Is this a generally well-accepted thing to do? Or is it kind of strange? The fact that I am not female, will it cast doubts that my telling of the story is/can be accurate? Would it be better to tell the story in 3rd person because of that?
I've never done this before and never considered it before either. So I have mixed feelings.
I've been in writing classes and heard this utter BS that men in general just can't write women, but women can write men just fine. All BS. I've written and sold several stories with female protagonists, female antagonists, female characters. Focus on the person, not the plumbing.
There's a book there.
If you can figure out how a female's mind works, there's a lot of guys who will pay a lot of money for that info -- drop the sf story and write a nf bestseller!
Think of Jane Austen. I'd say her female characters are richer and more compelling, but with few exceptions you don't read her male characters and think they're not credible. That's because she doesn't treat them as having bizarre and incomprehensible motivations. By in large men want the same things: love, respect, security, and freedom. But men and women have very different *roles* and the differences in roles fall within the novelist's power of observation.
Sometimes a writer gets subtle things wrong. In the middle Harry Potter books raging hormones are much in evidence, but Harry's awakening lust seemed a little bit off mark to me. I think that's because she is describing the sensations of *female* lust.
Another subtle thing that authors can get wrong are the nuances of how love and support is expressed between friends of the same sex. I critiqued a scene by a female writer friend of mine that involved two brothers talking about the difficulties they were having with a female character they were both interested in. This scene was well crafted, except it got all the nuances wrong. For example, one brother shared his feelings of insecurity, and the other sympathized with it. Now it's not that this doesn't ever happen, but happening *just that way* is a bit unusual in our culture. I think what was going on was that these men were talking like women.
As with Jane Austen, I don't think male and female friendships aren't all that different, but the conventions are radically different.
Consider the following dialog between two roofers.
SUBTLY GIRLY:
Mike: Ow! I hit my thumb with my hammer.
Pat : Are you hurt?
Mike: Yeah! See?
Pat : Ouch! That looks bad. Do you want me to get you a band-aid?
Mike: No, I think I'll be OK.
[Mike sucks on his sore thumb]
Pat : Don't do that, it might get infected. I think I'd better get you a bandage.
Mike: No, really, it's feeling better now.
Pat : It's the lousy balance on these crappy hammers. We ought to complain to the boss about them. I hit my thumb about twice a week.
Mike: Don't you hate it when that happens?
Now in real life, Mike would feel insulted by the way Pat is talking to him. If Pat were a woman, Mike would be very insulted and Pat would be mystified.
MORE MANLY (perhaps TOO manly):
Mike: Ow! I hit my thumb with my hammer.
Pat : Are you hurt?
Mike: No it feels great! What do you think you pinhead?
[Mike sucks on his sore thumb]
Pat : Sucking your thumb? Does baby want an ickle witty band-aid?
Mike: Jealous? [offers his thumb to Pat] Go ahead and suck it, pussy.
Pat: Ha ha ha. You're a pussy. I've hit my thumb harder than that a thousand times.
Mike: Ha ha. That's because you're a moron.
Pat : Ha ha.
Despite the obvious differences, *exactly the same thing is going on here*. Mike hit his thumb, and after checking to see he isn't really hurt Pat helps him deal with his feelings. It's purely a matter of style. In the first example Pat reaffirms Mike's feelings. In the second he expresses confidence in Mike's ability to handle his feelings.
[This message has been edited by Crystal Stevens (edited February 02, 2011).]
But . . .
Read Parke Godwin's BELOVED EXILE, the story of Guinevere after Arthur's death, and then tell me that a man can't write women convincingly.
It was so well done that I had to have someone tell me it wasn't a real memoir but a novel (Oops! Embarrassing!). I was convinced.
I think it's perfectly fine to do.
[This message has been edited by akeenedesign (edited February 01, 2011).]
Go for it!
quote:
So Meredith -- what is it that makes Godwin's female characters so credible? Does he write them in a way that makes them particularly believable as *women*, or does he just write them believably as people?
As I said, it's been a while since I read it. I had to go look up the title, although I knew exactly which book I meant. Clearly, it stuck in my mind.
I'd say she's a convincing person first. But I'd also say that there are some convincing female characteristics.
It's not embarrassing to be taken in by a writer that good. Hooray for Arthur Golden!
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited February 01, 2011).]
Is this because readers (particularly editors) are more willing to believe in a character that resembles the real person who created him? Are these character-author combinations easier to market? Or, is it simply because it's easier for an author to write about himself when using first-person?
It's probably all of the above. So, what you do when your POV character doesn't share an immediate resemblance to you and your story must be told from first-person?
Golden's approach was to write a character that appears completely different than him (i.e., a female servant from a different culture, location, and time period) then to incorporate believability through the use of thoroughly researched, historical details and the memoir style.
A similar approach might work for speculative fiction that's far enough removed from our everyday lives but clearly incorporates real (historical) or mythological elements.
The question is, do you need to put in that effort, or would third-person work at least as well for your novel?
I've said this before on other threads, but I'll say it again. Make a three dimensional character, and you will be fine. And make sure all your female characters aren't the same.
Also I say try it out in first and see if you can capture the character's voice. If not, go to third.
Mattleo,
Your example made me laugh. When I get in a fight with my sisters, we can't move past it until we have some big cathartic confrontation (even though it rarely resolves anything).
When my husband gets into a fight with his brother, he just goes up to him and says "Hey" and his brother says "Hey" and that is it.
Boggles my mind.
[This message has been edited by MAP (edited February 01, 2011).]
Edited to say that I'm female.
[This message has been edited by aspirit (edited February 03, 2011).]
Sometimes its different but I also use the various female FP novels i've read as modals.
quote:
I've noticed that the POV characters in successful novels written in first-person tend to share much in common with their authors--not just the gender, but also major personality traits and oftentimes appearances.
Sort of this (I can be fairly single-minded, like my protag). But more importantly, my characters were female because the characters' internal problems were brought into sharper relief if I played against gender stereotypes (sort of: women don't normally act that way ...but... what if they did?). Further, I did this despite female characters going against my genre's (arguable) stereotypes.
quote:
The choice is purely commercial, I believe women will find the story more interesting than men, particularly if the mc is female.
So just so long as you know the possible pitfalls: e.g. that hacking a plot to fit a market may be a harder sell to publishers than a story which is perfectly formed in and of itself. (Not sure what level you're writing's at cynicalpen as I couldn't find your intro thread, so if this isn't helpful, maybe it'll be helpful to someone else)
quote:
Two of the novels I am writing have female First Person even though I'm not.
As contrasted to male Second Person? 
Actually that would make for a strange and different book, alternating POV between F-1st and M-2nd.
Her: I did this, I thought that, etc.
Him: You did this, you said that, etc.
(cue Toby Keith, "I Wanna Talk About Me" !!)
Perhaps TOO Manly? Oh no, good sir. If anything, it wasn't manly enough. Were either of my friends to react to anything like so, we'd soundly beat him with hammers until he grew a pair.
Mike: Ow! I hit my thumb with my hammer.
Pat : Huh? I didn't know we were working within hearing distance of an Oprah's book club meeting?
Mike: Seriously, man, it's bleeding like crazy and I can see bones sticking out in different directions! Oh God, I was only taking this job to pay the bills while I was between jobs as a pianist. What have I done?
[Mike sucks on the bloody mess that was his thumb]
[Pat excitedly gets out his iphone and turns it to video mode]
Pat : Oh, sweet, you gotta warn me if you're setting up one of those. Sorry about raggin' on you. I've always wanted to do one of th- aww, dude, seriously? Sucking on it? It only qualifies as youtube worthy if I can see you biting it off. At least hit yourself in the nuts with a hammer and act like you weren't expecting it.
Mike: I think I'm getting lightheaded... can... can you help me off this roof before I fall? I can't feel my hand anymore and everything's getting white...
[Pat reluctantly lowers iphone, scowls at Mike]
Pat: Ha ha ha. Nice try. Get it through your thick head - I'm straight. Now shut up and get your side of the board fitted right.
Mike: [Slumps backward, begins sliding down the roof]
Pat : Kick ass! Chicks at the bar are never going to believe I'm the guy who shot "bleeding moron falls off roof." This is going straight to number one on Break.
In response to Ben, close third does not impact the reader in the same way as does first-person. I think it's like the difference between standing three feet from a stranger and letting a stranger lean on you. The average person prefers to maintain a buffer zone unless she is confident that the stranger is safe. This becomes even more important with prolonged contact. She might not mind bumping against a stranger in public (that is, reading first-person flash) but require a reason for intimacy when contact is extended (as for a novel).
So, unless first-person POV is necessary to tell your story well, third-person is a safer choice.
The question of whether or not to write from the opposite gender's POV is a separate issue. Female readers won't care about this as long as the POV character in a third-person story is strong and believable.
cynicalpen, here's a test for you if your character is an adult. Are you comfortable sitting in a group of women who aren't talking about you? If your character is a girl, then can you have a conversation with several girls and not run out of things to say? For an answer of "no", you aren't ready to write from a female POV. For "yes", try it. You can restart the story if you later discover that your character is a male, after all.
*EDIT: Added an important modifier.
[This message has been edited by aspirit (edited February 03, 2011).]
quote:
In response to Ben, close third does not impact the reader in the same way as does first-person. I think it's like the difference between standing three feet from a stranger and letting a stranger lean on you. The average person prefers to maintain a buffer zone unless she is confident that the stranger is safe. This becomes even more important with prolonged contact. She might not mind bumping against a stranger in public (that is, reading first-person flash) but require a reason for intimacy when contact is extended (as for a novel).
I find it's the other way around. Close 3rd person is a lot more personal to me than first-person, which actually tends to put me off the character. I, I, I, like being talked to by an egomaniac, tends to station the character at arm's length rather than me being inside the MC's head. I very seldom get truly involved with 1st person characters.
IMO most first-person works don't manage to achieve a good level of intimacy with the reader, until you get to the calibre of writing in Travis McGee. (Which is so well done, I actually had to go check... yep, it's first person, but it doesn't FEEL like it. It feels like really personal 3rd.)
If I were running a writing class, I would not let newbies write in 1st at all until they'd become tolerably proficient in 3rd, because in my observation, as a starting point 1st actually *teaches* bad habits -- the natural tendency in 1st is to tell, tell, tell, then *mistake* that for showing, to a degree even bad omni-3rd doesn't manage.
(Recently saw a first-attempt that due mainly to being overwritten, managed to head-hop between 1st-tell and omni-tell... now there's a trick!! Tho she'll be a good writer once she gets past this.)
Bella is self-sacrificing, but many readers perceive her as wishy-washy or whiny. If she were to think of herself as self-sacrificing, she most certainly wouldn't come across that way, and so it's almost impossible to make that clear about her (I didn't realize it until after I'd read THE HOST, and while I was reading the last book in the series.)
Writing in first person is an extremely hard way to convey any positive qualities about a character without the character coming off as the exact opposite. It's much easier to convey negative qualities of a first person narrator.
quote:
Writing in first person is an extremely hard way to convey any positive qualities about a character without the character coming off as the exact opposite. It's much easier to convey negative qualities of a first person narrator.
I wish I had read that before I wrote an entire novel that way!
I realized this after getting some feedback from someone on my main character. We had a amiable disagreement about what my intentions were with her character versus what they read from her, and that clarified the whole thing for me.
I haven't decided what to do about it yet. Though I am tempted to rewrite the whole thing in third person now that I realize how difficult it is, I don't think that will work. I can tell you I won't be making that mistake again anytime soon.
[This message has been edited by coralm (edited February 05, 2011).]
At the very least, it will be an interesting exercise, and you'll surely learn things about writing and about your story and characters.
In fact, I'm thinking that's probably a good exercise for all 1st person works... if it transforms easily into 3rd, you probably got 1st reasonably close to the character. If it refuses to play... it's probably a good bet that people will have trouble seeing the character as you wish in that 1st person POV.
Of course the reverse exercise is probably useful as well.
You wouldn't have to do the whole thing as such an exercise, but do pick what you believe is the pivotal scene.
Just messing around one day, I had my MC view some events by talking into a vocoder, so this section is in 1st instead of close-3rd. I haven't decided whether to keep it that way or not (probably won't, because he missed about half the events of the day and we kinda need to see the rest), but I was pleased that he sounds the same in 1st as in 3rd.
Then again, my last finished thing has a female narrator who, for reasons the plot makes obvious, refers to herself as "we" till almost the end. First person plural, I guess---except the character occasionally refers to "ourself," which, according to my spell check, isn't a word. A difficult thing to pull off, but I think I did as well as possible. (Twenty thousand words seems too long to roll that particular literary trick...but, hey, I think I'm writing just for me at this point.)
The challenge could be addressed in 1st with the use of a foil. A negative character can posit the options that your hero would never consider. Anyway, food for thought, great topic!