: Re: What are the standard genre characteristics of contemporary women's fantasy I want to write a fantasy novel with a female protagonist, and I want to familiarize myself with reader expectations.

@Si5022468

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As my name probably makes clear, I'm not female. However I'm a keen reader of fantasy and SF, and I'm particularly interested in anyone with new things to say, because the power of fantasy and SF is the ability to run fascinating thought experiments. So some of my favourites are from Sheri Tepper, Ursula LeGuin, Katherine Kerr, Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Emily St John Mandel, and no doubt more. Those are the ones I can think of immediately.

It should be immediately clear that none of them are doing anything similar, except writing damn good books with compelling characters, some of whom are female.

There are men who also write strong female characters. Neal Stephenson and Charles Stross, for example. (Stross also has a diverse set of sexualities for his characters too.) And of course Scott Lynch has this brilliant response to a reader who objected that a woman could not possibly be a pirate captain. Don't make the mistake that authors can only write well for their own gender - good authors are not limited by that.

More of those kinds of things, please. Create characters we can believe in, set them in a world we can believe in, and present them with events we can believe in (or at least suspend disbelief because they are internally consistent). And have a high standard of wordsmithing, because writing is an art.

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