Trick? Who's Trick and what's he doing in our thread?
Just kidding. Trick posted a while back he'd resolved the issue he asked about originally and since then the thread has taken off elsewhere.
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I do think it's an interesting topic though, and there's a few different discussions going on here. I can see where both Nihal and Mythopoet are coming from. Both about how women in fiction can come across as "deviations from the norm", and about how you shouldn't be telling others how to write. They're both good points.
One thing that I come across now and then when discussing ideas that people have about things is that they say "it's like this cool thing, but except for that thing it has this other thing instead". It's easy to describe things and concepts as variations or modifications of other things. This doesn't apply to just writing, but to all kinds of things.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
What I think you need to keep in mind when you do it this way (it's like this, but...) is all of the free baggage you're getting. In the case of male/female, is it really fair, or even possible to go: "a man is like a woman, except..." or the other way around?
Depending on how you do, you can probably pull it off, but for individuals and characters I'm not sure I'd recommend it.
Just kidding. Trick posted a while back he'd resolved the issue he asked about originally and since then the thread has taken off elsewhere.
---
I do think it's an interesting topic though, and there's a few different discussions going on here. I can see where both Nihal and Mythopoet are coming from. Both about how women in fiction can come across as "deviations from the norm", and about how you shouldn't be telling others how to write. They're both good points.
One thing that I come across now and then when discussing ideas that people have about things is that they say "it's like this cool thing, but except for that thing it has this other thing instead". It's easy to describe things and concepts as variations or modifications of other things. This doesn't apply to just writing, but to all kinds of things.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
What I think you need to keep in mind when you do it this way (it's like this, but...) is all of the free baggage you're getting. In the case of male/female, is it really fair, or even possible to go: "a man is like a woman, except..." or the other way around?
Depending on how you do, you can probably pull it off, but for individuals and characters I'm not sure I'd recommend it.