Writing from the Female POV

[Mindfire]

I don't think you've been reading my posts. Nothing I've said indicates it is external. Just think about it a minute. If a person can fall anywhere along the spectrum, then the only way to approach it, unless you just want stereotypes, is to treat the character as an individual and not a slave to some likelihood imposed by gender.

THATS WHAT I JUST-

I'm taking a break.

 

[saellys]

If you don't treat your characters differently because of their gender, then that makes there gender useless, and I don't see the point in that.

Egalitarian treatment (from authors and fictional societies alike) does not make gender useless. It doesn't even make gender less interesting. Elizabeth Moon's Paksenarrion trilogy has been brought up a lot in these threads, and I recommend that you check it out. Paks joined a mercenary company that accepted women as well as men. Every recruit was expected to perform the same tasks and undergo the same training, regardless of gender. The company, as an institution, did not treat its soldiers differently based on sex. Some of the soldiers treated each other differently, though, and it was very engrossing to read their interpersonal relationships, good, bad, and neutral.

Later when Paks ventured into the wider world, she encountered all manner of attitudes, which felt as natural and varied as they are right here in the real world. These situations cropped up once every few chapters on average, and in between, Paks didn't give her own gender any thought as she went about her business. Moon clearly chose to write a female protagonist on purpose, but the story didn't feel like she had a preachy agenda because her worldbuilding regarding social attitudes was so solid and the environment felt so natural. Nevertheless, Paks's gender was integral to the story and to the attitudes, at many times, of the characters around her.

 

[FatCat]

So the book would have been the same if the MC was a male? The same themes and motifs apply?

 

[Steerpike]

So the book would have been the same if the MC was a male? The same themes and motifs apply?

No, because the book deals with a lot of externalities of gender in the setting.

 

[Steerpike]

But, Paks isn't the stereotypical woman of her society, which is what some people seem to think we should employ. If she had been, there'd be no story.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

All your female characters don't react the same way to a given situation, I'm sure, but they all "feel" feminine to different degrees, in different ways.

This is important & I agree. We should write our characters as people first. Levels of masculinity or femininity are only one layer of the overall persona.

Would a female MC make a story different from the same story with a male MC? It most certainly could. However, those differences could be differences forced upon characters from the society the live within (maybe not though). Within a fictional world, views on gender could have an impact on the story (for the character's self-view as well as how others perceive them) but it doesn't have to...so, it depends.

I know what you're getting at FatCat. It might affect how the story is told but that choice of how it affects the story is more up to the author, and how the characters are written, than some forced notion of how gender must impact the story.

 

[FatCat]

Exactly, so being conscious of gender is important to writing a character and book. It seems like everyone wants to agree and say that men and women are the same, should be treated and written in the same manner, but that completely destroys gender identity, and makes it impossible for a book like Paksenarrion to be thematic. If the argument is men and women should be written according to stereotypes and devoid of personality traits that aren't derived from their gender, then that's just retarded. But to say that gender should have no influence to the story or the character, to me, is just as silly.

 

[Steerpike]

But to say that gender should have no influence to the story or the character, to me, is just as silly.

But no one is saying that, unless you go out of your way to misread posts to pretend they're saying it

 

[FatCat]

I apply great effort to misreading posts.

 

[Steerpike]

Heh.

I think it can be summed easily - develop your character, as a person, in whatever way you see fit for that character. Then determine her actions based on what she would do as a person. Simple. It could be anything along the spectrum of possibilities. But if you have a character that would do X, and you change it to Y solely because of the fact that the character is female, you're on the wrong track.

 

[FatCat]

So if you're writing a female heterosexual character, changing x=man to y=woman is fine?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Heh.

I think it can be summed easily - develop your character, as a person, in whatever way you see fit for that character. Then determine her actions based on what she would do as a person. Simple. It could be anything along the spectrum of possibilities. But if you have a character that would do X, and you change it to Y solely because of the fact that the character is female, you're on the wrong track.

Yes.

It's fine to consider how gender might affect a character within the societal structure of the story (& how others may view them). It's good to consider how gender might affect the character's self-perception & image. Regardless, you write the character foremost as a person. Gender is no more important an aspect than wealth, race, education level, skill with a sword, etc.

Your character will be far more interesting and realistic if handled in this manner. It will also help to diversify your cast of characters and assist in creating characters that are distinct from one another.

 

[saellys]

Exactly, so being conscious of gender is important to writing a character and book. It seems like everyone wants to agree and say that men and women are the same, should be treated and written in the same manner, but that completely destroys gender identity, and makes it impossible for a book like Paksenarrion to be thematic. If the argument is men and women should be written according to stereotypes and devoid of personality traits that aren't derived from their gender, then that's just retarded. But to say that gender should have no influence to the story or the character, to me, is just as silly.

Yyyyeah, this is the exact opposite of what I said. Paksenarrion was thematic in spite of your claim that it could not possibly be. The author was conscious of her gender without turning it into a defining trait for Paks herself. It was part of her character, but it was far more relevant to the world around her than to Paks. Paks's gender did not shape her decision making process except in situations where it was a factor in an outside influence.

Apropos of nothing in particular, over the course of my time on this forum I have grown quite weary of people insisting on interpreting things I say in ways that have nothing to do with what I actually said. I'm okay with clarifying my points for the sake of a thorough discussion, but I've consistently had to go above and beyond that, and it's exhausting. Not directed at anyone in particular. Just something I need to get off my chest.

 

[FatCat]

I never claimed Paksenarrion wasn't thematic, I was saying that gender identity played an important role in its theme, is this correct? If gender was neutralized, would it have worked in the same way? I don't claim that gender is a defining trait, but I do realize that there are differences between men and women, and according to how they're written, different personalities come about depending on the social construct of gender ideas.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Apropos of nothing in particular, over the course of my time on this forum I have grown quite weary of people insisting on interpreting things I say in ways that have nothing to do with what I actually said. I'm okay with clarifying my points for the sake of a thorough discussion, but I've consistently had to go above and beyond that, and it's exhausting. Not directed at anyone in particular. Just something I need to get off my chest.

An inherent difficulty when discussing complex ideas through small chunks of text only.

Most times the misinterpretation is 50% the fault of the post's author writing in a manner that is less than clear & 50% the reader imposing their own impressions on the words of another.

 

[Addison]

Writing opposite gender is tough, you grow up knowing what you, as a guy or girl, want or not, feel, how you think etc. But then again, as you grew up, you made observations, opinions, and had experience with the opposite gender. (Especially easy if you have a brother or sister) So you could use those observations as window, a platform with the character.

 

[saellys]

I never claimed Paksenarrion wasn't thematic, I was saying that gender identity played an important role in its theme, is this correct?

You said that treating male and female characters the same (which is what happens in Paksenarrion) destroys gender identity. Gender identity in the form of society's perceptions play a role in Moon's books, as sources of minor external conflict. It doesn't get destroyed by Moon's egalitarian treatment of her male and female characters.

If gender was neutralized, would it have worked in the same way? I don't claim that gender is a defining trait, but I do realize that there are differences between men and women, and according to how they're written, different personalities come about depending on the social construct of gender ideas.

What I'm saying here is that for all intents and purposes, gender is neutralized for Paks until the times she encounters someone else's perceptions. Paks's reactions to events are not dictated by her gender, even though at times the events themselves concern her gender. The influence of her gender is external, not internal.

I agree that the social construct of gender influences personality to varying extents between individuals. I do not agree that writing a character so far to one side of that spectrum that she may as well be genderless removes gender as an element from a story, and I'm citing an example to support that. There is more to (almost) any story than just the main character's perspective.

 

[FatCat]

What I'm saying here is that for all intents and purposes, gender is neutralized for Paks until the times she encounters someone else's perceptions.

Ok. /10char

 

[Alex Beecroft]

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.

No, I'm saying that it's literally a survival skill to be able to understand men enough to be able to predict a stranger's behaviour. Is this unknown man in the train carriage with you likely to attack you now the other passengers have got off? (In which case relocating to a different carriage might be a good thing.) Are those youths the happy drunk types or the 'lets have some fun with this lone woman' types? (In which case the benefits of taking the long way home to avoid them outweigh the risks of taking longer to get home.) Is this drunk guy going to back down or is he going to glass me? This situation is getting hairy, is it time to back down myself in order to defuse it?

At work and at home, you can get to know individuals well enough to adjust your understanding of how they behave to take in their individual personalities. With strangers you don't have that degree of fine calibration.

But also, when I say that women find it easier to understand men than men do to understand women, I say it also because we are all surrounded by a culture permeated with stories about men. Stories about sons and their relationships with their fathers. Stories about young men coming into their power - learning to handle it with responsibility (and maybe to get the girl in the process.) It's still quite common for shows and books to have only one woman in the cast, and she's the love interest - so we never get to see what her story is, what she thinks of life, what her hopes and dreams are. The story is not about her. Stories about women and their relationships with their mothers are vanishingly rare. I can only think of "Brave". Stories about girls coming into their power and learning to deal with it responsibly are rare. Fortunately not so rare as they used to be, but still something of a novelty.

Women, from a very early age, find themselves steeped in stories about what it's like, what it means, to be a man. Nobody is steeped in stories about what it's like, what it means, to be a woman. So of course it's easier for both sexes to understand men. Our culture has historically not considered understanding women to be a task worth bothering with, so there are far fewer resources to start off with.

 

[Steerpike]

Alex, even looking at it from a survival standpoint, you're still only working with a likelihood of what a male might do. Not all males act the same in any given circumstance, so you base your actions on risk or likelihood and the potential harm that can result. It makes sense, when dealing with unknowns.

But your characters are not unknowns, nor at they statistical likelihoods. They're individuals. Writing a male or female based on how you think it is likely a male or female reacts means you have an underdeveloped character. Develop her further and you can base her reactions on what she would do as a person, not on some over-broad statistical generalization of how women are supposed to think and behave.