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Is it harder to write the opposite sex?
- Thread starter Jabrosky
- Start date
My post in this thread http://mythicscribes.com/forums/writing-questions/7200-romance-gender.html#post91377 relates.
Basically, don't write Sally the Girl, write Sally the person/character who happens to be a girl. With this approach, I haven't had any of the women in my writing group complain I was getting it wrong with my female characters.
Basically, don't write Sally the Girl, write Sally the person/character who happens to be a girl. With this approach, I haven't had any of the women in my writing group complain I was getting it wrong with my female characters.
Actually, Dragon's Egg is giving me an opportunity to write from a female POV.
For the most part, I write Baldhart as a person and a mighty barbarian. In that respect, she's not a huge jump from the male MCs in my comfort zone. The first time being female had any real impact was when she challenged men to an arm-wrestling match, and the inappropriate reaction from a drunk when she won.
So based on the past two months of playing this character and writing her on the side, here are three things I recommend to a guy who wants to write a female MC well or at least in a way that seems to be working for Ireth and Nihal, unless they're just being polite and not telling me how guyish my character really is:
(Bold text = general rule; plain text = to OP)
1) She's a person, not a girl.
I've said this in other threads and others have said it in this thread, so it must be the most important. Uh, right? Well, anyway, that's the big one. A female dinosaur hunter still hunts dinosaurs like the male dinosaur hunters. She still has to use the same tactics and survival skills. Physical and emotional differences between her and males are as relevant as physical and emotional differences between her and other females.
2) She may be seen as a girl, not a person, so how does she react to those it's-a-man's-world prejudices?
Going back to our dinosaur huntress example: what are traditional roles? Are women expected to be gatherers not hunters? Do the men laugh at her mistakes or ogle her? Is her outfit skimpier, or did everyone used to comfortably hunt naked until the chief's daughter came along? If she's breaking the gender barrier because she's the chief's daughter, you have a class issue as well as a gender issue. So there's step one–we've established the prejudices in our world.
Step two is the huntress' reaction: complain to her powerful father, shrug off the chauvinistic attention,
3) She's not a sex object.
Honestly, I'm tired of knowing all the sexy details about female characters. So here's ONE possible path you can consider: she doesn't have a sex life. I don't mean she'll never meet a guy in life, but in your story, you focus on her younger years as a huntress. It's believable that your dinosaur huntress does NOT want to get pregnant while she's out in the wild hunting monstrous creatures. It's likely that she's in a life-or-death situation and is not in the mood. This is just one path, but it can work.
And if you do try this path, know that romance CAN come into her life, but don't rush it unless the story is meant to be romantic. Honestly, if you want a story about dinosaur hunting, the romance scenes could be a turn-off unless they're done well. Hold off romance until later in the series if you think it's appropriate or is part of your character's story.
Since you said the romance scenes derail your plot, I strongly suggest this path–at least for short story #1 of a series.
Building upon Legendary Sidekick's third point above, I'd add that there are plenty of reasons she might not be interested in a romantic or sexual relationship with a male character. She might be asexual or aromantic; she might not want kids ever; she might be gay; she might be in a committed and faithful relationship with someone who never makes an appearance; or she might simply not be attracted to anyone during the course of the story.
I get tired of reading books where the one major female character in the story ends up having sex with someone every single time. It happens a lot in David Gemmell's books, with the only major female character immune to it being inhuman, as far as I can remember. In fact that's why I put Legend down when I tried to reread it last year. I have a lot less patience for it than I used to, because it's not written for me, it's written for sexually immature males. In fact I don't tend to like reading sexual stuff in novels at all. It's either really badly written (Gilbert Gottfried reading Fifty Shades bad sometimes... *shudder* (seriously, that audioclip ruined my enjoyment of Disney's Aladdin forever. Iago's first line.)), really misogynistic, obvious wish fulfillment or way out of place. Or any combination of the above.
But the root of a lot of poor portrayals of female characters is the author treating them like sex objects, not like characters. So Legendary Sidekick's third point, I think, is quite an important one.
I get tired of reading books where the one major female character in the story ends up having sex with someone every single time. It happens a lot in David Gemmell's books, with the only major female character immune to it being inhuman, as far as I can remember. In fact that's why I put Legend down when I tried to reread it last year. I have a lot less patience for it than I used to, because it's not written for me, it's written for sexually immature males. In fact I don't tend to like reading sexual stuff in novels at all. It's either really badly written (Gilbert Gottfried reading Fifty Shades bad sometimes... *shudder* (seriously, that audioclip ruined my enjoyment of Disney's Aladdin forever. Iago's first line.)), really misogynistic, obvious wish fulfillment or way out of place. Or any combination of the above.
But the root of a lot of poor portrayals of female characters is the author treating them like sex objects, not like characters. So Legendary Sidekick's third point, I think, is quite an important one.
Nihal
Vala
You're doing fine with her, or at least it's my opinion.
--
I find hard to RP/write characters of the opposite sex. I don't know if it's my approach, where I try to understand the character and put myself in it's shoes, trying to feel the same emotion he/she would be feeling according to his/her logic. Their and my logic often disagree, but I can see the "why" they would react a way or another, even if I don't sympathize with their actions.
I know that sometimes when roleplaying males I slip and end being too gentle, when I should be more friendly but less warm. It eventually blows up my cover during those roleplays. The other extreme can also happen, when I end putting too much rage and coldness in the character when it's not his nature. I pick similar but not-ideal ways of acting out these characters' emotions.
I find many established authors/script-writers guilty of this. Yeah, they're published/extremely-successful and I'm not, but I can still say a female character is being objectified when she is.
saellys
Inkling
Yeah, that happened to Daenerys a lot. The idea that women spend any amount of time thinking about their breasts in the normal course of a day is pretty dumb, and pretty common to male gaze writing.
Despite that, I maintain that the depth and range of female characters in ASOIAF is unparalleled in the fantasy literature I've encountered, and for the most part the show has translated that well.
Jamber
Sage
On the topic of writing against sexism, I'm loving the way a recent author I've read is using the 's' word... 'Sag'. (The female main character studying herself in a mirror with the critical male gaze.) She's a main character and likeable, whereas in masculine fiction a breast that sags is generally attached to someone unlikeable, even monstrous (Stephen King does this a fair bit, and not only in his early fiction -- Bag of Bones for instance). Go the sag!
In any case, maybe one way to get away from internalised sexism (if you want to) is to write a character then change the gender (but nothing else). I gather this was the story behind Ripley in Alien. Would it have been so ground-breaking if Ripley had been conceived as a 'she' then changed to 'he'?
cheers
Jennie
In any case, maybe one way to get away from internalised sexism (if you want to) is to write a character then change the gender (but nothing else). I gather this was the story behind Ripley in Alien. Would it have been so ground-breaking if Ripley had been conceived as a 'she' then changed to 'he'?
cheers
Jennie
Jessquoi
Troubadour
What scares me is that a lot of these successful male writers probably don't even realise what they're doing to their female characters. Sure, there might be some smart and/or talented ones, but they're nearly always reduced to having a love interest or relationship with someone. It's like you can't have a female character without a sexual relationship developing from her presence in the story. It's driving me nuts too. That's what ruined Patrick Rothfuss for me. I started out really loving his books, but in the end it kind of turned into 'every man's' primal fantasy where the main character is just amazing at everything (including sex) and all the females are smart sexual objects. Just because they're smart that doesn't make it OK! It's a complete misunderstanding of sexism/feminism.
I heard that in some Australian dictionaries the definition of a misogynist is no longer a 'woman hater' but someone who has a bad understanding of women's rights, issues and feminism. An interesting insight.
I heard that in some Australian dictionaries the definition of a misogynist is no longer a 'woman hater' but someone who has a bad understanding of women's rights, issues and feminism. An interesting insight.
Cersei doesn't necessarily bother me, because she's one character and GRRM has other female characters that don't exhibit behavior anything like that. Further, Cersei isn't even supposed to be a likeable character. I've known one woman who was extremely obsessed with her own breasts and her series of augmentation surgeries, to the point it got her in some hot water at work, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn of a Cersei-like obsession in some people. For almost any anomalous obsession you can imagine, there are probably some people on the planet who have it. The important thing if you include it in a work of fiction is that it be anomalous, just as it is in real life. If every female character in your book is obsessed with her own breasts, you've got a huge problem. If it is one out of a large number of female characters, the others of whom are well-written as female characters, then it won't bother me so much. The one is not meant, in that case, to be representative of the whole.
saellys
Inkling
Cersei's rise to "power" was predicated entirely on getting married to a giant philanderer; her obsession with her appearance and her threatened reactions to any female character younger or subjectively prettier than her felt entirely consistent to me. Needless to say, if that had been the way every female character in ASOIAF related to every other female character, it would have been a serious problem. Or if there had only been two female characters (which is often the most fantasy readers can hope for) and one saw the other solely as a threat and rival, that would be equally problematic.
This is an angle where the show has been hit-or-miss. Arya tells Lord Tywin "Most girls are stupid" in season two, which is something book-Arya never would have thought or said. On the flip side, the show gave Sansa an awesome friendship with Shae, which was really refreshing in the midst of all the crap that happens to her. Disproportionate ratios of female to male nudity aside, I will conservatively say it's one of the least misogynistic shows on television! *waves tiny flag and plays a cheery tune on a kazoo*
This is an angle where the show has been hit-or-miss. Arya tells Lord Tywin "Most girls are stupid" in season two, which is something book-Arya never would have thought or said. On the flip side, the show gave Sansa an awesome friendship with Shae, which was really refreshing in the midst of all the crap that happens to her. Disproportionate ratios of female to male nudity aside, I will conservatively say it's one of the least misogynistic shows on television! *waves tiny flag and plays a cheery tune on a kazoo*
MongrelChuck
Scribe
I find a modified version of the Plinkett Characterization Test to be pretty good for dealing with anything you are uncomfortable or unsure about writing. For those who are unaware, the original Test is to strip away any and all representations of a character's identity based around 'what' they are, and focus on the 'who' they are. This is a good tool for those who write any form of genre fiction as it prevents your characters from "playing the uniform and not the man".
Let me go with a pretty universal Western example. I might describe this individual as a person whose identity was informed by a sense of responsibility ingrained through hard work and dedication. The individual suffers through a crisis of identity as they must wear many different masks to protect and assist those around them. This person was adopted, and though their adopted parents inform their understanding of duty and benefit, they feel isolated from the world due to a lack of attachment to their homeland and parents.
That's roughly how I might describe Superman using the Plinkett test. I probably missed something (I'm not a huge fan of the Man of Steel) but you can see the point of the exercise.
Now see how stable of a character is created if you describe your character without gender. Then add Gender. How does the understanding that this character has this identify inform your character? How does it enhance the story? If it doesn't enhance or detracts? You may want to start over.
Let me go with a pretty universal Western example. I might describe this individual as a person whose identity was informed by a sense of responsibility ingrained through hard work and dedication. The individual suffers through a crisis of identity as they must wear many different masks to protect and assist those around them. This person was adopted, and though their adopted parents inform their understanding of duty and benefit, they feel isolated from the world due to a lack of attachment to their homeland and parents.
That's roughly how I might describe Superman using the Plinkett test. I probably missed something (I'm not a huge fan of the Man of Steel) but you can see the point of the exercise.
Now see how stable of a character is created if you describe your character without gender. Then add Gender. How does the understanding that this character has this identify inform your character? How does it enhance the story? If it doesn't enhance or detracts? You may want to start over.
