Female Characters, pt. 3: Love and marriage, real boys and vampires

More blog reader discussion:

annemariewrites:
"Then again, I was raised in a household that read comic books like Xmen, Spawn, etc., where kick-ass females were more than costumed heroines. They had tragic pasts, bad romances, and they triumphed. also remember watching cartoons with bad-ass/strong female leads like in Thunder Cats. There was also She-Ra and to some degree even Rainbow Bright had kick-ass-ness with, um, unicorns thrown in for good glitter measure. >:D And let's not forget Miss April O'Neil from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. She didn't know kung-fu, but she usually handled herself even when in the Shredder's clutches."

I guess my issue is not just quality, but also quantity? I mean, April is only one girl and there were FOUR ninja turtles. Plus a male villain and a male mentor. I will admit, though, that there are some comic books that really excel with the female characters. X-Men had more guys than girls, but the girls they did have were pretty awesome. I always liked the early Claremont years of X-Men and I love Kitty Pryde's character, and Storm too. I even liked Jean Grey/Phoenix, although being from an earlier era she always had that role as "Cyclops's girlfriend".

I've often said that indie fantasy comics are my favorite stories, for so many reasons, and they have great female characters too. Elfquest, Thieves and Kings, Bone, Castle Waiting...two created by men, two created by women, both with really great characters of both genders, and not just your standard character tropes either.

annemariewrites:
"What amuses me further about that is I've pointedly used the SAME voice for a female character as a male. The male gets way more praise for being snarky and funny and the females are called "bitchy" and "cold". The things is, to some degree, I AM those voices. They are the products of my experiences. They are how I see things, so when people say my female characters are bitches, I tend to take that pretty damn personally."

That is true. I've heard this complaint from more than one female writer. Girls don't get as much slack when they're having a bad day, a bad year, or a bad life. Although there are certainly some bitchy women in successful popular literature. Maybe it's a matter of reader taste.

Maggie Desmond O'Brien says:
"I haven't tried too hard to write characters from guys' perspectives before - I just can't imagine what life would actually be like inside a guy's head. But I agree that it's difficult to separate myself from my female characters sometimes!"
Kirsten says:
"For me, the pressure in writing female characters comes from trying not to make them sound exactly like me. At the same time, I'm so used to writing a female MC (in tight first person) that my most recent attempt at a male MC (also in tight first person) didn't really sound like a real boy."

This brings up the question, for me, again...so what does a boy sound like? I'm not saying that women don't write unrealistically girly boys sometimes, and that it should not be a consideration! After all, I've certainly read books by men about women that made me cringe. OTOH, I do worry sometimes when I see writers discussing "how to write a boy" with tips like "boys don't talk about their emotions" or "boys don't think, they act!" Sometimes I worry this will produce not real boys, but "typical" boys.

As for writing girls that are too much like oneself, does anyone find this diminishes the more they write? I find that the more stories I write, the more I have to force myself to think of new sorts of characters so they aren't all the same in every book, and it gets me moving outside my box...not to say that I don't have "types" I keep coming back to.

redcrest:
"I agree that the flat, defined-only-by-love-plotline girl characters are definitely not a problem of male-authored stories—not by a long shot. In fact, I get the feeling that the majority of female-authored stories include or even center on the love life of the heroine. It takes me back to that stereotype of boys’ and girls’ dreams—the boys typically dream about what career they’d like to have in the future (“astronaut!” “rock star!”) while the girls dream about what kind of prince charming they’d like to marry… Do you think the majority of girls are really like that?"

No! Or maybe... I admit the love plot has always been my favorite, and when I was little I dreamed of getting married (which I never actually DID, but close enough), but...I think the problem is if you're dreaming about marriage for the sake of marriage--because you feel obligated by society or are concerned about being an "old maid"...which were real concerns for women in past history but are not as big a concern anymore. (It still exists, of course, but both men and women now worry about missing their chance to marry and sometimes start a family, it's no longer a question of "will a girl be stuck at home with her aging parents and be a burden to them?" This is now just a concern of people who play MMORPGs. ^_~) When I dreamed of marriage, I was really dreaming of having a partner, someone I loved to share my life with, like my parents had, and it wasn't my sole dream for myself. But all of us crave companionship. I think that's what good love stories are about, to me.

But to some other girls, a good love story seems to be about a man desiring a woman...sometimes even to an unhealthy point. Possessing, obsessing, dominating, even stalking. I think a lot of relationships, whether or not you actually have some dominatrix thing going on ;D have some level of domination and submission going on that the couple falls into naturally. We've all run into the guy with the bitchy girlfriend who wants to keep tabs on him every two seconds, or the girl who always bows to her boyfriend's wishes with some lame excuse...but I think even happier couples have some degree of it. But in a story where we could portray any sort of relationship, do women really want a man watching them sleep or following them around, even (or especially) a sexy vampire/angel/demon/whatever? Really?? Or is it harmless? Just women writing fantasy scenarios for other women? I will end this post with a bunch of unanswered questions for dramatic effect!!! =D

Female Characters, pt. 2: Wimps, Ass-kickers and Princesses

First, some discussion from the comments...

gracefuldoe:
"I've always found female characters easier to write. I was an 80s child too, but I loved the princesses and being a girly girl. To me boys were dirty and icky."

I can understand that! I like many aspects of the girly girl. I don't think Nimira is a girly-girl per se but she's not an ass-kicker either. She's not a princess, but...she could be. OTOH, I never thought of boys as dirty and icky. As a little girl, I tended to gravitate toward friendships with gentle nerd boys who sometimes turned out to be gay, and my dad was the kind of guy who never watched sports but would get sucked into The Joy Luck Club.

Are girls who like writing about guys affected by the males in their lives, or is it just as often wish fulfillment, I wonder?

Memory: "I think there's a lot more pressure when one tries to write female characters because there's such emphasis on avoiding the cliches and creating complex personalities. I don't feel like this is really the case where male characters are concerned."


That's an interesting point. I'd never thought of this; I guess I do feel pressure to write strong women moreso than to write men any certain way, but I always felt it came less from society and more from my own awareness that my female characters were inadequate. But I guess it's probably both.

Redcrest (among other things Redcrest says...we could probably have a pretty lengthy discussion just between ourselves): "And yes, “the girl” could never be the cool, smart-alecky one or stand alone w/o a love interest. Having a girl on the team apparently set off a certain expectation—“She shall be someone’s love interest”—like introducing a gun in the first act of a play immediately signaled “someone will get shot by the end of the play.”"

It's true, the token girl is also often the love interest, and it is a bit irksome when people defend female characters in a story by mentioning the love interest(s). In LOST, for instance (which I loved, btw) I think the girls definitely were more defined by their love stories. That's a show where you notice it less because it's a large cast and the characters are well-rounded, but as a group, the boys definitely do more. And it's not just a flaw of stories written by men. I think Harry Potter had a similar problem--there were cool girls in Harry Potter, but there were more boy characters of importance and weight.

olmue: "I'm a girl, so I do tend to relate to female characters more than males (in general). I've mostly written female MCs. However, I do find that it's also harder for me to separate myself from my character, and to really make her rounded, when I'm writing female. I did write one book entirely from a male perspective, and I found out all kinds of things about the character that I maybe wouldn't have been forced to think about had I been on default female. And then I was able to apply some of that when revising a girl MC book, so it was doubly helpful. I've been giving some thought to doing a dual POV, one guy, one girl, because I don't know if I'm quite ready to give up that interesting perspective yet."

Yes, I too find it harder to separate girl characters from myself...or is it a question of conveying myself in an interesting way? The guys definitely have a lot of me in them, too, but they're easier to make interesting. Back when I couldn't write many interesting girl characters, one girl I did love to write was Leslie Teller, who was extremely different from me. She was playful and fun and boy-crazy and very outgoing and flirtatious and had a rather wounded past and was frankly, kind of a ditz...not much for the book-learnin', anyway, but she had some considerable creative talent. She could have been a cliche but I think part of the fun was unearthing her layers. It's harder to write a girl like Olivia who is not me, but has enough in common with me to be my friend. Leslie probably wouldn't be my friend.

One concept we keep coming back to is the important of avoiding cliches in writing women. The history of female characters is a bit like the history of feminism itself--first women were mostly wives and mothers, then with the rise of feminism, it became all about "career" and stay-at-home moms started to feel looked down upon. Girls in books, too, started as love interests and moms, and then became tough, unemotional ass-kickers around the 80s, but now I think we're starting to see a wide range of girls. Girly girls have inner strength, warrior women aren't just guys with boobs...but we're still very conscious of the cliches and concerned about our portrayals of women.

Female Characters, pt. 1: In which I blame 80s cartoons just a little

Soo, I had this craft chat thing awhile back and the first topic was Female Characters. Just a few people showed up, but we had a decent chat. However, since only a few people could come, my friend Su suggested:

"Since so many folks missed out, why don't you start a post about it? Write your opinion, maybe throw in some of those questions you were going to ask at the chat, and then all of us can respond in the comments. The exchanges may be slower, but we can still get a pretty good chat out of it, I'm sure."

Good idea, Su! =D I just had to wait until BEA craziness was over. So let's chat here. Why not. I'll ask some questions all week, at least until I run out.

First question: Is it easier for you to write female or male characters? Why do you think that is, anyway?

I have been getting praise for Nimira in Magic Under Glass for being a strong heroine, and I have to admit, this surprised me a bit because I thought I kind of sucked at writing girl characters. When I was a kid/teen, I never wanted to be a girl in pretend games or write about girls. (I did like to draw girls, though, but that is because their clothes are better.)

I think I had the subconscious idea that girls couldn't be awesome. At least, not in the way I liked. Thinking back to the girls in popular media of my childhood, there were princesses and cackling evildoers and cute little girls. I had the entire Lady Lovelylocks castle, but I didn't want to BE Lady Lovelylocks. I just wanted her clothes. I loved some of the girls in books like Ramona Quimby and Anastasia Krupnik, but I didn't want to be them. They were too much like me. I liked characters who were accomplished and awesome and maybe a little eccentric and pompous. It wasn't that girls couldn't be strong back then. It was that they rarely got to be awesome in that particular way I craved.

I grew up in a sort of age of compensation for the crimes of the past. Girls in stories before my time tended to be wimps and damsels in distress and sexy window dressing or just plain excluded. By the 80s and 90s, we had plenty of "token" girls and sometimes girlcentric entertainment. Fantasy books had started to include the bad-ass warrior woman. But it seemed to me that these stories missed the point to some degree. I still didn't want to be a girl (well, in fiction anyway), write about a girl. I was perhaps LESS interested in the bad-ass warrior woman than I was in the girly girl who at least sported a hot wardrobe.

Girls were still not quirky.

So sometime in my twenties, part consciously and part unconsciously, I decided I was going to let the ladies be not just strong, but quirky and awesome and tragic-past-y and funny. Somewhere along the way I started liking Nimira almost as much as Erris. That would never have been the case back in the day. Triumph! I hope girls of the modern era have some more fascinating characters to inspire them than I did.

However, I know many writers found it easier to write girls than boys. Please let me know which you prefer and why!

I'll also have some more reader-centric questions upcoming, so whether you're a reader or writer, stay tuned.