Multiple POV story - Lack of female leads

[Jabrosky]

Why not? When I create a character, there's a first step for me that maybe not everyone goes through, or not in the same order. Conception, for me, is a mental picture. My huntress is not a woman. She is a red-haired, green-eyed, freckle-faced woman. Don't ever tell me to make her male, or make her dark-haired, or make her tall and lanky, or make her "hawt." It's not her. If you want a tall, dark and handsome beefcake hunter, that's a totally different person. He doesn't get to speak Addison's words or replace her in her story. He can go find his own story and someone else can write him because I don't give a damn about this guy. His image didn't pop up in my mind, and even now as I describe him, the image is fuzzy. He's a stranger.

This process is actually very similar to my own. I always start out with a clear visual image of a character and their appearance before getting down to personality and back-story. In fact, very often these characters begin as drawings before I attach a story to them.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I am exactly the same! I suspect this is a big reason for the disagreement on this subject.

I'm curious about how others create their characters. I think to someone with a totally different process, it may seem silly to not be able (or willing) to change the gender of an existing character.

 

[Ireth]

For me, it comes more easily with some characters than others. I realized having a male love interest for the female MC of one of my WIPs wasn't working out, mainly due to the relationship of both people with the villain. Changing the love interest to a woman and making the MC bisexual rather than straight solved a lot of problems, and it was as simple as changing "Vincent" into "Valerie". I doubt I could so easily do the same with another character, though.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Do I need to redraw Vincent now?

 

[Ireth]

Nope, leave him as he is! I just reused the names Vincent and Diana for another story, a fantasy retelling of "Hunchback of Notre Dame" with werewolves instead of Roma. But due to the above genderswap, the latter Vincent is now a she, named Valerie Richards. Flat Earth Vincent is still the same guy.

 

[Gryphos]

I'm curious about how others create their characters. I think to someone with a totally different process, it may seem silly to not be able (or willing) to change the gender of an existing character.

For me usually I think of the character's purpose in the story first of all. I'll use an example from my current WIP.

I needed a henchman for the main villain. That was the first thing I knew about that character, that they would be an agent of the villain. I had no idea what they would look like. So I thought more about them. I gave them a name first: 'Sigfarne'. Don't know why I settled on that – I just thought it sounded cool. I decided they were male, for no particular reason. The only time I really decided what he should look like was when writing the scene he first appears. The details of his appearance literally came to me as I was writing his description. His dark brown skin, his long, braided hair, his intricately designed suit with golden dragon patterns embroidered along the hem and around the collar, his top hat.

That's usually how it goes for me. I decide basic details of a character in planning, such as name and sex. But their actual appearance itself I only really decide upon in the moment. Because of this, I find it a lot easier to change details such as gender than some others might, because unless I've written a scene with them, I don't have any mental picture built up of them. I'm not saying my method is better or anything, just that it makes me less cautious about gender-swapping.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I'm curious about how others create their characters. I think to someone with a totally different process, it may seem silly to not be able (or willing) to change the gender of an existing character.

I think I may be sort of similar to you. I start with a concept or idea and then build from there. This concept usually comes with a very clear visual image of the character - including their gender.

I've struggled with a related issue for quite a while regarding one of my characters. Her name's Toivo and she's a paladin. The issue is that Toivo is a common male name in Finland (and I've got Finnish friends who will read the story). I could come up with some reason for her to have a man's name - but I'd still be sort of uncomfortable with it myself.
There's no way I'm going to change her into a man, just to suit the name, but it's also been really difficult to make up my mind about a new name for the character.

I'm likely settling on Toini though. It's similar enough, and it also has a fitting symbolic meaning to it that I like.
Still, just changing the name on the character has been a struggle of sorts.

 

[Mythopoet]

When I was younger, I wrote a lot more often from a female viewpoint. For some reason, in recent years I've been more inclined to write from a male viewpoint. There's nothing premeditated about it, it's just that most of the viewpoint characters I come up with tend to be male. I'm not sure why.

Right now I'm writing a collection of stories about a group of 16 characters. 9 of them are male, 5 are female. In this case it's partially because the characters are based on mythological figures. But I did go out of my way to to include more female characters than the story I'm inspired by did. I suppose I could have made more of them female, but the ratio of 9 males to 5 females felt right to me.

In my experience females in general are less inclined to take on the sort of roles that men natural take. For sure there are women who are adventurous and inclined to leadership and whatnot. And maybe it's just the type of women that I tend to be familiar with, but I know far more women who want to be stay at home moms than that want to dedicate themselves to busy careers. I myself would rather be a stay at home mom than take on any sort of career. So I do think it's more natural for men to take on traditionally heroic roles, especially roles that involve leadership or combat. It seems more natural to me for their to be more male than female characters in those kinds of roles in stories.

 

[Chessie]

I think writing from the male POV is much simpler. Straightforward, less emotional, just simpler. (its ok I'm a woman ha)

 

[Mythopoet]

I think writing from the male POV is much simpler. Straightforward, less emotional, just simpler. (its ok I'm a woman ha)

lol Me too. And I am also a woman. To be honest, I don't relate well to most of the other women I know.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Funny, I went the opposite route—writing mostly male MCs, and now mostly female.

I have three daughters, so part of it is I want them to be able to relate to my characters. (When they're old enough to read my work.)

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I think writing from the male POV is much simpler. Straightforward, less emotional, just simpler. (its ok I'm a woman ha)

Ah, so it's okay for you to say men are simpler beings. Like the hero stuff is because we're like animals, relying on instinct to fulfill the hunter-warrior ro—squirrel!

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

I think writing from the male POV is much simpler. Straightforward, less emotional, just simpler. (its ok I'm a woman ha)

Keep in mind though, this is the other half of that coin. Though they're not the standard, I have met overly emotional men.

Often, it's the characters outside the norm who make for the best reading. That high-powered female politician or soldier, or maybe the mild-mannered man who runs an orphanage.

I know the main focus of the thread is on under-represented women in fantasy, but writing characters as unique individuals applies to all.

 

[Mythopoet]

Ah, so it's okay for you to say men are simpler beings. Like the hero stuff is because we're like animals, relying on instinct to fulfill the hunter-warrior ro—squirrel!

You know, it's funny because of my 4 older kids, the two girls are much more likely to get distracted than the two boys. The boys tend to get super focused. I can't get my oldest daughter to focus on anything except Naruto to save her life. lol

 

[Svrtnsse]

On the matter of male vs female portrayal of women I'd like to point to something I stumbled across recently. It's an article about women who painted pin-ups. The main article is here: Pin-Up Queens: Three Female Artists Who Shaped the American Dream Girl | Collectors Weekly (it has some images that would have probably been considered raunchy at the time, but they're not worse than what you'd see in a regular music video these days).

The quote that stood out to me was:

“If you really get into it, you begin to see that women have a different way of portraying women than men do, even when they’re all trying to do something sexy for a pin-up calendar or a magazine,” Meisel says.

Now, what this tells me is that men and women view men and women differently, even if the differences may just be subtle little things. Optionally, it tells me that this persons thought they could see a difference, but since it sort of aligns with my belief on the matter I'll go with the first option.

I quite firmly believe that the world in general treats women and men differently - even in societies generally considered reasonably equal. As such, men and women growing up in the same societies would have slightly different experiences of life and I believe this shapes who they are in different ways.

How much does this matter in the general case then? Perhaps it's not such a big deal. Perhaps it just comes through in the subtler details if you study them hard enough. I think the best you can do is acknowledge that there may be differences and that depending on what you're trying to do, they may or may not need paying attention to.

 

[Helen]

Or too 'male-centric'? Reading a multiple POV with three men is too much?

If I remember, the early draft episodes of Seinfeld were just about the guys, and then they felt they needed a woman in there, hence Elaine's character was written in. As a woman, I think this is a good thing.

If you look at the Oscar nominees this year, they're all about a male central character - something is out of kilter.

 

[Fyle]

If you look at the Oscar nominees this year, they're all about a male central character - something is out of kilter.

Something about the Oscars is always out of kilter.

We all know Moulin Rouge was better than Lord of the Rings, right? Who came to that descision ? Talk about out of kilter.

 

[Xitra_Blud]

The most important thing is to tell a good story. I personally am a bit annoyed by this "strong female character" thing. Not everything has to "empower women". Not every story has to have a strong female character. Not every story has to have a female. The film "the Thing" did not have a single female character in it yet it is, in my opinion, one of the best horror films I've seen. Tell the story the best way that you can tell it (females or not). You can't keep people from being offended whether you have a female or not. Someone will always find something offensive regardless of what you do. 'That's not to say that when you do have female characters to make them one dimensional but I'm saying to write your story the way you see it in your vision. If that does not involve females that is perfectly fine. I have found that many stories, in my opinion, that try to have strong female characters tend to fail at it. They often focus so much on making a strong female character that the characters just comes out as a "man wanna-be" who has to constantly remind people that she is female but is as tough as the boys. That isn't all the time, but that's a lot of the time. Don't focus on the gender of the characters. Focus on writing a good story.

I'm a female and I don't need a female character to be in a story in order for me to get into it. What I look for is a good story and good characters (regardless of gender).

 

[Mythopoet]

I personally am a bit annoyed by this "strong female character" thing. Not everything has to "empower women". Not every story has to have a strong female character. Not every story has to have a female. The film "the Thing" did not have a single female character in it yet it is, in my opinion, one of the best horror films I've seen.

Likewise with Lawrence of Arabia. I love that movie. Not a single female character. It's just not a story about female characters. And personally, as a woman, I don't see any problem with telling a story that's not about female characters or telling a story that's not about male characters, if that's the story you want to tell.

 

[Fyle]

I personally am a bit annoyed by this "strong female character" thing. Not everything has to "empower women". Not every story has to have a strong female character. Not every story has to have a female.

If I had said this, I would have been reported and had every poster here jump on calling me who knows what...

Since the thread is 100+ posts in and the OP has not even given feedback based on our heated discussion (at least I don't think he has), can I ask you what you think of Tauriel in the Hobbit movies?

She is an example similar to what the OP was talking about, his question was different, but along the lines of adding a woman to a story without one because he needed one and didn't have one (maybe you read the OP).