Young Writers Society

I was feeling a bit insecure about one of my POVs, and was reading through some old critiques- and, quite frankly, my girl characters stink. They always have, apparently, and I don't think they're going to get any better. They're either super tomboy-ish (Lieutenant), or they're weak and waif-like (*cough* Liberty *cough*) for the purpose of satire.

I really shouldn't have a problem with this, but I do. Here's my question to you: What do you think makes a good girl character? Is it the usual 'staying true to herself' or 'proving she's just as good as the guys'?

And more importantly, what makes her an anti-Sue? What makes her feminine, but not angsty?

...and the icing on the cake: examples?

So, ramble away! I'm looking forward to some insights. ^_^

I'm not all that snappy on female characters, either, Sam. ^^' But here's what I do for a lot of characters, male or female.

I dissect myself.

That's right.

I sit down in a quiet place, have a notebook and pen at the ready and write down everything about me, from hair color to if my toe nails are clipped, from my nicest trait to the meanest little detail I have. No sugarcoating, either, one has to be honest here

When I have all that raw data about myself in front of me, I get around to organizing it under "Best traits", "worst traits", "nicest feature", "ugliest feature" (my face, LOL), et cetera.

Then I get another piece of paper and think of my character. What's he look like? Best trait, worst trait?

I write down all I can on his personality, sort of interchanging my own traits for his on the chart.

For example:
Sumi's Deadly Vice: Laziness and Pride (believe it)

Character's Deadly Vice: Lust and Wrath


think of my character, and go through the same, but reversed, process as before (the "dissection") with him/her. Then you have to go over the character's profile and smooth it out. No person has exactly the same amount as features, so you have to tailor the draft to fit the character.

It's basically taking all the elements of what makes you a person, and souping them up and re-applying them to your character.

It ain't the same as a good character-development scene, but it's real food-for-thought when you have a mental inventory of characters and one is just shabby.


That was pretty pointless. U

Uh, sorry for rambling! :p

Oy, it's odd isn't it? Guys are so much easier for us to write!!!


I love Lieutenant...Come on, it's easy to write? Girl pretending to be a guy xD

I'd have to say out of my female characters, Audrey might be the best. Fleur was good, but come on, she had her problems, right? Audrey is a better example. But I'm not sure why she's any different from a guy character beyond her gender...?

You'd think, being women, this would be easy!! But no.

It probably depends on what you are doing wrong with your female characters, and what time period they are in/genre. We'll poke around with your fem. characters later, okay dear? Otherwise, I'm not helpful at all ^^'

From what I saw, the Lieutenant looked like a great female character, but I don't know her that well, so I don't know. *shrugs*

Sam wrote:What do you think makes a good girl character? Is it the usual 'staying true to herself' or 'proving she's just as good as the guys'?

Er, I don't know if I agree with either. I think what makes a good female character is a balance. A balance between the confident and powerful side of a woman and the vulnerable, more feminine side. Characters who lie on either extreme aren't necessarily terrible, but I feel like if one side is excluded, the character becomes rather unbelievable. I like to think of Eowyn from Lord of the Rings for this. She is a powerful character, willing to go fight for Rohan and wanting to be as effective as the men, yet Tolkien also brings out the vulnerable, feminine side of her in her kindness, in her fear, in the small things that she does. I feel that's what makes her such a realistic character.

Sam wrote:And more importantly, what makes her an anti-Sue? What makes her feminine, but not angsty?

Well, I think making her anti-Sue can be done just by giving her flaws like every other character. She could be self-conscious or over-confident - there are many flaws to make a character anti-Sue. I think the balance I mentioned above helps mitigate the angsty side of a female character, but tis just my opinion.

Sam wrote:examples?

Well, Eowyn, of course... and Arwen is a good example as well. I hate using my own characters as examples but Sophie is one of my favorite female characters. On the outside, she's strict and mean and strong (almost overly strong showing her desperate attempt to be that way), but as the story progresses, her vulnerable side begins to emerge and she's seen as more feminine.

Hope those help you out some. ^_^

I have found that, as a guy, It is best to imagine female characters by themselves, without making any comparisons to male characters at all. They should be confident, but not overly so, unless they have a reason. I treat them exactly as I do my male characters when they are alone, except I make them a little more emotionally reactive, and I have a little trick. When narrating a female character, or from the poinnt of view of a female character, I describe everything a little bit more. I only really push differences between the sexes when there are two characters trying to impress/attract each other.

...

That's a hard question, I think...because it just depends on what you want your character to be. Also the time period and the place. In certain time periods, you weren't feminine if you chopped wood or went hunting.

Nowadays, being feminine is the same thing as being wimpy, almost. Girls I know (maybe it's just my circle of acquaintance) are always making fun of the more feminine types.

I think it's really hard to write up a girl character that's cool, without making her too tom-boyish.

I guess the point of this reply was that I'm having the same trouble as you! Ack...sorry, no help there!

I don't know really. I have two female characters, but they're easy to write for, as they're perhaps a bit too much like me for their own good.

Kit's an unmitigated tomboy, but she's got a sensitive side as well. She's tough physically (she lives on the streets, so she's got to be fairly tough), but her feelings are sensitive, and she can be hurt badly by the people who she's close to.

The Raven is odd. She's not exactly female, but she's not male either. Tangibley and mentally, both. For things like romance and that, the Raven is disgusted by it, and Kit doesn't care about it.

I don't know if it helps, but you could try the song in "My Fair Lady" about women. The person who's singing it is Professor Henry Higgins, and he prides himself on his cold attitude to women. He's a bit of a mysogonist, and he dislikes women for the same reasons as Sherlock Holmes. Anyway, in the song, he says about all the things that make a woman different from a man. Sure, it's exaggerated, but one of the main points is that women go by their emotions, and men by their minds. Head and heart.

"Why is thinking something women never do? Why is logic never even tried? Straightening up their hair is all they ever do! Why don't they try to straighten up the mess that's inside?"

That's just an example, and it's biased and exaggerated, but I see what he means, and this might help you. Hope it does!

Sam wrote:What do you think makes a good girl character? Is it the usual 'staying true to herself' or 'proving she's just as good as the guys'?

And more importantly, what makes her an anti-Sue? What makes her feminine, but not angsty?

...and the icing on the cake: examples?

So, ramble away! I'm looking forward to some insights. ^_^

Staying true to herself? Ew. No.

I don't know about you, but when I try to stay true to myself, I end up doing something that is so unlike me that it's ridiculous, really. Usually, when you think about staying true to yourself, this ends up being an excuse to not change yourself so that you don't have to change or so you can stick with a viewpoint that you don't want to change, even though the evidence shows that you should. This can be George Bush sticking it out with the immigration bill or someone throwing away her best friend because "she's a lesbian" or doing something else. And mind you, the examples I threw out are not ridiculous -- in fact, you can make a good argument on why those people did what they did. But this is a way to make CONFLICT, not CHARACTER. See the difference?

And ohmigosh, no. She doesn't have to prove that she's just as good as the guys. In fact, why are there so many feminine characters that want to do thiis? I realize that there are many females who want to compete against guys, but most girls are more focused on getting through ALL of life instead of just, "I'm going to beat the guys!" To just look at guys as being an obstacle to being a better person is an immature thing to do, and if you have a mature, or even a slightly mature girl, then "beating the guys" is only a small part of what she has to do with proving herself as a person.

Note the word: I did not say woman, I said person.

Because just because you're a particular gender doesn't mean you don't struggle with being human. I mean, I think the most common mistake with people who are writing for both sexes believe that, for some mysterious reason, girls and guys are completely different from each other. In some cases, they are. Girls deal with things differently than guys, but that's only a nuance. They are very very similar though. They deal with love, loneliness, pain, rejection, failure, success, and other human experiences that make them, well, human.

So first of all, a character has to be human.

Then the next question is "What is this character facing that is original, in the terms of the story?" Which is the main conflict that the character has to go through -- or else.

To use FREAK as an example!

In the freak's case, her conflict is that she isn't accepted as a human, yet she takes on many very human circumstances. In Carolina's case, her conflict deals with making sure that her family is insulated from the rest of the world (which um... doesn't quite work out). In Sadie's case, it's trying to break out of the shell of being a little girl into someone who is Important. In Elsa's case, it's just making sure that the family doesn't kill each other. So all four of the girls (yeesh, that's a small story) there are different prioriies and the conflicts occur because each of those priorities come up.

Some other stories might deal with characters who are bent with proving that they are equally as masculine as the guys, but not all characters should be like this. Please. They should all have something that they fight for individually. That will help create variety in your story.

Whatever their goals, there is still another goal that should always be a part of a story. The character should want to be a good person. In particular, for this question, the heroine should want to become a good woman. As with male characters who want to be good men, female characters who want to be good women have many opportunities to become heroines through their actions. So it's not like you have to have her always beat males to be a heroine (in fact, if you do this, I will have to kill you because of the sheer clicheness of it all).

So then, the question is, "What makes a good woman?"

And then here's the snag. You have to figure out what your society expects of women and make that work within your story. For example, in FREAK, it would not make sense for the freak to start killing people. I mean, some people might deserve to be killed in the story (Imp would say Claude, haha) but what makes her a heroine is that she lives through the conflicts that she is given and helps everyone (well... most everyone) to get through it as well.

In many mythologies, this is typical of the woman character. The best heroine, in mythology, assumes the mother figure of the creator (or someone who is close to the creator) and then helps her "children" (the creation) to grow. And that makes her amazing. So in Greek you have Gaea, in Hindu, you have Shakti, in Catholicism (an offshoot of Christianity) you have Mary, and so on. These "mothers" are extremely important and in many stories, the heroines help by preserving.

I mean, in modern stories this doesn't happen because you have all these females who want to be better than men, yada yada, but it might be nice to see this figure again.

You can sort of see in in Arwen, from Lord of the Rings. She follows what's happening and helps out Aragorn, among other things. Yeah, she's kick ass as well, but is more of a preserver than a doer, really.

Um... wow. This is a tangent. I forgot what we were talking about.

Female characters?

Oh!

Anyway, having female characters who are motherly types might be wonderful, because while men are usually seen as the protectors, women are seen as the preservers. And while this may seem "boring" to some, it really really doesn't have to be. Have you had any fights with your mom? Yes, huh? Okay, now add in a motherly figure who feels obligated to take care of a lot of crazy characters. Eep.

And remember: you have Shakti, but doesn't she have a form of Durga, who has a companion called Shiva? They'll preserve when they can, but if pushed, they can go nuts. Take Carolina, from FREAK, as an example.

So yeah. Matronly figures = awesome.

But then again, it really depends on what your society is like. For the backdrop of many mythologies, being a preserver is what makes a good woman, but who knows? You call the shots for your world.

Oh, wow...emphatic AMEN to everything Snoink just said.

Great insights! I stand humbled *bows head and clasps hands*

I'd also like to point out, Sam, that you seem to have taken two extremes of femininity (I don't know if that's a word, or if I just like repeating ininininini because it's kinda fun to typeokay back on topic...), but there isn't much averageness going on there. I always find it... interesting, I guess... when there's a female character who can give a perspective unique to a female person. (Maybe that's a little out on the rambling branch, though)

So basically, the question is: what makes a character female, and what makes a character male?

I'd also like to point out that out of nine responses to this question, only one is from the male persuasion. Let's hear it, guys. How are we different from you emotionally, mentally, personality wise?