Am I bonkers for writing male 1st person POV/multiple 1st person POV and hoping to sell?

Pisco Sour said:

But really, people are just...people, with different personalities and reactions.

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I think that's the key--write people, not genders.

Captcha said:

Just because you and your students can't do it doesn't mean other writers can't.

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Hmmm. Perhaps you're one of those who writes cross-gender well, but I wonder about the flip-side ability to read. I didn't say my students over the years couldn't. I said I noted differences between male and female writers. I also said I write dialog and narrative from a female point of view but am careful to run it past writers I trust to be more expert.

thethinker42 said:

Re: women not being able to write convincingly as men...bullshit.

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Again, cowshit on mistaking my observation as a blanket denial of abilities. I've read quite a few women who write men well but lots more who can't. The same is true of men writing women's POVs. Many don't realize the nuances Chompers spoke of. Both are skills needing honing. I'm glad you have it covered.

But is that really a sign that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or does it just mean that most student writers haven't mastered how to fully immerse themselves into any character with a different perspective and life experience?

I once read a book where the author thanked his wife and various other female associates for "helping him understand women". I really wish he hadn't, because frankly, all his consultants seemed to teach him were that periods sucked and men were stupid. I liked his female characters from his earlier series better. They were interesting people with different perspectives because they were from a different world, whereas these women read like 30-something white bread Americans supplanted into a fantasy realm.

Chase said:

Hmmm. Perhaps you're one of those who writes cross-gender well, but I wonder about the flip-side ability to read. I didn't say my students over the years couldn't. I said I noted differences between male and female writers. I also said I write dialog and narrative from a female point of view but am careful to run it past writers I trust to be more expert.

Again, cowshit on mistaking my observation as a blanket denial of abilities. I've read quite a few women who write men well but lots more who can't. The same is true of men writing women's POVs. Many don't realize the nuances Chompers spoke of. Both are skills needing honing. I'm glad you have it covered.

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You wrote "I can tell the gender of the writer without seeing him or her as easily as discerning Ernest Hemingway's prose from Stephenie Meyer's," and then say you didn't make a blanket denial? Really?

I'm not making any claims about my own writing. I'm speaking as a reader. I've read lots of authors who can write compelling and convincing characters of the opposite sex.

If you think other writers know more about your characters than you do based solely on their respective sexes, I think you either have a very poor understanding of your characters OR you're overestimating the difference sex has on characterization.

I know, we've had this discussion on this board before. We'll probably have it again.

Oh, wait. I meant... So, I know we've had this discussion just oodles of times before, so many times that we're maybe just getting sick of it, but I still just think that it's important!

(Seriously, are you writing women as caricatures of ultra-femme gay men? Or as dippy valley girls?)

Dreity said:

But is that really a sign that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, or does it just mean that most student writers haven't mastered how to fully immerse themselves into any character with a different perspective and life experience?

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If you (general you) go on a random forum where the members are anonymous and you don't know the members well, I'm willing to bet you will be able to tell who are male and who are female. And of course, there will be some members who you'd be wrong about, because everyone has their unique personality, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of your guesses were accurate.

Totally not bonkers

I sold my (3rd but soi close it could have been first POV) male only POV to Carina. Sold the sequal too

It depends on whether it works for the story

Personally I'm tired of "we don't get his pov" stories. I prefer to be in his head* as he falls for her. Not her head. Because I fall for him, not her. YMMV

Then again, not your usual romance reader.


*with a drill, if neceassary


PS re writing ike a guy..the books in my sig are First, written from the POV of a guy. A BUTT LOAD of people actually think/thought I was male

So yeah, women totally can't write men. *eyeroll*

chompers said:

If you (general you) go on a random forum where the members are anonymous and you don't know the members well, I'm willing to bet you will be able to tell who are male and who are female. And of course, there will be some members who you'd be wrong about, because everyone has their unique personality, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of your guesses were accurate.

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I'm fairly routinely surprised by the sexes of people even here at AW. Largely based on user names or pics, I form an assumption, and there's nothing in the writing that indicates I'm wrong. Of course, I guess you could just say that I'm unusually bad at detecting these things.

I have quite often been mistaken for a male, though, at forums where I don't post my pen name or other identifying features. People seem to THINK they can guess sexes, but... maybe not so much.

chompers said:

If you (general you) go on a random forum where the members are anonymous and you don't know the members well, I'm willing to bet you will be able to tell who are male and who are female. And of course, there will be some members who you'd be wrong about, because everyone has their unique personality, but I wouldn't be surprised if most of your guesses were accurate.

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Having participated in several forums over a numbers of years, I can say I've frequently seen women mistaken for men, but not once have I seen a man mistaken for woman.

Anecdotal evidence is anecdotal, I know, but to me it's another facet of the same issue: stereotypes carrying more weight than reality when forming perceptions.

Sometimes I get mistaken for male, online.

Back to the OP, here's an oldie but goodie series that uses M and F first-person POV very well: Andre Norton & co-writers, in the 'Gryphon' series.

Mr Flibble said:

PS re writing ike a guy..the books in my sig are First, written from the POV of a guy. A BUTT LOAD of people actually think/thought I was male

So yeah, women totally can't write men. *eyeroll*

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I thought you were a guy, because your username is Mister Flibble, and your Avatar is male. So much for being able to tell people's gender online.

Mr Flibble said:

I prefer to be in his head* as he falls for her. Not her head. Because I fall for him, not her. YMMV

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Did I read that right? I mean it kind of makes sense, but you said you prefer to read the man's experience of falling for the woman, even though your experience is the opposite? Because you fall for him because of the way he falls for her?

morngnstar said:

I thought you were a guy, because your username is Mister Flibble, and your Avatar is male. So much for being able to tell people's gender online.

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My pedantry compels me to point out that Mr Flibble is the penguin.

Pisco Sour said:

So far I haven't had any complaints about my male POV,but my readers are mainly (I assume) female romance readers. I did used to worry about writing my male POV characters, but not so much anymore. It's to do with my mind set when I'm inside their heads. Sometimes I ask my husband if a phrase I've written seems 'right' to him and he keeps me straight. I once did a paper during my MA socio-cultural linguistics about male v. female speech and I try to remember my research when I'm writing. But really, people are just...people, with different personalities and reactions. I haven't finished writing my male POV book yet, but hopefully my only male beta reader will tell me if there's anything that jarrs.

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Good point about readership. I suspect some dialog of my early female characters may have benefited from male readers who were accepting of ladies sounding like they had beards and mustaches.

I do what you do and check with someone who speaks other-gender better than I do. Maybe absolute confidence in an ability to write anyone's dialog or point of view gets the job done. Hurrah for them. For others, testing what we've written works lends confidence.

My Real Werewolves Don't Eat Meat series (male/male paranormal) has 5 novels and a short novella, all first-person POV, though there's only a single POV in each story. I haven't had any feedback saying that Kyle's and Tobias's narrative sounds feminine, and I'm very definitely female.

I also write YA. Nearly all of those books are first-person POV, and in the majority, the POV is that of a teenage boy. I've had readers question whether I'm female because I do the teen boy voice quite convincingly, apparently. And only one of the readers who's questioned that was female; the others were male. Including a few teenage boys.

So yes, women can write male POV. Men can write female POV. Someone cis-gender can write a transgender, agender, genderqueer, etc. POV. And so on. It isn't about the sex/gender of the character or the author. It's about the author's skill level at getting into the character's head.

Really one might as well say that no author today can write a Regency romance, since none of us have lived during the Regency era.

I enjoy reading first person POV, and would like to write in it, but have so far been scared off by the crowd that hate it, because they're so very vocal.

gingerwoman said:

Really one might as well say that no author today can write a Regency romance, since none of us have lived during the Regency era.

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Good point. I sometimes catch hell for writing gay men, but I tend to point out that no one ever complains about my lack of experience as a cop or vampire.

I enjoy reading first person POV, and would like to write in it, but have so far been scared off by the crowd that hate it, because they're so very vocal.

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Write it. Those who don't like it seem to be a vocal minority -- personally, I haven't noticed any difference in sales, ratings, or reviews between my third and first POV books.

Dreity said:

Having participated in several forums over a numbers of years, I can say I've frequently seen women mistaken for men, but not once have I seen a man mistaken for woman.

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I think that's because in a gender-neutral situation, most people assume male.

So anonymous person with no gender identifiers = male.

Anonymous person with male identifiers = male.

Anonymous person with female identifiers = woman.

So yeah, a lot of women are going to be mistaken for men, but no men are going to be mistaken for women

When I'm somewhere where people are typically female (like feminist websites) I frequently think men are women, because I'm assuming everyone is female.

@Mr. Flibble, I have to continuously remind myself that you're a woman. I'm pretending "Mr. Flibble" is the name of your cat and/or dog. It's how I remember, now.

@Captcha: in my head, you are genderless. I have no idea why. It's becoming more common, though.

ViridianChick said:

I think that's because in a gender-neutral situation, most people assume male.

So anonymous person with no gender identifiers = male.

Anonymous person with male identifiers = male.

Anonymous person with female identifiers = woman.

So yeah, a lot of women are going to be mistaken for men, but no men are going to be mistaken for women

When I'm somewhere where people are typically female (like feminist websites) I frequently think men are women, because I'm assuming everyone is female.

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I definitely agree. It's the default setting. Speaking for myself, I'm sure the pretty elf avatar signals "female" to the vast majority of people here, but when I'm gaming most people assume I'm male until either a) I get on voice comms or b) I mention my husband. If A and B happen around the same time, they then ask if I'm old enough to be married.

Dreity said:

I definitely agree. It's the default setting. Speaking for myself, I'm sure the pretty elf avatar signals "female" to the vast majority of people here, but when I'm gaming most people assume I'm male until either a) I get on voice comms or b) I mention my husband. If A and B happen around the same time, they then ask if I'm old enough to be married.

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!!!

I thought you were a man until literally just now. I just assumed you like pretty elf women.

I've gotten weirdness from people online, too. I remember back when I played WoW, I'd get jokes about how I was probably a lonely guy with a female avatar.

I didn't mean to pick such a feminine name or avatar on here. I kind of regret it, because I prefer to remain genderless when I can. "Viridian" was taken, though. I might ask for a name-change if I ever pick an official pseudonym, but then how will people recognize me?

gingerwoman said:

I enjoy reading first person POV, and would like to write in it, but have so far been scared off by the crowd that hate it, because they're so very vocal.

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The vocal POV haters confuse and sadden me*. I've never had a categorical hatred of any POV, just bad examples of any of them. I tend not to pick present-tense in either reading or writing, but that's because 1) it's been so badly-served in both commercial publishing and fan fiction, and 2) it's hard to do well. A little 1400-word tragedy took me far longer to write than it would have in any other POV. But that particular story needed present-tense, deep focus third-person for impact.

I haven't been fond of second-person POV, but I'm reading a great fan fiction series right now that uses it to underscore the narrator's slow recuperation from repeated traumatic brain injury.

*I'm confused and saddened for about ten seconds, before my filters kick on and I start thinking, 'Well, boo hoo to you, too, you shallow whiners. Maybe I'm not writing this story for you, hmm?' (Yep, the filters do get me in trouble in public speaking, if I'm not careful.) I am certainly not scared of readers who can't handle a different POV. If that's their barrier to entry, we already don't have a lot to share.

thethinker42 said:

Good point. I sometimes catch hell for writing gay men, but I tend to point out that no one ever complains about my lack of experience as a cop or vampire.

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Yes. This. I've had people--readers, other authors, and even people in my "real" life who wouldn't dream of reading my stuff--ask how I can write male characters, especially in erotic romance, when I'm not a man.

My usual response is "I'm not a werewolf either, but I seem to do pretty darn well with that." (Overall, my highest rated romances are my male/male werewolf series...)

I write in genres that have primarily female readers. I've written in both 3rd and 1st POV. I use female avatars and my initials, purposely make all bios and communications genderless. Everyone assumes I'm female, and I've had some interesting discussions with people who say that men can't write believable female characters. In romances, especially PNR and UF, the female audience seems to think that women do okay writing male characters but men can't write female.

My current WIP is switching 1st between the female and male characters in a romance. I don't mix them in a chapter, and I don't overlap the narratives. It really wouldn't work if I maintained all-female or all-male through the entire book, and 3rd would create a completely different book.

I like how this thread evolved into talking about not only POV but about gender in writing.

I seem to have seen a lot of POV writing in YA fic, and it works when it works!

Does anyone know of any good resources for writing gender-specific dialogue. I *think* I have a good ear for writing guys, but I don't have a male betareader to check for me. It's definitely a persistent concern!