Women novelists writing a story through the POV of a man

Rachel77 said:

One of my friends is married to a man who is 6'5", burly, and rides a motorcycle. He loves the flowery handmade soaps she buys.

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Does he like to run around smelling like them is the question, though, and would he buy them for himself if she didn't.

I tend to default to the male POV when I'm conceiving a story. I do have a few MCs in future WIPs that are women, but by and large, I write male.

Part of that is a marketing decision (MG has a big issue with boys not reading girl books). And part of it is just having been conditioned from reading so many male perspectives over the course of my life. As a teen, I read sci-fi and fantasy, and we didn't have as much access to paranormal romance or urban fantasy as teens do these days. So most of the MCs I read were male. The female protagonists I found were very firmly entrenched in stereotypical girl roles and weren't having the sorts of adventures I wanted to imagine myself in.

(A side note for anyone who's ever written in free-form role playing groups... those groups are generally [unless you're writing for Star Trek sims] heavily populated with female writers, who seem to claim female characters first. To make myself more welcome in any game I joined and to ease into storylines faster, I took on mostly male characters (LIs, typically). I became very accustomed to writing the male POV.)

I don't think I write a male POV vastly different from the way I think of my own POV—individual personality differences aside, there's nothing that seems to be a strictly male/female behavior or thought pattern.

The only thing I think I would add is that for some of the genres I write in, I've considered that I might stylize my male POVs a bit to be more like what my female readers want a male character to be like rather than being strictly an autonomous individual.

Men and women have a great deal more in common than most people know. The hazards of writing the opposite sex isn't about making the characters realistic. That's the easy part. It's about avoiding the trap of following the common stereotypes. I've seen men characters written by women that come across as men, and I've seen them come across as obviously written by women. They're too fake, and that's usually because they're over the top. The opposite is true, and usually for the same reason.

My main character is female although the friends are a mix, and I had a woman beta reader tell me two things: she really likes the main character and wants to read more about her, and nowhere in the story did she get an "oh puh-leaze" moment about the character's actions. I can tell you, even with the other things she pointed out that she didn't like, that comment about the character made me feel great.

I might have more trouble with finding some characters' internal voice/personality than others, but gender is only one thing among many here. There are males and females I have no trouble understanding and males and females I have more trouble understanding, both in fiction and in life.

I don't know why gender doesn't seem like a big deal to me, but maybe it's because I have a brother close to me in age, and because I have friends of both gender. Plus, as I said up thread, I've always read plenty of books with male leads as well as female.

I'd keep running it by a few male betas. Of course there's always overlap and so on. However, I've definitely read things written by men doing a woman's POV that jumped out at me as not ringing true. You don't want your readers yanked out of the story by that. If a couple of the guys say no in a certain spot, I'd make the changes.

veinglory said:

I suspect my thinking is more like the average man's than the average woman's anyway. I find male characters easier.

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This is how I am too. I can do both, but a male POV comes more readily for some reason.

I write and conceive of stories from both POVs, but my current WIP has a male protagonist, and it's really comfortable to me, maybe just because I feel like I know my own characters so well?

I am pretty comfortable writing in the male POV, however, whereas I suspect many men would not be so comfortable writing in the female POV. Similarly, as a caucasian person, I am uncomfortable writing in the POV of a POC, whereas I don't suspect (but I could be wrong) a POC would be uncomfortable writing something from my POV.

I think it has alot to do with what we conceive of as the "every-man". I have little problem appropriating the white male POV, because on some level, I see that POV as a blank canvas. Now ideally, any POV should be able to be a blank canvas, because I think we are all human beings first, and whatever other qualifiers are stuck to us second. But I think it's generally true that the white male gets afforded the status of just "person" while everybody else is "______ person", in the collective subconscious.

I wouldn't expect a man to be as comfortable writing in my POV, because my POV comes with cultural baggage that his doesn't. Similarly, I'd be hesitant to try and express my ideas through the POV of a black woman, because there is cultural and ideological baggage that comes with that POV that I am not equipped to handle. I don't like that it feels this way. I want to be able to write about the human condition from the POV of any human being, because again, we are all human beings first, but I think it's a subconscious thing.

So unfortunately, any time I find myself wanting to write about something that doesn't directly relate to some "women's issue" I find myself gravitating towards to male POV, as though this is the best POV to express anything human and universal. Like if we all shucked the extra layers of cultural suppression and bias, we'd all just be white males underneath. The white male is the newborn baby of story-telling. He can be anything you want him to be.

Recognizing this, I think I'm going to try to get away from this thinking.

I actually have a harder time writing female characters, but I think that's because I start worrying about their turning into the crappy females one sees on TV so often (where strong means bitchy). But I grew up with mostly males, so I'm just more 'in tune' with guys, too.

Don't all writers have to be able to handle both reasonably well?

Men and women are both human beings, but we are not the same. Our brains don't even work the same way, let alone our minds. This doesn't mean we can't write the opposite gender. But if readers can't tell the difference, we aren't doing it very well. The world is a different place for men and for women. Women face problems men do not, and men face problems women do not face. This alone changes our outlook.

And, really, I have no possible way of knowing how a woman actually thinks, and a woman has no possible way of knowing exactly how a man thinks. All we can do is approximate based on personal experience.

All good writers, I think, need to be able to write from any POV, but I also think readers should know one from the other, even if it were possible not to tell them.

I like writing both genders -- I do sometimes ask Old Man if something comes across as something a guy would do, but not often (because it's more what would this character do). That said, there are a few things that might make me scratch my head, or make it obvious that something ain't quite right. I do like to write a male POV. This is because it makes it easier to separate me from them (and when I write romance, I like to fall in love with the male POV a bit, and I fall in love with what's in their head soooo)


As for thinking like a guy v thinking like a girl? I like swordfights, and rugby and flowers and wrestling and high heels and leather jackets and motorbikes and make up.... you know. Girly things which actually are not either girly or blokey. Like lots of girls. All the ones I know anyway! And I write "girly" stories -- full of blood sex and death. Occasional entrails

The media perception of "what women are like" is not, in fact, what most women are like. Mostly we're just, you know, peoples.

Jamesaritchie said:

Men and women are both human beings, but we are not the same. Our brains don't even work the same way, let alone our minds.

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I think this is a major misconception. There are some minor differences, but for the most part our brains and minds do work the same. Give both a math problem and they'll use the same methods to solve it. Give them both the job to tune up a car and they'll do it the same. Give them both the job to bake a casserole and they'll do it the same. Right on down the line.

Our thinking and our methods are practically the same. Notice this isn't about the physical differences because it's the societies that play on those, not the individuals. How the men and women fit into the society is what we capture with our writing to add the differences. Subtle, but there it is. Put each out in the wilderness alone trying to survive off the land, and they're going to be interchangeable.

Why do I like the movie My Cousin Vinny? Because Miss Mona Lisa Vito, hot sexy Marisa Tomei, was the ex-mechanic and automotive expert. I loved the scene where she, in her slinky dress, big hair, big earrings, and ruby red lips, was talking about positraction and independent rear suspension. Not a single one of those lines would have to be changed for a male character.

I find there are plenty other factors about my characters harder to get right than gender, tbh. For example, age to me is a bitch to get. With my second book, which has both male and female PoV characters, none of my betas said, "This is not how a man would think!" But plenty of them said, "This character doesn't sound like an eleven-year-old. She sounds more like a teenager." Bwarrgghh.

I think as long as we treat the character as an individual and not fall back on stereotypes, it shouldn't be a problem.

Jamesaritchie said:

Don't all writers have to be able to handle both reasonably well?

Men and women are both human beings, but we are not the same. Our brains don't even work the same way, let alone our minds. This doesn't mean we can't write the opposite gender. But if readers can't tell the difference, we aren't doing it very well. The world is a different place for men and for women. Women face problems men do not, and men face problems women do not face. This alone changes our outlook.

And, really, I have no possible way of knowing how a woman actually thinks, and a woman has no possible way of knowing exactly how a man thinks. All we can do is approximate based on personal experience.

All good writers, I think, need to be able to write from any POV, but I also think readers should know one from the other, even if it were possible not to tell them.

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Ehhh. I have no possible way of knowing how a man actually thinks...but, tbh, I have no clue how other women think either, because, simply, having a uterus doesn't give me any cosmic links to every other woman in the world. People think differently. How a person reacts to a certain situation doesn't depend primarily on his/her gender.

Agree with Putputt, my uterus doesn't give me some magical female cosmic link thingie.

Oh, wait. I no longer have a uterus.



As for writing from male POVs, I tend to find it easier. Because boys and men are schmucks.

Oh, wait. I'm a schmuck.

zanzjan said:

And, further, none of us have any way of knowing how any other person actually thinks, except as we can extrapolate from observation and communication, which is always and necessarily an imperfect picture. If you try to see people as individuals first, and as someone to whom various assumptions and labels may apply as a distant second, it's a lot easier to write believable characters of *all* types.

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This, so much this.

I'm the only me I will ever experience directly, and I'm no more capable of knowing for absolute sure how other women experience being a woman than I am of knowing how different men experience being men.

Or any of a kajillion other experiences and identities that don't relate to our respective genders at all.

I have to use my powers of observation, imagination, and empathy.

And reading reams of books written by other people sure doesn't hurt. From what I've seen, there are people of differing gender with whom I have little trouble understanding and relating, and there are people of my own with whom I have more trouble.

Layla Nahar said:

I write 50/50 for sex, consciously so. I also do the same with age. I agree with the poster(s) who are saying that male/female thinking is not as different as we like to think it is, and also with the idea that writing a character is a lot like acting.

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I like that. We are all interested and looking for the same things. I wonder if the media seeks more of a rift for financial gain. Not all women are obsessed with shoe shopping, and not all men walk out the door without shaving.

Leigh Anne Jasheway wrote an article on How to Write Intriguing Male and Female at Writers Digest a couple of months ago. In it, she explored different views on the same thing from male and female perspectives. There are notable differences, but they can be overcome.

I'm male and am writing about a female character. So far so good, but whether it's good for the audience is another matter. One thing I know, though, I won't be able to handle a sex scene. Luckily there will be none.

Fruitbat said:

I'd keep running it by a few male betas. Of course there's always overlap and so on. However, I've definitely read things written by men doing a woman's POV that jumped out at me as not ringing true. You don't want your readers yanked out of the story by that. If a couple of the guys say no in a certain spot, I'd make the changes.

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The number one way men often screw up female point of view is when they impregnate the narrative with male gaze. You know, when women spend more time thinking about their breasts or shapely legs than we do in real life?

I'd guess women could do this too with men, and they sometimes do so deliberately if they're writing a romance novel that is actually written specifically to appeal to female fantasies, but I don't think we're as conditioned to think of the female gaze (as in lovingly lingering over the appearance of male bodies) is just the normal default for all human beings and to use it accidentally while in a straight, male pov.

One thing I'm perhaps reluctant to do as a woman writing men is to include places where he's aware of his manly bits, like (say) his undergarments are pinching them, or he has to put Vaseline on certain tender bits before a long bike ride or something (a male friend who used to do cross country bike touring said that this was necessary to prevent chafing), or he's comparing himself to a male friend in the baths and thinking he doesn't measure up. But one reason why is that I don't think I've read many male characters written by male writers (unless they're focused specifically on angst over those kinds of issues) who spend a lot of time thinking about those kinds of things either.

I do remember reading a book where a male character was concerned about his manly parts dangling unprotected in the darkness while he used a garderobe type toilet in a castle for the first time. But other than that, the only time male parts came up in a male pov was when it was a sexual situation.

Roxxsmom said:

The number one way men often screw up female point of view is when they impregnate the narrative with male gaze. You know, when women spend more time thinking about their breasts or shapely legs than we do in real life?

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I was just about to say this. When I see unrealistic female characters, it's never because the writer has failed to take gender into account. It's the exact opposite: because the writer is too focused on gender.

Even though I try to write from the character's POV, taking on the female's POV is easier for me. But I've been told I'm pretty feminine.

mccardey said:

I love it. It's not any more difficult than anything else - unless you're writing memoir, you're always writing from a different pov.

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This.

I wrote a book that switched back and forth between close 3rd person POV for a male and a female character. It never occurred to me to wonder if I could write the male as well as the female - I just listened to his character. We don't want all our characters to sound like us. It's no more difficult than writing a really introverted character if you're extroverted, or a wealthy character when you're middle class. There are layers to a character, gender is just one of them, and one of the easy ones (most of us interact with the opposite gender quite a bit).

I suspect that there is a wider range of difference between Man A and Man B, or Woman A and Woman B, then there is between a generic man and a generic woman.

And, besides, I don't think that people want to read about a generic man or a generic woman.

How can a peaceful person write about a psychopath? How can a young person write from the POV of someone old? Or vice versa?

Observation and imagination.

zanzjan said:

Mine came with that option, but I got talked into taking the free coffee mug instead.

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I chose the coffee mug too...dammit, did NO ONE here go for the cosmic thing??

Putputt said:

I chose the coffee mug too...dammit, did NO ONE here go for the cosmic thing??

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I don't know about the uterus option, but I ticked the box for the cosmic c*nt upgrade