Cross-gender MCs

lucidzfl said:

I'd put money on a table that not one of those women considers them self a "traditional woman"

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As I said in the post you quoted, every one of them would claim to be unique.

RJK said:

The WIP I've just started has a female protagonist, and a devout Muslim on top of that. You can't get further from me or my personality. It will be interesting to see how successful I am with her.

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Good for you! Stretching your legs is always a good thing for your writing. You'll probably bring back some useful stuff for the future, when you write characters more like yourself. Or that's how I feel when I write a character that goes outside my personal boundaries.

JoNightshade said:

As I said in the post you quoted, every one of them would claim to be unique.

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Whoops. I gotta remember not to do 2 things at once

sleepsheep said:

I write a character that fits the story, so I hardly ever set out to create a specifically male or female protagonist. I create the character first, and the gender falls into place as I develop the idea.

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Characters and their situations just pop into my head.

maestrowork said:

I don't see what gender has to do with that, though, unless you mean "gender" as in one of the things that is unlike you. That I can understand: I wrote about female MCs a lot, too. But I also write males. So I guess I am genderdextrous.

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I suppose my main problem is that I have a hard time writing the relationships that female main characters have with other characters. That's why it's not as huge a problem if it's a secondary/tertiary character, because most of the time the only important relationship that character's having (for the purposes of the story) is with the male MC, so it's easier. But when I'm writing a relationship between a girl and her boyfriend, or her mother, or god forbid her sister (that's the hardest for me, as a girl with a sister and no brothers) from a female point of view, I feel a lot closer to it personally. Whenever I write a relationship between two sisters, it always bears a pretty strong resemblance to my relationship with my sister. Which wouldn't be too major a problem except that I don't understand my relationship with my sister, because I can only see it from my very limited perspective. I can't write it convincingly because I don't understand it.

Shady Lane said:

Whenever I write a relationship between two sisters, it always bears a pretty strong resemblance to my relationship with my sister. Which wouldn't be too major a problem except that I don't understand my relationship with my sister, because I can only see it from my very limited perspective. I can't write it convincingly because I don't understand it.

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That's what editing is for, to help you grow as a writer. Trust me, when I write about a relationship between sisters, it always starts out as my relationship with my sisters, which I definitely don't understand. Then I force myself to go back and imagine what other relationships could exist. That way, I'm testing new possibilities and learning to write things differently than my first reaction. Otherwise, you never get beyond a "very limited perspective." Plus, it's like free therapy.

I know. I'm working on it.

Shady Lane said:

I know. I'm working on it.

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You can do eeet! (And yes, I have bought BREAK. Now, if only my TBR pile weren't becoming a structural element in my house...)

Kaitie, when you're writing your girl characters, listen to them. Don't think to yourself that they'll be like this or like that, let them just be themselves. Once you have established a female character enough, she will show/tell you who she is and her traits will soon come out into written words.

Redzilla said:

You can do eeet! (And yes, I have bought BREAK. Now, if only my TBR pile weren't becoming a structural element in my house...)

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Put BREAK on the top, come on now.



Seriously, it's such a titchy little thing. The font is REALLY big. You can read it in 2 hours tops.

Shady Lane said:

Put BREAK on the top, come on now.



Seriously, it's such a titchy little thing. The font is REALLY big. You can read it in 2 hours tops.

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It's true, I think I did it in 2.5.

I'm a guy's girl, but I've always written women MCs. I might not be a regular girl but I've befriended and been around enough of them to write one convincingly. Never tried writing a guy. It would be interesting.

JoNightshade said:

Imagine walking into an entire room filled with women who love scrapbooking, just want to be mommies, love talking about shopping for clothes, spend time trading recipes for baked goodies, and would LOVE to attend the ladies' fashion show this weekend. If they read at all, they like heartwarming stories with cute, amusing characters. All of them wear makeup and cute, tasteful clothing and are animated and over-enthusiastic when they talk. And every single one of them would claim to be unique.

This is the social group I belong to right now. There are about 30 of them and one of me. They are what I would call "traditional women." For the past 3 years I have been trying desperately to relate to them - any one of them. Being "me" in a female community like this is... well, it's challenging and pretty lonely.

And I don't want to write about it. If I'm going to write about a woman, I want to write about a woman who doesn't have to deal with any of this crap, and for me, in the real world, that isn't realistic. Hence "porting" my own ideas about women into a SFF setting.

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This is what online friends are for I think I would poke out my eyeballs with someone else's mascara if I were in your social group. Someone else's mascara because I don't wear makeup.

Also, there are more of us "non-traditional" wimminz out there than you realize... especially if you get one of those individual women away from that crazy ass group from the 1950s. I bet if you dig deep enough you'll find some guilty pleasures of theirs that would surprise you. Example: my sister fits most of that description. She loves scrapbooking, she's too cute and bubbly for words, loves to shop, wants kids, etc. But she also likes action and sci fi movies, isn't really into chick flicks, and enjoys hanging out with the boys as much as she likes hanging out with the girls. You just never know. Maybe one of them likes football or something.

Side point: if you've spent years trying to relate to those women, and can't... just be happy hanging out with guy friends and the few "non-traditional" women you find. I gave up trying to hang out with girly girls a long time ago. There's no reason to shoe-horn yourself into a role you're not comfortable with. Or, you could amuse yourself by purposely being contrary to the rest of the group.

Sassee said:

I'm a guy's girl, but I've always written women MCs. I might not be a regular girl but I've befriended and been around enough of them to write one convincingly. Never tried writing a guy. It would be interesting.




This is what online friends are for I think I would poke out my eyeballs with someone else's mascara if I were in your social group. Someone else's mascara because I don't wear makeup.

Also, there are more of us "non-traditional" wimminz out there than you realize... especially if you get one of those individual women away from that crazy ass group from the 1950s. I bet if you dig deep enough you'll find some guilty pleasures of theirs that would surprise you. Example: my sister fits most of that description. She loves scrapbooking, she's too cute and bubbly for words, loves to shop, wants kids, etc. But she also likes action and sci fi movies, isn't really into chick flicks, and enjoys hanging out with the boys as much as she likes hanging out with the girls. You just never know. Maybe one of them likes football or something.

Side point: if you've spent years trying to relate to those women, and can't... just be happy hanging out with guy friends and the few "non-traditional" women you find. I gave up trying to hang out with girly girls a long time ago. There's no reason to shoe-horn yourself into a role you're not comfortable with. Or, you could amuse yourself by purposely being contrary to the rest of the group.

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I'm fricking sick of girls who aren't girls. In the immortal words of Everclear, "I want a girlfriend who does not drink beer."

If I wanted girls who act like guys as friends, I'd just have guy friends.

Sassee said:

This is what online friends are for I think I would poke out my eyeballs with someone else's mascara if I were in your social group. Someone else's mascara because I don't wear makeup.

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I admit, it's sometimes tempting.

Also, there are more of us "non-traditional" wimminz out there than you realize... especially if you get one of those individual women away from that crazy ass group from the 1950s. I bet if you dig deep enough you'll find some guilty pleasures of theirs that would surprise you.

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See, I am positive this is the case. I have quite a few good, REAL women friends... who live far away. The trouble here is figuring out how to separate one out from the group long enough to actually get to know her, you know?

Side point: if you've spent years trying to relate to those women, and can't... just be happy hanging out with guy friends and the few "non-traditional" women you find. I gave up trying to hang out with girly girls a long time ago. There's no reason to shoe-horn yourself into a role you're not comfortable with. Or, you could amuse yourself by purposely being contrary to the rest of the group.

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Haha. Actually I have been quite happy just hanging out with the guys - the issue now is that in a few months I am going to have a baby. I'm pretty sure at that point I am going to want/need a female support group of experienced mothers. Sooo I'm trying to form some connections for that reason. I'm sorta hoping it will be easier once the baby is here... we'll have something to talk about at that point.

Lord, what I wouldn't give to live in a college town again.

Even though I write boys and hang out pretty much exclusively with boys, I am quite the girly girl. God knows why guys like me.

Shady Lane said:

Even though I write boys and hang out pretty much exclusively with boys, I am quite the girly girl. God knows why guys like me.

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I gotta admit, when I was checking out your author page on Amazon (I think that's where it was), I was surprised by your photo. I was sort of expecting you to look like a tomboy.

Kathleen42 said:

I gotta admit, when I was checking out your author page on Amazon (I think that's where it was), I was surprised by your photo. I was sort of expecting you to look like a tomboy.

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I know, right? And I'm totally not. I read Purse Blog everyday and fuss over my hair and wear dresses most of the time. My side of my dorm room is completely pink.

I'm just bizarre.

Again, think contradiction if you want to do something different. I have friend who can hang with the guys, drinks beer, fixes her own car, spent four years in the military in the Middle East, can probably seriously hurt any man if she wants to, doesn't mind to get her hands dirty, and swears like the worst of us guys, but she also loves to knit, garden and shop for household stuff. She married a really mellow guy who is also not your typical sports-loving "manly man."

The point is, there are all types of people and you shouldn't pigeonhole them or categorize them one way or another.

p.s. Shady Lane is adorable. Too bad you're jailbait.

maestrowork said:

p.s. Shady Lane is adorable. Too bad you're jailbait.

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I'm totally legal now! As long as you don't give me alcohol.

Okay, none of that, you guys. I am pretty sure any offspring produced by Shady and Maestro would be incredibly dangerous... anyone who looked at the kid would simply explode from cute overload.

Whoah. Whole lotta gender stereotyping going on here. Good thing Maestro's here to save the day.

maestrowork said:

Again, think contradiction if you want to do something different. I have friend who can hang with the guys, drinks beer, fix her own car, spent four years in the military in the Middle East, can probably seriously hurt any man if she wants to, doesn't mind to get her hands dirty, and swears like the worst of us guys, but she also loves to knit, garden and shop for household stuff.

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I really think most women fall into the shades of gray like the friend he's describing here. The most believable female characters do, too. The only thing I'd change is swapping out the word contradiction for complexity.

As Maestro indicated, a woman can love watching WWF and be a total priss about her nails, and this isn't a contradiction--it harmonizes just fine in her life. It's not a contradiction to have high levels of both female and male [stereotyped] traits in a single woman. She's multi-layered and deep for having a variety of interests. Perhaps for this reason, my favorite characters tend to be androgynous in their behavior rather than a stereotyped extreme.

Few women are walking stereotypes, and when authors try to make their female MCs "sufficiently womanly", it tends to sound shallow and cliche. Authors who don't relate to the girly-girl lifestyle (myself included) tend to err in the opposite direction, making characters who are wildly anti-stereotype, but ultimately just as shallow and contrived. In both cases, whether she's a gender stereotype or a not-stereotype, the author doesn't let her just be a human being.

It's heartbreaking how often people choose male protagonists because 'all things are normal and acceptable for men', but authors pigeonhole women into only things that are supposedly female-specific. We're all just human beings with a similar pool of motives and needs, not two different species divided by gender. Yeesh, folks. Similarities between the sexes are infinitely greater than the differences.

Even if you don't relate to a highly feminine lifestyle, there's no need to treat girliness with scorn. I think sometimes when the tomboy type tries too hard to define herself as "not like that", she tends to slam femininity as inferior or distasteful, which is a pretty insidious form of female misogyny. (Not accusing any posters here of this, but it certainly sounds like the same context for when I hear tomboy ladies bash on girly-girls. In an attempt to distinguish themselves from the negative stereotype, they inadvertently perpetuate the stereotype)

The point is, there are all types of people and you shouldn't pigeonhole them or categorize them one way or another.

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Thank you.

My point was not to stereotype any group of people, including women. My point is that to write a female character that I LIKE, and to do so realistically, in a contemporary setting, would invariably necessitate addressing gender issues that I DO NOT WANT TO WRITE ABOUT. Because I deal with them all the time. It's just not pleasurable for me.

Normal? Traditional? What is this, the 50s? Have I wandered onto the set of "Mad Men?" The lovely village of Stepford? I'm surprised the word "nymphomaniac" hasn't been mentioned.

Take a few minutes to conjur up a strong, confident, intelligent, talented 21st century woman (partnered or single, childless or not)and all that you admire about her. Then write what life was like for her as a girl.

What's with all this hate on the 1950's?