McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Hero vs. Heroine
The Neuromancer:
Does it make much of a difference? I figured that if it is a good story then the characters gender doesn't matter much but I have heard that most people prefer female characters.
What are your thoughts on this?
Btw, I am talking about the supernatural sci-fi genre.
Apocrypha:
I don't see exactly how gender matters as long as the story is entertaining and well written.
Starbeam:
I don't think it's so much that people prefer female characters as much as most of the urban fantasy being written is by female authors, and most tend to use female characters.
Snowleopard:
I like a well written story no matter what the gender of the protagonist is.
What I don't like is when someone, not so frequent now, does a action type fantasy heroine that is obviously just a guy in a girl suit.
A strong woman does NOT have to be a , pardon the crudity, a ball less guy.
JB does great women characters. Another writer who did great women was James Schmidtz.
Electric MacButters:
[rant powers activate!]
The question I would ask is which gender are you more comfortable being flawed? One of the big reasons I like JB is that male or female, all his characters are are flawed. It has become one of my pet peeves that in the past few years, nearly all the urban fantasy with female protagonists (and a LOT have female protagonists) she ends up being some sort of goddess (real or otherwise) who will always 'just happen' to have made all the right choices throughout both the book and her life to come together like a demented Rube Goldberg/M.C. Esher brainchild at the moment the villan finishes his/her/its monologe ('Oh! The muscley antiques dealer I have been passionately dating since chapter 2 gave me the key to the lost treasure of Shangra La as a secret santa present! Now I can send Davy Jones back to the land of dragons by combining it with the kitschy lamp I bought at a swap meet!')
This is by no means limited to female characters, but it seems decidedly more common than with male characters. Maybe it's just easier to imagine a guy having to work at it while his mistakes come back to bite him in the ass?
[rant over]
Personally, I don't read books to hear about how perfect the protagonist is; that's what video games are for. :)
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version