Strong Female Characters*

[Anne Lyle]

Originally Posted by James Coote

As for my own writing, I worry that women will look at my characters and see straight through them to the male author that wrote them. Basically that they'll reject them and say that men like me 'just don't get it'.

This is what beta-readers are for. I made sure that one of my betas for my first novel was a gay man, because two of the central characters are gay and I didn't want to commit any cliches. With the current one, I'm getting a Muslim friend to look at it, as the book is set mainly in the Mediterranean, so there's a lot more contact (and conflict!) between Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

No-one can be an expert on everything - you need people to help you with your blind spots, just as you do with more obvious research topics.

[Peter Graham]

Some folk enjoy being offended. As Hope rightly pointed out some months ago, being offended is very often a choice. If author A, as a man, writes a female lead, there will always be someone who loftily tells him that he should stick to what he knows and that he is being sexist in his portrayal. If A doesn't write a female lead, someone else will loftily accuse him of sexism for forgetting half the population.

Generally speaking, in literary fiction, character development tends to nose plot development off the winners' rostrum. In most genre fiction, plot is the driver.

By way of example, Jack's job is to bring magic beans home, plant them, get up the beanstalk and rob a giant.

Whether Jack is male, female, black, white, green with red dappling, religious, atheist, married, old, gay, straight or protobimeterosexualcurious, he's still got to get up the beanstalk and rob a giant.

What unites us as humans is always going to be far greater and far deeper than what divides us - be that gender, ethnicity, belief or who you like to have sex with. If writers concentrate on the big stuff, they might find that the window dressing looks after itself.

Regards,

Peter

[r_j_dando]

I write mostly male protagonists. (For anyone who hasn't guessed, I'm female). I've been writing male leads for years now; for some reason I generally find them easier to write. I suspect in part because I have 'male brain' - there are various tests to take to find out if you have typically male or female traits, and I score much higher on the male side of things.

I am also annoyed when reading books with female characters that don't behave like real people. Actually, I get annoyed with any characters that don't behave like real people, male or female! But it happens far more often with females. Seanan McGuire writes some great female protags, strong without being bitchy (Feed and Discount Armageddon spring to mind). Diana WJ also writes good females. There are excellent writers out there, and there are some whose approach to writing females is utterly terrible.

As a result of the above, I try to make sure that my females behave in a way I think is reasonable. As with all my characters, they have strengths and flaws. My male characters have a tendency towards the more thoughtful types, rather than the fighting types - although can be persuaded (reluctantly) into fighting if the story demands it. My females are usually fairly strong mentally. In my early writing years, I wrote some atrociously bad female leads, lurching from emotional crisis to crisis, and my gods they were bad. I hated writing females. And then I realised why I hated it - because I was trying to emulate a lot of the things I'd picked up on subconciously: women are weaker, less able, and so on. And given that that wasn't how I saw myself, writing characters like that always came across wooden. So I stopped, did a sense-check, and started writing females who behaved in the way that I wanted them to, if that makes sense.

[David Evil Overlord]

This thread has provided me with so many ideas for my female super hero protagonist.

I'm parodying some of the cliches of super herodom. Hopefully, it's gonna come out right.

[MemoryTale]

It's not a trope I've come across a great deal to be honest, I can think of a lot of female characters in the books I read who are strong without being bitches.

It's something I think I've avoided in most of my writing, with the exception of one character who needs to be belligerent for her contribution to the story to work.

I do think strong characters need a weakness, else it's just boring if you read them overcoming all of life's obstacles with nary a sweat. I don't mind that weakness being bitchiness, if it's not overdone. Sometimes I think you can avoid a cliche just for the sake of avoiding a cliche.

[nightdreamer]

Other than that a person's sex is often relevant to the plot, no, I don't think I have any special consideration otherwise. I'd say most if not all my female characters are strong, and very few of them are b**ches. Nor do I find it particularly difficult to write from the female perspective, though I may have to leave it up to some women to tell me how accurate I get it. There is a story about my upbringing which explains why I appreciate strong women, but let's not get into that. Incidentally, I am currently reading the Mistborn Trilogy. Vin is about as strong as a character can get, and about as far away from being a b**ch as one can get.

The Damsel in Distress trope? I despise it.

[MemoryTale]

The damsel in distress trope is great fun for parodying and subverting though. There was an Earthworm Jim cartoon where one of the villains kidnapped Jim's girlfriend, only to spend the rest of the episode getting destroyed by her

[Jake Reynolds]

I find women much more interestign to write, largely because they can be strong but have fears, decisive but doubtful, loving but callous, confident but vulnerable, and so on, but without stamping their feet, tugging their braids or crossing their arms under their breasts with a resounding harumph. The truth is, women simply are more interesting. Men, for the most part, are very black and white. They have a task before them and focus wholly on that until it's done. Though I have male characters, the more I write the more they become the foils for the female characters to bounce off.

I love this quote from As Good As It Gets:

“How do you write women so well?"
“I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.”

[Jammill Khursheed]

This has been a really interesting thread, and not one person has complained about 'moaning feminists' or said that they like seeing 'hot poses' in comics or anything even remotely like that so good on all of ya's, you do sadly still usually see a lot of that sort of stuff in sci-fi/fantasy discussions...

*** Mentally prepares to get flamed ***

That might be because a lot of sci-fi and fantasy fans don't really talk to women much

In my own WIP, MOST of the protagonists are women (its an ensemble piece with about 8 major characters, and only two are men, and one of them aint' all that important)...

ONE of my female characters is a bitch, but that's not because she's a woman, that's because she's just a bitch, and she's not the strong Amazon type either (she slaps a few of her subordinates from time to time but she never has a 'fight' with anyone)... None of the main female characters are weak girly types though...

Hardest problem I've got is trying to not turn the women into sex objects and make all the 'woman in it together' thing seem accidentally sapphic, made all the more difficult by the fact the central storyline focuses on the formation of a sex-cult and the leaders of it are preying on prostitutes, and pretty girls from children's homes they can turn into new ones, to fill their ranks (which, is what a lot of REAL cults actually do, I've researched it)...


Jammill

[Mouse]

Originally Posted by Jake Reynolds

...they can be strong but have fears, decisive but doubtful, loving but callous, confident but vulnerable, and so on...

Um, this just describes people.

[Anne Lyle]

Originally Posted by Jammill Khursheed

That might be because a lot of sci-fi and fantasy fans don't really talk to women much

Approximately 50% of SFF readers are women, judging by attendance at the more book-oriented conventions in the UK such as Eastercon and FantasyCon. Most of the writers' forums I go on have a lot of female members, probably a majority.

However, from what I hear, comic and videogame fandoms are much more male-dominated, in all senses of the word - that's where you'll hear a lot of the complaints about feminists. DC have pretty much said outright that they're not interested in the female audience. These media may have given you a skewed impression of the genre

[Jammill Khursheed]

I don't really do fantasy at all, 100% sci-fi/comics/videogame type person here, and I know there are a lot of women who are into elves and bows and arrows and stuff, and it might be a 50/50 split there, I wouldn't know...

Sci-Fi is still mainly 'for geeks' (I'm one of them, I wanna get a narrow boat just so I can call it the Pillar of Autumn and go down the canal on it) and people who can speak Klingon...

Not everyone is admittedly, but the one's who'll buy five issues of the same comic with different covers, or spend £300 on life size mould of a Borg's head, are the ones who companies make their most money off... And sadly for Sci-fi and especially comicbooks that's the main market they want to keep, and the sad little boys who boo when someone complains that women are only there to stick their chests out are who those things are aimed at...

Sorry if I tarred fantasy people with the same brush I'd be right to paint vast swathes of the sci-fi community with, it is just ignorance on my part, and in fantasy's defence people aren't in a furore over dwarves or nothing, just childish kick-ass-leather-bondage-laser-blasting-uber-bitches that are only there to get those arsoles horny, but sadly populate the stuff I like...

It's hard being a sci-fi fan and a feminist sometimes, and I get a little wound up in jumping in to try and equalise the playing field... ***Makes a mental note that Mordor is safe from the invading armies of suffragettes now***

Jammill

[Anne Lyle]

Originally Posted by Jammill Khursheed

Sci-Fi is still mainly 'for geeks' (I'm one of them, I wanna get a narrow boat just so I can call it the Pillar of Autumn and go down the canal on it) and people who can speak Klingon...

Yeah, and some of us girls are geeks too, you know?

*glances over at LotR "Argonath" bookends*

If I were you I'd stop digging that hole...

[Jimmy Magnusson]

Either you write characters with depth or you don't. That goes for males and females, characters and writers. I'm surprised so many gets stuck on the "ass-kicking" females, because that's not at all what I think of when I hear "strong female character". I think of people like Morn Hyland in The Gap Cycle (granted I haven't read the last book, so this observation only applies to the first four). She gets put through so much pain and suffering but never, ever gives up. Sure there might be hard times when she's down and out but in the long run she just pushes on. Playing as a female Commander Shepard in Mass Effect is another opportunity to see an incredibly strong character. Not because they can stand up in a fight (though Shep certainly can) but because they take a stand.

So I don't worry about "males can't write female characters, or at least not write them good without having a massive checklist to follow". Ursula Le Guin writes male characters just as fine as (and better than many) male writers. It swings both ways - if you're good enough and if you work hard enough you can always put out a well rounded character, male or female.

[Phyrebrat]

Originally Posted by Anne Lyle

Yeah, and some of us girls are geeks too, you know?

*glances over at LotR "Argonath" bookends*

If I were you I'd stop digging that hole...

hahaah me tooooo! I love my Argonath...One day my sister draped a fine gold necklace over the extended arm of one and I went orbital on her. Her response...'It's a what?' as she made them play pat-a-cake.

My sister, however, is the archetypal kick-a$$ - you know the rest... (she is also a massive SW, Fringe, BSG and Farscape fan, so she is also a weathercock and capricious )

pH