My serial fantasy character will struggle and fail. In a recent post she was fighting back-to-back with her husband. They were defeated and he was killed. In her grief and rage she gave an order that was objectively evil.
This is all good advice. I love writing female characters. I think my readers favourites are the females too. I’m currently working on a sequel to my popular vampire novel ‘Ofelia’. It’s interesting because it completely subverts the usual sequel structure. It also exposes a vulnerability in her - hubris, which almost costs her everything.
This hits all the right points. I haaaate the girl boss trope, or any writing/script that makes the female character unrealistically badass simply bc all the men around her are incompetent. That said, in any situation really, the solution is to "write humans" not stereotypes.
"We have mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, partners, friends, colleagues, teachers and countless others who have influenced us. We have seen their strengths, weaknesses, habits, tempers, insecurities, loyalties and ambitions."
Some of us, as well, have encountered many female fictional characters in our lives, and have therefore understood how they are created within and in spite of narrative limitations. This, in turn, may inspire us to create characters who succeed as characters where others failed.
For my part, I have found writing in a female voice more liberating than that of a man's. If you are making arguments about people needing to be free to act on their own terms without outside interference, for example, putting that in the voice of a white man rings more hollow than it would with the gender that arguably remains still less understood and understandable from the opposite position...
Excellent. And have your readers who fear they “can’t do it properly” ask themselves, are all the men they write identical (of course not!)? Variations in characters are what makes them interesting, just extend that line of thought to your female characters. Make them live and breathe as people!
I gave myself a challenge to write a female protagonist for my debut novel, Electromagnetic Assault, https://brucelanday.com/books-and-writing/ My protagonist is Navy Commander Jazmin Hassani. She's a Navy Special Operations Pilot assigned to a SEAL Team and the driving force in the book is her getting answers to the incident where as pilot, her aircraft was shot down by a mystery energy weapon at a Chinese military base, killing her entire SEAL Team. Jazmin was critically injured and the sole survivor. The rest of the book is her finding out what really happened and getting retribution for her fallen comrades.
I was an Air Force officer so I have some good role models for female military officers. It also helped that I've been married for 43 years and raised two high achieving daughters. I wrote Jazmin as a driven, high achieving woman. In many ways I wrote her the same as a male character but made sure to allow for her family and long time love connection with a sketchy Cyber Command officer from her past.
Jazmin was a lot of fun to write and I wound up with a surprising reader demographic of older women. I live in a retirement community and sold a ton of books to my neighbors, many of which were older (80+) women. The comment I heard frequently was that they normally didn't read my type of book -- near future military political technothriller, but they loved my protagonist and all I put her through. It also helped that in my near future world, there were many other powerful women characters.
I'm writing a new novel, Patriot Enforcer, with a new female protagonist, Commander Jac Remington, a time traveling federal officer with the TEA (Temporal Enforcement Agency) in support of the Patriot Party. Jac was coerced to take the job and years later, she'd had enough and is fighting back.
I was told by an early writing teacher to write books that women like because they buy 80% of the books. It was great advice!
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on how men can write female protagonists and other characters.
As a male writer who creates mainly female protagonists, I think this is a brilliant and (sadly, these days) brave breakdown of female character creation and enactment. It's also a worthy rebuff to the coarse stereotyping of male authors that infects publishing. Equality of thoughtful observation should be a given when it comes to creative writing.
This lowkey should be titled “how to write female characters as an author”. Yes to all of this. The girl boss persona who doesn’t need men drives me nuts (I had to write an article on it because it annoys the heck out of me 😅)
Thank you for this, it's useful for an author with primarily women leads. I do try to make my characters diverse, and I'm always interested in flaws. One has a noxious temper, one is socially inept, one is paralyzed at the thought of any change in her life, one keeps carousing and then falling into a black depression afterward. But your post is a good reminder that I could go further with this. Always love an MC with delicious flaws!
My serial fantasy character will struggle and fail. In a recent post she was fighting back-to-back with her husband. They were defeated and he was killed. In her grief and rage she gave an order that was objectively evil.
This is all good advice. I love writing female characters. I think my readers favourites are the females too. I’m currently working on a sequel to my popular vampire novel ‘Ofelia’. It’s interesting because it completely subverts the usual sequel structure. It also exposes a vulnerability in her - hubris, which almost costs her everything.
This hits all the right points. I haaaate the girl boss trope, or any writing/script that makes the female character unrealistically badass simply bc all the men around her are incompetent. That said, in any situation really, the solution is to "write humans" not stereotypes.
"We have mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, partners, friends, colleagues, teachers and countless others who have influenced us. We have seen their strengths, weaknesses, habits, tempers, insecurities, loyalties and ambitions."
Some of us, as well, have encountered many female fictional characters in our lives, and have therefore understood how they are created within and in spite of narrative limitations. This, in turn, may inspire us to create characters who succeed as characters where others failed.
For my part, I have found writing in a female voice more liberating than that of a man's. If you are making arguments about people needing to be free to act on their own terms without outside interference, for example, putting that in the voice of a white man rings more hollow than it would with the gender that arguably remains still less understood and understandable from the opposite position...
Excellent. And have your readers who fear they “can’t do it properly” ask themselves, are all the men they write identical (of course not!)? Variations in characters are what makes them interesting, just extend that line of thought to your female characters. Make them live and breathe as people!
I write female characters quite a bit so this has been a topic I have also engaged it quite a bit. I think you summed up most of my same thoughts
I gave myself a challenge to write a female protagonist for my debut novel, Electromagnetic Assault, https://brucelanday.com/books-and-writing/ My protagonist is Navy Commander Jazmin Hassani. She's a Navy Special Operations Pilot assigned to a SEAL Team and the driving force in the book is her getting answers to the incident where as pilot, her aircraft was shot down by a mystery energy weapon at a Chinese military base, killing her entire SEAL Team. Jazmin was critically injured and the sole survivor. The rest of the book is her finding out what really happened and getting retribution for her fallen comrades.
I was an Air Force officer so I have some good role models for female military officers. It also helped that I've been married for 43 years and raised two high achieving daughters. I wrote Jazmin as a driven, high achieving woman. In many ways I wrote her the same as a male character but made sure to allow for her family and long time love connection with a sketchy Cyber Command officer from her past.
Jazmin was a lot of fun to write and I wound up with a surprising reader demographic of older women. I live in a retirement community and sold a ton of books to my neighbors, many of which were older (80+) women. The comment I heard frequently was that they normally didn't read my type of book -- near future military political technothriller, but they loved my protagonist and all I put her through. It also helped that in my near future world, there were many other powerful women characters.
I'm writing a new novel, Patriot Enforcer, with a new female protagonist, Commander Jac Remington, a time traveling federal officer with the TEA (Temporal Enforcement Agency) in support of the Patriot Party. Jac was coerced to take the job and years later, she'd had enough and is fighting back.
I was told by an early writing teacher to write books that women like because they buy 80% of the books. It was great advice!
Thanks for your thoughtful comments on how men can write female protagonists and other characters.
She boobed boobily down the stairs
Peak. No notes. Publish it with haste.
As a male writer who creates mainly female protagonists, I think this is a brilliant and (sadly, these days) brave breakdown of female character creation and enactment. It's also a worthy rebuff to the coarse stereotyping of male authors that infects publishing. Equality of thoughtful observation should be a given when it comes to creative writing.
Good story. Having trouble with female characters? Read this article.
what if I don’t want my female characters to be male authors?
This lowkey should be titled “how to write female characters as an author”. Yes to all of this. The girl boss persona who doesn’t need men drives me nuts (I had to write an article on it because it annoys the heck out of me 😅)
This is generally good advice. I'd love to see a companion piece to this on how to write men, though!
if she doesn’t breast boobily and tit downwards, i dont want it
Thank you for this, it's useful for an author with primarily women leads. I do try to make my characters diverse, and I'm always interested in flaws. One has a noxious temper, one is socially inept, one is paralyzed at the thought of any change in her life, one keeps carousing and then falling into a black depression afterward. But your post is a good reminder that I could go further with this. Always love an MC with delicious flaws!
I write female characters all the time and no one has said I can't
They don't say you can't, they just say you're incapable of doing so.
Eh, nobody's said that either
Will DM you examples.