Writing from the Female POV

[Weaver]

If I can put my two cents' worth in, I'd like to know why men have such a difficult time writing female characters. From the perspective of a female, male characters aren't difficult at all. Could I ask for an example of what you [theoretical "you", not any one person - only if applicable] might struggle with, and why?

My own "problem" with writing female characters:

I write them like people. (Notice that I do not say "like humans." I write fantasy and sci-fi; not all of my viewpoint characters are the same species as my readers.) I have been told over and over again that this is not an acceptable practice, that I must write female characters according to the "standard" view of how women act and think, as if all women acted and thought the same way. Here is part of what one person on a peer-critique site said about one of my short stories:

"Just a note in regard to your note, I'm getting the impression the narrative is male. I can't pinpoint exactly why though I think if you could make it more emotional (in the bedroom females are more emotionally lead, where is males are more physically turned on, maybe you can apply this kind of concept to some of the details you've given - for example 'Time to time, I even found people.' How, emotionally, does this make the narrative feel? Instead of 'I even' maybe 'I was pleased/excited/relieved'. Maybe mention something about what it's like being female in the profession (which would work well if it is a predominantly male career), so you can nail any assumptions we may have. If you introduce the fact that the narrative is female early on, we will build our image of the character up from this."

(If you want to read the entire critique - and my thoughts on the whole mess after the fact - here's the link to my bloggish tirade about it: North of Andover: An old critique dissected (part 1) )

The assumption that a woman MUST be hyper-emotional offended me. It still offends me. So does the assumption that a man is always less emotional. Here am I, a grown man (and a straight one at that, in case someone claims that that matters), and I just admitted on another thread that I cried the first time I read a particular scene in a novel I love. Yes, men can have feelings. Deal with it. The POV character in my story is a private investigator (oversimplification, but close enough for current arguments), and she lives in a time and place where people don't expect women to be passive and timid and non-confrontational compared to men. People are people.

The thing is, someone else helped me out by rewriting that story a bit. When I posted the new version, the same critiquers who told me how unrealistic and wrong my female MC was before - after all, the hadn't expected me to be able to write a female character, what with me being male and all - they loved the changes, wanted to know which of my female friends had helped me out... And I had to laugh. The person who did the rewrites? My twin brother.

 

[Alex Beecroft]

My own "problem" with writing female characters:

I write them like people. .

I wish more people would do the same. I think that men and women are far more alike than they are different, and it comes from both of them being human. Yes, there are differences, but they are all differences that a writer can take into account, while remembering that women are no more homogenous than men are (or vice versa).

To answer a question further up the thread, it's easier for women to write male characters than it is for men to write female ones, because as part of a still largely patriarchal culture, and as a physically weaker person in an environment where 50% of the population is stronger than you, the ability to understand men is a necessity of survival for women. Plus, we're brought up in a culture which normalizes the way men (are supposed to) deal with things. We know the rules society sets out for both men and women, and we have been trained to observe and understand people in order to have some hope of influencing events. Men also have to understand men as a survival necessity but they don't need to understand women, so largely they don't bother trying - they just say "oh, women are irrational and mysterious," and leave it at that.

The cultural rules which shape the way women behave are largely invisible unless you go looking for them, but I would thoroughly advise reading some feminist blogs such as The Hathor Legacy or at the very least some female orientated SF/F blogs such as The Mary Sue. That helps you to see the contradictory pressures that women are under to conform to society in a way that (they hope) will keep them safe.

Of course, in other societies there may not be these embedded rules and double standards. In which case you're better off just writing all your people as people. If your society is based on magic and your women are generally stronger in magic than your men, then instead of being the weaker half of society who must worry about being physically and mentally safe all the time, your women will be part of the stronger half of society, and are likely to act more like men than your men.

 

[glutton]

However I do think some differences among the sexes need to addressed for instance women are physically weaker than a man.

Depends on the setting/character.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

To answer a question further up the thread, it's easier for women to write male characters than it is for men to write female ones, because as part of a still largely patriarchal culture, and as a physically weaker person in an environment where 50% of the population is stronger than you, the ability to understand men is a necessity of survival for women. Plus, we're brought up in a culture which normalizes the way men (are supposed to) deal with things. We know the rules society sets out for both men and women, and we have been trained to observe and understand people in order to have some hope of influencing events. Men also have to understand men as a survival necessity but they don't need to understand women, so largely they don't bother trying - they just say "oh, women are irrational and mysterious," and leave it at that.

Although I understand the sentiment used in this determination, the logic is somewhat flawed. I don't believe this type of thinking applies to writers in the same way it may apply to the broad population.

Writers, good ones at least, tend to be very observant people. Regardless of sex, writers as a group, would be far more observant than others that would not train themselves on creating well fleshed out and realistic characters.

 

[Ophiucha]

The difference between men and women is whatever your society dictates is the difference between men and women. Our society considers emotional expression to be a feminine trait - for better or for worse - which is why women, by and large, are more expressive about their emotions. Not every culture in the world and in history has considered that to be a feminine trait; if your culture considered it masculine, then spoiler alert!, your men would be more prone to emotional expression than women. Consider the gender roles in your society to consider how your female character may act versus how they think and consider the subconscious impact of gender roles on your character growing up. Even ~strong independent women~ will still have grown up seeing women whose only job was mother and housekeeper, who are objectified, and who are not allowed to fight. Even if she picks up the sword, these stereotypes will have a strong influence on her because they are - almost moreso than the technical bits - part of what defines a woman in her culture.

In terms of how you should write them, you should write women and men as people, who can experience the same emotions, who can have the same personalities and aspirations, and who are functionally the same... but who were raised with different expectations. Some people don't conform or live up to those expectations, but they are there. The only thing that should really hold you back from writing a female character is a lack of sufficient worldbuilding in the department of gender roles.

 

[Jamber]

Woman react emotionally, men logically. As noted above, it's a generalization, not universal truth.

I'll struggle to handle this logically rather than emotionally, of course, but here goes.

Logic would point out that a life of crime is likely to lead to long periods in prison, yet many more men than women wind up spending their lives behind bars.
Logic would say if you do a risky thing you might get hurt... Yet more men than women wind up in casualty wards for something predictable like speeding in a car, climbing something high, picking a fight outside a pub, etc.

The above statement is a belief, not a truth, and I'd argue there's a lot of real-world material to contradict it.

Arguments aside, I think it's very hard to find a comprehensive 'fact' about genders, and perhaps much more valuable to a writer to start with asking yourself what you want a character in that position in the story to feel, think and do? What are the ideas you want that character to deal with or represent? Yes, you can write gender as an add-on. Later you can always run a test of the characterisation on different readers to see if it rings at all true. I guarantee this will get you more interesting characters than if you use the logic/emotion divide as a starting point.

Then again, I'm all tied up with feelings, so don't expect my thoughts to sound logical. (Only joking, ShortHair. )

Jennie

 

[Devor]

Just in case people missed it, this thread was necromanced from over a year ago.

 

[Anders Ämting]

Hm. Even though I mostly use female main characters, this isn't something I usually think about.

I guess I just kinda go by the girls I've actually known over the years.

 

[skip.knox]

I have found it difficult to write from the female POV thus far...is it all about just practice, and getting women to read and critique your work for accuracy? Or are there some tricks to how you should approach the writing? Writing from the opposite gender has always proved difficult for me.

What about it have you found to be difficult?

The best advice I've read says: just write a character and have them do what needs to be done.

Why is your character female in the first place? "I dunno, it just felt right" is a legitimate answer. I've got a female important character like that. For some reason I picked "female" out of thin air and it felt right and I've left her that way and it still feels right. I don't take exceptional steps to emphasize female-ness except in romantic scenes. Those are all told from a male's POV; not sure if that's me being cowardly or realistic! But it's also just sort of how the narrative worked out.

 

[Jamber]

Just in case people missed it, this thread was necromanced from over a year ago.

Oops! It seems to be a current topic generally, so I didn't notice the date.

 

[saellys]

I agree with everyone who has already said that it's harder to write female characters if you consider them females first and characters second. Don't try to squeeze them into a psychological mold to conform to how people expect men and women to react in situations. Ask not what a woman would do, think, or say, but what your character would do, think, or say.

I think this is the natural consequence of how fiction typically treats being female as being different from the default. Men are written as people first, so writers who need a model for a male character can look back at all the male characters they've read about, and use them to write a person. Women are written as women first, so anyone who doesn't understand the model of "women" presented in traditional narratives, and who assumes that real women all fit that model of "women", won't be able to write a female character. (Incidentally, I believe that a woman who's written as a person first can be a model for a later male, and vice versa.)

We've had a lot of writers here on the forum in similar threads say that they naturally write an equal mix of male and female (or any shade between) characters, which is awesome. The sad fact is that most writers don't. I can read a given novel and imagine the author's thought process during character creation: "Okay, my party needs a proud half-elf mage, a strong barbarian who's actually really civilized and polite, an honorable thief, and an experienced ranger." Bam--they're all men by default. The justification for this, if any is offered, is often that this fantasy society the author created is a mirror of the real world's patriarchal history. Why? Uh... because.

To answer a question further up the thread, it's easier for women to write male characters than it is for men to write female ones, because as part of a still largely patriarchal culture, and as a physically weaker person in an environment where 50% of the population is stronger than you, the ability to understand men is a necessity of survival for women. Plus, we're brought up in a culture which normalizes the way men (are supposed to) deal with things. We know the rules society sets out for both men and women, and we have been trained to observe and understand people in order to have some hope of influencing events. Men also have to understand men as a survival necessity but they don't need to understand women, so largely they don't bother trying - they just say "oh, women are irrational and mysterious," and leave it at that.

The cultural rules which shape the way women behave are largely invisible unless you go looking for them, but I would thoroughly advise reading some feminist blogs such as The Hathor Legacy or at the very least some female orientated SF/F blogs such as The Mary Sue. That helps you to see the contradictory pressures that women are under to conform to society in a way that (they hope) will keep them safe.

Of course, in other societies there may not be these embedded rules and double standards. In which case you're better off just writing all your people as people. If your society is based on magic and your women are generally stronger in magic than your men, then instead of being the weaker half of society who must worry about being physically and mentally safe all the time, your women will be part of the stronger half of society, and are likely to act more like men than your men.

Well put. I've never really seen that first paragraph put into words before, but you expressed a lot of stuff I've been feeling for a while now.

 

[Mindfire]

I would argue that most humans are primarily emotion-driven. Onle those with great discipline can truly subjugate emotion to reasoning and even then there are slip-ups. Instead I would say the gender divide is in what kind of emotions men and women prioritize. Higher testosterone drives most men to operate on more... primitive emotions (resulting in the incarceration figures mentioned earlier). By contrast, emotion-driven women tend to be romantics. Not Valentine's day type romantics (though this is not uncommon), but romantics in the other sense. These are oversimplifications obviously, but I think they're truer oversimplifications than the old logic/emotion chestnut.

 

[geekgrrllurking]

A part of me seriously can't believe we are having this conversation in the 21st century. Write either gender as a three dimensional person, with thoughts and feelings, someone who is interesting and unique and I think the rest will fall in naturally.

Your job as a writer is to use your imagination and put the reader into your character's world. If you are worried about the gender, heaven help you if you end up writing from an elf point of view. Think outside the cliches and outside of the box and you may be surprised at how better your story will be.

 

[Devor]

I would argue that most humans are primarily emotion-driven. Onle those with great discipline can truly subjugate emotion to reasoning and even then there are slip-ups.

I don't think emotions and reasoning are at odds. I think most of the time we get angry or sad or happy for pretty good reasons, and I think we just as readily do pretty stupid stuff out of poor reasoning.

Higher testosterone drives most men to operate on more... primitive emotions (resulting in the incarceration figures mentioned earlier). By contrast, emotion-driven women tend to be romantics. Not Valentine's day type romantics (though this is not uncommon), but romantics in the other sense.

Very loosely, I think men compartmentalize their emotions a little more, while women more readily feel multiple things at once. I think that's probably the biggest reason many men have trouble understanding many women, but also, again, why men are more prone to dangerously impulsive behavior. Many men tend to want to be angry, and let that anger out, and then move on, while many women are prone to feel a little angry (and a little of everything else) wherever they go.

Following the example of anger, there's a big difference between when I yell at the kids and when my wife does. She has to be extremely angry to get the point where she's yelling, and you can feel the tension that stays with her pretty much the rest of the night afterwards. But I can yell, often, and two minutes later be done and things will be happy again. My anger will come and then be gone, while hers will linger.

Men also have to understand men as a survival necessity but they don't need to understand women, so largely they don't bother trying - they just say "oh, women are irrational and mysterious," and leave it at that.

So you're saying we understand people most through the workplace, where we don't like anybody and bottle up our emotions and try to precisely control everything we think, say or do? I would say the people we understand most are our loved ones - family and friends we've grown up with, the people we marry and share our lives with, the children we raise. It's pretty hard to talk about a gender gap within the typical modern family or in a coed school system, and certainly within the typical household.

My wife and I have been watching Dick Van Dike on Netflix, and so many episodes are about the misunderstandings between men and women. I think the show highlights many of them - it's not always a simple failure on the parts of men to try.

I agree with everyone who has already said that it's harder to write female characters if you consider them females first and characters second. Don't try to squeeze them into a psychological mold to conform to how people expect men and women to react in situations. Ask not what a woman would do, think, or say, but what your character would do, think, or say.

I think it's a mistake to assume that everyone writes best by approaching their characters the same way. But there's a big danger to ignoring the real differences between men and women, both in writing and in the world. By ignoring the differences, you fail to recognize when the environment has been adapted for one way of thinking over the other, and how you can reshape that environment to suit another thought process.

For instance, most businesses are highly compartmentalized, appealing not only to the male brain, but to the extreme male brain. Most women who rise to the level of CEO struggle with the position - unless they do two things.

- Stop approaching the business the way men tell them to approach it and develop a strategy for leading that's appropriate to the way they think as women.

- Generate buy in from relevant parties for the new approach.

Women who are able to do that often excel as CEOs. But if we can't stop and say, "Wait, what are these differences? How can we adapt to them? How do I develop strategies which work for someone who thinks differently than I do...?" - if we can't isolate the differences and discuss them, then we're holding women back. That's what we've seen, for instance, in the literature on women leaders. And that's what's happening here to hold back the development of female characters by male authors.

If the differences are real - and they are, you can take brain scans of infants to see that men and women have slightly different areas of prominence in the brain - then ignoring them only hurts the people who have the greatest need to adapt to the way those differences play out in society.

 

[Mindfire]

The sad fact is that most writers don't. I can read a given novel and imagine the author's thought process during character creation:

Hmm...

"Okay, my party needs a proud half-elf mage,

This kinda matches my main character, Reuben. I don't have elves in my world, but he is bi-racial, proud, and a mage.

a strong barbarian who's actually really civilized and polite,

This is a tough one. My party doesn't rally have any "barbarians". But I do have two characters who loosely fit into the "fighter" role. There's Leith (male), a former high-ranking soldier and the group's first "badass normal"... until he gets ice powers. Then there's Devra (female), inventor, strategist, and budding ruler of Mavaria. She's the group's second "badass normal" fighter/gadgeteer.

an honorable thief,

Shan-Ri is more of a ninja (with lightning powers!) than a thief, but close enough. Female.

and an experienced ranger."

Oh that's definitely Meeka. Skilled hunter-tracker, nature expert, master archer- and also female.

And then there's Kianna, who doesn't really fit any of those four descriptions. She's the group's prophetess/seer, but she's also a powerful mage with some ranger training.

 

[Steerpike]

There's a difference between identifying societal structures that have developed along male dominated lines, and developing a character herself differently because the character is female. I think that's a mistake and just ends up leading to flat, stereotypical female characters. The best approach to characters of either sex is to simply treat them as people, and assign characteristics in accordance with your view of what the character is like. Once that is done, your character will be put into situations that might be biased against her and she'll react in accordance with what her personality dictates, not with some uniform conception of what a 'woman would do' in that situation.

 

[Devor]

There's a difference between identifying societal structures that have developed along male dominated lines, and developing a character herself differently because the character is female. I think that's a mistake and just ends up leading to flat, stereotypical female characters. The best approach to characters of either sex is to simply treat them as people, and assign characteristics in accordance with your view of what the character is like. Once that is done, your character will be put into situations that might be biased against her and she'll react in accordance with what her personality dictates, not with some uniform conception of what a 'woman would do' in that situation.

I don't understand your point, Steerpike. If I'm going to develop a character, I'm still going to think:

This character grew up a farmer, she's spent all her life toiling the farms, so she's going to think . . . .
This character has two brothers, maybe they treat her poorly, so she'll have to . . . .
Now this character is the chosen lady of destiny, so she'll need to . . . .

What you're saying is that I can't add "woman" to that list? Does being a woman mean so little to the character?

 

[Nihal]

And I don't understand why being a "woman" is relevant. The fact people think that women "think/act differently" just because they're women puzzles me. They might think differently when being a woman in first place put them in different situations, but read something that sounds like "Oh, I'm in the exactly same situation but going to chose this option because I'm a woman!" is, at least, artificial.

Seriously? Read that a female character will focus on, let's say, the losses of war because she's a woman instead of winning the said war offends me. She might do this because she's emotional, not because she is a woman.

 

[Steerpike]

What you're saying is that I can't add "woman" to that list? Does being a woman mean so little to the character?

Sure, you can add it. But what characteristics are you going to add because of it? If you add some solely because you have some idea that it is an immutable characteristic of 'women,' then I think you're making a mistake. People are individuals, not statistics. Individual women run the full gamut of human characteristics. What characteristics are you going to assign the characters that you otherwise would not solely because the character is female?

 

[Steerpike]

Seriously? Read that a female character will focus on, let's say, the losses of war because she's a woman instead of winning the said war offends me. She might do this because she's emotional, not because she is a woman.

That's my view. Some women are emotional. So are some men. In fact, there's no characteristic of personality you can find that is exclusive to one sex or the other, so if you're assigning personality traits based on sex instead of on the character as a person, I think it's a mistake. There's nothing to be gained from it, and the potential to lose yourself in some stereotype.