# Male Vs Female



## WarriorPrincess (Mar 29, 2013)

Not sure if this particular subject has came up in threads before, but it recently came up in a conversation of mine. 

Are there any noticeable differences between fantasy novels written by females Vs Males? And do you think you could tell if it was written by a female but published under a male name?

 I personally enjoy both, and don't notice much difference. But can anyone else? 

WarriorPrincess


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## Mindfire (Mar 29, 2013)

I'm going to answer with a tentative yes. But that comes with a huge caveat: to me the difference is only really obvious in beginner writers. In my creative writing class, the difference between the males and females in terms of writing style was obvious if not quite neatly defined. When writers get older and become more experienced, the difference is less pronounced.


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## Feo Takahari (Mar 29, 2013)

My writing is usually evaluated as either female or foreign--my style doesn't seem to be common amongst male Americans.

(Autocorrect doesn't think amongst is a word. Then again, Autocorrect doesn't think Autocorrect is a word.)

Speaking more broadly, there are _definitely_ men who don't have any idea how to write female characters, but that doesn't necessarily mean a writer who can write female characters is female. (Oddly, I've seldom encountered female writers who don't know how to write males--maybe because there are so many male writers writing male characters that it's hard not to pick up at least one believable male archetype to imitate?)


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## Alexandra (Mar 29, 2013)

WarriorPrincess said:


> ... And do you think you could tell if it was written by a female but published under a male name?



I don't know, I've never thought about it. I do know that I can tell the difference between good writing and bad.


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## glutton (Mar 29, 2013)

Not all the time but there are some writing styles that are more often male and some that are more often female. For example the genre romance style is usually female, although there are some male writer who write romance under pen names, and the 'hardcore warrior story' style is more often male - but some women like Donna Gillespie write it well, but more of the ones who do it are men. Elizabeth Moon is another who writes in a nice gritty style.

Yes I do actually mean style and not plot because you could write a love story in a non-genre romance style, or a story about a warrior that doesn't come off as 'hardcore'.


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## Graylorne (Mar 29, 2013)

To be honest: no I can't, I never think of it and I find it completely irrelevant


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## Devor (Mar 29, 2013)

I would say say that if I absolutely had to sit down and type out a list of what I'd expect from male and female writers (I'm not going to), I would say that Martin and Rowling catch those differences pretty well.

I respect Martin's style a lot.  But I enjoy Rowling so much more.  That's just how it is.

I'm not going to try and pinpoint what I'm talking about, and I kind of hope nobody else tries to, either.  And of course nothing is even remotely absolute.  But by no means do I think those differences are a bad thing.  Always play to your strengths.  If men and women sometimes have slightly different strengths, then sometimes that should show up in the writing.  And I think that's a good thing.


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## glutton (Mar 29, 2013)

I will also say that for what I think of as typical 'high fantasy' style, it's pretty hard for me to notice a difference between male and female writing styles.


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## Ophiucha (Mar 29, 2013)

That's a tough one.

Any perceived differences between men and women's writing is going to be _entirely _social. Which means that it is going to vary from culture to culture. 'Feminine' writing traits or content in modern (white) America are not at all like 'feminine' writing traits or content in modern Japan, or Ancient Greece (for the very few female writers there were), or even _1800s _America. For instance, as glutton mentions above, romance is a woman-dominated market both in the writing and reading... in the West. Not true of all countries and times, however. Even within Western countries, the roots of romance are masculine. The courtly romances of Lancelot and Guinevere were written by men; it wasn't until the Victorian era that we began to see a shift.

Personally, I see a few things that are more common with women than men (in modern, Western, fantasy literature), and vice versa. They're not universal, but they aren't bad indicators. I know all the men _here _are above it, but let's be honest, if a work has few to no women in it, and the women that are in it are scantily clad, damsels in distress, or super tsundere... it was probably written by a man. And, as a rough equivalent, the entire 'feminist SFF' subgenre is unsurprisingly dominated by women. Romance is definitely more popular with female writers, and power fantasies ala Conan the Barbarian tend to be more popular with men. There are subtle shades of all four of these that I think, on some level, I'm picking up enough that I can make a guess about the writer's gender. But I'd probably never make a bet on it.

Stylistically, I don't think there is any difference.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Mar 29, 2013)

I'm sure there's _some _difference. I doubt I could reliably tell just by reading the story, though. Aside from the fact that storytelling works the same way either way, it's reasonable to assume at least some men lean towards a feminin style while some women lean towards a masculine one. 

So, there's probably enough variables here to make any guesswork mostly meaningless.


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## T.Allen.Smith (Mar 29, 2013)

I shouldn't be able to tell if the author did their job properly. I should be too engrossed in the story to notice any gender intricacies (assuming they even exist).


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## Devora (Mar 29, 2013)

Yes. It comes from how Male and Female writers form their sentences in stories, and how they present details.


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## Jamber (Mar 29, 2013)

A well written book can do anything, including 'be written' convincingly by someone of the opposite gender to their name. Many early works by women authors were published this way.

While differences _can_ be the there, writing is a kind of impersonation anyway. We impersonate the kind of author we'd like to read. I feel the only question to ask is whether it's well done.


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## Anders Ã„mting (Mar 29, 2013)

T.Allen.Smith said:


> I shouldn't be able to tell if the author did their job properly. I should be too engrossed in the story to notice any gender intricacies (assuming they even exist).



That may be true if you are an ordinary reader, but what if you are deliberately reading the book with a very analytical mindset, specifically to catch any subtleties a normal reader would not consciously pick up on?


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## T.Allen.Smith (Mar 29, 2013)

Anders Ã„mting said:


> That may be true if you are an ordinary reader, but what if you are deliberately reading the book with a very analytical mindset, specifically to catch any subtleties a normal reader would not consciously pick up on?



Unless you're making a study of the writing for educational purposes, I don't see the value in searching for any gender differences.

Good writing is good writing.


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## Alex Beecroft (Apr 1, 2013)

I think you can tell _sometimes_. Mercedes Lackey, for example, definitely writes like a girl. (And now someone's going to tell me she's actually one Mark Lake writing under a pen name aren't they?) And I hope that most of the 'ew, women are icky and mysterious, but I suppose the hero has to have a love interest so here, have a token female character' books I've read over the years were written by men. But most of the time you really can't tell. Look at James Tiptree Jr, for example - lauded as a great masculine writer until someone found out he was a woman. Andre Norton - I had no idea she was a woman until someone told me only last year. The romance genre is full of men writing successfully under female pseudonyms, and all the other genres are full of women writing successfully under male ones. So really no, you can't tell.


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## Feo Takahari (Apr 1, 2013)

Seeing as how James Tiptree Jr. is most famous for a): a story about how awesome the world would be if all the men died, and b): a story about men becoming murderous rapists, I think men back then only assumed she was male because they didn't want to believe someone so technically accomplished could be a woman.


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## SeverinR (Apr 1, 2013)

I think if you think about it, there will be something that stands out in woman writers that men normally wouldn't think of.
Different thought patterns, different views, different way of writing it. It's not great earth shattering changes, just little things.

every writer is unique, every female writer, every male writer, but certain thought processes just shine through.

Having said that, doesn't mean either is better, one is more blood and guts, or one is more relationship based. Its not that obvious.


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## Mindfire (Apr 1, 2013)

See this is why I gave the caveat. Only in beginner writers does gender truly stand out. Fledglings most likely haven't found their voice yet, haven't mastered close POV, etc. Most experienced writers can sound like anything they choose, but may prefer to use a certain style. Beginners don't have that skill and are more likely to either:
A) imitate their favorite author
B) write "typical" masculine or feminine prose because it doesn't take much effort
C) All of the above 

When it comes to experienced writers it's harder to tell what's due to gender and what's due to personal style choice, POV, etc. It's especially hard to tell if you're going in blind and/or the writer is trying to trick you.  

Re: Tiptree, it is strange no one suspected her even after she wrote two stories about how men are the scum of the earth. Typically men don't write like that unless they have some deep self-esteem issues.


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## Architect_of_Aurah (Apr 1, 2013)

Hard to tell; if I had to give an answer I would say no, given that I've read some novels by Naomi Novik and Anne McCaffrey.  Their style of writing fantasy isn't obviously different from male authors.


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## SeverinR (Apr 1, 2013)

Mindfire said:


> Re: Tiptree, it is strange no one suspected her even after she wrote two stories about how men are the scum of the earth. Typically men don't write like that unless they have some deep self-esteem issues.



I could over look it, Some men are "scum of the earth", it doesn't mean the writer believes all men are scum.  I think either male or female writers could support the claim, and do so believably.

I can tell the difference between Anne and Todd, I prefer Todd, but I don't think its male or female based.


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## Androxine Vortex (Apr 3, 2013)

One thing to keep in mind is how males and females are defined/used in a particular book. I'm currently reading a novel and one of the antagonists is a powerful cult leader seeking to gain dominance over a demonic entity and is leading hordes of minotaur like creatures. This character is female. But because of typical make female portrayal its easy to assume that the character is male. 

Now in terms of authors I think for the most part yes. If I pick up twilight I can assume it was written by a woman for a female audience (mainly female) but would it be possible for it to be written by a man? Of course, I think that a author is capable of writing any novel geared toward any audience. If they can make that novel worth reading is a totally different story (pun intended)


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## Taytortots (Apr 3, 2013)

I answered no. 
If an author weaved a story, and I want to read that story, I'm not sitting there thinking about the author, i'm thinking about their work. If you wrote something properly, you will have me engaged in your story not in you. 
I know people often say that women talk more about emotions etc, but I really don't believe that to be true. All writers have a different style, and there are no distinct gender differences in these styles. Writing about a certain thing or in a certain way doesn't make you more feminine or masculine.


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## Ophiucha (Apr 6, 2013)

So, I'm taking an online class on SFF (_it's offered by University of Michigan, over on coursera; I'd recommend it, it has a rigorous course load and interesting lectures_), and since we just read some Ursula K. LeGuin, our professor brought up this very subject. According to a study he did (exclusive to science fiction, but one must imagine it is true of fantasy by proxy), the only significant difference between male and female writers was this: 70-90% of stories written by male writers have male protagonists; 50% of stories written by female writers have male protagonists.


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## Devor (Apr 6, 2013)

Ophiucha said:


> According to a study he did (exclusive to science fiction, but one must imagine it is true of fantasy by proxy), the only significant difference between male and female writers was this: 70-90% of stories written by male writers have male protagonists; 50% of stories written by female writers have male protagonists.



Just out of curiosity, do you know if they tested for specific differences and what they were?


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## Ophiucha (Apr 6, 2013)

Devor said:


> Just out of curiosity, do you know if they tested for specific differences and what they were?



Based on how he was talking about it, it sounded like it was primarily based on the characters (since this was part of a larger study on character development in SF), but he mentioned that they found no significant stylistic differences, so I assume they had a metric for that as well.


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## Caged Maiden (Apr 6, 2013)

I just want to mention something... I recently read a work to crit, by an author called Michael Surname omitted.  When I offered to crit the manuscript (which I thoroughly liked) the author contacted me back by email and the address read _Michelle _Surname omitted...

I had to think back and wonder whether I simply misread the name... or did she write under another name?  I think when we read, we trust in the author.  While I'd like to say I'm more drawn to male writers... there's no guarantee a writer with a male name is actually not a woman.  

SO that's that.  Also, regarding romance novels... many men write the novels and then publish under a female name, knowing full well no woman is going to trust a man to write their romance books.  SO there you have it... male, female... it's all the same things, really, isn't it?  Some _people _are good romance writers, some great at epic fantasy.


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## CreatorOfBotis (Apr 6, 2013)

I voted yes, but to me it really depends on a lot of different things. I would say that it's painfully obvious to me in certain genres. If, in urban fantasy, for example, a book is written by a male, I can tell pretty quickly, regardless of the main character's gender. I'm not sure what it is. In high fantasy, epic fantasy, etc, I find the distinction much more blurry. I went through a phase of only being willing to read books written by women, though - around the same time I decided to only read urban fantasy. I'm not stuck in a niche anymore, but that distinction used to matter a lot to me.


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## Steerpike (Apr 6, 2013)

Yeah, but it is easy to say you can tell quickly, because you know the author's name when you start reading (barring a gender-changing pseudonym). So you bring your own perceptions to it. I suspect most of us, if confronted with a blind test, would find it is not as easy as we might think.


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## CreatorOfBotis (Apr 6, 2013)

Steerpike said:


> Yeah, but it is easy to say you can tell quickly, because you know the author's name when you start reading (barring a gender-changing pseudonym). So you bring your own perceptions to it. I suspect most of us, if confronted with a blind test, would find it is not as easy as we might think.



That's definitely very true - our preconceptions influence what we interpret while we read. Have you read much amateur work on sites like fictionpress? Often enough the username doesn't imply gender, and even a lot of user pages don't identify it. This of course brings us back to it being more obvious in less experienced writers, but I've had several writing/editing relationships in communities such as that. I could usually tell before I got to know the person I was working with.


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