Or is it just me seeing that, and has it changed - it's been a while since this came up last?



From what I've seen, the question has changed from  how to write "good" female characters to "authentic".female characters.
They're more afraid of people saying "That's just a man with breasts!" than being accused of having a bad character. It carries unfortunate implications, as both male and female writers also get told their character is unrealistic because she didn't do x or y or didn't have z happen to her. There's a much higher standard of "realism" required for female characters before they're called Mary Sue, Man with Breasts, Sex Object, Unrealistic virginal heroine, Strong Female Character,  and so on. While the only restriction with men is to not be too soft. Whereas women get criticized for being too soft too.


----------



## Devor

Annoyingkid said:


> From what I've seen, the question has changed from  how to write "good" female characters to "authentic".female characters.
> They're more afraid of people saying "That's just a man with breasts!" than being accused of having a bad character. It carries unfortunate implications, as both male and female writers also get told their character is unrealistic because she didn't do x or y or didn't have z happen to her. There's a much higher standard of "realism" required for female characters before they're called Mary Sue, Man with Breasts, Sex Object, Unrealistic virginal heroine, Strong Female Character,  and so on. While the only restriction with men is to not be too soft. Whereas women get criticized for being too soft too.



Female characters often get way over-analyzed, that's for sure.


----------



## Heliotrope

Russ said:


> First off I should take a moment to say thanks to Helio for what a great question she posed and what a great thread this had turned out to be.



Thanks for this Russ  I do get embarrassed about posing these controversial questions, especially when I am literally just "pissing in the wind" most of the time. I am the type that needs to think out loud, so often times I'm not even really sure where I stand on a certain issue and I like to have a variety of voices to help me explore an idea. I'm the type who is never satisfied with my own perspective. I always think "this is what I think, but I have a pretty limited world view, so maybe there are other ideas floating around?" 



Russ said:


> To understand why people are the way they are in Dune, I think you have to understand what the book is about at its core and what Herbert was writing about. To my mind Dune is about Messiah and the things that flow through it and from it. Lady Jessia is the mother of the Messiah, or Messiah to be and thus has to have certain characteristics, since she seems to be standing in for the Virgin Mary.



Yes, this makes perfect sense. The Virgin Mary character is such an interesting character, and one I would love to explore more. Have you read Untie the Strong Woman by Clarissa Pinkola Estes? (You, being a feminist may at least be familiar with her work?) She has another one on the wild woman archetype in fiction called Women Who Run With The Wolves. I love both, but Untie the Strong Woman really changed my view on Mary as a character. That has nothing to do with this conversation though, it was just a musing  



Russ said:


> You are right to say that there are no ordinary well developed women in Dune, but one should not expect to find them there.



Yes. Good point. I'm realizing this now.


----------



## Russ

Heliotrope said:


> Yes, this makes perfect sense. The Virgin Mary character is such an interesting character, and one I would love to explore more. Have you read Untie the Strong Woman by Clarissa Pinkola Estes? (You, being a feminist may at least be familiar with her work?) She has another one on the wild woman archetype in fiction called Women Who Run With The Wolves. I love both, but Untie the Strong Woman really changed my view on Mary as a character. That has nothing to do with this conversation though, it was just a musing



I am not familiar with her work, but I will be soon.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

<She has another one on the wild woman archetype in fiction called Women Who Run With The Wolves.>

I have that one!


----------



## Dark Squiggle

Funny. I found _Women who run with the Wolves  _in the basement when I was about 12, and my mother took it from me as if it were something evil and forbade me to read it. I never saw a copy again and I still haven't read it. Is there something really offensive in there?


----------



## Heliotrope

No, not at all. That is weird.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Indeed. I have no idea why anyone would forbid you to read it.  Was female empowerment particularly offensive to your mother, if you don't mind me asking such a personal question?


----------



## Dark Squiggle

I don't think female empowerment is an issue with my mother. She did give up practicing law to be a "full time mother" when my sister was born, but she's practicing again and she spends probably 90% of her time being the tough one in the room, so I doubt it. I guess it's just that my mother and I didn't get along so well at the time.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Ooh, I just thought of a great book [speaking of female empowerment] called The Great Cosmic Mother, by Barbara Mor.


----------



## rhd

Heliotrope said:


> Yes, this makes perfect sense. The Virgin Mary character is such an interesting character, and one I would love to explore more. Have you read Untie the Strong Woman by Clarissa Pinkola Estes? (You, being a feminist may at least be familiar with her work?) She has another one on the wild woman archetype in fiction called Women Who Run With The Wolves. I love both, but Untie the Strong Woman really changed my view on Mary as a character. That has nothing to do with this conversation though, it was just a musing
> 
> Yes. Good point. I'm realizing this now.



Damn I LOVE Clarissa Pinkola Estes, I love her rich style of writing!!

Too add, this is me quoting her in my art journal.


----------



## rhd

Dark Squiggle said:


> Funny. I found _Women who run with the Wolves  _in the basement when I was about 12, and my mother took it from me as if it were something evil and forbade me to read it. I never saw a copy again and I still haven't read it. Is there something really offensive in there?


She didn't want you to turn wild and all.


----------



## KC Trae Becker

Chiming in late, but this topic is a juicy one. 

I found my way to Tolkien in middle school. As an introverted Tom-boy, previously all my books had male protags w/ animal companions. I loved the Hobbit and devoured it like candy. I didn't really notice the total absence of females. After reading Susan Cooper and King Arthur stuff, a year later when I found The Lord of the Rings, I noticed, the under representation of women w/ sadness, but still found the hobbits down-to-Earth and child-like enough to be relatable and still loved the stories, though a skimmed most of the battle scenes after Eowyn defeated the Witch King. The scene between Frodo and Sam on the Winding Stairs into Mordor is one of my all time favorite scenes in literature. 

Despite much mockery from our Tolkien loving family, my daughter who has read The Hobbit somewhere close to 15 times and written many fanfics  that sound similar to some of the stories requested on this thread, cannot get through The Lord of the Rings, though she loves the movies.

I read Dune on my husband's recommendation post college. My expectations had changed dramatically by then. I got through it, saw the value of reading the first book, but didn't connect w/ any characters and couldn't get through the second.

Now my husband is enamored w/ Gene Wolf and keeps recommending him to me. I sampled his writing. I can't stomach it. Not only don't I like the vague open-to-interpretation style but the pre-960's view of women is a real turn-off. 

Alternatively, the Mists of Avalon and Andre Norton feminist fantasy stuff of the 1970's and 80's was similarly stomach turning for me. There was way too much misandry for my worldview. 

As for men writing believable female characters, you won't please everyone, but basing your characters on a real woman or a combination of a few real women, and/or getting critiques from women should help you to pull it off. Just try to have the female character's backstory be well rounded. Most people are pretty complex, but women tend to be less straight forward, more global thinkers and so the need to understand their many thoughts from many different perspectives on an event regardless of how they actually respond will help make the characters more dynamic and less flat in your head. It will probably come out in your writing if you actually get to know your female characters well enough for them to feel real to you. We women can be a lot of work to understand  but we're well worth it to help make your story come alive, and not just for the women readers.


----------



## A. E. Lowan

Coming in late, but I hear I was summoned. 

Lots of great thoughts in this thread, and it can be boiled down to a single sentence: Women are people. The thing is, in media we are often not allowed to be. We have to be conventionally attractive, we have to be the Strong Female Character, and above all we have to be Likable.

I have a choice gesture for all of this.

Women are people. Lets make sure to write them as complicated. Vexing. Funny. Liars. Fat. Cowards. Trans. Sexual, but on their own terms. Mistresses of their fates. Unlikable. Unrelatable. Curiously ugly. For pity's sake, middle aged with crunchy knees. Women are people.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

A. E. Lowan said:


> Women are people. Lets make sure to write them as complicated. Vexing. Funny. Liars. Fat. Cowards. Trans. Sexual, but on their own terms. Mistresses of their fates. Unlikable. Unrelatable. Curiously ugly. For pity's sake, middle aged with crunchy knees. Women are people.



Perfectly expressed. I love this.


----------



## Svrtnsse

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Perfectly expressed. I love this.


That reminded me of this, which is a nice quote if you've not yet come across it:


> "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people."
> _Marie Shear_


----------



## Annoyingkid

I remember people on another writing forum disagreeing with me when I said, females of fantasy races are not women.

From a feminist position, a female of a fantasy race doesn't say anything about  a human female. If you write a female elf or dwarf are clever or strong or capable, you aren't saying these things of human women.  Personally I don't consider it a feminist statement unless it concerns human beings. With one exception. If the fantasy creature is being used allegorically, to mirror the realistic experiences of women, under a patriarchal system. Therefore the Strong Female Character doesn't count.


----------



## Deleted member 4265

Well, I'm a bit late to the party, but its an interesting question.

Growing up, male-centric fantasy never bothered me. I've always had trouble relating to other girls, so I just figured that if I couldn't relate to women in fiction it was because I couldn't relate to them in real life. Every time I pick up a book and I actually like the female characters in it, it's such a rare event that its worth celebrating. For the longest time I refused to read anything with a female POV if it wasn't "balanced" by a male perspective.

And honestly, now that I'm older I still prefer my fiction more on the male dominated side (I enjoyed Mists of Avalon but my favorite characters were the Merlins). But while I think that part of my dislike for female characters comes from my own inability to relate with my female peers, I've also come to realize a lot of it has to do with the fact that women are written badly. So while, I would still prefer to read books from male POVs, I can no longer tolerate one-dimensional female characters even if they're only side characters. 

And recently, I have become more interested in reading female perspectives. By now I've read enough that I've actually liked to think that while they are rare, they're not just freak accidents. But while women can take on any role in urban fantasy, secondary world fantasy is usually based off of historical time periods (obviously you can make the gender roles in your story whatever you want, but Medieval Europe is the standard) and I think its a mistake to just try to put women in male roles in that context. Like someone else pointed out, gender swapping in Stranger Things wouldn't effect the story that much, but gender swapping LOTR is a whole different thing. I'm not saying there isn't a place for female-centric stories in secondary world fantasy, I just think its going to have to take on a different flavor than male-centric stories.


----------



## A. E. Lowan

I would recommend starting with an essay by Kameron Hurley called, "We Have Always Fought." Throughout history, women have held roles traditionally occupied by men, from baker to general to ruler and everything in between - but many of those women have been erased from the narrative and are only now being rediscovered. We have never been limited by our sex to being wives, mothers, whores, and queens, and this needs to be reflected in fantasy. We need our chosen farm girls going on grand quests, because it simply reflects historical reality.


----------



## pmmg

Honestly, I find that quote by Mrs. Shear to be a bit vapid, which pre-supposes an untruth in the way it often gets used.



Annoyingkid said:


> From a feminist position, a female of a fantasy race doesn't say anything about a human female. If you write a female elf or dwarf are clever or strong or capable, you aren't saying these things of human women. Personally I don't consider it a feminist statement unless it concerns human beings. With one exception. If the fantasy creature is being used allegorically, to mirror the realistic experiences of women, under a patriarchal system. Therefore the Strong Female Character doesn't count.



I don’t see why it would necessarily be disconnected from showing things in a way that would be easily correlated to a human woman's experience. One of the things that we get to do with fantasy is use it to illustrate the things we find true in the world around us. Before I can write an elven woman, I must first apply my own human thought as to what she must be like, living as one of her race, in her specific culture, and in her world. To some degree, that must first start with something of my own human understanding, which ought to mean it cannot really be wholly separated from the human condition.

But I think there must also be some truth to this. If I write a race where the women are giants say, and the men are not, their condition and life experiences would just be so very different from that of what human women know, and so their issues ought to be just very different as well, while still being true to them, and possibly speaking to things being true beyond them, but perhaps not.

I think this is a neat point to raise.

Though, I am not really interested in writing from a feminist position. I just what to capture what is true for the characters, and the world they live in. Different genders experience the world differently, and all must find a way to make their way in it. And in a diverse world, some will lend themselves into espousing feminist ideals (in the context of their own place), and some wont. I don’t see it as my goal to insert things that would not be true for the characters anyway.

People are people, and they are diverse and come in many stripes, with so many different facets and values and beliefs and things they hold true that it would just not do to curtail that for an agenda, or show them to be villains and heroes solely on the way they line up with today's notions.

The answer to how to write women is the same for writing any character. Write them as people. I don’t think that is radical. It would seem an easy thing to do, but apparently is not. To write them honestly, I think, is not to presuppose things upon them that don’t come from their story. People are complex, so writing anyone well ought to capture that.

I do think there are many things that make men and women different in the way they experience the world. I don’t think they are equals in natural physical attributes, or in the ways they develop around their differences, but I do think they are balanced and equal in that the gifts of one are capable of being proven insufficient by the gifts of the other. That to me, just seems like nature's way. And given the wide variety that people can be, there will always be some who do better than others, and some who just don’t seem to fit the mold. And heck, those differences make life beautiful.

This thread is asking why are women missing or shown in unrelateable ways in so many previous works of fiction. You know, they all existed in their own time, and they tried to relate what they saw in the world, and what they wanted to say. I am glad they wrote them, cause I have read a lot of them. But we are all up at bat now. Its our turn to hit the ball. Give the world believable characters and great stories, and we can be the topic of a thread on writers groups some distance off.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

To paraphrase from the Discworld: Stories are a mirror that you hold up to reality. [Or is it the other way round, that reality is a mirror that you hold up and create stories from the reflections? I can't remember.]


----------



## Chessie2

My last heroine was a chainsmoker and somewhat of a man-eater. The women in my books have bad attitudes, feisty attitudes, respectful attitudes, they cry, they curse, they smile, they love, they hate, they're everything in-between. Write them as people is spot on, pmmg.


----------



## evolution_rex

I noticed a few posts, including from myself, that were pretty much just replies to Heliotropes concerns coming from her female point of view and the dudes going 'well, in my opinion...'. I think it's interesting, that clash of just sometimes not being able to 100% see the point of view of another gender. Here's an example:

Today I rewatched an episode of  the TV show Twin Peaks: The Return (a show, which anyone who's caught me in the chat knows I talk too much about because it's the best thing of all time). In this episode there was a sex scene that was incredibly complicated. There are a lot of layers to the scene cinematically but I'll narrow it down to the basics. It went like this;

1. The is an evil version of the main character (as in they are doppelgangers) who does a very, very terrible action towards another character
2. Later on the good version of the main character and the other character have sex, but because of this terrible action made by his doppelganger, the other character doesn't want it.

When the episode premiered, I noticed right away that male fans and female fans interpreted the scene differently. The women knew immediately that she wasn't into it, but the male fans (including myself) didn't notice she didn't want it until she was literally covering up the main characters face and began crying. Most of the male fans also felt that they were both forced into having sex during the scene in some kind of ritual attempt (that's difficult to explain without the context of the show but like I said it's a very complicated scene in a very complicated series that contains 100% puzzle), while most of the female fans were grossed out by the main character's lack of sympathy and general coldness in the scene, which I had and many male fans had interpreted as nervousness or his own unwillingness to do the act.

The series being a series of absolute ambiguity made intentionally to make people question what they're seeing, not only is the scene horrifying and sad but genius. The director of the series, David Lynch, is very close to the actress (who's a pretty big feminist) who did the scene and has films people have interpreted as feminist (Mulholland Drive, Inland Empire, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, and the entire Twin Peaks franchise). Although many instances in this particular series feel old school hollywood in their portrayal of women (he even plays a character in the school who describes himself as 'old school' in the same way people described Harvey Wienstien as old school) but I believe it's all intentional because in this particular this series he shows great understanding of women's lives and fears and I think he intentionally plays with how different people will interpret it differently.

So I think this scene is a great example of how men and women think differently. After hearing the thoughts of women who'd seen the episode, and rewatching it a second time, I couldn't help but look at it in that point of view. And it was twice as unsettling of a scene. So, other than just praising some scene to a TV show I just saw, I think what I'm trying to say is that expressing different points of views are important and can change another's view. I think it's great to call out classics for their problems.


----------



## Annoyingkid

An old lesbian friend of mine actually preferred that I didn't pair up my two main female characters at all. Despite them being her favourite characters in the story. I agreed as I think some characters just work better as symbols and absolutes, or ideals or clear concepts instead of the really humanized portrayal.


----------



## TheKillerBs

Chessie2 said:


> Given that I write romances, my approach to writing characters is going to be different than another author catering to a mostly male audience. Let's face it: that's just the way it is.
> 
> I write mostly to a female audience, and I have to be very careful as to what issues and insecurities these characters deal with. They tend to be heavy because it's what I love exploring. My heroines usually have deep issues that stand in the way of their emotional fulfillment (the last one had daddy issues). But given that it's romance, this sort of character exploration is expected. Is it in an epic fantasy? Like, the kind some of our members write? I'm thinking of Skip who writes his historical fantasy novels with goblins. Would a young woman with daddy issues be a character male epic fantasy readers would want to read? Uh...probably not. They'd call her a whiner and be over it. Now, put that same character in front of a romance reader who wants to see this heroine's daddy issues NOT keep her from love with the man of her dreams. It turns into a conflict that drives the story. It wouldn't be so if Lila were a character in Skip's book. See where I'm going with this?
> 
> I think Helio's main concern can be explained by this: you were not the target audience for those books. Since you like your female characters a certain way, and like to learn things when you read, then those books won't satisfy you as a reader. They don't satisfy me much either. I do love Tolkien, but he's about the one exception besides C.S. Lewis.


I see your point. I don't fully agree with it. I can think of plenty of media that's aimed at a mostly male audience where important female characters have issues and insecurities they have to deal with. If your heroine were dropped into an epic fantasy, she would probably still be loved by male readers who want to see her daddy issues NOT keep her from kicking butt and taking names, or perhaps even fueling her desire to kick butt, lol. _Worm_, a superhero web serial, has a a teenage female MC with, erm, let's just say, issues. Daddy issues are just the least of them. It's probably the most successful web serial out there. Dark, though. Very dark. Apparently hits every trigger warning on Ergohacks.com. So yeah. I don't think target audience is a reason to let Tolkien or whomever off the hook.


----------



## Annoyingkid

TheKillerBs said:


> I see your point. I don't fully agree with it. I can think of plenty of media that's aimed at a mostly male audience where important female characters have issues and insecurities they have to deal with. If your heroine were dropped into an epic fantasy, she would probably still be loved by male readers who want to see her daddy issues NOT keep her from kicking butt and taking names, or perhaps even fueling her desire to kick butt, lol. _Worm_, a superhero web serial, has a a teenage female MC with, erm, let's just say, issues. Daddy issues are just the least of them. It's probably the most successful web serial out there. Dark, though. Very dark. Apparently hits every trigger warning on Ergohacks.com. So yeah. I don't think target audience is a reason to let Tolkien or whomever off the hook.



This is about degree. It shouldn't try to compete with a book that's dedicated to relationship drama. Tolkien was right to do a few things well then trying to do too many things and please too many people. Try to please everyone and you please no one.


----------



## Heliotrope

evolution_rex said:


> I noticed a few posts, including from myself, that were pretty much just replies to Heliotropes concerns coming from her female point of view and the dudes going 'well, in my opinion...'. I think it's interesting, that clash of just sometimes not being able to 100% see the point of view of another gender. Here's an example:



I really appreciate the fact that you noticed this


----------



## Svrtnsse

evolution_rex said:


> I think it's interesting, that clash of just sometimes not being able to 100% see the point of view of another gender. Here's an example:



A good example of this that has stayed with me for a long time is the meaning of the word _used_. I read about a survey where participants had been asked to rate whether they found certain words to be positively, neutrally, or negatively charged. According to the survey (which I've not been able to find again), males found the word _used_ to be neutrally charged, while females found it to be negatively charged.

It's a small detail, and I'm sure it's not universal, but I think it's a great example of how people from different backgrounds can related differently to the same thing.


----------



## Heliotrope

Svrtnsse said:


> A good example of this that has stayed with me for a long time is the meaning of the word _used_. I read about a survey where participants had been asked to rate whether they found certain words to be positively, neutrally, or negatively charged. According to the survey (which I've not been able to find again), males found the word _used_ to be neutrally charged, while females found it to be negatively charged.
> 
> It's a small detail, and I'm sure it's not universal, but I think it's a great example of how people from different backgrounds can related differently to the same thing.



Reminds me of this little (very unprofessional, not to be taken seriously) study on how men and women use different words when writing love poetry.

Study Reveals What Words Men And Women Use To Write About Love, And The Difference Is Striking


----------



## Devor

I think there's layers to a story. If you look at Stranger Things (season 1), for instance, we have the three or four boys, and Eleven, as this core group. Outside that group, we have characters like Hopper and Joyce, Nancy and Jonathan, Barbara and Benny, the scientist guy, and that evil woman who that shoots people.  Then we have the "mooks" - the lab workers who exist just to die.

If we were going to grade Stranger Things based on its inclusion of women, I would say it's mostly that middle group of characters that should be graded. Some stories simply focus on certain types of people - it's unfortunate that over a larger pattern some people feel left out, but you can't task every individual work with the job of fixing everything. You can't judge a story about a group of 80s boys who play D&D for being about a group of 80s boys playing D&D. But as you start to zoom out, and look at the other people in their lives and those others who are affected by the broader story, it would be a little weird if you didn't see any women involved.  Then of course you come to the nameless mooks who exist to die, and that raises all these emotions in many people about violence towards women... so there's that.

I'm not personally interested in actually grading Stranger Things or LOTR or any other stories past or present. There's a larger point I'm trying to make, not as a reader or critic, but a writer.

Somebody mentioned "target audience" above, and that's a concept that has changed over time. More recently, marketing experts talk about layering their target markets. Even if the main elements of your work primarily appeal to men or women or horror-lovers or teens or another group, there are multiple things happening in your work that can appeal to different people. Maybe a lot of women don't like a lot of horror, yet it seems apparent that there are a lot of women who like Stranger Things, doesn't it? Stranger Things has multiple target audiences and multiple ways that it appeals to them.

As a writer, I have a central vision for each story that I don't want to compromise (the D&D-playing boys who find themselves stuck in a horror). But _given that central vision_, how can I work in the vast supporting areas of my story to do better by a broader audience?


----------



## Heliotrope

Devor said:


> As a writer, I have a central vision for each story that I don't want to compromise (the D&D-playing boys who find themselves stuck in a horror). But _given that central vision_, how can I work in the vast supporting areas of my story to do better by a broader audience?



This is nice. I like this. I try to do a similar thing. Even though I'm writing middle grades with a female mc I do think that I want to add something for the boys reading the story, for the parents reading the story, for the teachers reading the story... etc.

I read somewhere that this is why Disney started the film Frozen with the ice workers digging at the lake and little Christoph and Sven trying to keep up. It was to show the boys viewing the film that there was _something_ for them here too. It wasn't just a gooey movie about two sisters.






Also read that this is why Tangled was narrated through Flynn Ryder, as if it were "his" story.


----------



## A. E. Lowan

Heliotrope said:


> This is nice. I like this. I try to do a similar thing. Even though I'm writing middle grades with a female mc I do think that I want to add something for the boys reading the story, for the parents reading the story, for the teachers reading the story... etc.
> 
> I read somewhere that this is why Disney started the film Frozen with the ice workers digging at the lake and little Christoph and Sven trying to keep up. It was to show the boys viewing the film that there was _something_ for them here too. It wasn't just a gooey movie about two sisters.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Also read that this is why Tangled was narrated through Flynn Ryder, as if it were "his" story.


Which raises an interesting point...

No Boys Allowed: School visits as a woman writer

As I just linked, Shannon Hale wrote a post a while back about how schools consider certain writing "for girls" as opposed to writing "for boys." You notice that most movies don't go out of their way to reach a female audience, because that media is considered to be accessible to everyone. But movies that might be considered "for girls," well, now, we have to make sure the boys feel included, because those stories aren't for them, otherwise.


----------



## Heliotrope

_But because I’m a woman, because some of my books have pictures of girls on the cover, because some of my books have “princess” in the title, I’m stamped as “for girls only.” However, the male writers who have boys on their covers speak to the entire school._

Oh my gosh, sickening, but so true! 

_perpetuating the myth that women only have things of interest to say to girls while men’s voices are universally important._

Yeah. That article just made me mad (in a good way) because it totally validates everything I was thinking. Hypothetically, if Stranger Things had been about a group of five girls, would it have had the same success? Or would it be labelled something akin to "Pretty Little Alien Hunters" and be classified as a girl show, with girl drama? I don't know. Of course it is all speculation, but yeah, the fact that boy characters are seen as "neutral" (everyone will like this story), and girl MC's get prefaced with "It's about a girl, but there is still some good stuff in here for boys!" makes me mental.


----------



## TheKillerBs

Annoyingkid said:


> This is about degree. It shouldn't try to compete with a book that's dedicated to relationship drama. Tolkien was right to do a few things well then trying to do too many things and please too many people. Try to please everyone and you please no one.


I'm sorry, I don't quite follow.


----------



## Annoyingkid

TheKillerBs said:


> I'm sorry, I don't quite follow.



The action or epic oriented fantasy  isn't playing to it's strengths if it tries to include things like daddy drama to anything close to the extent of a romance story.


----------



## TheKillerBs

Annoyingkid said:


> The action or epic oriented fantasy  isn't playing to it's strengths if it tries to include things like daddy drama to anything close to the extent of a romance story.


Oh, definitely. But that doesn't preclude female characters with some kind of emotional baggage from having important or even main roles, and LOTR doesn't have anything resembling that and I don't think it should get a pass for that either.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

^Does Eowyn not count? Maybe she doesn't count...


----------



## Svrtnsse

TheCrystallineEntity said:


> ^Does Eowyn not count? Maybe she doesn't count...


I guess that depends on what point you're trying to make, and why.


----------



## Heliotrope

For me Eowyn didn't count. She was a "strong female character" for sure, but one who was entirely devoted to her "people" as all good Tolkein women should be. She was an extension of the elves, without being an elf. She was highly idealized, asexual. The only difference between Tolkein's women is their costumes and their names.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Luthien didn't seem 'entirely devoted to her "people"' as you put it. In fact, she kind of went against them. Maybe I'm just bias. I apologize.


----------



## Heliotrope

Don't apologize! I'm just explaining why Eowyn didn't count for me. I didn't finish LOTR, so there is no way I would have read the Silmarillion, lol! So I can't speak to Luthien. She may have been more well rounded.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Her feats surpass Eowyn by a fair margin. Not only did Luthien escape from her parental induced house arrest, she rescued her lover, Beren, from Sauron's dungeons, and then, stole one of the Silmarils [semi-divine jewels, in case you're wondering] from *Morgoth. *They succeeded, though Beren lost his life in the process, and then Luthien went to the halls of the dead and sang a lament so moving that Beren was granted a second life. She accomplished more than most heroes, in my opinion.


----------



## TheKillerBs

Heliotrope said:


> For me Eowyn didn't count. She was a "strong female character" for sure, but one who was entirely devoted to her "people" as all good Tolkein women should be. She was an extension of the elves, without being an elf. She was highly idealized, asexual. The only difference between Tolkein's women is their costumes and their names.


And their lack of screentime, so to speak. At least in LOTR, I have never read the Silmarillion, either.


----------



## Annoyingkid

I don't care if Eowyn was sexual or not, what bothered me was the bad internal logic of her training and status. She says she and the women of that land are trained in combat. Her actions in ROTK prove  that. Yet literally everybody are intent on telling her that fighting is too dangerous. So what's the point in training them then? Or allowing them to train in fighting if they're not allowed to fight? it's just a big waste of time and energy. It's not like they stayed in Rohan's cities and towns to defend it when the men are gone, they fled to the hills or some crap. I find it baffling.


----------



## Devor

Annoyingkid said:


> I don't care if Eowyn was sexual or not, what bothered me was the bad internal logic of her training and status. She says she and the women of that land are trained in combat. Her actions in ROTK prove  that. Yet literally everybody are intent on telling her that fighting is too dangerous. So what's the point in training them then? Or allowing them to train in fighting if they're not allowed to fight? it's just a big waste of time and energy. It's not like they stayed in Rohan's cities and towns to defend it when the men are gone, they fled to the hills or some crap. I find it baffling.



In Japan it was custom for many women to train in the Naginata in order to defend themselves against a home invasion. There's nothing inconsistent at all about training someone to fight and telling them not to go to war, especially somebody like Eowyn whom an enemy might target.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

^I know that firsthand, sort of, because I used a real naginata when I took Karate lessons.


----------



## TheKillerBs

Devor said:


> In Japan it was custom for many women to train in the Naginata in order to defend themselves against a home invasion. There's nothing inconsistent at all about training someone to fight and telling them not to go to war, especially somebody like Eowyn whom an enemy might target.


But they did that because they stayed home. The wives of the samurai were expected to hold the fort while the men were on campaign. The women of Rohan weren't.


----------



## Devor

TheKillerBs said:


> But they did that because they stayed home. The wives of the samurai were expected to hold the fort while the men were on campaign. The women of Rohan weren't.



All the more reason to train them...?  I wasn't arguing that women can't or shouldn't fight, only that I didn't think the logic in LOTR was inconsistent. In a world of orcs and magic, it's not like you can put women / civilians, well, anywhere, with any guarantee they won't need to defend themselves.


----------



## Annoyingkid

Devor said:


> In Japan it was custom for many women to train in the Naginata in order to defend themselves against a home invasion. There's nothing inconsistent at all about training someone to fight and telling them not to go to war, especially somebody like Eowyn whom an enemy might target.



I just said they didn't stay to face any home invasion. They fled and hid when the men left.


----------



## Devor

I almost didn't post this because the derail has probably gone on long enough, but I expect somebody might react well to the AU thought below, so here we are.



Annoyingkid said:


> I just said they didn't stay to face any home invasion. They fled and hid when the men left.



I mean, let's rewrite the ending for a moment, and have the orcs kill all those men who went off to war.  LOTR alternate universe, where the women of Rohan are the only people defending the last remnant of humanity.  Are you really saying it was a waste of time to train somebody - anybody, warrior or not - in Middle Earth how to fight?  It's not like hiding and fleeing guarantees any kind of safety.


----------



## Annoyingkid

Devor said:


> I almost didn't post this because the derail has probably gone on long enough, but I expect somebody might react well to the AU thought below, so here we are.
> 
> I mean, let's rewrite the ending for a moment, and have the orcs kill all those men who went off to war.  LOTR alternate universe, where the women of Rohan are the only people defending the last remnant of humanity.  Are you really saying it was a waste of time to train somebody - anybody, warrior or not - in Middle Earth how to fight?  It's not like hiding and fleeing guarantees any kind of safety.



If women were trained for home invasion why didn't any of them fight at Helms deep? Helm's Deep is a home invasion.


----------



## Rkcapps

Just discovered this thread. As a female reader, I never found LotRs engaging or Dune. Just recently though, I was able to finish The fellowship of the Rings via Audible. I could appreciate so much of the writing. Beautiful. But, I'm not engaged enough to read the second book. It is very likely that I prefer more emotion. That's a personal preference but possibly it's a female preference. I honestly doubt LotRs would be picked up in today's fast paced market. Luckily it was discovered before the market took off. As much as it wasn't for me, it would be a shame if it hadn't been discovered. I really appreciate so much of what Tolkien did. As a side, I had no trouble with The Hobbit and that wouldn't have had emotion. Loved it. So figure that out!

I started out with Stephen Donaldsons books. Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. I vaguely recall only one female character but largely a male cast. I couldn't read now but 30 years ago? I couldn't put it down.


----------



## noob of the north

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I will write it down and try to see if i can make it come to life! The only thing is, I am in the middle of a WIP and several short stories and have like twelve story concepts gestating, including a couple graphic novels and a novel in verse O_O


I know the feeling. So many ideas, so little time.  Happy holidays!


----------



## Xitra_Blud

I am female, and I never had that trouble as a reader. I've never cared whether a book contained any males or females. I only cared whether or not the characters were interesting and carried the story along well.

In truth (or at least for me) stories don't need females and they don't need males either. They need characters. They need characters with roles that benefit the story and emotion. I've never found myself entertained by a book because the story contained someone who looks like me or shares the same gender as me, and likewise, I have never disliked a book for if it didn't.

I entirely disagree with putting in a character of a certain gender or race strictly because you feel the story needs that gender or race, and usually this only leads to the character being a love interest or existing in the story but not doing much for it--a waste a pages. I say, just write characters who serve a strong purpose in the story, even if it's only two characters of only one gender.


----------



## Steerpike

Xitra_Blud as a general rule I don't think the character's sex or gender serves or disserves the story. In other words, you could make the character either male or female and it would serve the purposes of the story just fine either way. There are exceptions, of course.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Steerpike said:


> Xitra_Blud as a general rule I don't think the character's sex or gender serves or disserves the story. In other words, you could make the character either male or female and it would serve the purposes of the story just fine either way. There are exceptions, of course.



For my WIP, switching the genders of some of the characters but not all of them would make for a story I would find difficult to write. In that respect, the genders of the characters do serve the story, in that the story wouldn't be written otherwise.


----------



## Russ

Steerpike said:


> Xitra_Blud as a general rule I don't think the character's sex or gender serves or disserves the story. In other words, you could make the character either male or female and it would serve the purposes of the story just fine either way. There are exceptions, of course.



Unless you are writing a story set in a culture which is gender blind, I think the gender of the character will often have a significant impact on most stories if the characters are interacting with a culture that treats different people differently.     

For instance if you are writing a story set in a lonely woods where the protag is going to fight a bear and then travel 300 miles through wintery woods to safety than gender is no biggie, we all bleed/freeze/despair etc.  

However if you are writing a story set in say...the Roman empire, or some version of it, and you want your portag to be a military officer, or senator, then gender matters.

The Joan of Arc story would not be what it was, if it was John of Arc.


----------



## Steerpike

Michael K. Eidson said:


> For my WIP, switching the genders of some of the characters but not all of them would make for a story I would find difficult to write. In that respect, the genders of the characters do serve the story, in that the story wouldn't be written otherwise.





Russ said:


> However if you are writing a story set in say...the Roman empire, or some version of it, and you want your portag to be a military officer, or senator, then gender matters.
> 
> The Joan of Arc story would not be what it was, if it was John of Arc.



Thus, the concept of "exceptions" that I attempted to establish, above.

However, most stories I come across aren't written with these factors in mind, and that's particularly true of stories within SF/F/H. If the idea is that when you're writing a female character, then you've suddenly got to alter your entire story to show discriminatory behavior against females, well...no, you don't. That's a conscious decision you choose to make, not one that is typically required by the story.

Citing examples where it _is_ required by the story is the citation of _exceptions_, which are just that. More often, it makes little to no difference, story-wise, and you don't have to twist the logic of the story world to have, for example, a female protagonist.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Taking a movie as an easy example, in _A New Hope_, if you changed the gender of Luke Skywalker to female, and didn't change the gender of any other character in the story, would that not change the dynamics between the characters? Wouldn't it be a different story, even if you made the character a lesbian? I don't think you can just flip the gender switch on a character and have a similar story _in general_. There will be all sorts of relationships (forget discriminatory behavior) that will need rewriting.

I just feel that _in general_, the rule would be you can't switch genders on your protagonist without needing to rewrite extensively. The exceptions would be the cases where you can switch genders without much rewriting. But I'm looking at it from a relationship viewpoint, not a discrimination viewpoint.


----------



## pmmg

I do think it is a little too far to say the gender of a character does not matter or can be transposed without any difference. I suppose I could change the gender of characters in many stories and not change significantly the events of the story, but it would still cause me a lot of rewriting if I did. Gender matters, it affects how the MC may come to view the universe around them, affects how others respond to or treat them, effects how the reader relates, and how I as an author fashion the character in my head. I am not sure I would want a story where the gender of a character did not matter, at least for those I am supposed to follow.

I suppose I would say, in some areas, gender makes no difference at all, and in others, it makes all the difference. I could not flesh out a real world with real characters without having both areas.


----------



## Steerpike

pmmg said:


> I do think it is a little too far to say the gender of a character does not matter or can be transposed without any difference. I suppose I could change the gender of characters in many stories and not change significantly the events of the story, but it would still cause me a lot of rewriting if I did. Gender matters, it affects how the MC may come to view the universe around them, affects how others respond to or treat them, effects how the reader relates, and how I as an author fashion the character in my head. I am not sure I would want a story where the gender of a character did not matter, at least for those I am supposed to follow.



It affects those things if you write it that way. Many, many stories are written ignoring those elements entirely, so that idea that you'd only have to include them if you decided on a female character is erroneous, in my view. I think a lot more stories than we acknowledge are more like the original Alien, where the lead character was originally written as a male. When the producer of that movie was asked about the difficulty in changing the script to feature a female lead, he said they basically had their secretary change "he" to "she." You could do that with a lot of stories without affecting the story itself, and without readers batting an eye. The hand-wringing by writers over whether the female character can work is largely a product of the male being seen as the "default," not needing explanation, whereas deviation from the default requires a reason.

This above is said, of course, acknowledging exceptions to the general statements.


----------



## Devor

I wrote a short story for a challenge here a few years ago that pitted three boys against two male biker thugs.  I thought, that's five boys and no women, but if I switched genders for characters that age I felt that I would also have to in some way bring up the question of who-likes-who and how does that play out?

It would, wouldn't it?

For that particular short story it felt encumbersome to the tense overall tone I was shooting for.  In rewrites since then, I merged two of the characters, and included more women as "extras" to kind of lessen the gender imbalance effect (and the MC's mother was always present).

It's hard for me to understand how changing a character's gender is supposed to be as simple as switching a pronoun, unless it's a plot-heavy story about adults who are more or less at work the entire time (i.e., characters are too professional, and too distracted by the events, and are well-developed in their lives, to consider romance).  That certainly isn't most stories.


----------



## TheCrystallineEntity

Funny, I was just thinking of Alien before you posted, Steerpike.


----------



## pmmg

Well, I for one think that if Ripley had been a male the story would not have been as successful.

I think I cannot agree that those stories where gender can easily be transposed are exceptions. I think more likely the opposite is true and the exceptions are the ones in which they can. The hand wringing by authors goes on in many other circles too. But putting all that aside, I don't think I want to write a character where their gender makes no difference at all. I want the differences. I want the characters, who they are, and what they are, and what they are made of to matter.


----------



## Mythopoet

To be honest, I think most of the differences between genders that people tend to think about when this question comes up are not actual differences in the fundamental nature of the genders, but are rather the result of how society treats people based on how it perceives gender. And a lot of society's perception of gender is pure bullshit. 

Also, the idea that because you switch a character's gender you automatically have to rethink all their relationships because once you have two people of different genders together they automatically, probably, have feelings for each other is very misguided. There shouldn't automatically be romance just because two people are different genders. That whole idea is a very poisonous outgrowth of the way society treats sex and sexuality. You can stick two characters of different genders together and let them continue to have a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship. In fact, there should be more of that. More platonic relationships. More friendships. More relationships that don't necessitate the characters jumping into bed with each other at the first chance.


----------



## pmmg

Mythopoet said:


> To be honest, I think most of the differences between genders that people tend to think about when this question comes up are not actual differences in the fundamental nature of the genders, but are rather the result of how society treats people based on how it perceives gender. And a lot of society's perception of gender is pure bullshit.



Perhaps. I don't think I quite agree with that, but I'm open to it. I think there are certainly many areas where gender will not matter, but there also many areas where it will. It can be bullshit, or a million other things, but that does not mean it would not be in play.



Mythopoet said:


> Also, the idea that because you switch a character's gender you automatically have to rethink all their relationships because once you have two people of different genders together they automatically, probably, have feelings for each other is very misguided. There shouldn't automatically be romance just because two people are different genders. That whole idea is a very poisonous outgrowth of the way society treats sex and sexuality. You can stick two characters of different genders together and let them continue to have a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship. In fact, there should be more of that. More platonic relationships. More friendships. More relationships that don't necessitate the characters jumping into bed with each other at the first chance.



I don't know where it was said that two genders present in the story together equates to automatic romance and thereby a need to rewrite all the relationships. There is a lot more than romance that can be at play. I'm pretty sure Ripley did not have a romantic relationship of any sort on Alien (excluding the sequels). Still I think a simple change of her gender would change a great deal about the success of that franchise.


----------



## Devor

Mythopoet said:


> Also, the idea that because you switch a character's gender you automatically have to rethink all their relationships because once you have two people of different genders together they automatically, probably, have feelings for each other is very misguided. There shouldn't automatically be romance just because two people are different genders. That whole idea is a very poisonous outgrowth of the way society treats sex and sexuality. You can stick two characters of different genders together and let them continue to have a non-romantic, non-sexual relationship. In fact, there should be more of that. More platonic relationships. More friendships. More relationships that don't necessitate the characters jumping into bed with each other at the first chance.



Insomuch as you might be referring to my post above, I didn't mean to take it anywhere near that far.  I was talking about a story with teenagers, and only that I would have to take time to address it in a _short _story, not that it would immediately turn everything into a full-blown romance.

I think part of the question here is how large a part of the character's life the story covers and what part.  There are times in life when relationships are front and center, when they're new experiences and you don't even understand much about your own instincts and are still learning how to interact with others.  Then there are other times in your life when you're in control of yourself, you've matured in your relationships, you know what you want - may even have what you want - and may be more concerned about developing in ways other than those romantic relationships.

And seriously, why does Alien always come up in these conversations?  It's a thriller script that bears little resemblance to a fantasy novel.


----------



## Svrtnsse

Mythopoet said:


> I think most of the differences between genders that people tend to think about when this question comes up are not actual differences in the fundamental nature of the genders, but are rather the result of how society treats people based on how it perceives gender.


I'm fully with you on this. We're all products of our surroundings, and it's not difficult to see how men and women are treated differently within modern society (talking the real world here, not a designed fantasy world). We're subjected to different expectations and they help shape who we are.

If we remove or change these expectations, we also change the effect they have on people.

I think it's safe to say that a fantasy world can have expectations of men and women that are different to those in the real world, and it will be reflected in how the men and women of that world relate to each other. 
I think it's less safe to assume that a society in a fantasy world will have the exact same expectations of men as it does of women. It could be done, but it might then raise the question of why you didn't just go with a single-gender society instead. 

If the expectations of both genders are exactly the same, wouldn't it imply that there are no actual differences at all between them?


----------



## pmmg

My fault, I think she was replying to you. Please disregard the parts about automatic romance.




Devor said:


> And seriously, why does Alien always come up in these conversations? It's a thriller script that bears little resemblance to a fantasy novel.



I would think the answer to this would be obvious, she is a heroine with which most readers will have some familiarity, and she is an example of a strong action hero type role. True, she is not really in the fantasy realm, but many characters that are like her are, they just don't have as wide recognition.





Svrtnsse said:


> If the expectations of both genders are exactly the same, wouldn't it imply that there are no actual differences at all between them?



The very fact that they are two separate genders already equates to differences. Perhaps, through some effort, we could remove some of the differences in expectations, but remove all of them? I'm gonna put that near impossible.


----------



## Svrtnsse

pmmg said:


> The very fact that they are two separate genders already equates to differences. Perhaps, through some effort, we could remove some of the differences in expectations, but remove all of them? I'm gonna put that near impossible.


Indeed, we can remove some differences in expectations, but far from all of them. There are bound to be some differences, and I think it's better to accept that and try to accommodate for those differences in a fair manner than to try and force everything to be equal.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Mythopoet said:


> Also, the idea that because you switch a character's gender you automatically have to rethink all their relationships because once you have two people of different genders together they automatically, probably, have feelings for each other is very misguided.



No need to argue against something that wasn't said. The word _relationship_ does not always imply romance. In general, two sisters will act differently with each other than two brothers act with each other, which is different from how a brother and sister will act with each other. Any character who can be either male or female in a story without changing their relationships with other characters must have only certain types of relationships. This seems more limited to me than the situation where a character has many relationships of many types. To me, the fewer relationships you have for your characters, the more likely they are to be stereotypes.


----------



## Mythopoet

Svrtnsse said:


> I'm fully with you on this. We're all products of our surroundings, and it's not difficult to see how men and women are treated differently within modern society (talking the real world here, not a designed fantasy world). We're subjected to different expectations and they help shape who we are.
> 
> If we remove or change these expectations, we also change the effect they have on people.
> 
> I think it's safe to say that a fantasy world can have expectations of men and women that are different to those in the real world, and it will be reflected in how the men and women of that world relate to each other.
> I think it's less safe to assume that a society in a fantasy world will have the exact same expectations of men as it does of women. It could be done, but it might then raise the question of why you didn't just go with a single-gender society instead.
> 
> If the expectations of both genders are exactly the same, wouldn't it imply that there are no actual differences at all between them?



I agree. A fantasy world can have vastly different expectations. That's up to the author. But the author should be mindful of what differences are projected onto the genders from the society they live in and which are real, inherent, objective differences. And the author should also keep in mind that whether or not you make those differences part of the story is entirely up to the kind of story you want to tell. A simple there and back again quest, for example, needn't change at all if you switch a character's gender unless the author chooses to make it a part of the story. It's a choice, not a necessity.

In a fantasy world you absolutely could have a single gender society if you so desire. There's literally nothing to stop you. And that raises the point that the only obvious, inherent differences between human men and women are their roles in the act of reproduction. Which means that any differences displayed in a story other than those related to reproduction are solely the choice of the author.


----------



## Mythopoet

Also, everyone, please stop assuming my post was in response to yours unless I actually quote it in my own post.


----------



## Annoyingkid

There are  differences in the genders in what events take place , aka there's a reason they say time travellers SHOULD NOT TOUCH ANYTHING. In my own story:

Female mc to male --> The rejection of the mentor happens at the same time, but critically,, after he's been tested for potential and trained from childhood by said mentor, who would not have thought to test a girl.. As he lost his childhood, he basically becomes like Michael Jackson. A huge manchild who wants to play games with kids all the time. So he gets married and has kids of his own. Gets killed by bandits sooner or later. World end's as it lacks it's greatest hero.

Her brother to female ---> Doesn't infiltrate lawless, abusive bandits. Doesn't stop their plans, society collapses.


----------



## Mythopoet

Annoyingkid said:


> There are  differences in the genders in what events take place , aka there's a reason they say time travellers SHOULD NOT TOUCH ANYTHING. In my own story:
> 
> Female mc to male --> The rejection of the mentor happens at the same time, but critically,, after he's been tested for potential and trained from childhood by said mentor, who would not have thought to test a girl.. As he lost his childhood, he basically becomes like Michael Jackson. A huge manchild who wants to play games with kids all the time. So he gets married and has kids of his own. Gets killed by bandits sooner or later. World end's as it lacks it's greatest hero.
> 
> Her brother to female ---> Doesn't infiltrate lawless, abusive bandits. Doesn't stop their plans, society collapses.



These differences are solely your own choice as the author. Which is fine. But don't pretend you would _have_ to make those changes. It's your own point of view, not a universal truth.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Mythopoet said:


> Also, everyone, please stop assuming my post was in response to yours unless I actually quote it in my own post.



This only works if you actually quote someone's post.


----------



## Annoyingkid

Mythopoet said:


> These differences are solely your own choice as the author. Which is fine. But don't pretend you would _have_ to make those changes. It's your own point of view, not a universal truth.



I would if I'm being faithful to the characters. The universal point I'm making is that events in timelines are like throwing stones in ponds. They lead to other events which lead to others.


----------



## Mythopoet

Michael K. Eidson said:


> This only works if you actually quote someone's post.


And look, I did that twice, when I was actually responding to a particular post. Which means that if I don't quote anyone, my post is not directed at anyone. It's just a post about my point of view.


----------



## Mythopoet

Annoyingkid said:


> I would if I'm being faithful to the characters. The universal point I'm making is that events in timelines are like throwing stones in ponds. They lead to other events which lead to others.



But you, as the author, are the one who creates the characters and the plot. They are a result of your own choices. They don't flow down from Heaven. You have to take responsibility for how you choose to write things.


----------



## Annoyingkid

Mythopoet said:


> But you, as the author, are the one who creates the characters and the plot. They are a result of your own choices. They don't flow down from Heaven. You have to take responsibility for how you choose to write things.


 
So do you. If you're genderswapping and nothing changes, that  indicates a flat story. Certainly a flat character.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Mythopoet said:


> In a fantasy world you absolutely could have a single gender society if you so desire.



I assumed this discussion was about humans. You can make up anything you want and pretend there are no differences between the genders. If that's the point some here are trying to make, then I have no argument with that. It's fantasy, so make your own rules. Go for it. No one to stop you.


----------



## Mythopoet

Michael K. Eidson said:


> I assumed this discussion was about humans. You can make up anything you want and pretend there are no differences between the genders. If that's the point some here are trying to make, then I have no argument with that. It's fantasy, so make your own rules. Go for it. No one to stop you.



No one here tried to make that point. You're taking away too much from a small part of the conversation.


----------



## Mythopoet

Annoyingkid said:


> So do you. If you're genderswapping and nothing changes, that  indicates a flat story. Certainly a flat character.



That's merely your opinion based on no evidence.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Mythopoet said:


> And look, I did that twice, when I was actually responding to a particular post. Which means that if I don't quote anyone, my post is not directed at anyone. It's just a post about my point of view.



And if your views go against what someone else posted, then they have the right to argue against your view, which will most likely be from the viewpoint of the post they made.



Mythopoet said:


> No one here tried to make that point. You're taking away too much from a small part of the conversation.



I don't know of any human society that is single gender, so if you're talking about a single gender society, you're talking about a non-human society. Or is there something I don't know?


----------



## Annoyingkid

Mythopoet said:


> That's merely your opinion based on no evidence.



It's a sign of a character being beholden to the needs of the plot.  

Lets go  back to my example for a second. The bandits in my story are  basically all male, rapists, murderering agents of chaos.  A female character is not going to  want to choose to live there and be abused over and over. If she did, that would indicate flatness in the charcater, that the character is just driven by plot requirements. 

To have the same dynamic as a male infiltrating males, I would have to change the bandits to majority female, which like the stone in the pond, changes more things. 

A writer is bound by realism and credibility in some ways. Writers do not have carte blanche to change anything and stop the causal chain on a whim or because of plot, if they are writing faithful to characters and a baseline realism.


----------



## pmmg

Svrtnsse said:


> Indeed, we can remove some differences in expectations, but far from all of them. There are bound to be some differences, and I think it's better to accept that and try to accommodate for those differences in a fair manner than to try and force everything to be equal.



I cant argue with that 



Mythopoet said:


> Also, everyone, please stop assuming my post was in response to yours unless I actually quote it in my own post.



Sorry, Mytho...I do my best.



Mythopoet said:


> These differences are solely your own choice as the author. Which is fine. But don't pretend you would _have_ to make those changes. It's your own point of view, not a universal truth.



Well, it may be my point of view, but I do think it is informed by an effort to understand what is true. I might ask if there are any such things as universal truths, but I do think somethings are kind of universal, and I do try to capture that. If its not true, I would think that would become more evident as I more observe the world I live in, and others have lived in, but the evidence must be convincing.

I don't know if that would lead to me making changes in a work, solely by changing a gender of a character, but if upon reading such character, the fact of their gender made it read as untrue or just not very likely, then yes, I would have to rewrite it. Cause, I think its truth would matter.




Mythopoet said:


> Which means that any differences displayed in a story other than those related to reproduction are solely the choice of the author.



I think this is incorrect. There are more differences between genders than just reproduction capabilities. If you had a single gender society, I fear that whatever their means of reproduction, I would be able argue they were not really a good match for our real world genders. The means of reproduction would make them in some way different. That might not show itself in physical attributes, but it would almost certainly show itself the gender roles of such a society.

When we are writing fantasy, sure, I can say this is fantasy, and so it is untrue but I can roll with it. But if we are trying to show what we think is true, and using the backdrop of fantasy to portray it, well, I'm gonna question. I think that is fair. I know it can be written, I don't know if it can be made true. True may not be the goal, so its okay if I get to put that aside and just enjoy. (See, I did not use Lara Croft, say, as an example, cause I know she is not true, but she is more in the realm of fantasy than Ripley, but Ripley I can see as true, thus I went with her example.)


----------



## Svrtnsse

Michael K. Eidson said:


> I assumed this discussion was about humans. You can make up anything you want and pretend there are no differences between the genders. If that's the point some here are trying to make, then I have no argument with that. It's fantasy, so make your own rules. Go for it. No one to stop you.


It was I who brought up the idea of a single gender society. This was in response to a comment that got me thinking about how differences between the genders are the consequence of decisions the author makes (including discrimination) and how that's not necessary for the story. I could have gotten that wrong though.

It seems to me that if you have a race of two genders (let's call them humans), there will be differences between the genders. In certain situations these differences will have an impact on the story you're telling, and in other situations they may not. Changing the gender of a character may also impact the story and may require parts of it to be rewritten, but it might not.

It depends on the story.


----------



## Annoyingkid

I would also argue that it doesn't matter if the differences are solely your own choice as the author, they change  what the characters are regardless. Again, mentor who only tests males = run of the mill sexist. Mentor who tests females only. That's something different.  If he tests both, then he's a different person.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Svrtnsse said:


> It was I who brought up the idea of a single gender society.



Yes, but I was speaking to this:



Mythopoet said:


> In a fantasy world you absolutely could have a single gender society if you so desire. There's literally nothing to stop you. And that raises the point that the only obvious, inherent differences between human men and women are their roles in the act of reproduction. Which means that any differences displayed in a story other than those related to reproduction are solely the choice of the author.


----------



## Devor

Since some people have brought it up, I do think men and women think and behave a little different on average - there are small differences in the brain, large hormonal differences, and even the obvious physical differences will affect people in some ways.

I don't think this conversation has been about any of that, though.

I got the impression from Helio's OP that the question was about the relationships that develop once you have people of different genders and look at the ways different people interact. LOTR gave us elf-dwarf relationships and wizard-hobbit relationships and ranger king to steward's son relationships.  It didn't give us the types of relationships most people are familiar with.

I thought the point of the thread was, _don't you want to those kinds of relationships where it does matter?_  And I think a lot of us are saying, well, yes.


----------



## pmmg

Devor said:


> Since some people have brought it up, I do think men and women think and behave a little different on average - there are small differences in the brain, large hormonal differences, and even the obvious physical differences will affect people in some ways.



I've been talking around it. I think this is obviously true, based on a lifetime of, well...a lifetime.




Devor said:


> I thought the point of the thread was, _don't you want to those kinds of relationships where it does matter?_ And I think a lot of us are saying, well, yes.



I agree with, yes.  I prefer stories with more male/female relationships to Dwarf and Elf, but LOTR did a pretty good job pretty much without them. Maybe it could have been better. I don't think LOTR did anything that did not seem true to that world. If it did, I don't recall anymore. As I've said before. He did his job, and got his place, but its our turn now, right? We stand on the shoulders of giants, and he gets to be one of them. So write something better.


----------



## Russ

pmmg said:


> I've been talking around it. I think this is obviously true, based on a lifetime of, well...a lifetime.



There is actually a lot of science that supports this as well.  They question still contested however is how much of those differences in behaviour are caused by culture (environment) and how much is caused by hardwired factors (genetics).  The science is showing significant sex behaviour differences in younger and younger children, which means that at least some of the behavioural differences are likely genetic.  The next big job is to figure out which is which, which ones we like and what to do about them.

Returning the the Alien example that SP brought up, I would argue that Alien is the exception rather than the rule.  IT contains two of the factors that I identified the can lead to a story where gender is  non-factor.  One is a gender blind culture (proven by the female space marine in Aliens) and an isolated man vs. nature type story.

In a more typical story, where characters will interact with a culture that is not gender blind, sex or gender is a factor.   That doesn't mean the writer has to go out of his way to highlight those differences, it just means that they are there and need to be taken into account or the story will have issues.


----------



## Mythopoet

Devor said:


> Since some people have brought it up, I do think men and women think and behave a little different on average - there are small differences in the brain, large hormonal differences, and even the obvious physical differences will affect people in some ways.
> 
> I don't think this conversation has been about any of that, though.



But any conversation about writing women and comparing/contrasting writing women and writing men always comes back to this. Because no matter what you say to open the topic, someone (usually multiple someones) will pop up to spout a lot about the hormonal and neural differences between men and women. And often they'll have "studies" to back them up. (I put "studies" in quotes because most people don't even bother to look into the study and determine if the source is legitimate or the methodology is sound. They just repeat whatever headline they read about it. I'm not saying anyone in particular here is doing that. I'm talking about my observations in general about when this conversation comes up anywhere.) 

Now, the problem with this assertion is that it always ends up being exaggerated. People say, "well obviously there are differences between men and women." Usually based on their experiences of the men and women they know personally. However, they don't take into consideration whether or not the observed behavior is an actual result of the person's biological nature or whether the behavior is simply engraved by society or a reaction to the expectations of society. Are women naturally less violent and aggressive? Or have we been treated as delicate flowers who need to be protected for so long that we don't even consider any alternative in our formative years? And here's the thing, no matter how many studies you conduct, you'll never find the answer to this question because it is simply too complex. There are too many factors that would need to be taken into account. And any large number of women that you studied would be much too varied to come to any kind of general conclusion. 

But "studies" generally ignore the fact that "women" are not a monolithic entity. They have to because science depends on observed phenomenon always acting in the same way under the same general conditions. But people simply aren't like that. You can put two people in the exact same conditions and observe them act in wildly different ways and there are simply too many factors involved to come to any reasonable, reliable conclusion as to why. Studies of human behavior always end up generalizing their results. They will give you what ever the largest common denominator is as the "result" of how people act while ignoring all the other people in the study who didn't act that way as if that's not important at all. (Which I suppose is true, because whatever the intentions of the people conducting the study, the only practical application of such studies is figuring out how to manipulate the largest percentage of people possible.)

The same goes for people who simply use common sense to observe how the genders interact in the real world around them. That's a nice idea, but the first problem is that you can't be objective about it. You can't look at the question from the outside because you are a human being also taking part in the interactions between the genders and you are physically incapable of looking at the problem from the outside. The second problem is that you are also incapable of considering all the factors. You may know some of the people you observe fairly well, but no one knows enough about other people to sort out a question of this scope. People are simply too complex. 

The reality is that even if men and women do have physical differences, different levels of hormones for example, those things don't form who you are. They have some influence. But for the most part they are there to facilitate certain biological processes that have little to do with who you are as a person and whether or not you like fighting. People are too complex and there is so much more that forms their nature than chemicals in their body. The presence of my uterus enables me to have children and makes me a mother, but it does not form who I am as a person in any other area. Unless I allow society to tell me it does. Unless I allow other people to tell me that being a mother means that I am a nurturer who has to stay home and nurture and that's my role and nothing else. The idea that women = stay at home nurturers and men = earners and protectors is a result of how society has decided things should be, not a result of my biology. 

Now, personally, I choose to stay at home and mother my children. But that is mostly because I am an incredibly lazy and self centered person who HATES working for other people and also because I love being with my kids. My husband works outside the home because honestly isn't capable of running the household but he's very good at what he does at work. But that is NOT because he's a man, but a result of his personal nature including his autism.  It has nothing to do with my hormones or sex organs or his. But a lot of people out there would look at me and my choice to remain at home with my kids and his choice to work and assume that it's because I'm a woman and he's a man. BUT YOU CAN'T DO THAT. You can't boil people down to what you can observe. There's too much inside us that can't be seen.

I suppose this has been a bit of a long rant that looks like it has gone off topic, but my point is this: you simply can't assume that what you observe in other people or even what scientists observe in other people is the result of a certain thing. You can't lump humans into huge groups of "men are like this" and "women are like this". The truth is that humans are an infinite spectrum of individual differences that come from an infinite amount of sources. And it's not even men on one side and women on the other. It's all mixed up. Some men and women will be completely different from each other, and others will be so similar you couldn't tell the difference without society's markers. We always want to be able to tell the difference, so we tell people that men cut their hair short and women grow it long or women wear pink and men wear blue. But those are only superficial signs that come from outside. They have nothing to do with our nature and thus are useless and even dangerous.

People can go around saying "well obviously there are some physical differences. There have to be." But when it comes down to it, those differences can't be quantified in any meaningful way and mostly people are just making them up out of their own biases. And people can say, "well certainly I wouldn't do that. I know better." But do you? Take a look at how you write women vs. how you write men and ask yourself seriously whether or not the differences you've written in a result of unquestioned assumptions or the result of digging deep and trying to truly understand the nature, not of men and women, but of people. Do you hide behind comfortable labels and stereotypes, or do you accept the true complexity of humanity? 

I'm not singling anyone here out or addressing this to anyone in particular, despite quoting Devor above. This is something that every single author needs to consider honestly for themselves. Including me. It's normal to just slide along the path of least resistance. But to transcend normality and achieve greatness you have to force yourself to dig deeper and question these things for yourself in the context of your own work.

Ok, this got A LOT longer than I intended. I just kind of spilled out everything going through my mind. This is everything I feel I have to say at this time and I'm going to try not to come back to this thread because I seriously just spent way more time than I can afford to writing this. If you want to continue to discuss this subject with me, pm me.


----------



## skip.knox

I'm not going to speak to the wider discussion here; it goes beyond my pay grade. But I'm writing a story right now and gender enters into it, so I'll contribute in that manner. My WIP is called _A Child of Great Promise_ and the main character is Talysse, and she's female. 

Why is Talysse a girl?

It was a whim.

That’s not a profound answer, I realize. I had the title first. My notion was of a young person who was supposed to do great things—not a child of destiny, but one who showed promise, and who kept not living up to that promise. A problem child. One who in fact would do great things, but not according to the expectations.

In picturing this kid, I sort of experimentally, provisionally, thought female. I’m not sure that was my first thought, or if I deliberately swapped genders. My previous book was predominantly about males, so maybe I was looking to change things up. I cannot recall.

What I do recall is that as soon as I thought of her as female, the character was locked. She was female. I went off to find a name and eventually came back with Talysse, and there she was. Characters can take shape like that.

Next was her age, and there presented a problem. If she’s nubile, then sex becomes part of the context. It’s a lot easier to move a boy of fifteen through a medieval world than to move a female of that age. So Talysse has slid around quite a bit, from twelve or thirteen all the way up to twenty or so. I couldn’t make her too old or I’d have to give up that title. If I made her too young, I couldn’t sell her doing some of the things she would need to do. Even now, her age is somewhat unclear to me. Teen.

Making her female drove some important decisions. I put her in a quasi-monastery to keep her away from the whole business of marriage. I gave her a companion and so developed Detta, one of my favorite characters. I made her a kind of orphan, a _donata_, which in turn drove a whole bunch of consequences.

I doubt very much I would have gone down those roads had the main character been a boy. He probably would have wound up in a boarding school of some sort, with Tom Brown-like bullies and tyrannical teachers. I do remember sort of peeking down that road and rejecting it as too conventional. Maybe that’s when I had the notion to make the character a female.

Talysse still presents challenges for me. Should she fall in love? Should she flirt, or have others flirt with her? Throughout the story she is in unusual social situations, so I can believably leave much of that to one side, but does that truncate her character in some way?

More importantly to me, am I doing right by her? Are her thoughts, her speech, her actions, proper and fitting for such a person? She is not at all typical, I’m not looking for that. But neither do I want to have her a girl in name only. I don’t merely want her to be female, I want her to be convincing as a female.

There again, I doubt I would have any of these concerns if Talysse were a boy. I would just write the story. My next book will have a female major character as well. So I hope Talysse teaches me well.

So, gender does matter for me, right now, in this book, with this character. I'm aware of the broader social issues in literature generally and fantasy specifically, but I can't seem to make any of that matter. Talysse matters (so does Detta, but she's a gnome and the dynamic is a little different there). I'm not after writing a female properly, I'm after writing Talysse properly and while there are plenty of things that make her unique, she's still a young female out in the world and to pretend to be blind to that would do her an injustice. 

Working on it ....


----------



## Devor

I want to say.... so... many... things...... about coming to a personal reckoning..... about hormones and self-control....... about the difference between macro and micro, sociology and psychology..... about white and gray matter ratios...... about consumer behavior..... about WWII, Playboy, and the color pink..... about abstract reasoning and personal relationships...... about my kids and the baby doll my daughter got (from the grandparents) for Christmas...... about feminists who sew... about ignoring outside pressures....... about the need to understand differences instead of projecting yourself onto others.  On and on and on, I already have a headache.

But despite acknowledging my belief that men and women are a little different on average, it was honestly my intention to direct the conversation back to relationships and the intent of the OP.


----------



## Russ

Devor said:


> I want to say.... so... many... things...... about coming to a personal reckoning..... about hormones and self-control....... about the difference between macro and micro, sociology and psychology..... about white and gray matter ratios...... about consumer behavior..... about WWII, Playboy, and the color pink..... about abstract reasoning and personal relationships...... about my kids and the baby doll my daughter got (from the grandparents) for Christmas...... about feminists who sew... about ignoring outside pressures....... about the need to understand differences instead of projecting yourself onto others.  On and on and on, I already have a headache.
> 
> But despite acknowledging my belief that men and women are a little different on average, it was honestly my intention to direct the conversation back to relationships and the intent of the OP.



Don't worry I plan to cover a lot of this stuff in a post responding to MP's when I can make the time to do it justice later today or tomorrow...


----------



## pmmg

Mythopoet said:


> Now, the problem with this assertion is that it always ends up being exaggerated. People say, "well obviously there are differences between men and women." Usually based on their experiences of the men and women they know personally. However, they don't take into consideration whether or not the observed behavior is an actual result of the person's biological nature or whether the behavior is simply engraved by society or a reaction to the expectations of society. Are women naturally less violent and aggressive? Or have we been treated as delicate flowers who need to be protected for so long that we don't even consider any alternative in our formative years? And here's the thing, no matter how many studies you conduct, you'll never find the answer to this question because it is simply too complex. There are too many factors that would need to be taken into account. And any large number of women that you studied would be much too varied to come to any kind of general conclusion.



Sorry Mytho, but I think this is incorrect.  I spend a lot of time thinking about the things that make people what they are, including the stuff science would suggest I believe, and environmental factors, societal conditions, cultural conditions and all that. I think most people who are engaged in trying to understand humanity (something artists do in particular), are also asking these questions. I think you are discounting them too much to say that their efforts are not studied or considered ones. I further think, it is possible to come to some general conclusions, and about a lot of things, not just gender issues. General conclusions do leave room for exceptions, but they would be exceptions.



Russ said:


> Returning the the Alien example that SP brought up, I would argue that Alien is the exception rather than the rule. IT contains two of the factors that I identified the can lead to a story where gender is non-factor. One is a gender blind culture (proven by the female space marine in Aliens) and an isolated man vs. nature type story.



I don't know why I wish to make a comment on this but here goes. I am not sure we see that gender blind culture until Aliens. I wanted to avoid that and stick to just Alien, as that story has not yet been expanded to anything more. In Alien, if Ripley had been male, and was the only survivor, we, the audience, would have thought less of him, and, IMO, thought less of the movie. Because he would have failed to have saved anyone, including the girl. Further, additional scenes, like going after the cat would not have seemed to have been a male sensibility, and so scenes like that would not have stood scrutiny. I think Ripley's gender does matter to the story, and the story is better because she is female. Ripley is believable cause she did what needed to be done, and did not give up her female identity to do so.


----------



## Heliotrope

As a feminist, the women are just “men with boobs” argument is super problematic for me. We are not men with boobs. Ignoring twenty thousand years of history and suggesting “women are the same as men” is dangerous. Writing us the same as men is also dangerous. It may have worked for Ripley, because it is a movie, but I don’t think the example works when we are discussing fiction. In fiction you are so much closer to the POV. You get all the thoughts, the history, the inner debates. Girls have different experiences than boys. Period. Boys have different experiences than girls. If you are writing a short character, they may have problems reaching things, maybe they get teased and called “dwarf”, maybe they are always mistaken to be younger than they are. They have different experiences than a really tall person. 

Boys and girls have different life experiences. You can’t write them the same. They are not interchangeable,


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Mythopoet said:


> You can't lump humans into huge groups of "men are like this" and "women are like this".



I didn't think anyone here was trying to do this. I didn't think the question was one of _how_ are men and women different. I thought it was a question of _whether_ they are different.

In my WIP, one of my main characters is a twin. I don't specify in the story that they are mirror twins, but this is how I picture them in my head. It would completely change how I think of the character and her twin sister if I were to change the main character to male and not change her sister to be her brother. And if I did make these two characters male, I'd definitely have to rewrite other characters, either as another gender or as gays, because, yes, I do have romantic relationships between the MC and other characters.

If I had started out my WIP with the intent to write the characters with different genders than what I've given them, maybe I could still make the story work without changing the plot too much. Maybe. But having all of my story written already, it would take a lot of work to rewrite the story the way it would need to be if I changed the gender of the MC and followed up on all of the changes required by the domino effect of the one change.

There are some characters in my WIP that I could easily change the gender on without a lot of rewriting. The relationships they have with the other characters are purely business ones, not personal ones.


----------



## Russ

pmmg said:


> I don't know why I wish to make a comment on this but here goes. I am not sure we see that gender blind culture until Aliens. I wanted to avoid that and stick to just Alien, as that story has not yet been expanded to anything more. In Alien, if Ripley had been male, and was the only survivor, we, the audience, would have thought less of him, and, IMO, thought less of the movie. Because he would have failed to have saved anyone, including the girl. Further, additional scenes, like going after the cat would not have seemed to have been a male sensibility, and so scenes like that would not have stood scrutiny. I think Ripley's gender does matter to the story, and the story is better because she is female. Ripley is believable cause she did what needed to be done, and did not give up her female identity to do so.



You make some excellent points there and you may have changed my mind on a few points.

A lot of what you say seems to be based on our cultural gender sensibilities rather than those of the fictional world.  This is an important point to make.  The audience is going to bring a ton of that stuff to any story we put out and we very much need to be cognizant of that when we write.  It offers us certain hard choices to make, such as should be simply conform to those sensibilities or should our world confront them directly and vigorously enough to let our readers now our fictional world does not share them and they need to understand that.  Now  you got me thinking.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

Michael K. Eidson said:


> No need to argue against something that wasn't said. The word _relationship_ does not always imply romance. In general, two sisters will act differently with each other than two brothers act with each other, which is different from how a brother and sister will act with each other. Any character who can be either male or female in a story without changing their relationships with other characters must have only certain types of relationships. This seems more limited to me than the situation where a character has many relationships of many types. To me, the fewer relationships you have for your characters, the more likely they are to be stereotypes.


The biggest difference I see is how they relate once they are married, especially if their spouses are in the room.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Hmmm 

My WIP so far has had an ENTIRELY female cast. Entirely. (Well, except for a few nameless, faceless mooks that don't last longer than a page, and a drug lord that is named but doesn't even come into the story.) The two main settings have been a women's prison and an all girls school (well, like Hogwarts except if you were learning to be an assassin and overthrow the government) 

There's pretty much only one male character that ever comes in, maybe two. 

I'm trying to think of how things would be different if it was the reverse and i had an entirely male cast...an escape from a prison populated entirely by men, and an assassin school of all men. And I honestly can't figure out how anything could be different. 

Okay, I guess teaching seduction to a bunch of dudes is a bit weird, one character's past as a prostitute and/or sex slave is more intuitive if she's female, and one character disguising herself using heavy makeup makes more sense. But in terms of the interactions between the characters, I can't imagine anything being different. 

Perhaps the reason for that is that there ARE no men. No male-female relationships, platonic or otherwise.

I don't know. I guess my characters would have marginal differences, but the story is just as plausible and the characters makes just as much sense if they were all boys and men. MC could still be a cynical, street-smart antihero if she was a boy. Her friend could still be a dangerous Deadpan Snarker with a tendency toward pyromania. And so on.


----------



## Russ

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I'm trying to think of how things would be different if it was the reverse and i had an entirely male cast...an escape from a prison populated entirely by men, and an assassin school of all men. And I honestly can't figure out how anything could be different.



While my suggestions about how a male or mixed sex assassin school would be a little speculative, I can say with great confidence that all male prisons and exceedingly different from all female prisons.


----------



## Alora pendrak

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Hmmm
> 
> My WIP so far has had an ENTIRELY female cast. Entirely. (Well, except for a few nameless, faceless mooks that don't last longer than a page, and a drug lord that is named but doesn't even come into the story.) The two main settings have been a women's prison and an all girls school (well, like Hogwarts except if you were learning to be an assassin and overthrow the government)
> 
> There's pretty much only one male character that ever comes in, maybe two.
> 
> I'm trying to think of how things would be different if it was the reverse and i had an entirely male cast...an escape from a prison populated entirely by men, and an assassin school of all men. And I honestly can't figure out how anything could be different.
> 
> Okay, I guess teaching seduction to a bunch of dudes is a bit weird, one character's past as a prostitute and/or sex slave is more intuitive if she's female, and one character disguising herself using heavy makeup makes more sense. But in terms of the interactions between the characters, I can't imagine anything being different.
> 
> Perhaps the reason for that is that there ARE no men. No male-female relationships, platonic or otherwise.
> 
> I don't know. I guess my characters would have marginal differences, but the story is just as plausible and the characters makes just as much sense if they were all boys and men. MC could still be a cynical, street-smart antihero if she was a boy. Her friend could still be a dangerous Deadpan Snarker with a tendency toward pyromania. And so on.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Hmmm
> 
> My WIP so far has had an ENTIRELY female cast. Entirely. (Well, except for a few nameless, faceless mooks that don't last longer than a page, and a drug lord that is named but doesn't even come into the story.) The two main settings have been a women's prison and an all girls school (well, like Hogwarts except if you were learning to be an assassin and overthrow the government)
> 
> There's pretty much only one male character that ever comes in, maybe two.
> 
> I'm trying to think of how things would be different if it was the reverse and i had an entirely male cast...an escape from a prison populated entirely by men, and an assassin school of all men. And I honestly can't figure out how anything could be different.
> 
> Okay, I guess teaching seduction to a bunch of dudes is a bit weird, one character's past as a prostitute and/or sex slave is more intuitive if she's female, and one character disguising herself using heavy makeup makes more sense. But in terms of the interactions between the characters, I can't imagine anything being different.
> 
> Perhaps the reason for that is that there ARE no men. No male-female relationships, platonic or otherwise.
> 
> I don't know. I guess my characters would have marginal differences, but the story is just as plausible and the characters makes just as much sense if they were all boys and men. MC could still be a cynical, street-smart antihero if she was a boy. Her friend could still be a dangerous Deadpan Snarker with a tendency toward pyromania. And so on.



Yes, but how different would your story be if you changed the gender of _only_ your MC? Everyone else stayed female, but your MC is male. _Now_ would your story be effectively the same?


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Michael K. Eidson said:


> Yes, but how different would your story be if you changed the gender of _only_ your MC? Everyone else stayed female, but your MC is male. _Now_ would your story be effectively the same?



Well, it wouldn't make sense that he was in an all women's prison or an all women's school...so i guess you'd say, entirely different.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Well, it wouldn't make sense that he was in an all women's prison or an all women's school...so i guess you'd say, entirely different.



You wouldn't have to claim the prison and school are only for women. Just think of the relationships between the characters. Would they behave to each other the same realistically? Could you strip the "all-female" label from the prison and school, switch the gender pronouns for your MC to masculine pronouns, not make any other change to your story, and have a story for which readers could easily suspend disbelief?


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Michael K. Eidson said:


> You wouldn't have to claim the prison and school are only for women. Just think of the relationships between the characters. Would they behave to each other the same realistically? Could you strip the "all-female" label from the prison and school, switch the gender pronouns for your MC to masculine pronouns, not make any other change to your story, and have a story for which readers could easily suspend disbelief?



I think so.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I think so.



Would you be willing to do that to prove a point?


----------



## Chessie2

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I think so.



Deferring to Helio's post as my answer here:


Heliotrope said:


> As a feminist, *the women are just “men with boobs” argument is super problematic for me.* We are not men with boobs. Ignoring twenty thousand years of history and suggesting “women are the same as men” is dangerous. Writing us the same as men is also dangerous. It may have worked for Ripley, because it is a movie, but I don’t think the example works when we are discussing fiction. In fiction you are so much closer to the POV. You get all the thoughts, the history, the inner debates. Girls have different experiences than boys. Period. Boys have different experiences than girls. If you are writing a short character, they may have problems reaching things, maybe they get teased and called “dwarf”, maybe they are always mistaken to be younger than they are. They have different experiences than a really tall person.
> 
> Boys and girls have different life experiences. You can’t write them the same. They are not interchangeable,



I am not a feminist. Helio and I differ only on that. However, Dragon, claiming your all female story would stay the same if your MC turned male is...I'm sorry, unbelievable. Ever want to know what women TRULY act like when there's a ton of us and one dude? The Beguiled pretty much says it all. You'll disagree for reasons I won't go into here. Not trying to be mean but what you're claiming is pretty unrealistic.

A quote from the Wiki article: *"All the women and girls in the school are immediately fascinated by the handsome man."*


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Michael K. Eidson said:


> Would you be willing to do that to prove a point?



What, change my MC to male?


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Chessie2 said:


> Deferring to Helio's post as my answer here:
> 
> 
> I am not a feminist. Helio and I differ only on that. However, Dragon, claiming your all female story would stay the same if your MC turned male is...I'm sorry, unbelievable. Ever want to know what women TRULY act like when there's a ton of us and one dude? The Beguiled pretty much says it all. You'll disagree for reasons I won't go into here. Not trying to be mean but what you're claiming is pretty unrealistic.
> 
> A quote from the Wiki article: *"All the women and girls in the school are immediately fascinated by the handsome man."*



I'm a little confused by what you're getting at here, but I don't think MC would immediately have all the women falling at his feet. I mean, they have priorities...like training, and not dying/being culled during graduation.


----------



## Heliotrope

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> I'm a little confused by what you're getting at here, but I don't think MC would immediately have all the women falling at his feet. I mean, they have priorities...like training, and not dying/being culled during graduation.



But _some_ would.

I'm the group of not seeing how it could be possible. If the MC was changed to male in your situation, you really don't think any of the other characters would change the way they behave towards him? So are all the girls in your entire school and prison asexual? No one is at all interested in anyone else, or thinks anyone else is attractive, or interested in even the differences between girls and boys? This is not believable. I've taught a lot of teenage girls.

Sexuality aside (lets pretend every single other character in your novel is asexual), They wouldn't notice that it was a boy, in an all girl's school? Not a single person would notice or care or wonder what the heck he was doing there? Wouldn't you have to come up with some sort of crazy backstory to even explain that? Thus changing the plot, and the stakes, and a whole host of other flashbacks and references to the past?

I don't know DOTA. I think it is noble to suggest that not too much would change, but that is stretching it.

We talk about "colour blindness" when referring to race. Some people say "I don't see colour" and pretend it doesn't exist. Other's say "I see your differences and embrace them."

In this case I think we are discussing a sort of "sex blindness." This sort of idea that at the core all people have the exact same life experience, regardless of sexual organs. They are totally inter changeable. I just don't see that as being true.

Even a trans woman, who believes she is male, has a totally different experience of transitioning than a male who is transitioning to female. Different surgeries. Different medication. Different experience buying clothing, getting hair cuts, trying out makeup (or going without makeup) for the first time. Different experiences dealing with reactions from family members...

So even a women who identifies as male does not have the same life experiences as someone born male. They just aren't interchangeable.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> What, change my MC to male?



Yes. Would it matter to you to simply change your MC to male? If so, why?


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Heliotrope said:


> But _some_ would.
> 
> I'm the group of not seeing how it could be possible. If the MC was changed to male in your situation, you really don't think any of the other characters would change the way they behave towards him? So are all the girls in your entire school and prison asexual? No one is at all interested in anyone else, or thinks anyone else is attractive, or interested in even the differences between girls and boys? This is not believable. I've taught a lot of teenage girls.
> 
> Sexuality aside (lets pretend every single other character in your novel is asexual), They wouldn't notice that it was a boy, in an all girl's school? Not a single person would notice or care or wonder what the heck he was doing there? Wouldn't you have to come up with some sort of crazy backstory to even explain that? Thus changing the plot, and the stakes, and a whole host of other flashbacks and references to the past?
> 
> I don't know DOTA. I think it is noble to suggest that not too much would change, but that is stretching it.
> 
> We talk about "colour blindness" when referring to race. Some people say "I don't see colour" and pretend it doesn't exist. Other's say "I see your differences and embrace them."
> 
> In this case I think we are discussing a sort of "sex blindness." This sort of idea that at the core all people have the exact same life experience, regardless of sexual organs. They are totally inter changeable. I just don't see that as being true.
> 
> Even a trans woman, who believes she is male, has a totally different experience of transitioning than a male who is transitioning to female. Different surgeries. Different medication. Different experience buying clothing, getting hair cuts, trying out makeup (or going without makeup) for the first time. Different experiences dealing with reactions from family members...
> 
> So even a women who identifies as male does not have the same life experiences as someone born male. They just aren't interchangeable.



I have the tendency to disregard the tangly situations sexual attraction creates in my books because i just don't want to deal with it. I guess that's my problem. 

And I was kinda envisioning in this scenario that the school was co-ed but yeah the label of an all girls school does bring gender into it. 

I think my realization had to do with the fact that I don't really write male characters in a different way than female characters. It's not me trying to be noble or trying to say that gender doesn't matter, I just found it hard to think of ways my characters would be intrinsically different as a different sex. Or even their relationships. I get what you're saying though. 

But I hate bothering with anything love/romance related so i kinda left it out. Except for a flashback or two and some references. A guy does form a part of my MC's backstory, come to think of it. I didn't even think of that before. But it's not in the present. 

Anyway, like i said I do get what you're saying.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Michael K. Eidson said:


> Yes. Would it matter to you to simply change your MC to male? If so, why?



Well, it'd be a huge pain, that's for sure. Changing all the pronouns and stuff. Anyway, I do like her as female. I can picture this character pretty easily as a guy, weirdly enough. I don't think I'd have to change much about the character intrinsically. 

When I think about it, though, some of the other characters I wouldn't want to change to male. Darcy especially. So why is Darcy being female important? I'm not sure.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Now I'm thinking of my MC genderswapped and it's fun. wait why is he so attractive


----------



## Heliotrope

Michael K. Eidson said:


> Yes. Would it matter to you to simply change your MC to male? If so, why?



This made me think  I write almost exclusively female protags. Why? I had to think about that. 

I think, because of my belief that men and women experience the world differently, I don't think I could accurately write a male protagonist. It feels a bit like appropriation to me. I get not everyone has that belief, and there have been many men who have written fantastic females... I'm just not sure I'm comfortable writing a man. I feel like I would rely too heavily on stereotypes. 

My current WIP focusses heavily on father/daughter relationships, because I take a lot of my themes from my life. 

I know that question was for DOTA, but I wanted to respond with my own reasoning.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Heliotrope said:


> This made me think  I write almost exclusively female protags. Why? I had to think about that.
> 
> I think, because of my belief that men and women experience the world differently, I don't think I could accurately write a male protagonist. It feels a bit like appropriation to me. I get not everyone has that belief, and there have been many men who have written fantastic females... I'm just not sure I'm comfortable writing a man. I feel like I would rely too heavily on stereotypes.
> 
> My current WIP focusses heavily on father/daughter relationships, because I take a lot of my themes from my life.
> 
> I know that question was for DOTA, but I wanted to respond with my own reasoning.



See, I find I can comfortably write either.

I'm not very gender conforming (my interests have always been traditionally "masculine" and even my appearance/the way i present myself) so that might be why.  

I love writing about sibling relationships for some reason.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

I think i just realized an important difference. 

Whether the character is male or female will affect how the *reader* sees the characters traits. 

Like i feel like they'll be more negatively disposed toward my MC's temper and recklessness if she was a guy than as she is. 

I feel like readers have expectations about gender, and even double standards, and that affects things. Idek.


----------



## Heliotrope

Yeah, I really want to make it clear that I believe any person can write any character, without restriction. I don't even care overly much for the "appropriation debate" we are seeing so often now. I'm all for creative license and freedom and speech. It's just that _I _don't feel comfortable writing men. I prefer to stay in the cozy little cave of what I know


----------



## glutton

My female characters can be traditionally feminine or more masculine in terms of personality, but their sheer awesomeness tends to override that either way. If you can beat up a 500' dragon with a nonmagical melee weapon, even if you want to come off as girly, others will tend to view you a certain way and you'll just have to... Stand Short (or tall) and Proud.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

I've enjoyed writing my WIP with three female POV characters, ages twelve, nineteen, and thirty-three. Though all three get fairly equal time, the nineteen-year-old is the main POV character. She has a twin sister who plays a big role in the story, even if she isn't a POV character. The main antagonist is female, older than them all, using magic to make herself look twenty-something. Another important supporting character is a female ghost, with the appearance of a twenty-year-old. The thirty-three-year-old woman is married to a thirty-two-year-old man, who is at the focus of everyone's attention, for reasons other than romance. There's another guy in the story, a secondary antagonist. There are a few other characters, some men and some women.

I've written the whole story and am now editing. If you were to ask me to change the genders of any of the characters specifically mentioned above, I'd say hell no. These characters are my friends, and I like them just the way they are. I understand them as they are. Change them on me, and I won't recognize or understand them.

And don't get me started on appropriation, Heliotrope.


----------



## skip.knox

It feels to me there is room for some nuance wrt writing men, writing women. We all write both. The discussion so far has more or less presumed we are talking about main characters, but of course both genders will be on stage, however briefly. So wherein lies the discomfort or question or room for discussion?

I can see a couple of areas. One, interactions between the sexes. Is my female protagonist speaking in a convincing way to another female? To a male? And vice versa. I've certainly seen critiques that said one or the other was behaving in a stereotypical way.

The other is internal life, how the character thinks about herself, or thinks privately about others. This to me starts to get interesting. Does a man fear in the same way as a woman? Would that vary by class or age? Are they courageous in the same way? Do they analyze a problem the same way?  Is a man reticent the way a woman is? Does he get angry the same way? Or, here's one: does the son relate to the father in a way different from the daughter? Are there some generalizations we can make or, more importantly for us, are there some actions or thoughts that would ring so false it would take the reader out of the story?

When I consider such questions, I cannot avoid think there are differences. More relevant to me, that there are difference that will matter in how characters behave in a story. Even down to small touches. Does it ring the same if my male character giggles as if my female character giggles? Or blushes? Roars? Gnashes her teeth? Word choice, body language, all sorts of things enter in here. It has less to do, but is not unrelated, with men and women than with how we portray men and women in a story. And, as I hinted above, these things will vary by social standing, age, cultural background, and individual characteristics. Fantasy writers than have the additional wrinkle of species. 

This has been a good discussion, but it was starting to feel a bit binary, so I thought I would through a few curves and maybe even a knuckleball.
(no spellcheck deserves my respect that doesn't recognize knuckleball *harumph*)


----------



## Heliotrope

skip.knox said:


> It feels to me there is room for some nuance wrt writing men, writing women. We all write both. The discussion so far has more or less presumed we are talking about main characters, but of course both genders will be on stage, however briefly. So wherein lies the discomfort or question or room for discussion?
> 
> I can see a couple of areas. One, interactions between the sexes. Is my female protagonist speaking in a convincing way to another female? To a male? And vice versa. I've certainly seen critiques that said one or the other was behaving in a stereotypical way.
> 
> The other is internal life, how the character thinks about herself, or thinks privately about others. This to me starts to get interesting. Does a man fear in the same way as a woman? Would that vary by class or age? Are they courageous in the same way? Do they analyze a problem the same way?  Is a man reticent the way a woman is? Does he get angry the same way? Or, here's one: does the son relate to the father in a way different from the daughter? Are there some generalizations we can make or, more importantly for us, are there some actions or thoughts that would ring so false it would take the reader out of the story?
> 
> When I consider such questions, I cannot avoid think there are differences. More relevant to me, that there are difference that will matter in how characters behave in a story. Even down to small touches. Does it ring the same if my male character giggles as if my female character giggles? Or blushes? Roars? Gnashes her teeth? Word choice, body language, all sorts of things enter in here. It has less to do, but is not unrelated, with men and women than with how we portray men and women in a story. And, as I hinted above, these things will vary by social standing, age, cultural background, and individual characteristics. Fantasy writers than have the additional wrinkle of species.
> 
> This has been a good discussion, but it was starting to feel a bit binary, so I thought I would through a few curves and maybe even a knuckleball.
> (no spellcheck deserves my respect that doesn't recognize knuckleball *harumph*)



Yes, these are ALL exactly my concerns when writing characters. I have no problem using male characters as secondary characters, but I struggle with them as POV's for all the same reasons you described above.


----------



## Russ

I think in many cases struggling with writing significant characters of the other sex is a matter of respect and humility and a healthy thing.

I sometimes struggle writing important female characters because I recognize my limitations in understanding the sex that I am not part of, and respect women enough that I want to write them in an authentic and fair way.

Men I know like old hat.  Women not so much.  I think it is like anything you know very well, you feel you can deal with it in your sleep.  While things are are novel or not as well known to you are more challenging.

If one didn't give a crap about those important issues the struggle would  not exist.  Thus I think that struggle is the sign of a healthy, insightful writer;s mind.

Or at least I hope so.


----------



## skip.knox

yup, I feel all that. 

At the same time, should a young writer have such compunctions about writing an old person? Should a poor author fret over writing about the wealthy? You see how that path wanders off into absurdity. That's why I said this is shady ground, as filled with bright patches as with shadows. Russ' comment about staying humble is certainly relevant. Don't just assume you know. The more I treat each character, however peripheral, as an individual fully formed within their context of gender, species, age, position, history, the better story I'll have when I'm done.  

At least a painter only has to worry about getting the anatomy right. <gdr>


----------



## Russ

skip.knox said:


> yup, I feel all that.
> 
> At the same time, should a young writer have such compunctions about writing an old person? Should a poor author fret over writing about the wealthy? You see how that path wanders off into absurdity. That's why I said this is shady ground, as filled with bright patches as with shadows. Russ' comment about staying humble is certainly relevant. Don't just assume you know. The more I treat each character, however peripheral, as an individual fully formed within their context of gender, species, age, position, history, the better story I'll have when I'm done.
> 
> At least a painter only has to worry about getting the anatomy right. <gdr>



Totally agree. 

I would never suggest that one should avoid those kind of challenges, but simply to approach and depict groups that I am not part of with respect and a sincere effort to depict them accurately.

I am writing a book now where a lot of the characters are black and it is the hardest writing I have ever done.  But it won't stop me from trying to tell this story.


----------



## Svrtnsse

Some of you will have hear/read this before, and probably multiple times, but maybe not everyone.

In my first novel, Enar's Vacation I tried my best to do justice to the female characters (I assumed I'd get the males right by default so I didn't worry about that), whether they were young girls or old witches or wandering semi-alcoholic monks. I put a lot of thought and effort into it and I was quite pleased with myself.

I passed it out to some test readers, and some of them liked it while other didn't, as is normal.
What bothered me was that one of my friends got so annoyed with my bad cliched gender stereotypes that she stopped reading halfway through. At first I figured she was just overreacting and didn't understand what I was doing, but as time went on I got around to asking another friend of mine and she pointed out the same thing, and in a bit more detail what was wrong.

A lot of it was with little details that I'd missed or just hadn't thought about at all. I got a third person to look at it and she eventually got me a long list of all kinds of things that could be tied back to bad gender stereotypes in one way or another. I still haven't fixed that as I moved on to write other stories instead, but I may come back to that novel later.

The reason I'm bringing this up is to tie in with what the last few posts have been about: the concern for getting it wrong.

When I first learned that there were stereotype issues with my book I took it pretty badly on a personal level. I'd created the book and the book was a reflection of me. As such, if there's bad stereotyping in the book, it must come from me. Ergo: I'm a bad person.

So there's a kind of logic to the reasoning, but it's still wrong. Sure, I got things wrong, and it's a reflection of me, but that doesn't mean I'm a bad person - even though for a while I felt like I was.
It took some time to realise and to figure it out, but a lot of what my friends objected against were things I'd done due to lack of knowledge and experience - both as a writer and as a person. 
I took the time to analyse what the complaints were, figure out where they came from and what lay beneath. It was unpleasant, but in the end it was a good learning experience.

The bottom line here is that it's easy to get things wrong when you don't know what you're doing. It can be a really stressful experience when it happens, but it's something you can get through if you set your mind to it. It's a great opportunity to learn and grow.

Like, in order to learn from your mistakes you have to make mistakes.






I can't take myself seriously if I'm serious for too long.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Svrtnsse said:


> What bothered me was that one of my friends got so annoyed with my bad cliched gender stereotypes that she stopped reading halfway through. At first I figured she was just overreacting and didn't understand what I was doing, but as time went on I got around to asking another friend of mine and she pointed out the same thing, and in a bit more detail what was wrong.



Hence the importance of beta readers, not just to catch our use of gender stereotypes, but to catch anything we weren't focused on when we wrote the story.

I wrote some fiction with a thirteen-year-old girl as a main POV character once before. My female readers loved the character and one of them went out of her way to tell me so. This was a story with a couple of males as additional POV characters. The girl POV character got all the love from female readers. So I have no doubts about my ability to write female characters. I'll still want female beta readers for everything I write.


----------



## Annoyingkid

There is a not entirely unfounded fear that when a writer - or just about anyone - says there are fundamental differences in men and women, that it's being used to as a reason to limit opportunities for females. To keep these characters  in the passive, submissive, victim role and away from the dominant, risk taking leadership roles. A writer might then say "I don't do that!" 
Well you sure about that? That you don't do this to at least some degree?


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Annoyingkid said:


> There is a not entirely unfounded fear that when a writer - or just about anyone - says there are fundamental differences in men and women, that it's being used to as a reason to limit opportunities for females. To keep these characters  in the passive, submissive, victim role and away from the dominant, risk taking leadership roles. A writer might then say "I don't do that!"
> Well you sure about that? That you don't do this to at least some degree?



I've seen unnecessary limitations placed on fictional women so many times, and it's become too easy to spot in movies and the fiction of others. Perhaps it's not as easy to spot in one's own writing, though I believe I've done a good job avoiding it. Some of what I've written in my WIP may not sit well with some readers, but I've tried to stay true to each character. If some of their behavior is stereotypical, well, real people sometimes behave stereotypical, which is how we came to have the stereotype. So in answer to the question, perhaps I have done it to _some_ degree, but I hope the degree is minimal.


----------



## Xitra_Blud

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with having male characters who react in ways that are more like a woman and vice-versa. I may think that the character is more feminine than most men, but it wouldn't pull me out of the story. Same thing with females who carry more masculine traits. I wouldn't be unconvinced that the character is a woman. I may think she's a tomboy, but it wouldn't pull me out of the story. Girly-boys and manly-women exist. I just think the author ought to know who they are writing.

I am female and write mostly male MC's (or I have lately anyway) and never once did I feel uncomfortable writing them. I simply ask myself, "How would my character react to this?" rather than "How would a man react to this?" Truth of the matter is, you have some people in reality who react to situations and think in ways that's less common in their gender. I don't see why characters can't be the same.

In fact, I've created male characters who are deliberately feminine. Prince Amiah is all about beauty and being the "fairest in the land". Granted, he lives in a society where male beauty is considered the superior beauty, but it's still  traditionally a feminine role. And then I have some male MC's in other stories that take on a far more traditionally male oriented role and behave more masculine.

I guess if you are writing a character that is intended to be a manly-man or a girly-girl, and the character reacts in ways that are not particularly masculine or feminine, then you may be off, but I think if you know who you're writing and have an understanding of the character you are trying to create, it's okay for them to cross the gender line every once in a while. Know how the character would react not how their gender would react.

I feel like worrying about whether I'm writing "a man" rather than whether I'm writing "true to my character" is going to lead me down a one way trip to a flat character.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Xitra_Blud said:


> I am female and write mostly male MC's (or I have lately anyway) and never once did I feel uncomfortable writing them. I simply ask myself, "How would my character react to this?" rather than "How would a man react to this?" Truth of the matter is, you have some people in reality who react to situations and think in ways that's less common in their gender. I don't see why characters can't be the same.





Xitra_Blud said:


> I feel like worrying about whether I'm writing "a man" rather than whether I'm writing "true to my character" is going to lead me down a one way trip to a flat character.



Well said. There are many ways in which I am and many ways in which I'm not a stereotypical male, but I would never consider myself effeminate either. Each individual is unique. While gender plays a part in what makes a person who they are, it is only a part. If you understand your character's motivations, you can write the character, using gender and other characteristics to aid in adding realism.


----------



## DragonOfTheAerie

Xitra_Blud said:


> Personally, I don't see anything wrong with having male characters who react in ways that are more like a woman and vice-versa. I may think that the character is more feminine than most men, but it wouldn't pull me out of the story. Same thing with females who carry more masculine traits. I wouldn't be unconvinced that the character is a woman. I may think she's a tomboy, but it wouldn't pull me out of the story. Girly-boys and manly-women exist. I just think the author ought to know who they are writing.
> 
> I am female and write mostly male MC's (or I have lately anyway) and never once did I feel uncomfortable writing them. I simply ask myself, "How would my character react to this?" rather than "How would a man react to this?" Truth of the matter is, you have some people in reality who react to situations and think in ways that's less common in their gender. I don't see why characters can't be the same.
> 
> In fact, I've created male characters who are deliberately feminine. Prince Amiah is all about beauty and being the "fairest in the land". Granted, he lives in a society where male beauty is considered the superior beauty, but it's still  traditionally a feminine role. And then I have some male MC's in other stories that take on a far more traditionally male oriented role and behave more masculine.
> 
> I guess if you are writing a character that is intended to be a manly-man or a girly-girl, and the character reacts in ways that are not particularly masculine or feminine, then you may be off, but I think if you know who you're writing and have an understanding of the character you are trying to create, it's okay for them to cross the gender line every once in a while. Know how the character would react not how their gender would react.
> 
> I feel like worrying about whether I'm writing "a man" rather than whether I'm writing "true to my character" is going to lead me down a one way trip to a flat character.



Basically my philosophy on the whole thing. I worry I will fall into stereotypes if i overthink how a male or female might behave over how my character would behave.


----------



## Devor

DragonOfTheAerie said:


> Basically my philosophy on the whole thing. I worry I will fall into stereotypes if i overthink how a male or female might behave over how my character would behave.



Stereotypes are a thing that happen because you're _not_ thinking about them.


----------



## skip.knox

It's interesting to me that people assume they can write their own gender just fine. Maybe that's a correct assumption, but it strikes me that it is an unexamined one.

_Pace_ Socrates, the unexamined character is not worth writing.


----------



## Annoyingkid

Gender swapping a female MC is not so easily done without stepping on the toes of one's established male characters and potentially having a vibe that's too similar. 

My MC has a brother so there's already going to be notable similarities, including having the same surname. It's redundant if they're both hypermasculine ruffians, so lets have it be a direct translation and have a more refined male warrior of noblity. Whoops, too similar to another male character who's ...a refined warrior of nobility.

Its not interchangable because the gender is a powerful differentiating tool to begin with.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

This might be evil, but why not look at how some social animals treat gender?
I'm into fish, so I'll give an example I like. Female tiger barbs are generally more dominant than males because they are bigger  and therefore fight better (bigger females can carry more eggs = more offspring), but there is one major exception. When a school of tiger barbs is threatened by a predator they usually have two responses: flee or swarm and harass until the predator flees or is torn to bits, but there is sometimes a third exception. The predator may be too powerful to swarm, but a single mid-sized male may become a "bully" male. The bully male will hide in crevices and jump out at the predator, ripping out chunks of flesh and fins, using aggression, speed and agility to slowly destroy or deter the threat. This male will then become dominant, in spite of his small size.
I think this is an interesting, and genuine display of gender roles in a species that  exhibits sexual dimorphism. It allows for differences  and yet is very different and somewhat less rigid than the gender roles we have created. There is an enormous amount of social animals to take cues from - why not use them to shape male/female interaction?


----------



## Devor

Dark Squiggle said:


> This might be evil, but why not look at how some social animals treat gender?
> I'm into fish, so I'll give an example I like. Female tiger barbs are generally more dominant than males because they are bigger  and therefore fight better (bigger females can carry more eggs = more offspring), but there is one major exception. When a school of tiger barbs is threatened by a predator they usually have two responses: flee or swarm and harass until the predator flees or is torn to bits, but there is sometimes a third exception. The predator may be too powerful to swarm, but a single mid-sized male may become a "bully" male. The bully male will hide in crevices and jump out at the predator, ripping out chunks of flesh and fins, using aggression, speed and agility to slowly destroy or deter the threat. This male will then become dominant, in spite of his small size.
> I think this is an interesting, and genuine display of gender roles in a species that  exhibits sexual dimorphism. It allows for differences  and yet is very different and somewhat less rigid than the gender roles we have created. There is an enormous amount of social animals to take cues from - why not use them to shape male/female interaction?



^ There's a study on a variety of monkeys that demonstrates that the females show far more compassion to the male monkeys, with one exception:  The Alpha male shows more compassion than anyone else.  What that means is up for speculation, but one hypothesis is that males tend to "specialize" more, so that it wasn't the Alpha male's _nature_ but its _job_ to be more compassionate.  Taken to an extreme that sounds horribly condescending (women don't specialize? That's all anybody in this economy does nowadays).  Taken to a more mild view, it may imply that women tend to "wear more hats" in the workplace, while the men tend to want to focus and push aside things they view as distractions.

Insomuch as any of that might be true, you could also cut the gender difference and recognize it is as a normal difference - Some people like to wear lots of hats, and some people like to focus more on one thing.

A lot of the more scientific approaches to this discussion tend to focus on differences like this one above ^ - normal distinctions between normal people, where the distribution of women and men skew a little to one direction or another.


----------



## Dark Squiggle

Devor said:


> ^ There's a study on a variety of monkeys that demonstrates that the females show far more compassion to the male monkeys, with one exception:  The Alpha male shows more compassion than anyone else.  What that means is up for speculation, but one hypothesis is that males tend to "specialize" more, so that it wasn't the Alpha male's _nature_ but its _job_ to be more compassionate.  Taken to an extreme that sounds horribly condescending (women don't specialize? That's all anybody in this economy does nowadays).  Taken to a more mild view, it may imply that women tend to "wear more hats" in the workplace, while the men tend to want to focus and push aside things they view as distractions.
> 
> Insomuch as any of that might be true, you could also cut the gender difference and recognize it is as a normal difference - Some people like to wear lots of hats, and some people like to focus more on one thing.
> 
> A lot of the more scientific approaches to this discussion tend to focus on differences like this one above ^ - normal distinctions between normal people, where the distribution of women and men skew a little to one direction or another.


So I am female because I like to do a lot of different things?
Are you saying that animals are bad examples because they can't be understood?

Also, someone earlier in this thread mentioned brother/sister relationships being different from sister/sister and brother/brother relationships (I can't find the post now, or I'd quote it), but I wanted to add that unless one of them is married or there are outside people present, there is no difference, at least none that I can see. I have no brothers, but I have 4 sisters, and I can tell you that we all interact differently to each other, and I think that age makes a bigger difference then gender in such a relationship, as does personality. I see my freind's interactions with their siblings as a reinforcement of this.


----------



## Michael K. Eidson

Dark Squiggle said:


> Also, someone earlier in this thread mentioned brother/sister relationships being different from sister/sister and brother/brother relationships (I can't find the post now, or I'd quote it), but I wanted to add that unless one of them is married or there are outside people present, there is no difference, at least none that I can see. I have no brothers, but I have 4 sisters, and I can tell you that we all interact differently to each other, and I think that age makes a bigger difference then gender in such a relationship, as does personality. I see my freind's interactions with their siblings as a reinforcement of this.



Growing up, I had three brothers and two sisters. Yes, each individual is unique, and the relationships between me and each of my siblings are different. Age can certainly make a difference in relationships. But there were commonalities in my brotherly relationships that weren't there in the relationships with my sisters, and vice versa. Regardless of age, the brothers were more apt to engage in wrestling of any type, whereas anyone would participate when we played tag or built snowmen. The girls had activities that didn't interest us boys. Shared experiences help shape relationships, and some experiences are more likely to be shared only between brothers, or only between sisters. Hence the differences I perceive between brother/brother, sister/sister, and brother/sister relationships.

[Edit: One of my sisters was something of a tomboy, having three older brothers, but that doesn't change anything I said above.]


----------



## Devor

Dark Squiggle said:


> So I am female because I like to do a lot of different things?
> Are you saying that animals are bad examples because they can't be understood?



So, my point here wasn't even about whether or not men and women are different in this way, but to give an example of some of the factors and considerations modern scientific approaches are looking at.


----------



## pmmg

Dark Squiggle said:


> I think this is an interesting, and genuine display of gender roles in a species that exhibits sexual dimorphism. It allows for differences and yet is very different and somewhat less rigid than the gender roles we have created. There is an enormous amount of social animals to take cues from - why not use them to shape male/female interaction?



I suppose I would be more inclined to do this if I was writing a fantasy race that had some animal type traits, borrowing from the example above, if I had a anthropomorphized fish people, I might look to the example of a fish species as a way of working out the type of gender roles that might form, and why. But, I guess I feel, there are enough examples of people being people to work out how gender roles would tend to play out in societies not dissimilar from our own. So, while I think it is neat, and I can understand why some species have developed gender roles that don’t seem very much like those I might be led to assume, unless I had some reason to base my human-like species on something animal, I am more apt to put my energy into studying such roles as have appeared already in our human species. They are the best match.

Course, they are fantasy worlds we are writing about, so why not add some fantasy?


----------



## Dark Squiggle

pmmg said:


> I suppose I would be more inclined to do this if I was writing a fantasy race that had some animal type traits, borrowing from the example above, if I had a anthropomorphized fish people, I might look to the example of a fish species as a way of working out the type of gender roles that might form, and why. But, I guess I feel, there are enough examples of people being people to work out how gender roles would tend to play out in societies not dissimilar from our own. So, while I think it is neat, and I can understand why some species have developed gender roles that don’t seem very much like those I might be led to assume, unless I had some reason to base my human-like species on something animal, I am more apt to put my energy into studying such roles as have appeared already in our human species. They are the best match.
> 
> Course, they are fantasy worlds we are writing about, so why not add some fantasy?


Well this thread was discussing genderless society, gender roles, and how gender effects/taints relationships, and I felt this was a good way to look at it in a way that, at least to me, feels a lot more realistic than pretending to erase gender altogether. You can't pretend that Fantasy doesn't already have a reputation for societies/species/races that are fabricated and idealistic, or at least stereotypical why is this not okay for a semi-standard (elf/troll/goblin/pixie/etc.) race that offers a healthy bit of life? I feel this is a good, clear lens to look at such concepts with. "Anthropomorphized fish people" are far more realistic than Tolkien's elves, and probably more capable of the dynamic characters and relationships this thread is crying out for, even if such people would be as heavily flawed as we are.


----------



## pmmg

Dark Squiggle said:


> why is this not okay for a semi-standard (elf/troll/goblin/pixie/etc.) race that offers a healthy bit of life?



Well, look, nobody has to listen to me, and I am quite sure most poeple dont. I dont really think this falls into the category of 'okay' and 'not okay' to do. You get to invent the world, make it anyway you like. If you want races that behave like fish might in some concept of gender roles, go right ahead. You might write the next astounding franchise and make lots and lots of money with it, and if you do, more power to you.

Many of these races, I could imagine might, or would, have different roles present themselves for the various genders. My inclination, however, would be, that to the degree that these races are similar to our own, they would likely have developed gender roles along similar trends. So, if you show me a race where all the women are smaller than the men, and the women make up all the combat roles, I am going to 1) think that unlikely, and 2) look for why that may be. Could be there are reasons, could be there are not. I will remain to be conviced. Worst that can happen is I will put your book down and go on to the next. But you know, most people put down a lot of books, and some few seem to like some works enough to make them best sellers, even though most readers would scoff at the notion.

My daughter hates the idea of sparkly vampires in Twilight, and refuses to call them vampires. But you know what...I am sure Mrs. Meyer does not mind one bit.

So, if you think Elves are ripe for bending all the gender roles, go for it. I think, unless there is some reason elves would be dramatically different, that would be unlikely. So, I probably wont write it that way. If I was, I would have to change a bit some features of the elves.

But more important than this whole discussion. If you have a story to tell and a vision of what you want to have in it, than by all means, go get it written. I'll be happy to hear about your success.


----------



## JBryden88

Admittedly I read the OP and skipped to the end.

I'm not a woman, but I've never read Dune and I've never and will _never _finish LOTR. One of the things that bothered me about Tolkien's work was that it read like a fictional encyclopedia half the time, and when it got to the actual storytelling I was already 100 pages in and couldn't be any less interesting. I will always pick the movies over the books... and I think part of the reason is in the fact the lack of anything for female characters to do. Personally? I'm a softie. If a fantasy doesn't have a romance - even if it's subtle and platonic - it feels like there's something missing. I like to see the full range of relationships in my fantasy - I like to see rivalries, bitter enemies, the best of friends, family, and both romantic and sexual relationships in my stories.

I'm the sort of person who judges a story on how realistic it is not by if I can believe the world, but if I can believe the characters. If all the characters go through a harrowing journey and there isn't even a single mention of certain qualities that are fundamentally human? That's what makes me realize I'm just reading a book and not actually immersing myself into a story.

When it comes to actually writing women... as a guy I try to follow a simple rule for myself. I develop the character traits, the role they play in the story, and then I worry about whether they are a male or a female. I've heard some guys say that they can't identify with female characters (not saying I've heard that here, but in general) but I've found that for me if they are well written fully fleshed out characters, it doesn't matter *what* they are, but *who* they are that allows me to relate.


----------



## Lisselle

I read The Lord of the Rings when I was ten, twice, and I've read it nineteen times since. Dad placed Dune on my pillow when I was thirteen, (Making sure I only ever read the first book!) and I loved it. He then gave me his Asimov collection. Before I turned fifteen I was a Sci Fi and Fantasy addict, however by that age I believed only boys had the truly grand adventures in life. (Not burdened by boobs and periods and all the things I saw as hindrance, which Frodo did not have to deal with on his quest to destroy the Ring, or Paul did not experience upon discovering he was the Kwisatz Haderach.)


After fifteen, I read Sharon Penman, Anne McCaffrey, and more. I actually found the Mists of Avalon to be inanely boring, and never finished it. 


I agree with OP about The Name of the Wind, whilst I loved it, and was interested to hear Patrick Rothfuss was a lecturer of some sort in Feminism and women's studies, I found his writing of women lacklustre and gratuitous.


With my own writing, I know I am reaching out to the young girl who believed only boys had adventures. I have two main characters (a male and a female) and a multitude of support characters.


I write females with as much variation as I write my males. Hopefully I have the males right, though I am sure a couple follow standard stereotypes.


I write girls and women in much the same way as I write boys and men; they are people, they are all different, and are driven by different histories and experiences. (I write detailed histories for each.) I have always loved creating characters, and find it really easy, and because I am a staunch believer in my own strength, and also because most of my best friends have always been guys, I write my females with their own sense of expectation that their world will view them as equals, and their stories will be valid. If my characters argue, or dislike each other, it is never on the basis of gender.


The females in my story are never, never threatened with sexual violence. I feel this is an important responsibility for me as a writer. The fear of sexual violence is not something I wish to impart on any readers I may ever have. I do not use it as a tool or tactic between the males and females, it is weak, and only hurts girls/ women and their vision of how they can act, and what they can expect. It also hurts men. It should not be the standby way to treat/abuse/dominate/seduce a woman in a story.

 (And yes, I hated reading Game of Thrones, though I now find the later seasons of the TV series quite compelling!)


----------



## argentquill

Do you think it's okay to have a heroine who has her own struggles, but also has a different body type, being strong and muscular?  My heroine is from a barbarian bloodline in a Fantasy universe, where the majority of their people, including many of their women, are gifted with size and strength.
Do you think young female readers can get into such a character, if she has abilities, but also insecurities, and she's working to accomplish something?
To further break the cliche of roles, her boyfriend/fiance is a blacksmith and magic item crafter.  He's not a weakling, but he's not a warrior.  (This is one bone of contention between the heroine and her mother).  Among a couple of other themes, I was trying to press the idea that _we all have different gifts._


----------



## pmmg

Yes, no doubt some will like it and relate.


----------



## argentquill

Thank you.  I hope to keep writing and getting the main heroine and the other characters to keep on growing.


----------



## Rkcapps

Try decide who your audience is then ask yourself, would they relate. Find someone in your target audience and ask them.


----------



## argentquill

Rkcapps said:


> Try decide who your audience is then ask yourself, would they relate. Find someone in your target audience and ask them.


Good idea.


----------

