McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Writing from a different gender perspective
Aludra:
Honestly... From what I've read, there are more male writers than female writers who can write females well.
Getting a reader of both genders to check the perspective makes sense, regardless of the writer-character gender combination.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Aludra on October 14, 2009, 02:57:10 PM ---Honestly... From what I've read, there are more male writers than female writers who can write females well.
--- End quote ---
Define "write females well".
Gender is largely a social construct. When I bounce my work of my betas, I've never had complaints about doing male or female characters less plausibly - there are directions, like writing people with social confidence (I am a recovering pathologically shy person), that I find a great deal harder to get into than gender-related stuff. That said, I mostly don't write contemporary settings, because I have equally little sympathy for female or male contemporary gender roles (princesses and "guys" irritate me equally; my own gender identification is "geek"); I'm interested in writing about people who are themselves first, not their gender first.
I suspect a lot of what I write might not work for people who have deeply held notions about gender being essential and fundamental difference much larger than any difference between individuals, but, well, those people are wrong, so I'm not inclined to give them much time, and furthermore, writing for them is a no-win double-bind; write a gender that's not yours like you, they say your male characters feel like women or vice versa; write a gender that's not yours not like you, it comes across as made up out of whole cloth rather than anything real.
Fortunately, writing in genre gives me aliens, angels and AIs to play with.
Aludra:
"writes females well" defined as: How Jim writes in Codex Alera. (LOVE IT)
does not "write females well" defined as: LKH. Seriously. Ick. I love her monsters and some of her male characters. I want to kill Anita. Which would display immense talent if that were her goal. I don't think it is, though.
I'll further say that it's not so much a "HEY your lady isn't lady-like" as a "Hey! Just because your character is a woman doesn't mean she's obsessed with her nails! Really!" thing.
lt_murgen:
Writing well for the opposite gender is difficult at times. But the other posters are correct- a well defined history and motivation is key to any well written character. This is particularly true when the motivations may be related to a gender that you are not familiar with.
Let me explain by way of my epiphany, some years ago.
I was watching the movie "Aliens" when it first was released on DVD. It was with a group of chatty friends, including my arch nemesis (and wife's best friend) who I shall call Dr. Feminist. I made the comment that in the original script for the first movie, Ripley was supposed to be a man. Her reply opened my eyes:
"That wouldn't make sense. The whole reason Ripley was the hero was because she was the groups mother- protecting them from the big bad monsters that they didn't know were lurking out there."
She was right! Viewed in the light of the mother-protector concept, the movie Aliens becomes the story of two matriarchs defending their brood against the other. Not heroism, not sacrifice, but the preservation of their species. I watched it again later, and saw a whole new depth to the movie I had missed before.
Shecky:
*shrug* For my money, it was just because it made the "win" all the more dramatic.
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