truepenny | Women writers, women characters

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Women writers, women characters

The Mirador has a female narrator.

(For those of you who have read The Virtu, yes, it is who you think it is.)

She is the hardest damn character to write I have yet been afflicted with. (Notice the crucial word in that sentence is yet. *g*) And I've been thinking about why that's so.

There is historically a preponderance of male narrators in my work, between Booth, Felix, and Mildmay. I just did a quick tally on my bibliography, and although it's a little difficult to decide how to count, we can put it at approximately 14 to 4. (Things are a little more balanced if we make it simply protagonists, rather than narrators--17 to 9--although it's still not what you would call gender parity.)

This raises a number of questions. The first one, obviously, is Why do we care? What does it matter if I write about men? It's not like the feminist police are going to come and revoke my gender or anything.

And no, of course not, and there's a sense in which it doesn't matter, as long as I keep writing mindfully. After all, A Companion to Wolves has almost no (human) female characters at all, and it's probably the most feminist thing I've ever written. I can even claim that I write about men because I'm interested in power dynamics (especially in the psychosexual arena), and you can get at those a lot more clearly by putting a man in a feminized position than you can by putting a woman in a masculinized one.

(Remember that I have a Ph.D. I'm professionally trained in the fine art of persuasivity.)

There's another sense in which this issue does matter--and matters a lot--a sense that Virginia Woolf was talking about way back when and that we (women writers in the Anglo-American tradition) still haven't really come to grips with. I write more men than women because it's easier, and it's easier because ...

Well?

It's easier because Anglo-American narrative traditions support and expect a male protagonist. It's easier because the things we make stories about are traditionally male things. It's easier because I imprinted on male protagonists as a child far more strongly than on female. (Little Women and Anne of Green Gables did not do it for me. Tom Sawyer did.) It's easier because I, as a reader and writer, am conditioned to think about male protagonists. Part of my mind, down near the trapdoor to the subconsious, still thinks that men are more "interesting" than women.

For the record, this is complete and total bullshit.

It would be easy to get defensive here--and I have done in the past--and take a stand on the wacky ineffability of creativity. I don't control what my subconscious throws through the trapdoor at me, and attempts to do so are likely to sabotage the whole works. You have to dance with them what brung you, and what I've realized recently is that my male characters are much more likely to want to go dancing with me.

(No, this metaphor has nothing to do with heterosexuality. Felix loves to dance.)

I tend to be suspicious of metaphors for creativity that assign too much agency to made-up people. It feels like a cop-out, or like hypocrisy, or being so incredibly twee that one should be taken out and drowned in a bucket. But if we accept that the various imaginary people in my head are all aspects of my subconsious mind that don't have any other way to get expressed (i.e., they're all "me," and splitting them up into different characters with different names and behaviors and appearances and so on is merely a convenience for the story-telling engine), then I can go so far as to say that my male characters want to talk to me. Even taciturn ones like Mildmay. Or neurotically shy ones like Booth. My female characters don't.

I have a story that's been stalled out for *mumblecough* a really long time, and I think it's because I have two female protagonists who have gotten stuck in the scene where they have to talk to each other, and they stand there in the early morning sunlight on a New England beach and insist they have nothing to say. The hardest thing about writing A Gift of Wings was Agido's voice. (I'm still not entirely happy about it, but the published version is exponentially better than the original first person version.) One way I know that the ftm transsexual who's appeared in my head is genuinely a man, despite accidents of birth biology, is that he wants to talk. He wants to show me things and tell me about his life. His female cousin is, metaphorically speaking, sitting leaned way back in her chair with her arms crossed.

I don't think, by the way, that this has anything to do with the gender performances of men and women in the world outside my head. But inside my head (--it's too dark to read. --Shut up, Groucho.), among the people I make up, a characteristic of men is that they will cooperate with the narrative. Women mostly won't. The female narrator of The Mirador was actually lying to me. (Here again, that looks almost like a cop-out, but I don't know any better way to describe it.)

What does all this mean?

Damned if I know.

The whole tangled mess is a problem. In the general, it's something that feminist writers (I think) have to at least take into consideration as they write, whether they choose to allow it to affect their narrative choices or not; in the particular ... well, at least now I've articulated what the problem is.

And maybe I can start figuring out ways to convince my female characters to talk.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I have been thinking along similar lines:

http://oracne.livejournal.com/777750.html

I don't have an answer, either.

It's easier because I imprinted on male protagonists as a child far more strongly than on female.

For years, I've been keeping a running tally of the characters in books (films, plays, etc.) that particularly catch my attention. With the rare exception, these are almost exclusively male. I don't think this is because males are inherently more interesting than females; I think it's because the conjunction of traits that really interest me in a character (as

matociquala might say, kick me in the squid) tend to crop up in male characters more often than in female. The exceptions are, in that respect, consistent with the rule.

Out of curiosity, I just checked protagonist statistics: 17 to 13, male / female. But the supernatural figures are almost always female. Hm. I've noticed this before, but not put much thought into why. It may be a similar reason; I'll have to consider.

Thanks for causing my brain to think.

Have you read Edith Wharton's "Roman Fever"? It's a short story. I thought of it when you mentioned your story with two female protagonists who won't talk to each other.

Oddly, I'm working on my first male protagonist (I often have a mix of characters, but in my Path trilogy, it was largely a female's story). Anyhow, I'm having trouble with him. Part of it is that he doesn't really care about the things the way I think women do. And so what's been difficult is finding the real source of conflict. I don't know if it's entrirely a gender thing , or whether he's just that way. Time will tell, I suppose.

I saw that you're going to Worldcon. Are you going to World Fantasy too? HOpe so. Like to see you in person and I won't make Worldcon.

TAke care,

Di

I'm not sure if I can say anything helpful on this, since I tend to default to female characters, which is such a different place to come from.

But from having read the Booth stories and The Virtu (less so in "A Gift of Wings"), what I'd say is that you do tend to a particular kind of female character, practical and clever and plain enough to look pretty when she really wants; giving off an air of terrible competence. Whereas your male characters are more *vulnerable* and more imperfect; more free to be dislikable and more free to show their damage. When they're competent at something, they undervalue it (Booth, Mildmay) or flaunt it (Felix); they are more dramatic about it.

I mean, I did notice the hints at damage in the backstory for one of the new female characters in The Virtu, but they're hints, very restrained and unemotional, whereas Felix and Mildmay kinda bleed all over the page.

That's--more or less--what I mean when I say they won't talk to me.

They're a set of very well defended ladies, in my head.

And I know it's partly the whole stereotypical gender role thing--women are "supposed" to be vulnerable and helpless, so I write them competent and autonomous--even autocratic--while the men are vulnerable and victimized and, as you say, bleeding all over the page.

Maybe because they're distanced enough from me that I feel safe in letting them be vulnerable? I don't know.

I'm shy of lesbians. Isn't it funny what we think about? I have straight women and gay and straight and bisexual men in spades, but my only foregrounded characters who are queer women are Autumn and Carel.

I wonder why that is.

I'm doing okay with female POV characters, though The Stratford Man and associated texts and Undertow are a bit shy of them (one woman, four men, one hermaphrodite)--and our two coauthored books are all male. (Another reason to stick to two female POVs if we do a sequel to Wolves, I guess...) The Eddas are more or less balanced, though--except Bound, which is 3/1 m/f. Hmm. Now I need to think about it myself.

I'm contemplating changing a character in The Sea thy Mistress to a woman, just to redress the anti-lesbian ~~bias~~ balance a little. (His relationship is key to the plot, and I think he'd work fine as a chick.)

I don't know if I have any insight to offer, but I have the same problem in reverse. My current project is just about my first with a male protagonist not set up to fail.* My reflex is female characters. Thus my struggling with not just making a male narrator sympathetic but make him attractive to the female narrator.

* Unless you count Paul Bunyan, who's really more a type than a man.

---L.

I don't think you deserve any particular blame for an imbalance, because I know I don't deserve any particular credit for my imbalance the other way.

lnhammer, I'm an enantiomer. My default, both in reading and writing, is female. (Hobbits are honorary girls.) A solipsistic sort of feminism, I suppose; I'm working on the radical notion that guys are people.

Nine

When it comes to teenage guys, I kinda wonder. Speaking as having been one.

---L.

That's fascinating to read.

I don't have anything to add, just yeah.

Hey -- mostly stopping by to say I read Melusine this weekend (OK, I'm behind the curve) and really enjoyed it. I think my favorite thing is how your characters were the worst communicators in the entire world (in a good way!), and so much of the conflict comes out of that very human problem, even in the middle of a totally hardcore fantasy novel with magic and fleeing and ghosts. That was pretty bitchin.

I'm interested in how your female characters are reserved -- the female wizards in Melusine are so reserved they're often described as being made of stone, when Felix is mad. The passions in that book lie mostly in men. I have no idea if it's a good or bad thing from a feminist perspective. I mean, your male characters were reserved too, it's just that we knew their secrets, and they got into more fights.

My characters, POV and otherwise, are mostly female, mostly queer. Right now I'm kind of obsessing about female strength, heroism, and female desire, so, duh. I'd like to shake it up a little bit, and probably will once this obsession gets a little less intense. And on one hand, yeah, it's driven by obsessions, but on the other hand, always good to fully investigate what's behind, around, and within your obsessions, right? But I"m sure your passionate men have lead you some interesting places, and, um, yay more books!

--Meghan

Thank you!

I am thinking that there may be a question in here somewhere about whether an individual writer is more comfortable--even more capable--writing about people who are like her or unlike her.

I, obviously, am more comfortable writing about people unlike me. (Which would be Felix.) The only one of my narrators who is deliberately like me (as opposed to the characters who I recognize belatedly are like me--different problem) is Booth, and Booth is in fact in some respects a self-parody. Some of his stories were also very hard to write because he was like me.

So one thing clearly at work here is my comfort zone. Although characters unlike me can also push that envelope, so it's not completely a turtle-like defense mechanism.

You know the "absent woman" argument? (At its best in the bit of the Pooh Perplex where he redefines Winnie the Pooh to be all about Christopher Robin's absent mother.) I was thinking that Methony is pretty damn absent and also in the running for "worst mother of all time".

And looking from that, lots of your women are inscrutable to your POV characters, which is fine, but... when it comes to comfort zones and people unlike you, that's interesting.

I think when I go to that bit of my head where characters come from, it's all mist and shadows, and I can shape that in different ways, to start with anyway, and there are easy ways and hard ways and it's tempting to go for the easy ways because they're natural and have the story nature.

I was going to say I write mostly women, but I'm not sure (Sulien books are female POV, Prize is two M two F, T&C is, um, female-omni, I think more female than male mini-POVs, Farthing is one of each, Ha'Penny ditto, Lifelode is two F one M and female-omni) I think though I tend to come up with more female characters because they're more interesting to me because I read the default narrative and ask where the women are, because where the women are is a crack, and stories happen in the cracks.

Like

matociquala, I also tend to lack lesbians.

Mothers who aren't absent in my work tend to be close spiritual sisters of Medea.

(Which is not, let me clarify, a reflection on my own mother. I think it's more a reflection on what I suspect I'd be like as a mother.)

Of course, Methony also has more than a little Medea in her, and it's no accident that Mildmay's Keeper--the only other available mother-figure--is named Kolkhis.

Ahem.

Okay, issues with women's traditional nurturing roles, check.

This is all I got today:

1) MOONSPINNERS!

I'm rereading all my Mary Stuart right now for comfort.

2) As of now, I have three cliches of women: one Good Wife, one Martyr, one Scheming Minx.

And you know what? I've decided to have faith in me, get done blasting this draft out, and let the nuances come in later, when I go back. Because I am damned if I see how else I'm going to get there. I'll figure out who they are by writing them. I hope, cause it's all I got.

(which I guess is as much as to say, my conscious mind is letting me down, so it's down to hoping that my backbrane will come through. I mean, I KNOW *I*'m a feminist, it OUGHT to work... )

I am not a writer so I can't speak at all to why male characters might be easier to write or anything like that. What I would like to say is that my favorite reading material is predominantly male central characters written by women. I don't believe this is because I was imprinted with more male characters in my youth. The Little House books were (and still are) favorites, and Tom Sawyer didn't do much for me at all. I believe that most women writers have a voice that I relate to but the characters I am most attracted to are male, at least in part because I am straight and therefore attracted to men. When I was in Jr. High S. E. Hinton was my favorite author. I read later she used her initials so as not to turn off male readers, but it never occurred to me that she was not a woman. I just always assumed S. E. Hinton was female from the first time I read her books. The Outsiders read as by a woman to me despite that fact that it was first person with a male narrator.

I guess I understand the concern and the feelings that there is something less feminist about writing books with male characters. But I read for entertainment first and foremost and I find your male characters extremely entertaining, so my gut response to talk about striving to write more female characters is "Oh, please don't!" Sorry...

But it gets so boring writing the same thing over and over again!

(lack of growth is like death, only without the crying relatives, after all.)

3-4 unpublished erotic fantasts hardly count but..
You could try intrernalising the problem. Have your females inability to talk become the explicit issue in the story. Have someone really get on their case for it & force them to do something about it even if only bloody the protagonists nose and walk away (but don't leave it at that have them gpo away into a dark corner and solililoquiise about WHY they always handle problems this way.
Hope this hasn't pissed you off too much

not-a-writer:

But I don't think Sarah's point was that her female characters have problems talking to other characters. On the contrary, they tend to be somewhat frustrated at the reluctance of her male characters to just say what they're thinking.

When she says her women "won't talk to her", I think she means that she has trouble imagining their thought processes, at least in a way that is fun to write. Felix and Mildmay (especially) both tend to bottle up their feelings, but Sarah has no trouble imagining what those feelings are, and so she can reveal them in the interior monologues. If you are having problems imagining what a female character would say, do or feel, it isn't any easier to write a dark corner soliloquy than it is to write a conversation.

(Yes, she did describe a scene where she is having trouble writing a dialog between two female characters, but I got the impression that it was more that she had trouble imagining what the two characters would each be feeling that was interesting enough to write about, than that she had trouble making them express those feelings aloud to other characters.)

Sarah,

You obviously enjoy showing the contrast between a character's internal voice and the way they present themselves to others. And you're very good at it. It's one of the things that make your stories fun to read. But I suspect it is part of what is contributing to your preference for male narrators.

Feeling compelled to hide one's self-doubts, having a self-perception that is more vulnerable than one's public persona, is more of a male trait than a female one. Women are more likely to verbalize their insecurity than attempt to hide it behind a facade; they're more likely to try to draw one another out than to retreat into shells. Personalities like those of Mildmay or Felix would not work very well as female characters, because while women can certainly be catty like Felix or insecure like Mildmay, both types are still likely to have more consistency between their internal and external voices. Felix says things that are harsher than what he feels. A woman who says catty things is likely to be thinking catty thoughts as well. The only kind of women who tend to hide what they're feeling are ones who are doing it to be manipulative, deceptive, or to conform to fluttery feminine stereotypes. They're strategically disguising their strengths or motives, not bottling up their fears. (And you said you can write Medea.) So if you like writing first-person narratives where the character's sympathetic side is seen more by the reader than by the other characters, then either your women characters won't play along, or if you force them to, they come across as rather masculine personalities.

The way out of this impass is probably to find more ways to introduce zest and flavor into a first-person narrative other than having such a contrast between what a character thinks and what they reveal. Can you have a woman say what she thinks, and still have it be a voice that's entertaining to read? Maybe by having the color come from spunk, sass, irreverance instead of from suppressed angst?

Who were the female narrators on your favorites list? What kinds of personalities do they have? In what styles are their stories told? I bet if you concentrate on analyzing what makes them fun to read, you'll find some clues to making them easier to write.

(I like Asha Greyjoy in George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire.)

The only kind of women who tend to hide what they're feeling are ones who are doing it to be manipulative, deceptive, or to conform to fluttery feminine stereotypes.

Heh. Many of the women I know--myself included--make a sort of cottage industry out of hiding their insecurities. *g* if you knew me, you would never believe I'm painfully shy, because I overcompensate like a mad thing.

I suspect generalities.

(deleted comment)

...sounds familiar. :-P

"Pain? What pain? No, that leg's not broken -- put me down! I need to keep running this marathon! Two salt tablets and another mile!"

OK, I probably was overgeneralizing.

;-)

I'm not talking about real women, who do not fit into any generality--not even the most basic, "Well, they probably all have two X chromosomes."

I'm talking about women in the Anglo-American narrative tradition--on whom a lot of generalities tend to get acted out.

The two categories are not the same.

The only kind of women who tend to hide what they're feeling are ones who are doing it to be manipulative, deceptive, or to conform to fluttery feminine stereotypes. They're strategically disguising their strengths or motives, not bottling up their fears.

I, the, what? Reality aside, even in the Anglo-American narrative tradition referred to elsewhere, this isn't true. I mean, Jane Eyre? Most of the women in worthwhile post-1970s genre fiction?

Maybe by having the color come from spunk, sass, irreverance instead of from suppressed angst?

I think this is the kind of thing that makes female-character-avoidant people avoid female characters in the first place. And again, it's not at all realistic - numberless hordes of female teenagers don't latch onto angst and angst-ridden people because it's a foreign emotion to them (us)!

cija,

I can't really tell what you're getting at. In your first paragraph, do you mean that most women in worthwhile post-1970's genre fiction are taciturn and prone to hiding their emotions and opinions? That isn't the impression I get, but maybe we read different books.

In your second paragraph, I'm not sure what the referents of "this kind of thing" and "it's not at all realistic" and "it's a foreign emotion" are. By "this kind of thing", do you mean that female-character-avoidant people are avoiding female characters because too many female characters are sassy and irreverent, or because too many of them are filled with angst, or something else? What is unrealistic, being spunky, suppressing angst, not suppressing angst, or something else? Is your last sentence literal or sarcastic?

I'm not arguing, I just can't tell for sure what you mean. Your statements could be interpreted multiple ways.

I've already agreed with the original poster that I was overgeneralizing. "Only" was way too strong a word to use. People are individuals, and any generalization applies only in a statistical way, like saying women tend to be shorter than men. I still think it's true, though, that as a rule women tend to be more open about how they feel, especially with their close friends and lovers, than men tend to be.

Sorry for the lack of clarity. My attempt at expansion may or may not be helpful:

'Having the color come from sassiness, spunk, irreverence', is what I meant by "this kind of thing." It's also what I was calling unrealistic. It's a character cliche I particularly dislike, especially because it's almost exclusively foisted on women. One of the reasons I dislike it, beyond personal taste, is because by their very nature, sass and irreverence are directed towards people in positions of power and responsibility. (Otherwise it's not sass, it's bullying.) So disproportionately giving women those character traits stacks the deck against women characters having power and responsibility -- and adulthood, I think -- themselves.

(The exception, of course, is when sass/sarcasm is a front, a cover for insecurity or self-loathing or what-have-you -- also a cliche, but one I like. (Plus it doesn't read to me as sexist.) Or when it's bravado, an effort to create in yourself the very nonchalance you're trying to project - Buffy quipping as she slays, that sort of thing. That, I like. But Buffy has tons of insecurity issues to go along with her sass.)

So anyway, I thought you were suggesting those sorts of traits as a female substitute for either angsty repression or emotional flamboyance - what I meant by my last paragraph was that angstiness is as girly an trait as they come, so it's not unrealistic to give it to a female character. But! at the same time, it's not a well-regarded or a respectable trait, so it's no 'easier' (and therefore less interesting) for a female character (or a real woman) to be angst-ridden than for a male one.

As far as reading habits go, women in the vast majority of the books I read and enjoy have multiple and sometimes conflicting motivations for their actions, often try to hide fear, shame, and embarrassment from others, and so on. But I don't think this says much about my reading tastes; it's just a description of ordinary human behavior -- I don't know how to read 'hiding your feelings' as a gendered trait -- everybody does it, if they can. I'd agree that women are socialized to hide different sorts of emotions than men are, though.

I'm not arguing

I'm not...well, maybe I am arguing a little, but I'm not hostile about it. I'm certainly not trying to fight. I do think a lot of this comes down to personal taste in character types, which can't be argued. (for instance, you mentioned George RR Martin, which reminds me that my personal perpetual grudge against that kind of fantasy is the way ideas of nonconformity in women are structured -- I look mostly in vain for some acknowledgement that a girl who likes to read books by herself all day is just as a rebel and just as much in violation of her social role as a girl (like Arya) who likes to fight and ride horses. Not that I don't want to read about physical heroism! - but it's the angst vs. sass thing all over again. There are a billion different ways for women to be interesting.)

[This excessively long comment was brought to you by the Campaign for Respectable Female Angst.]

Thanks, that does help.

I was by no means advocating specifically for more spunky women and fewer angsty ones (after all, it has been noted that most of Sarah's female protagonists tend to fit neither of those models, but are instead competent, straightforward and even-tempered). It was a single toss-away comment as an example of one possible other kind of more colorful personality that was different than being either Felix-like or Mildmay-like. I could have picked any number of other examples instead. My main point was the same as your conclusion that "There are a billion different ways for women to be interesting".

I just get the impression from Sarah's writing that she likes to have fun with her characters by making them a little extreme in some way, and they're fun to read as well, even when they aren't particularly having fun. Which made me think that maybe why her female characters won't talk to her as much as her male ones is that they are less extravagant. They're believable, but maybe she's a bit bored by them.

There are not only a billion different ways for women to be interesting, there are also a billion different tastes in what kinds of people one finds interesting. Like the original poster to whom I was responding, I'm also not a writer (at least, not of fiction - just of software and technical articles.) But I think if I were a writer, and I were getting blocked with my female characters more than my male ones, I would examine the female characters that I do find myself wanting to talk to, the ones whom I keep having conversations in my head with after the book ends, and analyze what about them makes me respond that way. Even if there are fewer of them than there are of the men, there are sure to be some.

Sarah,

You said: "among the people I make up, a characteristic of men is that they will cooperate with the narrative. Women mostly won't. The female narrator of The Mirador was actually lying to me."

Doesn't that strike you as resembling Real Life somewhat? The reigning wisdom is that men are competitive by nature and women cooperative... yet, in real world observation, it seems that men more easily work together for a common goal while women tend to compete with each other, and judge each other on levels that have nothing to do with said goal. I know these are generalizations... and no generalization ever holds up for all cases... but there it is.

Maybe the female narrator was lying to you because you're too pretty or she likes your husband and doesn't think you deserve him.

Just a thought.

Bryan.

If this comment is based on experience rather than knee-jerk stereotyping, I pity you and every woman you know.

No, I'm not knee-jerking, and I'm not alone in the observation.

"Let’s face it. Women do not get along that well in real life. Women are bitchy. They are competitive. They do not tend to LOVE one another on sight. Sure it happens. Every once in a blue moon, but the cold hard facts are that women, especially when you group them into a pack, do not all love one another and get along famously." Sharon Long, Romancing the Blog

Full post is here: http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/?p=671

I lived through high school, college, and office jobs. It wasn't that rare to see best friends stab each other in the back. It didn't happen all the time, but it wasn't rare. It was drama.

As to stereotyping, any time you lump large groups of people into a class together, you've participated in stereotyping. Is it a stereotype to say that men are competitive and women are social? Yes. Is it a stereotype to suggest that men are cooperative and women competitive? Yes. Is either stereotype wrong? Not always, but isn't that how many stereotypes get started?

Believe me, I didn't intend to offend. Nor was I hoping to inspire pity. But it strikes me that in your quest for redefining, or un-defining, gender roles there is a question you're not asking, or at least, not answering.

You said: "There's another sense in which this issue does matter--and matters a lot--a sense that Virginia Woolf was talking about way back when and that we (women writers in the Anglo-American tradition) still haven't really come to grips with. I write more men than women because it's easier, and it's easier because ...

"Well?

"It's easier because Anglo-American narrative traditions support and expect a male protagonist. It's easier because the things we make stories about are traditionally male things. It's easier because I imprinted on male protagonists as a child far more strongly than on female. (Little Women and Anne of Green Gables did not do it for me. Tom Sawyer did.) It's easier because I, as a reader and writer, am conditioned to think about male protagonists. Part of my mind, down near the trapdoor to the subconsious, still thinks that men are more "interesting" than women.

"For the record, this is complete and total bullshit."

You started to answer the question, then stopped yourself. The question is "Why?" Why is it easier for you to write a male narrator?

I return to my original quote from your post: "among the people I make up, a characteristic of men is that they will cooperate with the narrative. Women mostly won't. The female narrator of The Mirador was actually lying to me."

Why? Tell me I'm full of shit, that's fine. As long as you ask "Why?"

Let's take this apart a little.

1. I wasn't generalizing. I was talking about the characters in my head and how their gender assignments relate to the way I've been conditioned as a reader and as a writer.

2. I wasn't talking at all about real men or real women "I don't think, by the way, that this has anything to do with the gender performances of men and women in the world outside my head." And I don't.

Both men and women, in real life, can inhabit a breathtaking variety of gender performances. Most of which are, yes, influenced and conditioned by our socialization, which conditions men to be aggressive and women passive, etc. etc. But I know aggressive women. I know conflict-avoidant men.

3. Fishbowl social arenas, like high school, or a cubicle maze, can elicit virulently destructive behaviors like betrayal and backstabbing and lying and all the rest of it. The destructive behaviors may be inflected by gender (i.e., girls may be cruel in different ways than boys), but that doesn't mean gender causes them. Teenage boys are just as capable of spite and cruelty as teenage girls and vice versa.

4. Your generalization about women does not match up with my experience of being an adult woman and of having adult women as friends.

5. If you think I didn't answer my own question, you're misreading. It's easier for me to write male characters, particularly as narrators, because of the gendered way I've been conditioned to think about narrative. Also, as we've been puzzling out in the comments, because it's easier/more comfortable for me to write characters who are unlike me, and therefore I write better and more truthful characters once I've distanced them from myself a little--which I apparently do subconsciously via gender assignment. This is obviously something I need to work on, and I'm well aware of it.

Maybe the female narrator was lying to you because you're too pretty or she likes your husband and doesn't think you deserve him.

Over-anthropomorphize much?

Maybe "lying" is the word

truepenny used to describe something that is otherwise difficult to put into words about the creative process.

Maybe this whole notion of conversations with characters is really just a metaphore.

Oh, and just for the record....this narrator....wouldn't like me.

I'm so glad to read this. I'm writing a fantasy novel for the first time, coming out of the romance genre. This is a straight fantasy and my protagonist is female. All I do is think about this issue. How to get my heroine out of the *glass coffin* without making her the *wicked witch* which would be the course most women writers take in order to avoid the labels women writers fear (gender issues to a degree). I suppose coming out of romance, my heroine should avoid love affairs. But that's a cheat too.

However, I feel obligated to write better women, after years of writing Cinderella tales. I am not interested in Anita Blake clones. Being able to kick, kiss, and kill as good as any man is another cheat and just as phony as the Cinderella tale.

Keep writing on this...

Hey, I can kick and kiss as good as any man. (Never had to find out about killing.)

Actually, I have some reports that I kiss better than most men. *g*

...okay, more seriously. I think your struggle to write complex, three-dimensional characters is laudable. And I don't think that fantasy women have to be stereotypes. Go, you! Perservere!

Thanks. It's a muddle. I do have to laugh at myself at times, but if I don't take my story seriously, I will be stuck in a place I don't like at the moment and for a writer, that's a form of creative murder. I'll write nothing. I won't take the leap.

And I'm leaping in the dark here.

Which is breathtakingly scary. Like

matociquala, I support you!

A small and feeble thought: is gender-counting the silly response?

By which I'm groping for the idea that a "good" man is a better viewpoint character than a "bad" woman, however you choose to define good and bad. And even then it matters how they fit within the story.

As an example, consider how Lord Peter agonises over Harriet Vane's possible reactions to him. You could write their story from either point of view, and both, but without Lord Peter's PoV, the story is missing a vital part.

I think I can even see how you could write a feminist story without a single woman appearing. Maybe more obviously as a play than as a book, because written fictions have a flexibility that the stage doesn't. Stick half-a-dozen soldiers in a hut in the jungle, and you can certainly explore their attitudes to women.

But at this point I have the uncomfortable feeling that somebody is sneaking up on the tree with a chainsaw, and I'm out on a particularly precarious rim.

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Women writers, women characters

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Male and Female characters

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I'm not really a writer

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Real Life?

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And ain't I a woman?

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