Anyone who has read my books knows that I write from the male perspective a fair bit. My reasons are complex, but it's probably owing to growing up in Alaska where there was a 4:1 ratio of men and women. It is a place where men are men and women win the Iditarod, so even my female characters tend to hunt, fish and chop wood. If there is a girly character in my writing, it's rarely a central character because I struggle with girly females.
Regardless, men and women are different and if you don't know that, it may be negatively affecting your writing. Females tend to write like girls (hence the majority of romance novelists being female) and men tend to write like men (and pen the better epic fantasies -- usually). There's nothing wrong with that, unless you want to market books to humans in general or create characters of the opposite sex, because trust me, there is no such thing as gender neutral writing and attempts to make it so are cautionary tales in why we shouldn't go there because we give up a major tool for creating tension and nuance within our novels
I'm not saying anything that scientists haven't already found ample evidence to support. Men and women are different at a biological and brain architecture level. Those hardwired gender difference have a huge impact on how we write, but as I showed in the first paragraph, that is also influenced by culture and temperament. There are, believe it or not, male romance novelists. They usually write under a female pseudonym and their novels sell just as well as the ones written by females. There are other writers who seem to transcend gender. Kate Elliott, who is one of my favorite epic fantasy writers, managed to make me forget that a girl was writing Prince of Dogs, while, in the Cold Magic series, her female-centric narrative is perfectly believable.
How does she manage that? I don't know, but I do know how I attempt a similar outcome.
I recognize that men and women are different. We even use different vocabulary. Women like personal pronouns -- I, you, we and are also much more descriptive and effusive in our language. We play with adjectives. Men like active verbs and concrete figures and tend to limit descriptors to numbers.
Nothing separates men and women more than our analogies. A man warms to the idea of an motor that roars like a lion while a woman prefers something that purrs like a kitten. In epic fantasy, men and women often live very different lives. A male soldier is likely to draw metaphors from his own life -- to think of horses, swords and armor. A female seamtress is more likely to think in terms of needle, thread, coat and shoe.
Men think in terms of accomplishments -- a battle won, a disease conquered, a city built. Women focus on relationships and emotions. This is really evidence in the entertainment we choose. Men tend to like explosions in their movies while women want a happily-ever-after. In writing novels, male writers tend to follow the men off to war while female writers tend to focus on the family coping at home.
At a writer's workshop last winter, we were asked to write a paragraph describing a photo (depicting a cowboy breaking a bronco) and then to write the same description from the perspective of the other gender. The results were an interesting survey. All of the paragraphs from the male perspective focused on the excitement and sense of accomplishment in training the horse while most of the female-perspective paragraphs focused on the fear of injury and the sadness of the animal's terror. Mine was the exception to the female perspective rule -- I wrote with the guys, probably because my mother used to break broncos in Montana as a teenager and I grew up with those stories.
If you're writing for a purely male or female audience, it's helpful to know these difference, but it's vital to be aware of them if you're writing for humans in general. I write epic fantasy and apocalytpics. It's important for me to blend and balance these two genders to be more inclusive of both men and women. I try to include both domestic scenes and battles. My female characters care about things my male characters do not. Lydya, an important character in the Daermad Cycle, struggles to spend time with her children and cares that soldiers are getting serving girls pregnant. Meanwhile, Padraig notes how much taller the walls of Clarcom have become in the years he's been away.
One of the most essential focuses for a writer who wants to be accurate with both male and female characters is dialogue. Recognizing differences in gender communication can help to create more believable characters that ring true with readers. Linguists have found that women state preferences rather than make demands, ask questions rather than make statements, and we apologize for our difficult decisions. Men use more commanding and aggressive language, use more sarcasm, insults and sexual innuendo and also hold their personal information much closer than women do.
Of course, our differences are not all the same. Not all women think and behave alike and the same is true for men. As a tom-boy raised in Alaska by a tom-boy farm girl and a man who paid the bills as a professional chef, I am well aware that there is considerable variation within the genders, but their differences as a woman somewhat in touch with her masculine side and a man somewhat in touch with his feminine side provided conflict in their relationship. While some in society consider it politically correct to write men and women as the same in novels, we are not the same and it is that difference that provides opportunity for conflict and nuance. Just as you would research a character from another culture, you should research gender differences so that you can exploit, enhance and highlight the differences to make a more compelling story.
Regardless, men and women are different and if you don't know that, it may be negatively affecting your writing. Females tend to write like girls (hence the majority of romance novelists being female) and men tend to write like men (and pen the better epic fantasies -- usually). There's nothing wrong with that, unless you want to market books to humans in general or create characters of the opposite sex, because trust me, there is no such thing as gender neutral writing and attempts to make it so are cautionary tales in why we shouldn't go there because we give up a major tool for creating tension and nuance within our novels
I'm not saying anything that scientists haven't already found ample evidence to support. Men and women are different at a biological and brain architecture level. Those hardwired gender difference have a huge impact on how we write, but as I showed in the first paragraph, that is also influenced by culture and temperament. There are, believe it or not, male romance novelists. They usually write under a female pseudonym and their novels sell just as well as the ones written by females. There are other writers who seem to transcend gender. Kate Elliott, who is one of my favorite epic fantasy writers, managed to make me forget that a girl was writing Prince of Dogs, while, in the Cold Magic series, her female-centric narrative is perfectly believable.
How does she manage that? I don't know, but I do know how I attempt a similar outcome.
I recognize that men and women are different. We even use different vocabulary. Women like personal pronouns -- I, you, we and are also much more descriptive and effusive in our language. We play with adjectives. Men like active verbs and concrete figures and tend to limit descriptors to numbers.
Nothing separates men and women more than our analogies. A man warms to the idea of an motor that roars like a lion while a woman prefers something that purrs like a kitten. In epic fantasy, men and women often live very different lives. A male soldier is likely to draw metaphors from his own life -- to think of horses, swords and armor. A female seamtress is more likely to think in terms of needle, thread, coat and shoe.
Men think in terms of accomplishments -- a battle won, a disease conquered, a city built. Women focus on relationships and emotions. This is really evidence in the entertainment we choose. Men tend to like explosions in their movies while women want a happily-ever-after. In writing novels, male writers tend to follow the men off to war while female writers tend to focus on the family coping at home.
At a writer's workshop last winter, we were asked to write a paragraph describing a photo (depicting a cowboy breaking a bronco) and then to write the same description from the perspective of the other gender. The results were an interesting survey. All of the paragraphs from the male perspective focused on the excitement and sense of accomplishment in training the horse while most of the female-perspective paragraphs focused on the fear of injury and the sadness of the animal's terror. Mine was the exception to the female perspective rule -- I wrote with the guys, probably because my mother used to break broncos in Montana as a teenager and I grew up with those stories.
If you're writing for a purely male or female audience, it's helpful to know these difference, but it's vital to be aware of them if you're writing for humans in general. I write epic fantasy and apocalytpics. It's important for me to blend and balance these two genders to be more inclusive of both men and women. I try to include both domestic scenes and battles. My female characters care about things my male characters do not. Lydya, an important character in the Daermad Cycle, struggles to spend time with her children and cares that soldiers are getting serving girls pregnant. Meanwhile, Padraig notes how much taller the walls of Clarcom have become in the years he's been away.
One of the most essential focuses for a writer who wants to be accurate with both male and female characters is dialogue. Recognizing differences in gender communication can help to create more believable characters that ring true with readers. Linguists have found that women state preferences rather than make demands, ask questions rather than make statements, and we apologize for our difficult decisions. Men use more commanding and aggressive language, use more sarcasm, insults and sexual innuendo and also hold their personal information much closer than women do.
Of course, our differences are not all the same. Not all women think and behave alike and the same is true for men. As a tom-boy raised in Alaska by a tom-boy farm girl and a man who paid the bills as a professional chef, I am well aware that there is considerable variation within the genders, but their differences as a woman somewhat in touch with her masculine side and a man somewhat in touch with his feminine side provided conflict in their relationship. While some in society consider it politically correct to write men and women as the same in novels, we are not the same and it is that difference that provides opportunity for conflict and nuance. Just as you would research a character from another culture, you should research gender differences so that you can exploit, enhance and highlight the differences to make a more compelling story.