: Write the characters you want to write At the end of the day, if you write something you don't want to write, it will show. Feeling bullied into writing the character that you're told is

@Sue2132873

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Write the characters you want to write

At the end of the day, if you write something you don't want to write, it will show. Feeling bullied into writing the character that you're told is politically acceptable won't result in a work that you, nor anyone else, enjoys. Don't worry about the critics on Twitter who try to slander your work as "problematic"; you're not exactly writing samizdat.

But be aware that it might take practice. You'll probably have a few clumsy sets of characters before you nail down the situations and conflicts that women have with each other, and with men.

That said, all human beings experience dire conflict; it doesn't have to be physical. Everyone jockeys for comparative status with their peers, they have rivalries, they socially backstab each other, they have deep and lifelong friendships that are tested, they find themselves ostracized by others, they're deceived into doing something unacceptable, they might fall into addiction, they move to a new place where they don't know what people expect of them, their skills are one-upped by a younger character who reminds them of themselves, etc.

On a more positive side, rarely do you need a macguffin to solve these problems; a woman who is concerned about her best years being behind her, and who has a younger rival competing for the same things as her, doesn't need a +5 Dress of Gorgeousness to resolve the conflict she has (even if she thinks she does at the beginning of the story), she instead needs to focus on pursuits that play to her strengths. Perhaps she can expose her rival for being slimy and underhanded, showing the world that being attractive does not mean being pure (or, perhaps her rival is unattractive and jealous in the first place, and moral is that being unattractive does not give you license to tear down others).

Conversely, a younger woman may feel pressured to be a straight-A student and to become a doctor, but is jealous of others who are more free to pursue friendships, relationships, travel, or other things that are not directly related to becoming a high-income member of society. Women today are highly pressured to be "men with tits", and fighting other women's expectations of them is as worthy as any other story. There is nothing wrong with being genuine, free, expressive, and loving - even if others want to tear her down for being weak. She might not be a millionaire when she's 30, but she's less likely to be a self-hating depressive who spends her time on twitter attacking people who live the life she wishes she had the self-confidence to live...

tl;dr women have just as many conflicts as men, just because they don't involve end-of-the-world scenarios, or a thrilling MMA battle with the bad guy at the end, doesn't mean they're any less real or consequential to the people concerned.

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