: Re: A critic made a comment that my female character sounds like she was written by a man I'm a man. Working on my sci-fi novel. It's meant to be a light-hearted heist caper. My main character

@Phylliss352

Vote Up Vote Down

As a male writer who's had female protagonists, and plenty of female characters regardless of the protagonist's gender, I've not been told a female sounded like a man wrote her, but I have been told one could easily have been male, and that speaks to many of the same concerns. There were two main issues I had to fix in that instance.

Firstly, her traits were perhaps characteristic more of males than females, insofar as they were gendered at all. I usually write characters without trying to choose gendered traits for them - in this example, she was a young genius with a scarring past and dark streak - but that's not always a good thing. (I think it mostly is, though; it results in a work that needs tweaking after beta reader feedback, but so does anything.) Just to give some examples:

She made two comments about masturbation. The first was her refusal to describe her cousin's beauty in detail, in case a reader fantasised because of it. The second was a clarification a phrase of hers didn't have risqué intent, as a reader might have thought it did if they'd noticed an extremely subtle but unintended pun. I deleted the first because, as part of other improvements based on feedback, I did include a description of the cousin anyway. This is because one of the main ways gender would affect my protagonist is her awkward relationship with that cousin, whose response to gender roles is more affected by puberty. As for the second, I kept it (albeit with a slight edit) because it underscores the character's ability to out-think most readers.
She doesn't focus on being girly. A reader wondered whether she giggles, and what she thinks of make-up. I ultimately worked into the character's description of her cousin signs of envying her more straightforward femininity, which she mostly wraps in a transparent criticism of the effort.

Secondly, she didn't sufficiently address the consequences for her of being female in her society (the contemporary US). Ultimately, the problem women face is that people underestimate them. (You're welcome to dream up a fictional world where this isn't the case, but there are bound to be characters that would be underestimated, so it switches the question to how to write group X properly.) How should you, as a writer, make sure it's obvious a character endures this and understands that they do? I can't answer, because it depends on the character. In my case, she'd see it as a make-lemonade-from-lemons situation: if people underestimate her, she'll take advantage of that to trick them. That's the kind of person she is, someone who thinks her brain's job is to control people, not to show off all the maths she can do. I guess what I'm saying is: find what facts about your character reflect her reaction to being a woman. Her reaction, not that of the male writer who created her, but also created the world that makes her who she is.

(0)

Login to post a comment!