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Writing from the Female POV

No, because women are never any sort of physical threat whatsoever.

*In case it isn't clear, that was SARCASM, folks.

I'm thinking that I've gone on too long on this subject and am now just pissing people off, so I'm going to answer this one with a link and then leave the subject for other people to pick up if necessary.

Tomgram: Rebecca Solnit, The Longest War | TomDispatch

One of the things to think about when you write your female characters is that perhaps she does feel a bit more threatened on a regular basis than your male characters do.
 

Jabrosky

Banned
They still helped me get a better grasp on writing from the female POV, though, because there are so many different sorts of leading ladies in romance novels whereas your (non-romance) fantasy leads are usually Red Sonja 'man with curves and definitely written by a man' sorts, maybe the occasionally hooker with a heart of gold, and if you're very lucky, you might get a farm girl who is the daughter of the king and has some prophecy about them.
I wonder, would you be interested in a story starring a female ruler? I don't mean a princess or king's wife, mind you, but a woman who rules her country in her own right. I'm writing that kind of heroine right now, and she's a woman of color while we're at it.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
I wonder, would you be interested in a story starring a female ruler? I don't mean a princess or king's wife, mind you, but a woman who rules her country in her own right. I'm writing that kind of heroine right now, and she's a woman of color while we're at it.

Certainly. Women in leadership roles are pretty rare, and the royal ones tend to be princesses who inexplicably have no real power or responsibility despite half of them having dead parents. An actual queen (empress, lady, whatever) is always nice, plus it necessitates a different role for the character than we'd usually see. If a female character has responsibilities, it is either to her father or to her children (e.g., her primary motivator is either to get married or to save/protect her children), having a female character who has responsibilities to her people in some tangible sense would be a chance of pace.

And I always approve of main characters of colour; they are far more rare than female characters, and most of the ones who do appear are men of colour. (Similarly, on the subject of intersectionality, it seems that most queer main characters are also white, gay men...)
 

saellys

Inkling
Is an individual person's experience necessarily a symptom of a problem at large though?

It can be, and attempting to deny or diminish that experience (for instance, by offering a list--approximately thirty authors long, so far--of books the person who had that experience never got to read and presuming there are "tons" of female leads in a sea of men and people have no trouble finding books that feature them) is counterproductive. When people talk about a lack of representation, and the very idea is met with resistance, that is part of the problem.

Threads like this inevitably become post after post of people who have experienced these things defending their experiences and reiterating that it's a problem over and over to people who just don't believe it, until everyone gets tired and gives up or the thread gets locked, and we never reach a point where progress can be made, en masse, to fix the problem. I'd love to have a discussion, just once, where everyone who hasn't experienced these things listens to the people who have, and accepts what they say without trying to convince them that their experiences are irrelevant or not connected to a larger issue.

A small stack of books that happen to be different from the overwhelming majority of what has historically been, and still is, available to the average reader, won't fix things. Let's talk about the books yet to be written, and the evolving fantasy genre we are helping to shape with our own work.
 

T.Allen.Smith

Staff
Moderator
...attempting to deny or diminish that experience (for instance, by offering a list--approximately thirty authors long, so far--of books the person who had that experience never got to read and presuming there are "tons" of female leads in a sea of men and people have no trouble finding books that feature them) is counterproductive. When people talk about a lack of representation, and the very idea is met with resistance, that is part of the problem.

The listing of books in this thread, by many members, was in response to this challenge:
Challenge: name a fantasy story that isn't in a contemporary setting, isn't either "feminist fantasy" or "fantasy romance", is well-written, and has a female character as the primary protagonist (not the sidekick or love interest.)

Simply because someone responded to that challenge does not mean they are resistant to a person's experience or diminishing it in any way. Quite possibly, those individuals merely wished to share their own personal experiences with works that fit the criteria of the challenge & the subject matter at hand. Shouldn't that be encouraged if the genre is going to move towards greater equality in representation?

Many books mentioned, I'd never heard of before. If I wanted to read more stories with female MCs, this would be great information.
 
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saellys

Inkling
The listing of books in this thread, by many members, was in response to this challenge:


Simply because someone responded to that challenge does not mean they are resistant to a person's experience or diminishing it in any way. Quite possibly, those individuals merely wished to share their own personal experiences with works that fit the criteria of the challenge & the subject matter at hand. Shouldn't that be encouraged if the genre is going to move towards greater equality in representation?

Many books mentioned, I'd never heard of before. If I wanted to read more stories with female MCs, this would be great information.

You're absolutely right, and I always appreciate more book recommendations. But I nevertheless want to point out that in numerous threads on this forum, when someone says "I haven't read many fantasy books with ___!" someone else inevitably responds with "Have you read ___?" as if one book would change the fact that there is a huge imbalance in the fantasy genre. I want to make sure that Glutton isn't using the lists people have posted as justification for their apparent belief that there are tons of female-led fantasy books out there and they're totally easy to find.
 
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glutton

Inkling
I want to make sure that Glutton isn't using the lists people have posted as justification for their apparent belief that there are tons of female-led fantasy books out there and they're totally easy to find.

Well it probably is easy to find a ton of female-led fantasy books on say Amazon and for cheap (ebooks) if you look for them, a more accurate statement than 'there are few female-led fantasy books' might be 'there are few heavily marketed and traditionally published female-led fantasy books'.

The former statement (that there are few female-led fantasy books period) just doesn't seem factually true enough not to protest. Heck, you could probably read only female-led fantasy and have plenty of reading material.
 
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Steerpike

Felis amatus
Moderator
Yes, I think that's right. If someone says there are not many female-led fantasy novels, they're making a statement of objective fact (and one that happens to be untrue). You can hardly fault respondents for addressing what they actually said rather than what they intended to say.

If someone indicates that their experience has been such that they haven't seen many female-led stories in the genre, then that's different and there could be a wide variety of explanations, ranging from that they don't have a very broad understanding of the genre to buying decisions of their book stores or libraries, to marketing.

In that regard, here's an interesting article:

Women Genre Authors Much Less Likely to Get Reviewed | The Mary Sue

Lots of women writing in the genre (and no they aren't all writing about male characters) but they aren't getting reviewed.

Some of the statements made about experience are evidence of underlying problems in the market (see Chilari's posts above, where such books simply weren't available to her). But other posts, particularly when presented as objective statements (someone said something above to the effect that they couldn't read novels because the female characters were never well-developed) is just preposterous on its face. It just means they are reading the wrong fiction (and a very limited section of the market indeed). On a writing site a person posting has to be able to say what they mean and those replying are justified in responding to what was said.

As for lists of books, I posted mine in response to a challenge someone made, and frankly the person who made the challenge seems to have an extremely limited range of experience in the Fantasy genre. The question is whether this is evidence of something particular to them or symptomatic of the genre as a whole. For someone growing up in the 1990s or before, I think you can the problems were largely within the genre itself. Speaking from today's vantage point (having just walked through my local Barnes & Noble fantasy section yesterday and given the access to books online) I think you have to say that some of the fault lies with the reader. Unless you live nowhere near a sizable bookstore and are cutoff from the internet, then the only reason you can't find books with well-developed female characters, or plenty of female-led fantasies is that you aren't looking for them.

As indicated by the article above, however, there are issues within the industry as well, and these can still have an effect because of the purchasing habits of many book-buyers (which is limiting in and of itself, but it is what it is). It is (or should be) more of a problem to the general book-buying public than to other writers, who should have a decent understanding of the genre they're trying to write in.
 

Nihal

Vala
I don't know if it matters or not to the authors here, but some people hadn't access to female-led or books with well developed females for another reason beside growing in the 90's-: Language.

If it's not a blockbuster or achieved a certain degree of success no one is going to translate the books. No national publisher will bother to print it. I still have some trouble finding good not-so-famous books in my language, even famous authors don't get translated if it doesn't sell. First, I turned to fan-made translations or Portugal-portuguese books. Now I picked the habit of reading in English, but I'm one in a thousand.

Theeen you can argue I should pick things written by people in my country. Really? I challenge you to find good books in fantasy genre. They're rare, and I bet it's like this in another countries too. Fantasy writing isn't a tradition here—some people frown upon any national author who writes fantasy that has any foreign-inspired element, like if we should use our folklore or nothing—and I would be alienated if I decided to stop reading books from foreign authors.

So, the point about "successful" books with well developed females is valid from an worldwide point of view.
 
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glutton

Inkling
I don't know if it matters or not to the authors here, but some people hadn't access to female-led or books with well developed females for another reason beside growing in the 90's-: Language.

If it's not a blockbuster or achieved a certain degree of success no one is going to translate the books. No national publisher will bother to print it. I still have some trouble finding good not-so-famous books in my language, even famous authors don't get translated if it doesn't sell. First, I appealed to fan-made translations or Portugal-portuguese books. Now I picked the habit of reading in English, but I'm one in a thousand.

Theeen you can argue I should pick things written by people in my country. Really? I challenge you to find good books in fantasy genre. They're rare, and I bet it's like this in another countries too. Fnatasy writing isn't not a tradition here—some people frown upon any national author who writes fantasy that has any foreign-inspired element, like if we should use our folklore or nothing—and I would be alienated if I decided to stop reading books from foreign authors.

So, the point about "successful" books with well developed females is valid from an worldwide point of view.

This is a good point and hopefully the advancement of automated translation technology will help with it.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
One must also consider ease of access to a big book store, particularly when talking about young adults. I'm 21 and I don't have a credit card, nor do the majority of my friends my age or younger. Online shopping is done sparingly and largely through some third party (for me, my husband; for my friends, their parents). We still do a lot of our book shopping at book stores, but... with Borders closed, there are huge areas where there aren't book stores that have entire rows of fantasy and science fiction. The closest Barnes & Noble to my parents' house (where I am staying right now) is far enough out that my mum wouldn't take me there more than twice a year. The closest book store to this place has two shelves of fantasy books, maybe 100 titles in total, and the only non-urban female-lead stories they had were The Mists of Avalon and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. It's been a few years since I was at my old high school, but unless they've done some serious expanding, those two titles are two more than our library had. The only thing I distinctly recall them having was Dragonriders of Pern, which I didn't like much in high school since I didn't like science fiction much at the time. Our local library had a bit more variety, but I had to be driven there by my mom if I ever wanted to take out a book. She was good about buying me books online when I asked for them, but libraries and the local Borders (which went out of business a bit after I graduated; my brother went two years without one) were still where I got the vast majority of the books I'd read in high school, and it's no coincidence that I didn't read many books with female protagonists until I moved to a major city with a school that has one of the biggest libraries in North America and a bookstore dedicated entirely to SFF a twenty minute bus ride from campus.
 

saellys

Inkling
Everything Opiucha said above is applicable to lots of people today, just so we're all clear.

And since we're getting personal about "experience" with the fantasy genre that so many of us don't seem to have, here's another obstacle for you: I don't have a lot of time to read books. I'm raising a kid, fixing up a cargo bike to be my primary vehicle, training with my local roller derby league, and dealing with whatever else comes up in between. I've been reading The Deed of Paksenarrion at mealtimes, between interruptions, for two months and I'm halfway finished. When I have the leisure time to read, I do try to focus my attention on female-centered books, and that often means looking at recommendations like those posted above. But the other problem, the one relevant to this thread in particular, is that sometimes those recommendations are not accurate. People told me for months that The Lions of Al-Rassan had a female protagonist with agency, and when I finally had a chance to read it, I discovered that wasn't true. It was very frustrating, and now I'm hesitant to dedicate several months of reading to a book someone tells me I will like because of the female protagonist.

But the above is just my personal experience, of course.
 

glutton

Inkling
I'm 21 and I don't have a credit card, nor do the majority of my friends my age or younger.

Most online sellers accept debit also, don't they? You just put your debit card info into the credit card info fields. Amazon also accepts direct from bank account payments, and some sellers accept Paypal which can be directly funded from a bank account... kind of surprised since I excepted younger people to be much more savvy about making online payments than me. :)
 
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glutton

Inkling
But the other problem, the one relevant to this thread in particular, is that sometimes those recommendations are not accurate. People told me for months that The Lions of Al-Rassan had a female protagonist with agency, and when I finally had a chance to read it, I discovered that wasn't true. It was very frustrating, and now I'm hesitant to dedicate several months of reading to a book someone tells me I will like because of the female protagonist.

Now this I can definitely sympathize with, and I'm not sure how one would go about getting around this problem beyond reading spoiler-type reviews/comments on the book in question.
 

Nihal

Vala
Most online sellers accept debit also, don't they? You just put your debit card info into the credit card info fields. Amazon also accepts direct from bank account payments, and some sellers accept Paypal which can be directly funded from a bank account... kind of surprised since I excepted younger people to be much more savvy about making online payments than me. :)

Depends upon where you are, again. Paypal doesn't have an agreement with banks from many countries. I don't have a national credit card (I don't like credit cards =P) but I have an international, I got it only to use Paypal because here it's the only way to get cash in your account–unless you're a seller too; and Paypal is my bridge to the world.

It's also wise to mention that international cards aren't the easiest thing to get your hands on, it usually boils down to having a job and proving it.
 

glutton

Inkling
Depends upon where you are, again. Paypal doesn't have an agreement with banks from many countries. I don't have a national credit card (I don't like credit cards =P) but I have an international, I got it only to use Paypal because here it's the only way to get cash in your account—unless you're a seller too; and Paypal is my bridge to the world.

It's also wise to mention that international cards aren't the easiest thing to get your hands on, it usually boils down to having a job and proving it.

Ah okay, I guess we have it super easy here in America... globalization really needs to happen faster at least in terms of providing for worldwide online commerce without such fuss.
 

Ophiucha

Auror
Inane Adult Financial Chatter: Half and half with Canadian banks. The bank I was with until I got married had really awful online banking options - they were literally the only bank of the major four or five that I couldn't make direct payments with for my tuition. You could get it to work with Paypal, but that was about it. Amazon is a bit finicky about accepting the bank stuff from Canadian banks, but I did use it a few times back when I still had an American bank account. My current bank doesn't seem to like Paypal but it will do Amazon Canada without complaining, though Amazon Canada costs more than the American one most of the time, so I don't tend to buy books from them (see also: my reference a few pages ago to me also being poor as heck).

On Topic: Definitely true with the reviews and recommendations. Some of it is just a matter of opinion - one person's 'strong independent woman' is another's oversexualized caricature - but sometimes people will recommend something and it's just, like, a real stretch of the imagination to even call the woman in question the main character. This is particularly true of romances, where the woman might technically be narrating the story, but it's still the man who is the chosen one, the magical one, the dynamic character. The female perspective might be there, but it doesn't do much good if she's not actually doing anything besides telling the story. (Unless you are going for like a Dr. Watson sort of thing, I guess, but then I'd still like a lady as your Sherlock Holmes. And as your Moriarty - Moriarty is like my favourite literary character and I would kill for a good genderbend of him.)

You also have difficulty trusting adaptations, too. Game of Thrones, though the source material had problematic elements, has a lot of unnecessary misogynistic overtones. In a recent episode, a female character (Brienne of Tarth) insulted one of the male characters by comparing him to a woman... when she herself was a woman, and considered women who die in childbirth equally valiant as those who die in combat. In the same scene of the book, she just called him 'craven'. Arya Stark had a similar scene last season, I believe. It's very irritating that they would take these female characters who were, by and large, positive and female-friendly and add so much unnecessary pettiness to the characters (not to mention a couple of extra scenes of assault against these women). I love the show, but it really bothers me that the writers would change that element of the source material.
 
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