Mark Charan Newton recently wrote a blog post entitled “Getting Women”. His provocative title caused me to click through and read what he had to say. He talks about having awareness while writing female characters in fantasy, and how he improved at avoiding stereotypes and portraying more realistic female characters in his latest novel. Having not read this novel, however, I am left without concrete examples of *how* he succeeded. Hence my own post with a similarly eye-catching title.
I’m going to talk about a recent example from my writing life. For one of my latest stories, I chose to write it in a first person male POV. This is, in fact, the first time I’ve attempted such a thing in my writing. I adore first person, but up until now, I have always chosen a female voice. Part of this was because I felt more confident that I could get a female voice correct, and part of it, I’ll admit, was my desire to read more stories in the adult science fiction/fantasy genre told from the POV of a woman. Write what you want to read, and all that. (Interesting side note: At Taos Toolbox this year, we had six women students and eight male students. For our first week submissions, we had ten mainly male POV stories/chapters and four female POVs. All four female POVs were written by female students. Food for thought, that.)
But for this particular story, I really wanted a male POV, and it had to be in first person. I was somewhat apprehensive about giving it a try. I decided, in order to avoid complete creative blockage, to not obsess too much about the “maleness” on my first draft. I would do as I usually do and try to inhabit my character’s mind (similar to Method acting), but beyond that, I’d fix any voice problems in a later draft and rely on my writing group to catch the things I couldn’t catch myself.
My writing group critiqued the story last Friday, and I was surprised at how few issues of male vs. female voice they brought up. There were a few, notably a mention of a “champagne pink silk dress” (apparently, men aren’t aware of the color champagne pink. Who knew?) But overall, only a few changes of that nature needed to be made. So apparently my technique of trying to get into the head of my specific character, as opposed to thinking “what would a man say” every five words, worked out mostly okay this time.
Of course, I think what Mark might have been talking about in his blog post is the prevalence of female stereotypes in fantasy. Fantasy readers get to see several cardboard classes of female character: bad-ass in leather, damsel in distress, someone’s wife/mother/daughter/sister who only exists to be angelic and pure or bad and slutty, or be rescued or to show our hero isn’t completely socially maladjusted. The list goes on and on.
Here’s my question: can you think of any stereotyped male character types in fantasy that you find equally boring and/or offensive? Comment below and let me know!
The Practical Free Spirit 
Eesh, are you kidding? I have a whole laundry list of male stereotypes that drive me crazy when I see them…
The “lone wolf” who doesn’t need help from anyone (who then must be saved from this misconception by a cardboard damsel from above). It’s even worse when you see someone in real life who self-identifies that way, turning their outward face into a caricature of themselves…
The bookish nerd who must rise to the occasion and learn true courage…
Conan (he goes by many names, but they’re all really just Conan.)
The gruff law and order man with a heart of gold…
I’m sure there’s a bunch more, but those are just the ones that pop up right away. And then there’s the poor teenaged characters, who are automatically doomed to either infantile thinking and an inability to distinguish hormones from reality, or to be written as a dumbed down version of one of the adult stereotypes from above.
By contrast, I really like fiction that plays with those stereotypes and subverts them, or uses them as a backdrop for a much richer character (Firefly has a bunch of great examples of this, especially Mal and Inara, who are SO not what is expected.)
I think it’s easy to draw from a grab bag of pre-built characters, rather than creating a genuine individual for a story. Empathy is a lot of work. 🙂 I appreciate it when I see it.
Aleatha, you win! So many stereotype examples, all of which I recognize with a certain amount of cringing. I agree that when an author successfully subverts one of these stereotypes, it is made of win.
I was just thinking the other day, too, about how necessary the capacity for empathy is for a writer. Good call!
I’m usually not offended by male stereotypes unless that’s ALL the male character does.
For instance, I have at various times in my life been the roid-raging asshat, the insufferable know-it-all, the good friend pining away in hopes she’ll notice me, and the sexist pig. I’m capable of all these things, so why should I get shoe-horned into just one of those roles? I’m capable of so much more! But even those pale in comparison to my one true hatred. Read on, if you dare!
The most aggravating stereotype to me isn’t actually a stereotype. It’s the ‘perfect’ man. He’s built like a brick house, has eyes you can’t find your way out of with a map, compass, and GPS, and he listens to every word you say without comment or judgment. Let’s call this guy, oh, I dunno… ‘Edward’. That’s a good neutral name that doesn’t get used much.
This guy is in love, but that’s ALL he is. Real men in love do all of these things, but there is more to our personality than that. Your roid-rager will bring you flowers, but will NOT like you spending time with other men that he perceives as a threat. Your know-it-all will plan glorious evenings on the town and listen intently to all your problems, but then he’ll want to help you solve them (even if all you needed was to talk about them). The sexist pig will admire you for the paragon of womanhood that you are, but he might just catch a glance at the supermodel that just wandered out of the Victoria’s Secret shop at the mall.
Edward, on the other hand, never gets angry at anything you might do, even if your behavior shows him the greatest disrespect.
Edward will empathize to the Nth degree, feeling your pain (even pain of your own making that he warned you about in advance), but never try to stand between you and the source of your torment because he knows what a strong, powerful woman you are as you weep inconsolably on his shoulder.
Edward is completely psychic and will know instantly that you’ve had a horrible day and will cancel your evening out and meet you at the front door with chocolate and your comfortable robe with the latest episode of that Show You Like queued up on the DVR, and he’ll do it all before you even get home!
Frankly, I think it’s fair to say that the stereotypical male that I hate most is the one that doesn’t exist, and the reason I despise him is that he CAN’T exist. And I’m absolutely positive that women hate the stereotypical ‘perfect female’ that exists in the minds of all men as well.
Make sense?
Mmm Edward.
I’m sorry, did you say something?
(Hehe!)
I completely agree with your arguments here, Eric. The stereotype sometimes, as a rubric, can be useful – as long as the character grows from it. To cage a character inside a stereotype is boring and offensive. To start with a stereotype and grow the character into something real and complex is a worthy goal.
I think perfect characters in general are fairly boring. The perfect romantic interest is probably a sub-class of this. We even have a writerly name for it: the Mary Sue.
On the other hand, Eric, are you saying that the other types of stereotypical males CAN exist? Or is the point about most or all stereotypes the fact that usually human beings are more complicated than that?
Stereotypes in real life? Yes, I think they do exist. All the ones I mentioned are part of any male. Each has its uses, and occasionally it gets used as a defense against the world. When it becomes the dominant personality trait is when a real person becomes stereotypical.
So, using a stereotype isn’t a sin, but, like the cited Firefly reference, the reader needs to have peeks of what lies beyond it.
I tend to write male characters in first person POV, at least in the first draft. For some reason that helps me get into their heads more.
This is a BRILLIANT idea, Ada! I’m going to give a test run later today. Many thanks!
Having done it once, I would definitely write in a male first person POV again. It wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be! 🙂
That’s a tough question because we all want a little bit of stereotype in our characters – it lets us relate to them and pick up the story more quickly. As long as I’m surprised, I don’t mind most stereotypes (especially if the character breaks out of them, or at least struggles).
That said, some I’d stay away from if I were writing (and this isn’t gender-specific, though it’s usually male characters) are the “mysterious trader with information” (loner who knows something, but offers it at a price), the “Luke Skywalker” (farmboy finds his place in the universe), and the “Spock/Data” (outsider that serves primarily to remind humanity about itself). Not offensive as much as overplayed.
Kudos on writing from a different point of view – I have a very hard time with it. Every time I’ve tried writing from a female character POV, I feel like there’s something slightly perverted about the whole thing.
Perverted? Huh. I’d never thought of that as a possible reaction to writing the opposite sex.
I agree that as readers, we often want to be able to recognize something of *ourselves* in the characters we’re reading about, especially the protagonist. We want to be able to relate in some way, just as we want to be able to relate to people we meet at parties, and are therefore inordinately excited when we discover we have something in common. 🙂
The “Luke Skywalker” is used so so much, especially in epic fantasy. I don’t know if I mind this trope or not though; I think it depends how it’s handled. The Hero’s Journey or coming of age tale is so central to many of the stories we tell, and some of them I still find enjoyable.
I would love to read the short story mentioned above, from a male POV! I actually prefer writing from a man’s perspective… my favorite being mid-life, unattached and cranky. I try to think too much about /why/ that’s my favorite POV.
Anyhoo, it’s my opinion that you should always tell a story from the perspective that flows the easiest. I’ve gotten through the middle of long novel chapters and realized that I had screwed everything up because I wanted the chapter to work from a different view point.
As for male stereotypes, ditto the “Conan” example given by Aleatha.
I also see a lot of stereotyped fantasy men in mentor roles. There’s always the Father Replacement who is harsh, and then wise, and then comforting. Maybe that’s a good stereotype, I don’t know, but I sure do see it a lot!
I’ll show it to you, once I’ve revised. Um, but you might have to remind me. 🙂 I would never have guessed you wrote many mid-life cranky men – you are full of surprises!
I think if any character is so stereotypical that they are completely predictable before you’ve even gotten to know them, that is less than ideal for most stories – if for no other reason than you’ve just drained a lot of tension and suspense from your narrative.
Wow, Aleatha really nailed that list. For me, I don’t have a problem with those types, as long at there is more to them.
I think those stereotypes feel flat when they don’t really have a moral need and a weakness. Whether the character is aware of the need and weakness or not.
The reason Mal and Inara work so well is that they both have these as part of their character. Their values are challenged by allies and opponents alike, and that’s what makes them come to life.
The scariest thing I’ve ever done in writing is doing a first person short from the POV of a woman for the first time. It was scary mainly because I knew it would be going out to the group, and I was really worried about offending someone. Back in High School I wrote a story that got me accused of being a misogynist, and I think I was still shell shocked from that.
As I got into the story though, I just focused on that character as a fully realized person and stopped worrying about “is this a woman thing to do?” Being worried about that is so counter-productive.
Thankfully, it ended up a lot like yours did. A few “A woman probably wouldn’t know/do that” but that’s it. I’m glad I took the risk for two reasons. First, writers should never get too comfortable. Second, that was the story that got me an honorable mention for the Asimov award.
Awesome post, Amy. Posts like this keep me writing my 1000 words per day because they remind me of why I need to write.
Love ya!
I actually enjoy writing things that I find scary…. keeps me completely engaged with what I’m doing. If I don’t feel challenged I tend to get bored after awhile. Thank goodness for first readers and critique groups who can help me catch things that go wrong from my experiments.
Sending love right back at ya!
The biggest problem I’ve seen women writers do with male characters (besides Edward . . . don’t get me started on Edward . . .) is try to get them to express their feelings in ways that most guys (at least, hetero guys) just never do.
It’s a big challenge, actually, for *all* writers in certain circumstances – because how do you get those feelings across correctly to the audience if the characters won’t bloody well *say* them? Fortunately, writing in the first person / third person subjective solves that.
In TV, this is a huge problem because you have to do it all in dialogue or action somehow. Normally the work-around in TV is to have men express their feelings out-loud anyway. Wonder why Sam and Dean from Supernatural sound like they just might possibly be lovers? That’s why. You can blame a lot of slash fic on this one fact, probably . . .
A big challenge for a hetero male writer, I think, is to write from a female hetero perspective, showing the male love interest through her eyes. I find it terribly difficult, and I’m very comfortable in my sexuality. I wonder if the same would be true for a woman writing about a man who’s eying a woman, but I doubt it.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Mark Charan Newton, Amy Sundberg. Amy Sundberg said: Getting Men: http://bit.ly/cAmHqK. A response to Mark Charan Newton's post on Getting Women. […]
For me, I wouldn’t feel overly uncomfortable writing about a man being into a woman, but whether or not I’d get it right is another matter entirely.
I worry about the statement that women writers have male characters express their feelings in unrealistic ways. On the one hand, I agree that this happens, but on the other hand, going too far the other way can cause another male stereotyped character to come out: the strong but silent type with no visible emotions whatsoever. I think it can be difficult to hit the right balance here.
I agree one hundred percent that 1st or close 3rd can help out a lot with this problem. Of course, if it’s not a viewpoint character, then you don’t get this advantage, but then you can slant the character through your POV’s eyes, so that’s at least something.
“On the one hand, I agree that this happens, but on the other hand, going to far the other way can cause another male stereotyped character to come out: the strong but silent type with no visible emotions whatsoever.”
I think, if the characters are treated as individuals of particular temperaments, this can be more easily dealt with. Most men will less express their emotions verbally than most women *of similar temperament*, but some women are quite tight-lipped about their emotions too, so you have to figure out what works for the character – and in the case of men, usually from there if you’re unsure then it’s best to err towards the character being more tight-lipped, rather than more emotionally verbose.
I think there is an interesting point about men and the display of emotions. It’s not that men have fewer emotions than women, but (at least in the West) they’re strongly socialized not to display them as much. From the perspective of inner monologue, they have just as powerful feelings. If they’re talking to a woman, they might talk about it a bit — but far more hesitantly than I’ve noticed that women tend to do, and often far more inexpertly because they don’t do it very often.
But when men are in a “potential threat” situation* — whenever there are other men around, or women they’re trying to impress, or a large enough group of women — men tend to shut down the overt displays of emotion. Their feelings may still come out in subtle ways (stress signals, anger, quietness, etc) or they may be wholly hidden, depending on the person and the time, but the big thing they won’t ever do is sit around and talk about their feelings.
Written inexpertly, this can make the men seem like automata (the “strong silent type” as a cliché), but written well it’s more about strong emotions repressed or channeled into actions. And honestly, despite all of this seeming complexity I’ve seen men written convincingly by women all the time; men and women spend enough time around one another that they tend to have an instinctive feeling for whether someone is “acting normally.”
Why that doesn’t seem to work as well the other way round is an interesting question in its own right.
* Even around their friends. I think that treating the presence of other men as a potential threat is something biologically hard-wired in; if you look at how men tend to relate to each other in stone-age cultures, or among other apes, you can see why. Male-male interactions are structured around a subtle grammar of hierarchy, accepting or challenging another man’s place.
“Why that doesn’t seem to work as well the other way round is an interesting question in its own right.”
I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but this seems to imply that you think on the whole women are better at writing men than men are at writing women. I wonder if this is so, or if readers are more sensitive to improperly portrayed women because of historical gender inequality. Or even if it’s because of an unbalanced gender ratio of characters (certainly at the small microcosm of Taos Toolbox, there were more male POV characters, and the female writers were the ones trying to get practice in writing both genders). Or some combination of several factors. There are lots of interesting possibilities here.
“I wonder if this is so, or if readers are more sensitive to improperly portrayed women because of historical gender inequality.”
That’s… a really good question. I’m not certain. What got me saying that in the first place was thinking about Golden Age SF, and its infamous inability to render even vaguely realistic women. I’m not sure to what extent that was to go with the “Boy’s Club” idea that very early (e.g. Gernsback-era) SF was trying to create among its readers, and to what extent that was just writers who had no idea how to describe women; maybe some historians of the era know. There, generally, it was such a bad miswriting that you wondered if the writers had ever met a woman.
(And harkening back to EF Kelley’s comment, there seems to be a dual phenomenon in Romance, where crazily unbelievable men seem to be de rigeur. In this case I’m pretty sure it’s a deliberate genre choice rather than the writers not knowing what men are.)
But in most fiction this doesn’t seem to be the case. Modern F&SF and lit fic both seem to have at least basically realistic men and women, written by both men and women; and thinking about it some more, I don’t think I see quite as vivid an asymmetry in these genres.
So perhaps what I’m really thinking is that certain subsets of literature have developed tropes in which radically unrealistic men or women are expected, and strong stereotypes tend to abound there; but in other parts of literature, it’s more of a mixed bag, and more of a matter of individual authors being able to get character and voice right.
“Certainly at the small microcosm of Taos Toolbox, . . . the female writers were the ones trying to get practice in writing both genders.”
If you mean the female writers were the only ones trying to get practice writing both genders, that’s not entirely true. My second story was mean to be told more from the woman’s perspective than the perspective of the man. That it might seem otherwise is because it was a distanced 3rd person perspective, so the perspective angle was more subtly directed than a more subjective viewpoint would be.
Sorry, I should have clarified I was referring to the first week subs that I went over in detail for the data.
Although, even if I had gone through the second week subs, I wouldn’t have classified your story as being from a female perspective. That might have been a weakness of mine as a reader, though, or faulty memory.
I don’t expect most readers will notice it. I also don’t know if I did a good job on that aspect – but I was trying to focus in that direction, as much as the story would allow, whether or not I succeeded. I have another story I’m editing that is set in 1st person, from a woman’s perspective – and has been quite challenging. I like a challenge, so I plan on doing a few more.