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On Writing Women. Looking for honesty...

Heliotrope

Staff
Article Team
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?
 
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Ban

Troglodytic Trouvère
Article Team
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 :)
 

Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
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

Auror
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.
 
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.
 

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
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.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
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?
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
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

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
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

Felis amatus
Moderator
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).
 

Devor

Fiery Keeper of the Hat
Moderator
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?
 
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