Here's a challenge for male writers: If you're writing a female main character, see if you can make it like 50 whole pages before she thinks about her weight and how it compares to other female characters and how it's okay if she's a little ✨soft✨ because she's given birth
Comments
Not weight. Nothing soft about pregnancy
"Well, I've always just considered women to be people." -- George RR Martin
Also sorry you are slogging through the worst. X.x
They just. Won't. Let female characters be selfish or stupid. Everyone makes the same mistakes they made in the book, but the show ties itself in knots trying to show that they aren't mistakes, really.
Totally flies against GRRM's quote.
Yup, I’m good.
Seriously though, people really write like that?
😄
1. Write based on the main aspects you want. Essentially, make a strong person and not an object.
2. Roll the gender dice. Don’t write gendered things into the character unless it’s absolutely required as part of the story.
And this, of course, goes beyond gender too.
So that advice works for some characters, but not all, and we need to be mindful of that, because to be blunt, as a result, some characters aren't ours to write.
1. You were dismissive of the "unless it’s absolutely required as part of the story" which covers, for example, womanhood, as a core part of the story. But also leaves open that not every person has the same core tenet.
We need to keep that in mind when it comes to writing characters (outside SFF, where worlds are different) who aren't like us. 1/
I offered some tips to make diverse characters that don't feel like pandering, and you return with "some characters aren't ours to write" which is a fascinating view.
Where then does the line get drawn, can we still write Sci-Fi? Fantasy? What about historical record, is recording another's actions 'ours to write'? How is going 'you cannot write that because you didn't live it/aren't the same' not its own form of bigotry...
Make them secondary to the core of the character, and, oh wow! Now you don’t look like a hateful POS(this isn’t directed at a particular author).
I'll continue work like that in the meantime, like it was constructive criticism for my benefit.
But I guess I won't find out if I've been successful until the BETA reader stage 😁
I know that generally, people tend to simplify the way they think about the inner worlds of others, but that particular manner of doing it is gross.
1: the only comparison I made was she isn't married.
2: she sees herself in terms of her work. Feisty, prepared, and ready to go toe to toe with anyone.
3: the most dangerous character is a grandmother many times over, because of brains & experience.
4: do better with the next book.
A good tip for next time: imagine using an adjective (like "feisty") to describe a man and see if you'd feel weird about it. If so, it might be a good word to swap out.
It's not an easy balance and I feel too much of what I may have done right previously was by accident.
Me learning to be a better writer includes sharpening that weapon for Marlowe to use as she sees fit.
“There are only two kinds of people in the world: Men, and Women.”
All other “differences” are cosmetic. The two don’t communicate well, because each carries preconceived notions preventing effective communication.
By the end of my short story she has survived by overcoming her doubts and fears and meeting her mentor's expectations. I am male, old, and the father to two daughters who are brilliant and bold.
"Scarlett O Hara was not a beautiful woman but men seldom noticed when caught by her charm.."
It’s been so difficult to reclaim myself as a writer and as a person. Or believe that anyone might care what I have to say.
Honestly just this reaction will keep me going for a while, and motivate me to try and find a writing group again. Thanks
Now doing brain dead things for a man? That I still see quite often.