Let women write stories about women (article)

[Meow Mix]

I found this to be a good read:

https://www.thegamer.com/womens-sto...3U3bW5Zcjh6RnRxMEVLcnZCbXlWcEhHTk1hQ21laXBFRg..

Within, the author argues that women leads (and other significant roles) in games are overwhelmingly written by men, even those whose stories revolve around lived experiences that would be difficult for a man to sympathize with.

There is a difference between empathy and sympathy: with the former, you can imagine what something is like; with the latter, you have suffered the same.

I want to clarify that there is nothing wrong with a man writing characters that are women: it would be absurd to say that we can only ever write characters like ourselves. But the case is made that some of these particular men (in the article) only pay lip service to empowerment (see especially the background on Gaynor in the article).

Let women write stories about women more often, especially when the issues explored in the game deal with the kinds of lived experiences men would find hard to understand from experience. I don’t think that’s unreasonable to hope for.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

It's the advantage of having a more diverse workforce generally.
Speaking from personal experience, I no longer have to try and ensure female opinions and viewpoints are considered in my planning, since 50% of my team is female, and I can just get them involved. Or even better, throw my work over the fence to them...ahem...

This applies to areas outside of gender, too, of course.

I'm generally pretty good at the empathy thing, but it can only at best approximate life experience.

Another benefit of a more diverse workforce is that I don't have to hit up 'the woman' for a feminine perspective. Instead, I just get one in every meeting, from a larger group of females. Turns out women aren't even a completely homogenous group, would you believe!!!

 

[Meow Mix]

It's the advantage of having a more diverse workforce generally.
Speaking from personal experience, I no longer have to try and ensure female opinions and viewpoints are considered in my planning, since 50% of my team is female, and I can just get them involved. Or even better, throw my work over the fence to them...ahem...

This applies to areas outside of gender, too, of course.

I'm generally pretty good at the empathy thing, but it can only at best approximate life experience.

Another benefit of a more diverse workforce is that I don't have to hit up 'the woman' for a feminine perspective. Instead, I just get one in every meeting, from a larger group of females. Turns out women aren't even a completely homogenous group, would you believe!!!

Shocker!! (to the last statement) ^.^

Also I want to clarify that I didn’t mean to undersell empathy and its use when making decisions or writing characters, it is still very important. Just wanted to draw the difference because of the “best approximation” factor.

 

[SomeRandom]

I found this to be a good read:

https://www.thegamer.com/womens-sto...3U3bW5Zcjh6RnRxMEVLcnZCbXlWcEhHTk1hQ21laXBFRg..

Within, the author argues that women leads (and other significant roles) in games are overwhelmingly written by men, even those whose stories revolve around lived experiences that would be difficult for a man to sympathize with.

There is a difference between empathy and sympathy: with the former, you can imagine what something is like; with the latter, you have suffered the same.

I want to clarify that there is nothing wrong with a man writing characters that are women: it would be absurd to say that we can only ever write characters like ourselves. But the case is made that some of these particular men (in the article) only pay lip service to empowerment (see especially the background on Gaynor in the article).

Let women write stories about women more often, especially when the issues explored in the game deal with the kinds of lived experiences men would find hard to understand from experience. I don’t think that’s unreasonable to hope for.

I wholeheartedly agree. Though I do find it interesting that there are many very successful female authors who have written about boys and men (JK Rowling comes to mind. Though I know she’s “cancelled” these days.) Which obviously speaks to how male dominated storytelling tends to be as females are taught to identify with young boys early on.
Though in YA fantasy and Sci Fi there does seem to be more successful female authors than males. And they tend to write about both.

 

[lewisnotmiller]

I wholeheartedly agree. Though I do find it interesting that there are many very successful female authors who have written about boys and men (JK Rowling comes to mind. Though I know she’s “cancelled” these days.) Which obviously speaks to how male dominated storytelling tends to be as females are taught to identify with young boys early on.
Though in YA fantasy and Sci Fi there does seem to be more successful female authors than males. And they tend to write about both.

Had me thinking a bit here.
A few points, in no particular order.

1) As there is a large amount of literature out already with male protagonists, writers like J.K. Rowling (purely as an example) have a large body of work they themselves have consumed that provides them with a framework. You can argue the toss around whether her writing shows any real insight to masculinity, but she has plenty of frames of reference she can draw on in terms of literary characterizations.

2) Traditional masculine roles are often over-simplified even by male writers. And non-traditional masculine roles? Well...not sure a fresh perspective isn't every bit as valid as a more traditional male one anyway. Personalizing this a bit, I'm currently writing a character into one of my stories who is at least somewhat asexual, and more likely repressed homosexual. I haven't fleshed out his sections of the story too much yet (only about 40% done) so I'm sure at some point I'll work it out. Does a female have more or less insight into that character than me? I also have an important middle-aged male character (heh...yeah, so I should understand him), but he's not a family man, and has some other traits quite different to me. And a female character who is vital to the messaging I'm trying to convey. If I can really nail her motivations, I might be onto something, but at some point I'll be relying on female proof-readers. If she's not believable, my whole novel becomes pointless. No pressure on her, or anything.

3) Books are a little different to video games. We can see the characters thoughts, and there is sometimes quite the ensemble cast. So, writing a video game character is 'relatively' simple compared to actually trying to get inside the head of someone who's life is entirely different to the one you yourself have lived. But equally, video games are written and developed by groups of people (largely), so my earlier comments about a diverse team apply. Books are often written by 1 person, and you'd hope to heck that they didn't limit themselves to characters of a certain gender and age demographic.

It takes a degree of humility, a number of trusted and frankly blunt advisors, and a willingness to invest emotionally to even approximate a character effectively, and the more different from your own personality that character is, the more this is true, imho.


A question from curiosity on Harry Potter...how much would it matter if Harry and Hermione changed roles within the series?

 

[Meow Mix]

I wholeheartedly agree. Though I do find it interesting that there are many very successful female authors who have written about boys and men (JK Rowling comes to mind. Though I know she’s “cancelled” these days.) Which obviously speaks to how male dominated storytelling tends to be as females are taught to identify with young boys early on.
Though in YA fantasy and Sci Fi there does seem to be more successful female authors than males. And they tend to write about both.

That is true. And two of my favorite women in fantasy were written by men (Éowyn from LotR and Jasnah Kohlin from the Stormlight Archives).

I only mean to say I hope we see more women written by women, not that men need to stop writing women. ^.^

 

[lewisnotmiller]

That is true. And two of my favorite women in fantasy were written by men (Éowyn from LotR and Jasnah Kohlin from the Stormlight Archives).

I only mean to say I hope we see more women written by women, not that men need to stop writing women. ^.^

Diversity and opportunity are good things!!

 

[Meow Mix]

Had me thinking a bit here.
A few points, in no particular order.

1) As there is a large amount of literature out already with male protagonists, writers like J.K. Rowling (purely as an example) have a large body of work they themselves have consumed that provides them with a framework. You can argue the toss around whether her writing shows any real insight to masculinity, but she has plenty of frames of reference she can draw on in terms of literary characterizations.

2) Traditional masculine roles are often over-simplified even by male writers. And non-traditional masculine roles? Well...not sure a fresh perspective isn't every bit as valid as a more traditional male one anyway. Personalizing this a bit, I'm currently writing a character into one of my stories who is at least somewhat asexual, and more likely repressed homosexual. I haven't fleshed out his sections of the story too much yet (only about 40% done) so I'm sure at some point I'll work it out. Does a female have more or less insight into that character than me? I also have an important middle-aged male character (heh...yeah, so I should understand him), but he's not a family man, and has some other traits quite different to me. And a female character who is vital to the messaging I'm trying to convey. If I can really nail her motivations, I might be onto something, but at some point I'll be relying on female proof-readers. If she's not believable, my whole novel becomes pointless. No pressure on her, or anything.

3) Books are a little different to video games. We can see the characters thoughts, and there is sometimes quite the ensemble cast. So, writing a video game character is 'relatively' simple compared to actually trying to get inside the head of someone who's life is entirely different to the one you yourself have lived. But equally, video games are written and developed by groups of people (largely), so my earlier comments about a diverse team apply. Books are often written by 1 person, and you'd hope to heck that they didn't limit themselves to characters of a certain gender and age demographic.

It takes a degree of humility, a number of trusted and frankly blunt advisors, and a willingness to invest emotionally to even approximate a character effectively, and the more different from your own personality that character is, the more this is true, imho.


A question from curiosity on Harry Potter...how much would it matter if Harry and Hermione changed roles within the series?

I found Harry to be an annoying character personally (at least less so than Ron), and Snape was toxic af (but a good character, just a toxic one).

I think the takeaway here is not so much that "people shouldn't write characters different from themselves," but more just "It'd be nice to see more lived experiences behind writing some characters." Less a condemnation of one and more just a rooting for seeing more of the other.

 

[Meow Mix]

The condemnation aspect in the article isn't so much about writing characters but the hypocrisy in how some of the writers then treated women in real life. I guess the article had two points.

 

[SomeRandom]

That is true. And two of my favorite women in fantasy were written by men (Éowyn from LotR and Jasnah Kohlin from the Stormlight Archives).

I only mean to say I hope we see more women written by women, not that men need to stop writing women. ^.^

Oh don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think men should not write women characters. Hell Matilda was like my role model when I was a tot and she was Roald Dahl’s creation. Just that women writing women (including WOC, LGBTQ+ etc) adds some much needed authenticity and a broader range of potential stories

 

[SomeRandom]

A question from curiosity on Harry Potter...how much would it matter if Harry and Hermione changed roles within the series?

An interesting hypothetical. Hermione is from the trope of the “bookish/nerd” female. A character who is usually a supporting character used as a catalyst for the growth of the main character (usually male but there are exceptions.)
Possibly a greater emphasis on book smarts or even an arc where her insecurities come to light. Hermione is very stubborn and headstrong but she probably couldn’t have that many flaws. If she were the main character she might have copped flack for being a know it all or annoying perfectionist. As is she is sometimes criticised as being a feminist mouthpiece. I don’t agree, I quite like her character, just an observation

 

[Meow Mix]

Oh don’t misunderstand me. I don’t think men should not write women characters. Hell Matilda was like my role model when I was a tot and she was Roald Dahl’s creation. Just that women writing women (including WOC, LGBTQ+ etc) adds some much needed authenticity and a broader range of potential stories

I read a book recently explicitly because it had a trans author and was about a trans character (Dreadnought: Nemesis Book One by April Daniels). I can't help but feel like it would have probably been different if it weren't written by an author that was also trans, so this is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to see more of.

Now, I didn't end up thinking the book was great overall (it was okay). But the perspectives offered by the character definitely reflected the author's lived experiences, it had a genuineness to it.

 

[SomeRandom]

I read a book recently explicitly because it had a trans author and was about a trans character (Dreadnought: Nemesis Book One by April Daniels). I can't help but feel like it would have probably been different if it weren't written by an author that was also trans, so this is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to see more of.

Now, I didn't end up thinking the book was great overall (it was okay). But the perspectives offered by the character definitely reflected the author's lived experiences, it had a genuineness to it.

Indeed. I’ve no doubt a cis person could write a compelling narrative about a trans person. Nothing wrong with that. But I think there will always be a slight barrier holding back authenticness. That’s not the cis author’s fault, just a reality of the human condition. In addition to narratives sympathising with trans experiences, voices from that community can offer valuable insight and broaden the pool of perspectives. I see nothing wrong with that