: It is hard, I think, to create an authentic voice of a different sex because you can't get inside and hear the truth of an internal voice. I often wonder what on earth my husband's internal

@Kaufman555

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It is hard, I think, to create an authentic voice of a different sex because you can't get inside and hear the truth of an internal voice. I often wonder what on earth my husband's internal voice is saying when he's so quiet all the time.

As for being able to tell, my first name could be either gender and when I worked as an I.T. engineer, nobody knew from my written communication that I was a woman and it created a great deal of shock when I turned up to meetings after weeks of written communication.

If you try to create that 'authentic female voice' you could end up with a stereotypical character because every woman is different. I have met men who appear more feminine in the way they communicate than some of my female friends, and female friends who struggle with interpersonal communication because they are more logically driven than emotionally driven.

The stereotypical woman's voice would be quite chatty, gossip-focused, interested in clothes and shoes, etc. But that type of character will alienate a lot of female readers as many of us are very quiet and introspective and find that type of character shallow.

I think you would be better off concentrating on the characters themselves (which you seem to be very comfortable with already), focussing on what type of person they are inside. You could base your female character on a composite of a couple of women you know and spend a lot of time with these women (as Chris suggests), listening to how they talk, what they talk about and (as Amelia suggests) what they focus on, pay attention to, and what's important to them. Once you know this character as well as you know yourself, I think her voice will come naturally to you.

I'm watching The Bridge at the moment and the female protagonist in that is really interesting, socially challenged, and almost too logical even for the male characters to relate to. She's so interesting as a character and her voice is incredibly distinct.

So, be careful of trying to nail that generic female voice and ending up with a stereotype. I feel your struggle as I'm trying to create an authentic voice in my male character. It isn't easy.

Good luck!

Oh, and out of interest, I popped this into gender guesser and I come out as 65% likely to be male:

Genre: Formal
Female = 424
Male = 812
Difference = 388; 65.69%
Verdict: MALE

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