She Says, He Says: Gender and the Writing Craft

We do know there is such a thing as “Women’s Literature” and it is known that romance fiction targets a feminine audience. Does the author’ sex influence its characters? Are male novelists guilty of stereotyping female characters? Are their feminine counterparts still hooked in idealized masculine protagonists?

In a near future, gender might become an obsolete term. Until then, we accept that men and women (regardless of their sexual preferences) react in different ways to situations and emotions. Just as religion, family life and past romantic history reflect on a particular writer´s work, gender does play a part in his/her craft.

Indeed, certain genres are associated with gender. As much as I try, I cannot remember a war novel written by a woman. Women can describe the effect conflicts have on civilians, but they don´t write battlefield scenes. Perhaps because until recently few women were on the battlefield and none was too eager to fictionalize her experiences. Think of how Margaret Mitchell describes soldiers in Gone with the Wind. They are either in hospital beds, on leave or marching away form Atlanta. She doesn´t show them actually engaged in war games as Stephen Crane does in The Red Badge of Courage.

Wounded Confederate soldiers in Gone with the Wind

There are hardly any women writers specializing in thrillers, adventure novels, epic fantasy or science fiction. I don´t know if there is a predisposition against them doing it or if those are not subjects women care for. This is why the few women who have achieved success in those genres (e.g. Ursula Le Guin) are twice as famous. Precisely why Nicholas Sparks is much lauded for being one of the small number of men who dare to write romance. In fact there are plenty of male romance authors but they hide under pseudonyms. Just as Nora Roberts signs her futuristic murder stories as “J.D. Robb.”

Beyond the question of prejudice in the publishing universe, I’m interested to know if readers notice a difference in voice when comparing genre written by novelists of either sex. Do women authors “feminize” their science fiction and mysteries? Do men authors rely on negative archetypes when it comes to feminine protagonists? Just think about those wonderful hardboiled detective classics and their femme fatales, as dangerous as tarantulas.

Barbara Stanwyck playing femme fatale in Double Idemnity based in a James Cain story

Nineteenth-century literature was full of novels with feminine names as titles, all written by men, all depicting nasty protagonists: unfaithful wives like Madame Bovary or Anna Karenina; prostitutes like Camille and Balzac´s Nana; fallen women like Tess of D’Urbervilles and ambitious schemers like Thackeray’s Becky Sharp. Thank you gentlemen, but you did us a disservice. Only Dickens stepped aside from the Scarlet Women-Makers Circle, but he used a worse stereotype: the victim, the damsel in distress that always needs a knight to fight for her virtue.


Women writers are also guilty of stereotyping. In The Time Traveler’s Wife, Audrey Niffenegger creates a leading man who is a metaphor for guys unable to commit and who drift in and out of their women’s lives. At least, Henry De Tamble has an excuse. He suffers a genetic disorder that forces him to time travel, but that’s little comfort to Clare, the wife he is constantly deserting. Although the novel should be about Henry, we are hooked on Clare and her plight. He is just a nuisance, an object, and although Niffnegger alternates Henry and Clare’s perspectives, sometime he feels like a cardboard character.

Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in The Time Traveler's Wife

It might sound as a generalization, but biographical data shows us that most romance authors base their masculine characters in “The Man that Got Away” (a former lover), or some approximation to the ideal man they dream to find. Sometimes they combine both and give an impossible happy ending to their botched down affairs. Although it´s legitimate to draw on our own emotional experiences to create characters, sometimes we concentrate so much in developing a leading man or woman that their counterpart ends up being a one-dimensional shadow.

Afraid to fall into that trap, many men writers have qualms about delving too deep into the feminine universe, and some female novelists wouldn’t dream of writing from a man’s point of view. This is particularly true in romance.

When I first started to write “seriously”, my story had a supposedly dead protagonist who resurrected around chapter fourth. Therefore, the first three chapters were written from her bereaved husband’s POV. My Beta Reader wisely said that no woman reader would care for a romance written from a man´s perspective. I went over my collection of bodice-rippers and saw her point. And yet we now have romantic bestsellers like Water for Elephants with a powerful sensitive hero, and he comes from the imagination of a woman, Sara Gruen.

Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon in Water for Elephants

Ideas such as “real men don´t read romance” (so far I haven’t met any who dare come out of the closet and confess to enjoy that genre) and women readers shying away from “masculine” genres are hard to kill. That is why to attract female viewers, movie versions of Jules Verne classics or Conan Doyle’s The Lost World insert token ladies that never existed in those books.
What is Arlene Dahl doing in the Center of the Earth? Certainly Jules Verne didn't put her there

I must confess I am an odd duck that don´t need girls in a tale to appreciate it. I have watched the Band of Brothers miniseries about twenty times and never minded the absence of female characters. Moreover, although I concede that women are at their best in the creation of female characters, some men authors are masters in that same craft.
Band of Brothers. Wo needs girls with such gorgeous soldiers?

I enjoy the Sookie Stackhouse Novels (The Southern Vampire Mysteries) but I hate her! She is irksome, silly, and loud. Vampires, get her! On the other hand, I have fallen in love with the women in George R.R. Martin’s saga A Song of Ice and Fire since as characters they are vigorous, varied and they hold up their own in a world terribly biased against their sex.
Sookie and one of her vampire paramours

However, I constantly hear men complaining about the manner in which female writers portray their sex. They say that most male protagonists penned by women are feminine fantasies or nightmares. Even when it comes to “macho territory” such as detective stories they point out to me that Patricia Highsmith‘s Tom Ripley is homosexual and Agatha Christie´s Hercule Poirot is a fuzzy old bachelor, far from the manly private eye epitome created by men authors. I happen to think that P.D. James’ Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is a pretty strong masculine character, but then as a woman, my judgment could be clouded.

Could you give examples of authors who are experts in developing characters of the opposite sex? Do you find it hard to create them? As a reader, do you notice how the author imposed his/her voice to the text? Do you think gender dominates certain genres?

Freelance Writing

Although fiction writing is my true love, professional non-fiction writing has probably honed my craft more than any story I’ve written. Being edited constantly, learning to withstand criticism, and writing on a deadline are all experiences any writer can benefit from.

When people learn I’m a freelancer, they usually want to know more about how that works — especially if they’re interested in trying it themselves. My path is not typical, but I’m not sure there is a “typical” path for freelancers.

My first paid writing job was as a reporter for a tiny newspaper, but after I became a mom I needed something more flexible, preferably something I could do from home. By the time my daughter was born I had moved to a new city so I cold-called the major newspaper there and asked whom I should speak to about freelance writing. Within a few minutes, I had my first assignment.

Thirteen years later I am still writing for that same newspaper, even though I have again moved cities. I’ve done some articles for other publications, which has taught me how good I have it with “my” newspaper. I’ve worked with two editors there now, both lovely people who edit me lightly and who let me write as often or as infrequently as I like. With my energies currently going toward completing at least one of my two novels-in-progress, I’m on a bit of hiatus at the paper, and my editor says that’s fine, just let her know when I’m ready and she’ll have work for me.

This publication also pays well … relatively speaking. Freelancing is not a money-making venture, and those who do it for a living have to be savvier than I am: for example, if you’re clever you ca re-sell the same article multiple times without breaking copyright. My more ambitious freelancer friends work their way up the chain, going from stringers at newspapers (which can pay as little as $15 per story) to writing regularly for magazines that buy their articles for a thousand bucks a pop.

Since I’m not relying on it for the money, and since fiction is my first love, some people (especially my husband) ask me why I freelance at all. The primary reason is exposure: I want to keep up my resume, to have my name out there. I hope that when I finish my novel and begin looking for an agent, it will be noted that I’m a regularly-published, reliable writer who is used to deadlines and to being edited.

For this reason, I’d encourage anyone who has considered freelancing to give it a try. It’s an excellent way to get your name in print, and the feedback you get from editors will only help your writing. Even if it doesn’t pay well at first, the experience is worth it: think of it as getting paid to be critiqued, to take a writing class. When you think of it that way, what writer wouldn’t jump at that chance?

What about you? If you freelance, what has your path been? If you’ve considered it but haven’t taken the plunge, is there anything you’re curious about?

Dipping My Foot in the Playwright's World

Or how about just dipping my big toe in?

About a year ago, I was given the opportunity to go swimming in someone else's pool. Now, I didn't go with mischievous intentions (like leaving a cloud of colored water behind because I didn't want to be bothered by getting out and using the restroom, or throwing a Snicker's bar in so I could have the pool all to myself). No, I went willing to take the plunge and enjoy my stay as much as possible. And who knew, if all went well maybe I'd be invited back, or heck, maybe I'd get my own pool and enjoy every minute I spent in it. The name of this pool was "Playwright" and I entered the fluid world of writing my First. Play. Ever.

I'll be honest, I'm not the best at short stories because I think on a broader scale when it comes to my writing. I love great little subplots where each one takes its own path through the maze, but amazingly enough comes out the same side with every other subplot, right where it needs to be. I'd never written a play either. I thought perhaps I would crash and burn because at first glance a play seems similar to a short story. The writing had to be tight, we had only so many characters we could work with, the pacing had to stay even, and we had only a certain number of pages to get the whole thing out there in a timely manner. Needless to say, I believe my co-author and I wrote a pretty good play. If you're thinking of wading into the playwright's waters, then I want to share the highs and lows of what to expect. 

I'd say that first, be sure of whether or not you want a co-author along for the ride. I had a lovely co-author who writes children's stories but, much like me, she had never written a play either. There was a lot of starting and stopping in the beginning because our ideas and our writing styles clashed (I had a much darker take on things that she didn't much care for at times). We had to figure out what would work best if we ever expected our play to see the light of day. In the end, we worked it out where we took two scenes per act (so I would have two and she would have two) and individually we exclusively wrote our two scenes. I should back up a bit and say that we had already brainstormed and had an outline for the direction of the play, so the task became doling out who would write what scenes. We managed to pull it off and the final product turned out much better than if we had continued to battle our way through with each of us writing over the other and then arguing about what worked best. The main thing we had to be careful with was that the characters' voices had to remain consistent no matter who wrote the character for a particular scene.

Next, I'd suggest getting a good guide on how to write a play. Plays are a different monster than novels, the main reason being there is no prose, therefore, no living in the characters' heads. My co-author and I chose The Playwright's Guidebook by Stuart Spencer. Why this book, you may ask? No reason other than out of the hundreds of guidebooks (very similar to all the how-to books on writing novels out there on the market) this one had good reviews and it was affordable ($11.56 on Amazon). The main chapters are divided into first an intro, entitled "How We Tell Stories," which gives some great background info on how the world of plays came about in the first place, and also into three useful parts based on structure, the creative process, and dealing with problems. Each chapter ends with exercises to use in your own writing and these exercises challenge the writer when it comes to things like how to build a scene, how can the story have forward momentum, and how to make the dialogue and action work for your story.

Dialogue is key! Especially in the first few pages. You must grab your audience right out of the gate. If you remember nothing else, remember this. Your dialogue in any given play you choose to write must move the action along, while at the same time revealing who your characters are. As I mentioned before, no prose, therefore no leaving it up to the audience to try and figure out what's going on inside everyone's heads. As a novelist, I must admit that working with pure dialogue was a hard nut to crack. I'm used to working with lengthy descriptions or getting lost in a character's thoughts. The lengthy descriptions aren't necessary because the audience can see what's going on up on the stage. And those thoughts? Toss them out the window when writing a play. 

Lastly, editing is crucial. My co-author and I spent many nights at Starbucks sipping tea and hashing out scenes. When we went to put the whole thing together, it took a lot of effort to make sure everything was on the right track. Be patient with your co-author. Even in the end, ideas will clash, but that's where compromise comes into play. When working with another writer remember that their ideas count just as much as your own. Taking the time to edit out all the inconsistencies and making sure you have a smooth product is worth the blood, sweat, and tears. And enjoy the experience! I did, and who knows? Maybe I'll go for another dip in that pool!

5 Things to Remember When Writing Your First Play

1. If you write with a co-author, work side-by-side with him/her, not against or over him/her.
2. Have a good guidebook helping you along the way. Do the exercises!
3. The opening scene is what will draw in your audience. 
4. Have conflict with high stakes and high hopes.
5. Your plot will always be related to your theme. Write something you care about, not what you believe is selling.

For the aspiring playwright:

Here is a sample exercise from The Playwright's Guidebook (Page 47). Give it a try and see if you've got what it takes!

Write a short five-to ten-page scene in which there are only two characters and the first character wants a book from the the second character. All the details of the scene are up to you. In other words, you have been given the action for the scene, but nothing else. 

What did you come up with? Care to share?