Why do men have issues writing female characters?

I am a guy. I'm just going to say that right now, in case it weren't obvious. And, because I'm a guy, I think I have issues writing convincing female characters. I'm not saying that this problem is unique to me, I think a lot of male authors have the same issue, especially screenwriters. Articles I've read recently complain about "strong female characters" and I personally don't like that label. Characters shouldn't be able to fall into a simple one word description. Even labeling them "male" or "female" is kind of stupid. I'm not saying all characters should be asexual, but I think gender should be incidental, not a defining characteristic.

If you seem to be struggling with writing female (or male for lady writers) characters, the best thing I can recommend is to forget gender altogether. You shouldn't be defining your characters by what's in their pants, unless you're writing sex stories.

Let me give a for instance. My current novel project involves a thief who gets into some kind of trouble and is helped out by a bar-owning friend who also happens to wield magic. Now, look at that sentence and judge the genders of those two characters. Judging by just that sentence, bearing in mind cultural bias, one would assume that both are male, with a token female supporting character somewhere in the story, right?

That's a perfectly acceptable assumption, right? One doesn't typically think of lady thieves or even lady business owners, no matter how often we see such in reality. In truth, the thief is indeed a male while the bar owner is a woman. Surprising? No, not really, when you think of how many TV shows or screenplays or whatever have been altered to include female mains. In truth, I never gave much consideration as to Rose's gender; while I was writing, the name Rose came out and I rolled with it.

But, here recently, I've been toying with the idea of completely reversing the roles, making Rose my main, the thief, and Orion the barkeep. Would that make any difference at all? No, I don't really think it would. It would take minimal rewriting to alter the story in such an earth-shattering way, because I don't write Rose as a woman, not completely. I write her as a person first, and as a woman second. She has all the strengths and weaknesses, in fact probably more strengths that Orion, my main. Quite frankly, there are times I find her a more compelling character than the thief.

So what's my point? When asked how he manages to write such convincing female characters, George RR Martin replied "You know, I've always considered women to be people." Ultimately, that's the secret that writers, and especially screenwriters, need to realize: women are people. The best way to write convincing women is to write them as people, rather than women. And, on that note, write men as people too, not the testosterone fueled Duke Nukem type men. Not all guys feel the need to solve problems by punching them in the face. Speaking, or writing, as one of the nerdy, social butterfly types, I can say it's not only women being misrepresented in media, it's just worse with women.

The Original Premise and Evolution of my Novel

  Ok, I'm here to procrastinate writing again, mostly because I feel oddly motivated to do precisely dick. So I decided to come on here and babble about my novel- its initial premise, what inspired me and most likely a summary of the story as I see it in my head.

The story goes like this: I work in retail and they make me take breaks, and during those breaks I tend to read. Anyway, while my store was moving to its new location, I got an idea for a story. This blew my fucking mind, as I'd not had a viable story idea in perhaps 20 years. See, I'd just finished Brent Weeks's Night Angel Trilogy for like the third time and the idea of immortality struck something in my subconscious. As I walked to the mall for lunch, I started thinking about thieves in a medieval fantasy world. The two ideas melded and I began thinking of how a thief who'd practiced his craft in medieval times and who was cursed with immortality would have to adapt to modern technology.

I almost immediately dumped the immortality conceit, mostly because I didn't want him to come across as a vampire, as vampires are extremely overused in pop literature. So I just began to focus on the thief; who was he, where did he live, etc. The same day as the idea struck me, I went to the mall and bought a notebook and I began writing. In hindsight, I probably should have let the story stew in my mind before writing, but I was so excited that I'd finally had an idea that I had to get it onto paper.

Cut to about six months later and I had a rough draft typed out. From beginning to end, the document was about 36,000 words. I initially was writing this with Fantasy & Sci Fi magazine in mind, but their upper limit for novellas is 26,000 words. So I was left with the prospect of cutting 10,000 words, or soldiering on and lengthening the book to full-on novel size.

While struggling to lengthen the languishing book, I moved on to other stories; it seems that this one story broke the dam as it were and story ideas were coming to me left and right. I conceived of a sequel or two to my original story, as well as a prequel. I came up with several other stories, and as they were fresh and on my mind a the time, I spent more time working on those. Eventually, I stopped writing altogether for perhaps two months, spending the time reading George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.

It wasn't until I purchased Telling Lies for Fun and Profit, which I mentioned in my earlier post, that I began to re-examine my thief novel. On my computer, I opened a new file and began rewriting. Before, I'd been just going through the rough draft document and trying to add one word at a time. By rewriting, I was able to lengthen more naturally, to get rid of the parts I didn't think worked and to add things that I wanted added. As of this writing, I'm approximately halfway through the story and I've added close to 5,000 words at last counting.

Ultimately, the story is coming along, and while I don't expect I'll finish within the year, I do believe I will finish it at some point.

Really, the title of the blog says it all.

  So as a way to get myself motivated to write more, I've goaded myself into starting a new blog, partly as a writer's journal, a place to put down ideas and as a place to bemoan my shitty writing. Currently, I have anywhere from 8 to 10 stories going all at once, one of them possibly spawning a sequel or two.

  A little background: I've been writing off and on since I learned how. One of my stories was entered into a contest when I was in first grade and I actually won and award. To be honest, the story wasn't that good; in fact, I doubt very much I could rewrite it now to make it any better, but for a five year old, it was pretty damn good. Since then, though, I haven't done much writing because I felt that I had no ideas. In reality, I just hadn't read enough.

  The most important thing, I believe, to being a writer, aside from a good grasp of your chosen language, is having read a good deal. Not necessarily in any one genre, although if you tend to prefer just one, that's OK. I tend to read omnivorously, from almost any genre from sci fi to fantasy, spy capers, westerns and horror of both psychological and supernatural. As such, I find myself writing just as omnivorously. Indeed, I have a story from almost every one of those genres in the works right now.

  I've read a couple of books on the craft of writing and they've inspired me to get going again on the novel that I've been chipping away on since March of 2012. I highly recommend the book Telling Lies for Fun and Profit if you're interested in the craft of writing. Everybody at work seems to think I'm crazy for writing, and they also think that I'll get published and get rich, etc...

  I won't lie, publication has been in the back of my mind since I finished roughing out the plot of my novel, but the more I think about it, the less I like the idea of publication simply for the sake of seeing my name on a book on shelves, although that would be absolutely orgasmic. I write for relaxation, for the enjoyment of creation, the same reason I like making armor and jewelry. What I write may not be good, but it's not about quality, it's about creation.

  Lawrence Block wonders in Telling Lies why amateur painters don't consider themselves failures because they're not in art expos or why amateur musicians aren't failures for not playing Carnegie Hall while amateur writers will invariably consider themselves failures for not being published. It's true; there is a certain pressure on the amateur writer to get published even though the real trial is getting the idea written and that's the crux of the situation. Writers should be satisfied simply by getting the words on the page, or in the word processor. Once that's accomplished, you can call yourself a writer, no matter what. You are a writer, you've written something. Sure it may be derivative, it may be boring, it may suck harder than a hooker on payday, but who cares, you've accomplished the hard part.

  My point is, publication doesn't really matter, unless you've quit your real job to attempt to write full time, in which case, more power to you. I personally don't have the cojones to do that, but whatever works for you. You should feel satisfied simply by getting words onto pages. And so, here I am, avoiding putting words into my word processor by putting other words on the internet. Is that ironic? And if it is, do I care?