: Re: Will my book have a better chance at being successful if I include more gender diversity in it? My novel so far only contains female main characters. There are some male characters, but they

The conventional wisdom says you need males. The conventional wisdom can go jump in a lake.

The conventional wisdom that I've heard says that girls will read anything, but boys only read stories with boys in them.

As a YA boy (about 10 years ago), I don't think that the gender of the protagonists was ever a major factor in choosing the books I read. There were undoubtedly some books that were marketed towards girls that I avoided because of it, but just having a female cast alone wasn't something I (consciously) noticed.

Now, I was a bit of an extreme bookworm, and probably not a representative audience. But even if the conventional wisdom is true, I don't think it's one that we should be encouraging. The conventional wisdom was that YA books couldn't be much more than 200 pages until JK Rowling sold a couple million copies of Order of the Phoenix, and now that rule is cheerfully ignored.

You'll probably get pushback from publishers on the matter, but if you can honestly say that you've experimented on the matter and that it would actively make your book worse, then I think that it's a fight you will win.

Load Full (0)

: How to keep romance out of my novel? (Kem uses they/them pronouns.) I'm outlining a story about a witch named Kem who has to protect the world from evil. Kem befriends demons and other witches,

@Goswami879

Load Full 4 Comments

: Is a nuclear apocalypse cliche? My post-apocalyptic novel occurs in 2122. In canon events, around the year 2018, after many years of global war, a chain reaction caused the launching of all

@Goswami879

Load Full 2 Comments

: Scrivener: use chapter and/or page numbers in hyperlinks Since I'm writing a paperback, not an e-book, I wonder if and how I can teach Scrivener to use chapter numbers and/or page numbers when

@Goswami879

Load Full 1 Comments

: Is a lawful good "antagonist" effective? In my post-apocalyptic novel, my protagonist is not necessarily "good", and although the antagonist is an honest and kind person, my protagonist perceives

: Re: Will my book have a better chance at being successful if I include more gender diversity in it? My novel so far only contains female main characters. There are some male characters, but they

More posts by @Goswami879

: How to keep romance out of my novel? (Kem uses they/them pronouns.) I'm outlining a story about a witch named Kem who has to protect the world from evil. Kem befriends demons and other witches,

: Is a nuclear apocalypse cliche? My post-apocalyptic novel occurs in 2122. In canon events, around the year 2018, after many years of global war, a chain reaction caused the launching of all

: Scrivener: use chapter and/or page numbers in hyperlinks Since I'm writing a paperback, not an e-book, I wonder if and how I can teach Scrivener to use chapter numbers and/or page numbers when

: Is a lawful good "antagonist" effective? In my post-apocalyptic novel, my protagonist is not necessarily "good", and although the antagonist is an honest and kind person, my protagonist perceives

Login to post a comment!

0 Comments

Back to top