Female characters: how necessary?

Brian G Turner

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aka: How important is gender for accessibility?

How important are female characters for female readers for accessing a novel?

My presumption is that good strong and varied female leads pontentially make a book much more compelling for the female reader.

However, how flawed is that assumption? Does the gender of the protagonists really matter to readers?
 
Gender is important if the point the writer has making has something to do with gender... but it's not that important for accessability. However, it's difficult to write a book which explores people and the ways people react if everyone is one gender... how can you represent human behaivour if only one gender is written about? Spec fic is paricularly poor in this respect, as if often ommits the importance of characterization anyway... am I making sense?

Brian, the 'female reader' has presumably the same needs as the male reader- i.e interesting writing/plot/characterisation. We can read things which aren't about women, you know.
 
I don't particularly care what gender is being written about as long as it's worth reading. I would imagine most female readers would feel the same (but not being female, I don't really know :D )

However, from a writer's point of view, I've always thought that it would probably be quite a challenge to write in the opposite gender (and even more of a challenge to do it well). :)
 
Or it proves how much of a non-issue the whole thing is. Look at Ripley. I don't really mind either way, and it seems that in most cases the gender of characters is interchangeable (although you might have to reverse everyone for consistency).

Incidentally, Paul Verhoven made the point that in Starship Troopers both Rico and Carmen have secondary relationships, but whereas viewers thought that the thing between Rico and Dizzy was fine, they disliked Carmen for doing the exact same thing just as honestly, if not in a more acceptable manner. Good example of the double standard in action.

More females should reply to this thread.
 
I don't think that a novel or short story needs female characters to make it accessible to female readers. Maybe it's just me, but I can identify with male characters as well as female characters.

Although I can think of circumstances in which one might write a story with all male or all female characters, I think stories with characters of both genders can explore the human condition more fully and with more complexity. But I don't think a story with all male characters would be any less accessible to me than a story with all female characters.
 
As a woman who has read (at least I like to think) alot, I have to admit that it is not necessary to have many or even major female characters to be able to enjoy/understand/relate to a book... think of Tolkien if you don't get what I mean.
But in saying this, the characters I have always been able to see myself in most strongly and empathize with are females. Yet this is not just because they have been labeled chicks and wear skirts, but because the writer has been skilled enough to realize that woman are very different to men (hate to shatter all those fmeinist theories, but gender does make a difference) and the writer has made them respond to situations and their internal thought process both be affected by this. They are therefore believable.
The important thing isn't that half the characters in a book be female, or even that they are strong woman, but that they are actually written as believable characters that are not just two dimensional.
And if woman want more female role models out there as characters in books, maybe they should pick up a pen and start writing, instead of complaining about it.
Sorry. Don't really know how much of that made sense. It's been somthing I've been thinking about in terms of screenwriting and female characters in movie, but hadn't actually translated into books.
 
Female characters are important to me. While I can understand certain scenarios where they might not be very important, I still have a hard time relating to a manly-man, all male cast. That's one of my biggest hurdles when it comes to Tolkien - where are all the girls?

My father raised me with Ripley, Sarah Conner, Red Sonja (cringe), and Conan's Valeria as role models. It took a long time for me to realize that the real world doesn't work that way. For me, Kyra was the best part of "The Dark Crystal." I remember being distinctly annoyed that the Childlike Empress didn't get out of bed and help Atreyu kick some Fantasia butt.

That said, strong, sympathetic male characters can make up for a lot of the deficit. The two male main characters of Carol Berg's "Transformation" were wonderful, and females in that book were mostly transitory. I hated all of the female characters in Anne Bishop's "Black Jewels" trilogy. I despise books like "The Mists of Avalon" because they are so female-centric. So I guess . . . it's more an issue of characterization. Characters have to be real, no matter what the gender. There's just such a sad tendancy for females to be written as hair-flipping, back-biting harpies - like being a bitch makes for stong character. Jordan is very guilty of this.

Bottom line: if it's well written, gender doesn't matter. If it's poorly written, gender could make the difference as to whether I read it or not.

Lucifer
 
I've never really thought of reading a book just because it has female characters or not. It doesn't matter to me as long as I am enjoying what I am reading.:)
 
That reminds me- the comment about fantasy heroines often being annoying- of something I'm sure I've posted before, but here it is again anyway:

The 3 types of annoying fantasy heroine

1. The nasty one: always nasty and mean, whatever the circumstances, just so irritating and moody. You wouldn't want to meet this one on a dark night.
2. The soppy one: this one is just as annoying as the above- she can't seem to make her own decisions, is probably very young, has done something silly like run away from home, and cries all the time.
3. The brisk one: this one acts all brisk and organised and bossy, also extremly aggravating.

Real women aren't like that..... so why do fantasy authors think they are? They need to actually think about characterization more.
 
The thing is, I can't remember ever reading a novel with a strong female character until I was in about eighth grade, which is when I first read "Gone With The Wind". I would defintely consider Scarlett O'Hara a strong female character. And, when you think about it, so was Melanie Wilkes, in her quieter way. So, I guess I got used to identifying with male characters, because they were the only interesting characters around.

I do think maybe I compensated for not finding novels with strong female characters when I was young by reading a lot about women who had made contributions in real life. I read everything I could get my hands on about Amelia Earhart, Helen Keller, and Marie Curie. They made up for a lot that was lacking in fiction.
 
It's already been said - the gender doesn't matter as long as the characterizations are real and the stories good. Sure, I enjoy reading about strong female characters, but I also enjoy strong male characters as well. I've never not read a book because of the gender of the characters and I've never read one solely on the basis of the gender either. The story comes first, then characterization. I've always felt that a good story could have all the characters replaced with the opposite gender and still be a good story.

That being said, I was really annoyed when the gender of the characters in Jurassic Park were switched for the film :D go figure, I'm a contrary female :p
 
I've always felt that a good story could have all the characters replaced with the opposite gender and still be a good story.
That's a fascinating theorem - and I'm sure there must be exceptions. How would Jane Eyre work with the genders reversed, for instance? Could it? Hmmm...
 
And how the blended the racial characteristics of Arby with the brashness of Kelly, and none of the smarts of either. Ire.
 
Esioul said:
Gender is important if the point the writer has making has something to do with gender... but it's not that important for accessability. However, it's difficult to write a book which explores people and the ways people react if everyone is one gender... how can you represent human behaivour if only one gender is written about? Spec fic is paricularly poor in this respect, as if often ommits the importance of characterization anyway... am I making sense?

Brian, the 'female reader' has presumably the same needs as the male reader- i.e interesting writing/plot/characterisation. We can read things which aren't about women, you know.

That's sum up everything IMO.
 
i wouldn't say that i am too bothered at all by the gender of characters in fantasy/sci-fi books...

though there is one niggle i have...

most of the female characters in this genre tend to fall into one of a few categories: Royality, harlots, ordinary slum dwellers, peasants (in the countryside)... and that tends to be it...

and whenever a strong male character comes into the scene, then the women just faun over him... one example that i can think of is in Magician (by Raymond E Feist) where Queen Aglaranna of the elves meets Thomas (the castle boy who dons the armour of the last of the Valheru) and this 1000+ year old queen suddenly falls for him like a simpering schoolgirl... it just doesn't fit right...

i like strong female characters that don't scream at the first spider that appears in the shower, or that can only get employment on their backs or from washing clothes in the local mud hole...

i like the characters by mark anthony in the last rune series... they are strong, determined women who can kick some serious bum!!!

i also like characters of different hues and who bring different perspectives to the story...
 
The Master™ said:
i wouldn't say that i am too bothered at all by the gender of characters in fantasy/sci-fi books...

though there is one niggle i have...

most of the female characters in this genre tend to fall into one of a few categories: Royality, harlots, ordinary slum dwellers, peasants (in the countryside)... and that tends to be it...

and whenever a strong male character comes into the scene, then the women just faun over him... one example that i can think of is in Magician (by Raymond E Feist) where Queen Aglaranna of the elves meets Thomas (the castle boy who dons the armour of the last of the Valheru) and this 1000+ year old queen suddenly falls for him like a simpering schoolgirl... it just doesn't fit right...

That's just bad characterization. And fanboy wetty dreams put on paper.
And unfortunatly not restricted to fantasy, last author I can think of with the same tendancies is Chuck Austen, a comic writer who successvly disfigured X-Men, Avengers and Superman.
 
I was told years ago that the accepted wisdom at SF/Fantasy publishing houses was "Girls will read stories about boys, but boys won't read stories about girls." This was obviously back in the days when the majority of fans were still geeky young males, though curiously most of the editors were females.

This was also back in the days (I remember them well) when it was possible to go all the way through high school English classes without being assigned more than one or at most two books by female writers. (And that one was usually "To Kill a Mockingbird" by the somewhat confusingly named Harper Lee.) This was in the US, I hasten to add. Teenagers in the UK may have been reading Jane Austen in class even then for all that I know. The point I am trying to make is that females in this part of the world were brought up in those days to feel quite comfortable reading about the male viewpoint, whereas young males were almost never exposed to books written by the opposite gender.

But the world has changed since then. There are lots more female SF/Fantasy readers and writers. Boys and girls alike grow up reading books by women as well as men. Also, periodically, SF/Fantasy publishing houses are reminded of the fact that more than half of the fiction readers, in this country at least, are women -- and they would dearly love to lure in a larger proportion of that particular market, away from the romance genre. Sadly, this sometimes means replacing one set of stereotypes for another.

I was greatly bemused when one reviewer spoke of "The Hidden Stars" as a feminist alternative to the standard fantasy novel, just because it includes some strong women among its cast of characters. It certainly doesn't address any gender issues, though it does have its share of powerful, confident females. So maybe the definition of feminism is changing, too.
 
it seems to be a distrurbing trend within any genre, except where a female writer does a better job on the characters... but then you get a switch and all the men are suddenly nasties...

so, i suppose there will be the rare occassion where they are more true-to-life representation of the sexes!!! ;)
 
I heard, but cannot confirm, that women buy significantly more books than men. If this is true then I think keeping women in mind when writing is a very good idea. Anyone with real statistics???

I also agree with some others here that appealing to women readers doesn't necessarily mean sticking in women characters (especially if they are written as men - and I don't mean this in a sexist way - but sometimes one gets the feeling when reading a book that the gender of a character was changed to female as an afterthought.) :rolleyes:
 
That's one of my pet peeves, too, women who are written as though they were really men in women's (usually rather well endowed) bodies.

I doubt that the gender of such characters is really an afterthought, though (as much as it may seem that way). I believe that it is more a case of the authors thinking that the only really admirable traits that such a character could possibly have (aside from beauty and sexual availablity) are the traditionally masculine ones.
 

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