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Jaeh:
which is harder, a female author pulling off a male protagonist, or a male author pulling off a female protagonist?

 I'm trying to write something here, and I'm using a male protagonist (I'm.. er, female) so... I just thought I'd ask.

Nickeris86:
hmmm that's an interesting question.

honestly i don't think its harder for eaither gender too write about the other. i have known some people who have no trouble writing the oposit gender belivably as main charecters. me personally i never really put that much effort into creating female main charecters, the one time that i made the main charecter female i made her very much a tom boy.

its my opinion that it depends on the person writing and their own style and mind set. some people can think as a man or a women and do a descent job of it, most however can not because that's just not he way they think.

emgirl:
Personally, I think that men or women simply take what they admire/dislike from the other and use that as a springboard...as in attitudes, mannerisms, speaking. For instance, men are much choppier speaking to other men then a women speaking to other women. Good luck!!!

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:

--- Quote from: Jaeh on April 25, 2010, 07:30:04 AM ---which is harder, a female author pulling off a male protagonist, or a male author pulling off a female protagonist?

--- End quote ---

I don't think either are necessarily particularly hard.

Writing the opposite sex in contemporary society's specific gender roles is something a lot of writers mess up, but that's not necessarily the same thing.  In that, say, a man who is very much male-socialised may well mess up what female-socialised feels like from the inside and vice versa. Personally, I can't make head or tail of either strongly male-identified or strongly female-identified people in real life, so I just generally write characters who aren't that caught up in gender roles; no macho jocks, no Disney princesses.  Plenty of room left for geeks for ascetics and asexuals, angels, aliens, AIs, and that's only the start of the alphabet.

Reil:
I've seen it butchered either way.  I tend to write from the female perspective often as not.  Could be because I grew up surrounded by women/girls, could be because I'm more motivated to understand the female psyche, could be I watched too many Joss Whedon stories, I dunno, but more than half of my PoV characters seem to have ovaries.

Edited because I spelled psyche "psychi"

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