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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: belial.1980 on October 14, 2009, 01:21:44 AM
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I've heard of some very successful male authors criticized (some admitably) for not writing well from the female POV. I'm a male and I haven't written a lot from a female POV in the past but I've been doing it a lot lately. Just looking for pointers.
I don't know if this is right or wrong but I tend to construct my female characters just like my male characters: generally I start off with another literary/movie character or a person that I know in real life as inspiration. Then I think of a couple defining character traits or quirks and write from there to see what happens.
For example one of my favorite characters I'm writing now, Hailey, was inspired by Drew Barrymore's character from Donnie Darko. Drew's character was a high stern school teacher with a quirky dramatic flair about her. I sort of kept her in mind when writing Hailey, but didn't write ::her:: specifically.
To the guys and gals out there, any ideas/suggestions/things to watch out for?
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About the only advice I can think of is to have a female friend/girlfriend/relative who's willing to read and let you know if there's anything that doesn't sound right. When I write a male character, I do pretty much the same, start off like I do with any other character, and then just write what feels right. And according to my b/f, I do pretty well. But I think a bit of that is also that I lean more toward tomboy than girly girl.
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I think if you want to get into a woman's head and write her, then you will. And you'll get better at it with practice. I notice that i sit differently when I'm typing a male vs female character. I think it's a kind of physical reminder to keep me focused on the view point of the male. I'll be interested to see what other people say.
Cool question beliel
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Writing men, women, dogs, aliens, or whatevers successfully all depends on motivation to me. Men and women have fundamental differences at this level.
Now to be clear, I personally have no idea what motivates most women. I've been with the same one for nine years now and I still have trouble figuring out why she does things the way she does.
But when constructing my characters I tend to try to think of them from birth to whatever age they are when the reader will meet them. Did they have a good, honorable, loving father? This fact alone would affect a boy differently than a girl. For a boy his father would be one of his first role models (possibly, of course a good writer could make the kid a psycho killer, but that's beside the point). For a girl a good dad is her first idea of what a man is suppose to be like, and it will most likely affect who she chooses to date or befriend. The same is true in the opposite for good mothers. Now how about abusive parents, or neglectful, or depressed?
I'm not a psychiatrist or anything. This is just how I think parentage affects kids.
I don't write a lot of this first stuff down. I'd be writing for hours without getting any real writing done. Instead I day dream as if I'm sculpting someone. Did she have siblings? Did he get to go to his prom? Is he overweight? and so on
all of these things will affect personality and more importantly MOTIVATION.
Lastly keep in mind I'm an unpublished beginner too, so I'm certainly no expert.
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I think of it as being somewhat like method acting. Instead of focusing on gender, what are the character's motivations? What is his history/backstory, and how does it color his reactions? Is he bright, naive, socially inept, a control freak? Does he act impulsively, or think every situation through first? What is his "voice"? How does his physicality determine his actions? What props does he habitiually use? Also, I try not to base my primary characters on specific actors, as I feel it will be too limiting (though I did it with a supporting player who's only in two scenes; he's modelled after Jack Black.)
(BTW, I've used "he" here as I'm female, in case anyone's wondering.)
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Honestly... From what I've read, there are more male writers than female writers who can write females well.
Getting a reader of both genders to check the perspective makes sense, regardless of the writer-character gender combination.
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Honestly... From what I've read, there are more male writers than female writers who can write females well.
Define "write females well".
Gender is largely a social construct. When I bounce my work of my betas, I've never had complaints about doing male or female characters less plausibly - there are directions, like writing people with social confidence (I am a recovering pathologically shy person), that I find a great deal harder to get into than gender-related stuff. That said, I mostly don't write contemporary settings, because I have equally little sympathy for female or male contemporary gender roles (princesses and "guys" irritate me equally; my own gender identification is "geek"); I'm interested in writing about people who are themselves first, not their gender first.
I suspect a lot of what I write might not work for people who have deeply held notions about gender being essential and fundamental difference much larger than any difference between individuals, but, well, those people are wrong, so I'm not inclined to give them much time, and furthermore, writing for them is a no-win double-bind; write a gender that's not yours like you, they say your male characters feel like women or vice versa; write a gender that's not yours not like you, it comes across as made up out of whole cloth rather than anything real.
Fortunately, writing in genre gives me aliens, angels and AIs to play with.
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"writes females well" defined as: How Jim writes in Codex Alera. (LOVE IT)
does not "write females well" defined as: LKH. Seriously. Ick. I love her monsters and some of her male characters. I want to kill Anita. Which would display immense talent if that were her goal. I don't think it is, though.
I'll further say that it's not so much a "HEY your lady isn't lady-like" as a "Hey! Just because your character is a woman doesn't mean she's obsessed with her nails! Really!" thing.
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Writing well for the opposite gender is difficult at times. But the other posters are correct- a well defined history and motivation is key to any well written character. This is particularly true when the motivations may be related to a gender that you are not familiar with.
Let me explain by way of my epiphany, some years ago.
I was watching the movie "Aliens" when it first was released on DVD. It was with a group of chatty friends, including my arch nemesis (and wife's best friend) who I shall call Dr. Feminist. I made the comment that in the original script for the first movie, Ripley was supposed to be a man. Her reply opened my eyes:
"That wouldn't make sense. The whole reason Ripley was the hero was because she was the groups mother- protecting them from the big bad monsters that they didn't know were lurking out there."
She was right! Viewed in the light of the mother-protector concept, the movie Aliens becomes the story of two matriarchs defending their brood against the other. Not heroism, not sacrifice, but the preservation of their species. I watched it again later, and saw a whole new depth to the movie I had missed before.
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*shrug* For my money, it was just because it made the "win" all the more dramatic.
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"writes females well" defined as: How Jim writes in Codex Alera. (LOVE IT)
Codex Alera has just never come together for me, nor does it stick well in my head, socan;t really comment there.
does not "write females well" defined as: LKH. Seriously. Ick. I love her monsters and some of her male characters. I want to kill Anita. Which would display immense talent if that were her goal. I don't think it is, though.
I'll further say that it's not so much a "HEY your lady isn't lady-like" as a "Hey! Just because your character is a woman doesn't mean she's obsessed with her nails! Really!" thing.
Well, one would think that that combination of examples serves rather well against any gender-essentialist notion that men can't write women in some ineffable way that only women can, fwiw.
I'd also offer Daniel Abraham's Long Price books for a really good example of a man writing female characters; one of the viewpoint characters in the first is a middle-aged female manager with a bad leg that is a permanent chronic source of pain, which is a kind of character I can't recall ever seeing in an epic fantasy before, and she is just wonderful.
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"That wouldn't make sense. The whole reason Ripley was the hero was because she was the groups mother- protecting them from the big bad monsters that they didn't know were lurking out there."
She was right! Viewed in the light of the mother-protector concept, the movie Aliens becomes the story of two matriarchs defending their brood against the other. Not heroism, not sacrifice, but the preservation of their species. I watched it again later, and saw a whole new depth to the movie I had missed before.
Myself, I hate Aliens on something pretty close to these grounds; I think it's profoundly anti-feminist. Take a strong independent female professional, contrive a means to assemble a nuclear family around her, and present that as her core motivation. Kinder, kueche, kirche. And that's before we get into the subtext of the enemy female being fecund, parasitic, and black.
I think I am one of a very small number who dound the opening to Alien^3 profoundly satisfying on these grounds.
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Jim writes women well in all his books. Murphy, Charity, Molly... All feminine, all complete characters with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Male author who writes women VERY poorly? Robert Jordan. Snivelling, sniffing, bitchy, snotty, conniving, whiny, and horrible. There isn't a woman in the entire series (or at least as far as I read, which was the first four or maybe five, I think) I could either identify with, or could ever imagine wanting to know. I'd smack them all senseless. Hated the lot of them, and the female characterizations are one of the biggest reasons I stopped reading the books. I can only conclude that Robert Jordan has never met a strong, competent, kind, loving woman in his entire life. They're all mean and sly and hateful, judging by the women in his books.
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I can only conclude that Robert Jordan has never met a strong, competent, kind, loving woman in his entire life.
Having met his wife, this is not in fact true.
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Having met his wife, this is not in fact true.
I'm most curious as to what Harriet thought of her husband's female characters, given all the great things I've heard about her. It's a shame, too, as I otherwise thoroughly enjoy the Wheel of Time (yes, despite all the cries of "boring!" around the world-building/stage-setting in later books; I don't think that's a bad thing).
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I'm most curious as to what Harriet thought of her husband's female characters, given all the great things I've heard about her.
So far as I know, she was his first and most intense beta-reader, so I can but presume they had her approval; precisely what he was actually trying to do with them remains opaque to me.
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Jim writes women well in all his books. Murphy, Charity, Molly... All feminine, all complete characters with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Male author who writes women VERY poorly? Robert Jordan. Snivelling, sniffing, bitchy, snotty, conniving, whiny, and horrible. There isn't a woman in the entire series (or at least as far as I read, which was the first four or maybe five, I think) I could either identify with, or could ever imagine wanting to know. I'd smack them all senseless. Hated the lot of them, and the female characterizations are one of the biggest reasons I stopped reading the books. I can only conclude that Robert Jordan has never met a strong, competent, kind, loving woman in his entire life. They're all mean and sly and hateful, judging by the women in his books.
Hmm.. You're a better person than I am clearly, because I identified with the snivelling, the sniffing, the snotty, (I've got allergies, you know), the bitchy (Oh, I can be a mean bitch, but I'm subtle), the conniving (ahem, sex as a method for behavior alteration, I does it), whiny (my tantrums are grade A) and the horrible. I am also a myriad of good things as well. I think that if you can relate to Alanis Morsiette's "I'm a bitch, I'm a lover" song, then you should be able to relate to Jordan's females.
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There's a part of me that wonders whether Jordan was making a comment on the common position in our quasi-patriarchal society that "men are all the same" by making the WOMEN largely the same in his world's society (which happens to lean closer to the matriarchal than does ours)...
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There's a part of me that wonders whether Jordan was making a comment on the common position in our quasi-patriarchal society that "men are all the same" by making the WOMEN largely the same in his world's society (which happens to lean closer to the matriarchal than does ours)...
Could be.
I wouldn't presume to speak for either of them or claim to know them at all well, but they did come across as both being old-fashioned Southerners of a context where gnder distinctions are more fundamental than they are in my worldview.
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Could be.
I wouldn't presume to speak for either of them or claim to know them at all well, but they did come across as both being old-fashioned Southerners of a context where gnder distinctions are more fundamental than they are in my worldview.
That's the impression I've been gathering. To be honest, Jordan reminds me a bit of the accounts of Heinlein: old-fashioned gentleman kind of person.
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Receptionist: How do you write women so well?
Melvin Udall: I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.
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There's a lot of things that make a character multi dimensional. I suspect the best way to make great women characters is to make great characters who happen to be women.
Yeah, right - like it's just that easy.
*sigh*
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Hmm.. You're a better person than I am clearly, because I identified with the snivelling, the sniffing, the snotty, (I've got allergies, you know), the bitchy (Oh, I can be a mean bitch, but I'm subtle), the conniving (ahem, sex as a method for behavior alteration, I does it), whiny (my tantrums are grade A) and the horrible. I am also a myriad of good things as well. I think that if you can relate to Alanis Morsiette's "I'm a bitch, I'm a lover" song, then you should be able to relate to Jordan's females.
"Can be" those things is one thing. "Always are" is another. If you are always those things and never anything positive, then yes, I'm a better person than you are. And I wouldn't want to know you any more than I would ever want to know any of Robert Jordan's female characters.
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"Can be" those things is one thing. "Always are" is another. If you are always those things and never anything positive, then yes, I'm a better person than you are. And I wouldn't want to know you any more than I would ever want to know any of Robert Jordan's female characters.
My philosphy is that everyone is good. And everyone is bad. At the same time. Yin, yang and all that.
So yeah I always have the option to be conniving, whiny w/e, and I always have the option to rise above it, and when I can do both at the same time, I go for it.
And I'm sorry you feel that they are always those things. They aren't. You may want to try it again with an open mind. Morgaine is wise and powerful. Nynaeve is smart and brave. Egwene is strong, inquisitive, and accepting of others. Morgase (when not brain-washed) is dignified and self-sacrificing. Just as a few examples. I can pull out my texts when I get home and illustrate more for you if you like. I hate to see people decide they hate a book for something that just isn't true. If you say you dislike WoT b/c of the pace or the setting or the writing, then fine. But b/c you think the characters don't have good qualities and only have bad qualities, when it is just not so is another thing.
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I doubt I could be induced to pick up those books again if paid, honestly. I picked them up because a friend of mine says it's one of his favorite fantasy series, and I just couldn't get past the portrayal of women. We had a different experience reading them, and that's fine. :) But I'm also far from the only person to say that his women are horrible examples of women, and that the portrayals are so negative that Jordan comes off downright misogynistic.
I get what it's like to try to defend a beloved series, tho. My favorite series has a rapist as its main character and I'm forever defending him, what happened, and the series. Stay strong! :D
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I doubt I could be induced to pick up those books again if paid, honestly. I picked them up because a friend of mine says it's one of his favorite fantasy series, and I just couldn't get past the portrayal of women. We had a different experience reading them, and that's fine. :) But I'm also far from the only person to say that his women are horrible examples of women, and that the portrayals are so negative that Jordan comes off downright misogynistic.
I get what it's like to try to defend a beloved series, tho. My favorite series has a rapist as its main character and I'm forever defending him, what happened, and the series. Stay strong! :D
Yeah it just sucks to be the only one of my group of friends with the ounce of patience it takes to sit through descriptions like those in WoT and LOTR. *sigh* And the one friend who could sit through them.. She won't read a book that doesn't have a vampire in it. Talk about books with poor characters.. Vamp romances. Eep.
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My philosphy is that everyone is good. And everyone is bad. At the same time. Yin, yang and all that.
So yeah I always have the option to be conniving, whiny w/e, and I always have the option to rise above it, and when I can do both at the same time, I go for it.
And I'm sorry you feel that they are always those things. They aren't. You may want to try it again with an open mind. Morgaine is wise and powerful. Nynaeve is smart and brave. Egwene is strong, inquisitive, and accepting of others. Morgase (when not brain-washed) is dignified and self-sacrificing. Just as a few examples. I can pull out my texts when I get home and illustrate more for you if you like. I hate to see people decide they hate a book for something that just isn't true. If you say you dislike WoT b/c of the pace or the setting or the writing, then fine. But b/c you think the characters don't have good qualities and only have bad qualities, when it is just not so is another thing.
The problem with all those characters, and the women in general in those books, is the ultra massive sense of entitlement they carry around, and the fact they consider men to be beneath them.
Jordan claims he was aiming to write 'strong' women, and a culture that had it's gender revolution so long ago that it's not longer even relevant...but I think he was wide of the mark in both cases.
Egwene is all the things you mentioned...but she's also stuck up, and borderline misandrist.
There are multiple examples, but the biggest one I can see is that almost all the female channelers, at some point, use their power to impress upon someone (usually a man) that they are stronger.
That's abuse, right there....
I don't consider them strong women....I consider them sad stereotypes.
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I hope someday loads of people argue so adamantly about my work. The fact that this discussion is so heated is a testament to his success...I envy RJ...and Mr. Butcher of course... ;D
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I hope someday loads of people argue so adamantly about my work. The fact that this discussion is so heated is a testament to his success...I envy RJ...and Mr. Butcher of course... ;D
THis discussion is heated?
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It seemed to be before you entered it. I just mean about the Robert Jordan women thing. You know fan vs. antifan....nevermind.
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It seemed to be before you entered it. I just mean about the Robert Jordan women thing. You know fan vs. antifan....nevermind.
I get what you meant.
Yeah I am passionate about things I like, and I don't like it when people refuse to *try* something before giving it a critical comment. Just in general.
So let me read your stuff, and I'll be passionat about it, too!
The problem with all those characters, and the women in general in those books, is the ultra massive sense of entitlement they carry around, and the fact they consider men to be beneath them.
Jordan claims he was aiming to write 'strong' women, and a culture that had it's gender revolution so long ago that it's not longer even relevant...but I think he was wide of the mark in both cases.
Egwene is all the things you mentioned...but she's also stuck up, and borderline misandrist.
There are multiple examples, but the biggest one I can see is that almost all the female channelers, at some point, use their power to impress upon someone (usually a man) that they are stronger.
That's abuse, right there....
I don't consider them strong women....I consider them sad stereotypes.
I can see how you'd think that. But as a woman who is in an environment where chauvanism and "southern gentleness" are interchangable, the world RJ's women get to live is friggin' fun to visit.
Like I said earlier, people are people, they're good AND bad. And power, in reality, is always abused, even by people who don't do it with bad intentions.
I'd say that Jordan is the only writer I've read who truly created his world so that females are the stronger sex or at the least equals. They may feel entitled, but I have yet to meet a man who doesn't also think so. May be my geographical location has something to do with that, or it may be generational. Either way.... I honestly think that your complaints of women are directly relatable to my current complaints with our pseudo-gender-equal-society males.
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I can see how you'd think that. But as a woman who is in an environment where chauvanism and "southern gentleness" are interchangable, the world RJ's women get to live is friggin' fun to visit.
Like I said earlier, people are people, they're good AND bad. And power, in reality, is always abused, even by people who don't do it with bad intentions.
I'd say that Jordan is the only writer I've read who truly created his world so that females are the stronger sex or at the least equals. They may feel entitled, but I have yet to meet a man who doesn't also think so. May be my geographical location has something to do with that, or it may be generational. Either way.... I honestly think that your complaints of women are directly relatable to my current complaints with our pseudo-gender-equal-society males.
I'm sorry; could you be more explicit with regards to the "interchangeability" between chauvinism and "southern gentleness", as well as your geographical location and "pseudo-gender-equal-society males"? You've left too much unsaid for me to determine what you're saying about whom.
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She's in Dallas, Texas. From that point, I can kinda see what she's getting at.
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I can see how you'd think that. But as a woman who is in an environment where chauvanism and "southern gentleness" are interchangable, the world RJ's women get to live is friggin' fun to visit.
Really?
You WANT to be like that?
You want to be as closeminded and gender biased as the men who treat you that way?
Cause, in my opinion, that's what RJ's women are like.
Look at the scene in CoS, where Nyn and Elayne have to apologise to Mat, about the way they treated him in the Stone, when he busted them out.
Nyn throws a tantrum worthy of a freaking child to avoid apologising to a man....she hates apologising to women, too, but she does it without the massive display when she's forced to it.
The constant belittling of men, the constant anger when a man does anything that may possibly be misinterpreted(and consistently is) and then berating the men who actually do show up to pull their asses off the fire when they can't do it themselves.
And that's 'fun to visit'??
Like I said earlier, people are people, they're good AND bad. And power, in reality, is always abused, even by people who don't do it with bad intentions.
Agreed....but an entire gender all doing the same thing?
Come on...that's just not likely, is it?
I'd say that Jordan is the only writer I've read who truly created his world so that females are the stronger sex or at the least equals.
The females are 'stronger' only becasue the males can no longer channel....what they should be, what he set his world up to be, is equals...each contributing something different to society.
They may feel entitled, but I have yet to meet a man who doesn't also think so.
Hey, let's not bring the real world into a discussion of a fictional world...cause I can give plenty of examples of abusive, entitled women in the real world too.
We were talking about how RJ portrayed women, NOT what men do in the real world.
May be my geographical location has something to do with that, or it may be generational. Either way.... I honestly think that your complaints of women are directly relatable to my current complaints with our pseudo-gender-equal-society males.
fictional women.
In a fiction book.
NOT real world.
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Thanks everyone for your input. So it looks like the crux of the issue is that any character, male or female, should have:
1) Motivation to do what they do.
2) Consistency.
LIke I sad before, I really don't think in terms of "this character is a man/woman so he/she will think and act this way..." I try to delve into what's important to this character and give them a reason to be in the story. From there I try to add color with quirks, character traits, unique expressions or idioms, etc. to add flavor. Or sometimes I do the reverse, starting off with the inital image then digging deeper and finding out what they're like inside.
This question seemed to stir a pretty decent buzz LOL. Any other thoughts?
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I only have one thought on this subject. I hope I don't ever bring any gender-based biases I might have into my writing. I don't want to be one of those people who portrays one gender or the other unrealistically within the story world.
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She's in Dallas, Texas. From that point, I can kinda see what she's getting at.
Grew up and lived most of my life in the south, and I don't see it short of prejudiced stereotype.
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I know I'm coming into this post late, but I wanted to (since this thread is relevant to what I'm currently working on myself as a writer) put in my two cents as it were. First off, it's true that if you're a male author and you're story's main protagonist is a woman that you have to think like your subject. How do you do that? I believe it's simple (and it's already been said). You think of a woman you know from real life or from, say the movies--you follow that. But, really we're all people regardless of sex. So, for me, since my main character in my latest endeavor is a woman (and I'm a man)... I have an example in mind and go from there. But, I also go by what I want the character to say--or, rather, what they're trying to coax me into saying about them. Most of what I've learned is that you have to forget about the sex of your character when you're first writing them... then ask yourself questions later, and get opinions from others. That's what I've done for my latest project.
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I'm a newbie here, but this subject is something I've been dealing with when it comes to my stories that I work on. All my life I've gravitated to the female character, be it in movies, books and even video games (Chun Li IS my character of choice in Street Fighter). However, I've come to the opinion that well all are truely a product of our history and environment. What's helped me immensely in my recent writing is "45 Master Characters" by Victoria Lynn Schmidt. If you take what she suggest and look at the archtypes present in mankind's myths, you'll find that alot of the characters we come up with are off-shoots of these. Like what was said before about finding out the motivation behind why the character does something; fused with these archtypes, it's possible to get a better understanding of why the opposite sex might do something or might not do something.
If this has been mentioned already then please disregard, I'm at work and don't have the time to read this entire thread, sorry.
Just my 2 cents. Take it or leave it.
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I think of it as being somewhat like method acting. Instead of focusing on gender, what are the character's motivations? What is his history/backstory, and how does it color his reactions? Is he bright, naive, socially inept, a control freak? Does he act impulsively, or think every situation through first? What is his "voice"? How does his physicality determine his actions? What props does he habitiually use? Also, I try not to base my primary characters on specific actors, as I feel it will be too limiting (though I did it with a supporting player who's only in two scenes; he's modelled after Jack Black.)
(BTW, I've used "he" here as I'm female, in case anyone's wondering.)
This. Very-very much this. Then I go back and first ask myself about any obvious discrepancies (you know: obvious out-of-character-act is obvious type stuff). Then I get my mother and sister (or available willing female reader) to read the specific passage relating her words and actions, and ask the simple question: "Do you know anyone like this? If so, are they all or overwhelmingly women?" I find that is not just a good way to edit out the trash, but get literary feedback in the form of unintentional character critique!
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This. Very-very much this. Then I go back and first ask myself about any obvious discrepancies (you know: obvious out-of-character-act is obvious type stuff). Then I get my mother and sister (or available willing female reader) to read the specific passage relating her words and actions, and ask the simple question: "Do you know anyone like this? If so, are they all or overwhelmingly women?"
Which is perfectly good if you want to write a plausible contemporary Western female character. And of much more limited use for a medieval nun or a seventeenth-century Japanese noble, let alone the social context of a different world altogether.
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Which is perfectly good if you want to write a plausible contemporary Western female character. And of much more limited use for a medieval nun or a seventeenth-century Japanese noble, let alone the social context of a different world altogether.
Not so. I didn't ask if it was them, or their circle of friends. I asked about anyone they knew. Having lived across the nation (in both senses), having family across the nation (again, both senses), and with my sister being particularly exposed to foreign cultures in her course of study, it gives me a very wide range of PoV analysis. It also lets me get a grip on whether the character is how I want them and not only analyze them as a person, but analyze them as a person from their culture and specific experiences.
Is it perfect? No. But I read enough (fiction and non) that at the very least, I'd have to ask a contemporary of the culture you're asking about to find breaks in plausibility. Speaking of which, let me know how I can contact any you find. Even without a far-ranging sister, it's not all that hard to find someone who has been outside of your community this millenium, and develop a web of potential contacts and questions.
Additionally: people have not changed as much as we like to think. The same things motivate and inspire us as they have for thousands of years. Seventeenth century nun? From a noble house, an orphan, someone who was simply an extra mouth to feed? How attractive is she, and how interested in men? How ambitious? What is her driving goal [most pious, hardest worker, etc.]? Answering these questions fills in much of the character. Japanese noble? Princess, eldest woman of a clan, trophy wife, respected wife? Again, asking about their specific circumstances and their hopes and dreams is the core of method acting, not stereotypes.
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Is it perfect? No. But I read enough (fiction and non) that at the very least, I'd have to ask a contemporary of the culture you're asking about to find breaks in plausibility. Speaking of which, let me know how I can contact any you find.
Read the documents they leave.
Additionally: people have not changed as much as we like to think.
I disagree here, entirely.
I mean, I wince every time I see an American author writing about Europe today who doesn't understand that a hundred miles is a long distance and a hundred years is a short time,
and that's just a contemporary difference but it peremeates almost everything.
Again, asking about their specific circumstances and their hopes and dreams is the core of method acting, not stereotypes.
Only so long as one gets out of using contemporary axioms to guide that, at which an awful lot of people fail badly.
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I don't consider them strong women....I consider them sad stereotypes.
Not to reanimate a WoT thread, but just to put my 2 cents in. I always found the WoT to have a nice interplay between the male and female characters, that reminded me of my grandparents and all of their sagely and gently condescending (on the other genders) advice.
I actually hated most of the female characters POVs for a number of the books, but thought that this was merely a result of being in the protagonist's POV so often (and the female characters all attempt to "fix" or "better" him so often).
The one exception was the Tuon character, whom I thought was intersting and smartly written. This character was one of the few that was strong and focused, and I felt that the character already knew her place in that world, and thus had focus and strength.
In the book just released (The Gathering Storm), I actually enjoyed the Egwene POV a lot.... this same clarity of the pervious Tuon POV came through....and though it was written by Sanderson, RJ's wife remained the main editor, and (RJ's words) driving force. This was a vast improvement on the previous books, where the female POVs all were aimed at showing women tricking (or pulling, or kicking, or convincing) the male characters to the right thing. Maybe it was just a matter of timing, that the main female characters were not fully fleshed out until more towards the end...when their role in that world was more clear to them (see the Matt character for the same issues/resolution)
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I disagree here, entirely.
I mean, I wince every time I see an American author writing about Europe today who doesn't understand that a hundred miles is a long distance and a hundred years is a short time,
and that's just a contemporary difference but it peremeates almost everything.
Only so long as one gets out of using contemporary axioms to guide that, at which an awful lot of people fail badly.
Because a lot of people fail badly at thinking things through all the way, which is certainly not a new trait. It's just as cringe worthy to see a British or Japanese writer who's never left the country talk about travel in America. A good writer in this sense either avoids what this kind of dichotomy, talks extensively with an expert / researches, or has a co-writer editor capable of handling such things. This is indicative of how people don't change, not how they do.
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It's just as cringe worthy to see a British or Japanese writer who's never left the country talk about travel in America.
That was parodied rather well some time ago by an author whose name I can't remember; the book was a sequel to The Thin Woman, a fun murder mystery. The British husband and wife flew into New York and rented a car to drive to Chicago for a convention; their assumption that they would get there in an hour or so was proved disastrously wrong.