An interesting article about writing female characters

swap the genders

I thoroughly recommend this - it's a great way to reveal hidden pitfalls, and inspire better character development.

I agree the article raises points that could be avoided. However I think if you can swap the gender without it making a difference then the character development is missing something. I think there are subtle differences in how male/female characters do things which can make a better character. I'm not advocating massive differences, which is what the article is trying to draw attention to.

A quick search online found the following article. I've highlighted a few of interest

50 REAL Differences Between Men & Women

Men & women don't see in the same way - The male retina is thicker.
Females hear better than males
Women also exhibit a stronger emotional response to the anticipation of pain
Males are More Likely to Overestimate Their Ability
Men are more likely to perceive a neutral face as unfriendly
Women read subtle emotion better than men
Males and females are not empathetic in the same way
Contrary to popular belief, it's men that fall in love at first sight
Men are more comfortable lying to the opposite sex
Women navigate using landmarks, men navigate using cardinals and distance
A woman's brain is more 'flexible' than a man's
 
I agree the article raises points that could be avoided. However I think if you can swap the gender without it making a difference then the character development is missing something. I think there are subtle differences in how male/female characters do things which can make a better character. I'm not advocating massive differences, which is what the article is trying to draw attention to.
But there are also subtle differences between every person regardless of gender.

Just to take one example, "Females hear better than males" - how is that subtle difference going to make how you portray a character's gender different? Unless you have a hundred females and a hundred males doing something in the story where better hearing is an advantage, it's unlikely.

I guess what I'm also saying is there are always going to be exceptions to the rules.
 
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But there are also subtle differences between every person regardless of gender.

Just to take one example, "Females hear better than males" - how is that subtle difference going to make how you portray a character's gender different? Unless you have a hundred females and a hundred males doing something in the story where better hearing is an advantage, it's unlikely.

I guess what I'm also saying is there are always going to be exceptions to the rules.


Hehe, I can answer that with two words... Sam Elliot

It is not that you can actually "hear him better," it is simply that his voice has a resonance, a cadence and tempo that goes right to your core. So, what it is saying is that though women may or may not actually "hear" better, women are more attuned to very minor variations of tone. Certain combinations will illicit "x-feeling," and others will inspire 'y, z, etc.' sensations.

Though I've not studied it, if I had to guess I would assume it goes back to primal times when a female had to be aware of her surroundings by being stationary (IOW, locked in a hiding location with young). Men in contrast were more mobile. Therefor, they might miss a sound more easily in motion themselves, yet, the ability to pick out threats/prey via visual cues would be important.

How that would apply to a story could be very involved. Just grazing the surface, a man might see this, next scene visually catch that, next etc., using sight as their primary sense, and in contrast the woman hears this that or the other inspiring XYZ emotional intuition.

Ex.:
Mary set her hand to Bob's chest to get him to stop. She wasn't sure, yet she heard a subtle groan of metal echo through the ship that filled her with dread.
"What's wrong with you?" Bob asked.
"Didn't you hear that, something is wrong," Mary replied.
"Get back!" Bob suddenly shouted noting the far end of the hallway shift to the right ever so slightly.
"Why?" Mary asked.
Etc..

K2
 
From a writing point of view, the points where a writer will need to say "men do this, and women do that" will surely be very few indeed. If we're talking about individual characters, then they won't be "typical" men or women, and will need to be approached as one-offs - ie, not "Does this character a convincing woman?" but "Is this woman a convincing character?", which I think is more than just semantics. Of course, some might be more or less stereotypical than others, but that's about it.

On the other hand, the occasions when a group of men or women (as opposed to both together, as per a crowd, or them acting under one person's orders) will all have to act in the same way will be pretty rare too. I suppose a rampaging mob might be predominantly male (maybe), but that's the main thing that springs to mind.
 
But there are also subtle differences between every person regardless of gender.

This is probably along the lines of what I was thinking. By changing the gender of the character you are replacing them with a different person. When I view characters in my imagination they each have their own mannerisms, some of which probably won't end up on the page. By changing the gender I would essentially be creating a new character with different mannerisms.


I guess what I'm also saying is there are always going to be exceptions to the rules.

Yes absolutely.
 
For me, it's not so much that I want to write "female" characters but rather that I don't want to fall into the usual pitfalls and traps (especially as I'm an inexperienced writer).

What it comes down to is that I want all of my characters to have depth. The diversity of male characterizations in literature means that I have dozens of examples of, for example, a "respected, eldery scholar" who happens to be male. When I'm writing a character like that, I try to avoid the stereotypes (the wise and kind-hearted mentor or the equally common head-up-his-*** bumbling fool) and I work to find a distinctive personality for him.

Unfortunately, much of the fantasy and scifi I grew up with did not give any depth to female (and minority and LGBT) characters, meaning that, in some respects, I have to be more aware of stereotypical portrayals and how such characters have been used as nothing more than plot devices. As a result, when I work at giving my female characters distinctive roles and personalities, I am more aware of their gender. As I said, it's not so much that I'm trying to write a "female" character but, rather, that I'm trying to avoid stereotypes. In all of my characters.

The funny thing is, once I started considering the roles and personalities of my female characters, it made me go back and rethink the male ones, as well. I think it has helped me come up with better male characters. The stereotypes of masculinity portrayed in a lot of literature have likely done as much damage to our society as those of feminity.
 
Without looking at the article...

Obviously you can only do your best and try to be observant and empathetic, but I think that can only get you so far sometimes. It seems to me, for example, that friendship between females is often quite different than friendship between males. The closer I am to my male friends, the more we (jokingly) insult each other. I don't observe that happening between my female friends. So I could try to write their kind of friendship based on observation, but to me it wouldn't seem as real; there would be something missing. I like to think that my female characters are reasonably portrayed (and women beta-readers seem to have found them okay, bar a few details I've tried to correct) but I'm pretty sure they'd be quite different if a woman wrote them.

We've already been over this one and the extent to which this isn't quite true, but at the same time, the way we conduct social relations is one of those areas where I do there's a notable difference between the average man and the average woman (at least in mixed company) and where ignoring it can lead to things feeling wrong. I know that in a lot of male dominated groups, there's a big difference on how women come across depending on whether they're one of the lads or not.

I just finished reading the Wheel of Time series a week ago, which is perhaps the most known gender-separated magic system in popular fantasy, and honestly, nothing about the implied commentary on gender even slightly occurred to me. I can pick it out I suppose, at the blogger's promoting, with the differences in how men or women must use the power... but wow, I can only imagine what a drag the whole series would have been if I'd been thinking about that the whole time as a comment on genders (rather than how I took it: a comment on a fictional magic world).

Is it an inherent bias of my own (a blindness in this case) that I was able to read it without those kinds of constant reflections? Or is this a more a case of, you can find what you look for, meaning some readers will see this sort of thing and others won't?

Bit of Column A and bit of column B but I have to say, in some cases, the commentary on gender is a bit more than implied and Wheel of Time is definitely one of those cases. I forget when it started to occur to me that the entire series read very easily as a commentary on gender dynamics but once I did, I saw it everywhere in that series and a lot of things made more sense. I'd go so far as to say that reading WoT without seeing any gender commentary is a bit like reading Narnia without seeing anything about Christianity.

edit: Aaaaaaand reading the article and there it is in point 3... yes, the male characters spend a lot of time going on how about strange and inscrutable women are. The women do the same back. And the men spend a lot of time thinking about how the other men have got it together and would know what to do while the other men think the exact same thing back. And the women do it. Wheel of Time is a fantastic Rorschach test, I'll say that much.
 
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I think the best female characters are those that pull their braids and smooth their skirts.

On a serious note - there seems to be a common theme from some in this thread (there is clearly a counter narrative) that male and female is a completely interchangeable trait, like swapping out brunette and blonde hair. For me, if a character was to change gender then the entire story/their character changes - men and women aren't just interchangeablefeatures in a story, being a man, or being a woman, is a core part of someones identity and character.

If an all powerful author writing my story could change my gender I wouldn't be the same person - so much of who you are is formed by your life experiences - you can't change someones gender without changing their entire life and the person they have become - at least IMO.
 
... is a bit like reading Narnia without seeing anything about Christianity.

lol... I guess I’m just thick.

I realized this only much later when I encountered CS’s other works, like Mere Christianity, and learned about his stance on using fiction to express his understanding of real-world truths.

In my defense, I read the fantasy genre specifically to escape the sorts of things I have to process in the living world, so perhaps that is my bias against considering these kinds of connections. It didn’t occur to me that wasn’t normal.
 
lol... I guess I’m just thick.

I realized this only much later when I encountered CS’s other works, like Mere Christianity, and learned about his stance on using fiction to express his understanding of real-world truths.

In my defense, I read the fantasy genre specifically to escape the sorts of things I have to process in the living world, so perhaps that is my bias against considering these kinds of connections. It didn’t occur to me that wasn’t normal.

Nothing wrong with setting your mental settings to "Do Not Scan". I love subtext, so I see a lot of it, but I don't really unravel a lot of detective stories because I don't want to.
 
The Bible would be more entertaining if Jesus were a giant talking lion who is also magical.
 
The main problem for a lot of men is that their main relationships with women are sexual.

This means that at least an unconscious level the female characters they write end up sexualized - hence why women characters often stop to think about their breasts, or wonder how sexy they might look.

And if a woman character ever needs something to have struggled against to define them, then it's almost always sexual violence they've had to endure and survive (and even continue to do so). Almost never for male characters - because the writer doesn't define them in sexual terms.

Hence why I recommend swapping out character genders - because once you start doing this, it's easier to recognize and challenge such assumptions and change them. And once you do free characters of such restraints, it's easier to develop them better as individuals - as people.

Men just don't realize how much they are defined by their own gender, because the society we live in treats it as a normative experience, and rarely challenges it.
 
The main problem for a lot of men is that their main relationships with women are sexual.

This means that at least an unconscious level the female characters they write end up sexualized - hence why women characters often stop to think about their breasts, or wonder how sexy they might look.

And if a woman character ever needs something to have struggled against to define them, then it's almost always sexual violence they've had to endure and survive (and even continue to do so). Almost never for male characters - because the writer doesn't define them in sexual terms.

Hence why I recommend swapping out character genders - because once you start doing this, it's easier to recognize and challenge such assumptions and change them. And once you do free characters of such restraints, it's easier to develop them better as individuals - as people.

Men just don't realize how much they are defined by their own gender, because the society we live in treats it as a normative experience, and rarely challenges it.
You know, for a bit, I thought we were just going to disagree on this issue, but this last post got me thinking.

There is a big problem with oversexualization of women in nearly all forms of fiction, SFF not excepted. And, unfortunately, I think you are right about the cause. Many men simply do not cultivate platonic friendships with women, and this leads to a massive lack of understanding about women in general, as well as a significantly misinformed perspective of female characters in fiction. So, from the context of understanding if a female character is sexualized, then yes, swapping genders could be a good exercise. Better, though, may be to make some platonic female friends, but in lieu of that...

That said, I don't think I could ever get behind the idea of there being no difference in any sense between male and female characters, so that a gender swap would be useful for other sorts of checks. Then again, I also don't see male as a default gender, so perhaps I look at the world differently than most. But, living in a house of women and comparing it to the house of men I grew up in, there are, decidedly, some differences. For example, I have never, once, considered my sleeping attire based on their aesthetic value (it is strictly a combination of comfort and temperature), but my nearly 6 year old will not wear pajamas which aren't pretty, or at least cute. No. Matter. What. I am convinced that she would maintain this insistence under the threat of death. But, what many male writers don't seem to understand is that "pretty" and "sexy" are two radically different descriptors, often with different audiences and objectives in mind. Obviously, my daughter couldn't care less about the latter, but the former? Life and death.

When it comes to fiction, we shouldn't shy away from the legitimate differences, even though we absolutely should shy away from the oversexualization that often occurs (unless that is what we are exploring, of course!). The goal, ultimately, should be realistic, believable, relatable characters who are just as complex as the species which inspired them. It seems to me that this requires non-accidental character traits, including gender and/or sex. I could be wrong, and I welcome the correction if I am. But, I like characters that remind me of real people... neither androgynous or sexualized.
 
The main problem for a lot of men is that their main relationships with women are sexual.

This means that at least an unconscious level the female characters they write end up sexualized - hence why women characters often stop to think about their breasts, or wonder how sexy they might look.

And if a woman character ever needs something to have struggled against to define them, then it's almost always sexual violence they've had to endure and survive (and even continue to do so). Almost never for male characters - because the writer doesn't define them in sexual terms.

Hence why I recommend swapping out character genders - because once you start doing this, it's easier to recognize and challenge such assumptions and change them. And once you do free characters of such restraints, it's easier to develop them better as individuals - as people.

Men just don't realize how much they are defined by their own gender, because the society we live in treats it as a normative experience, and rarely challenges it.


I agree that most relationship from the point of view of men with women are either evertly sexual or familial. I had two very good female friends growing up - one of them in High School who was very attractive, everyone was convinced we were secretly dating and couldn't understand that I found that weird.

I disagree with your second point, I think both genders are defined by their gender and it has a huge impact on their development - I don't think it is just men who fail to realize the effects of gender on their psyche - I think both can make that error.

I am not sure swapping out genders would be beneficial to me - do you need to re-write their sections or do you literally just do a find and replace on names and gendered pronouns? I'm just interested in how you do this in practice and the impact it has on your work?
 
I disagree with your second point, I think both genders are defined by their gender and it has a huge impact on their development - I don't think it is just men who fail to realize the effects of gender on their psyche - I think both can make that error.

That's true, but I don't think some male writers realize just how culturally rather than personally defined their view of women is, which is my point. Most women writers, on the other hand, have grown up in a society where the male lead is the norm and something they've had to learn to adapt to.

I am not sure swapping out genders would be beneficial to me - do you need to re-write their sections or do you literally just do a find and replace on names and gendered pronouns?

Even just swapping out gender pronouns may help reveal not just hidden stereotypes, but also inspire the writer to think more deeply about their characters and their development.
 
That's true, but I don't think some male writers realize just how culturally rather than personally defined their view of women is, which is my point. Most women writers, on the other hand, have grown up in a society where the male lead is the norm and something they've had to learn to adapt to.

With the exception of UF and Romance - that's predominantly a female dominated market - I do catch your broader though and do agree somewhat. It sort of ties in with how female authors write male characters - I'm going to start a thread on it this evening because I find it very interesting.

I made a conscious decision a number years ago - after realizing I read mostly male SFF authors, to actively read more female written SFF and I did notice a change in flavor between the two genders writing and their characterization of their leads. If I am completely honest before I started reading female written SFF I sort of avoided it in a prejudicial way, mostly subconsciously and only when I stopped to think did I start to address this.

As I said upthread I think the best way to write believable characters is to have believable motives and I am not sure that men and women will ever understand the others motives exactly, women are from Venus after all. :) On that note I wonder if you could train an AI (using language analysis) to differentiate between fiction written by men and fiction written by women - I wonder how much structural and tonal differences can be attributed to gender rather than specific writer.
 

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