Writing Realistic Opposite-Gender Characters

mixed up dru.:

I have a much easier time writing guys that girls.
I have three brothers and a dirty mind, so it's not that much of a challenge for me to write boys.

I'm the same, except I only have two brothers.

Actually, my favorite character to write was actually a male. Jack Manson. I feel like I portrayed him pretty realistically. I think one thing to remember when writing guys is that they're emotional, but not in the same way that we girls are. I'm not being sexist, that's just my opinion.

I like writing girls, but I always tend to make them too... girly.

I love to write both. And the conrast between them.

I take it to be the same with drawing manga-
At first my guys were appalling. You couldn't tell them apart from the girls, let alone see any guy-ish qualities in them.
but then I started observing: taking note of the little things about guys, in real life and in other mangas. How they're figure was shaped differently, how certain kinds of fabric creases and fold in different places- where the indents and bones are- and then how it can differ and what makes it a hot, cute, scrawny or muscley guy.
I tell you, it was well worth it. It's now that I begin to get confused with female anatomy I am so absorbed with guys haha! XD

But I reckon it should be the same with stories.
Observe from other literature and from real life.
The little things that stand out to YOU
And that's what will make your writing individual and successful at the same time~
Maybe I should even make an observing sketch/notebook to help me? XD
Haha, freakyness ftw :D

Still... It's the speech that I find the hardest... to get...
natural sounding :S
Unless it's a fanfiction and I know the person- well, their voice at least and rough idea of how they word things.

I usually find myself writing boys a lot. I'm not sure if I'm good at it or not.

(Could someone read a chapter of one of my stories and see if I'm doing anything wrong? Please?)

No one's told me that I write men well/badly. So I'm not sure.

I have asked a guy friend to read a dialogue between two of my male characters before, and I asked him, "What do you think? Do you think these guys are realistic? Would you say something like this?"

And he looked at me funny and said, "How should I know?" And then I realized what guys are really like.

They don't read between the lines. They're blunt and half the time, don't care what they wear. At least, that's how my guy friends are.

My real issue is gay guys. There's two stereotypical types: The "Omg, you're gay?" masculine gays, and then the feminine gays that walk by you and you just know their probably gay.

But most of my homosexual characters are somewhere in between. But making that line between masculinity and femininity is really difficult.

For some bizarre reason, I find it easier to write first person narrative from a male perspective, despite being of the fairer gender myself, even if they are rather effeminate (see Jason: Free Fall). I don't know what that says about me: I have a younger brother and a younger sister. *nervous laughter, collar tug*. I've only written one, rather short story in a female first person narrative.

My index/ring finger thing says I'm masculine anyway...

Mostly, however, I write from a third person, kind of God like perspective. I guess it's easier to manipulate the reader that way, giving them nothing direct to go on.

I just write characters as they come to me. Direct gender roles have nothing to do with it. When writing male characters, I don't think I've ever though "is this how a bloke would act?" - I just wrote it.

I find myself writing male characters in first person a lot more because most first person narrative books I read have a male protagonist. It's what I'm comfortable with for the most part because I use what I learn from books and apply it to my own development.

Flangsty Molrowings:

I just write characters as they come to me. Direct gender roles have nothing to do with it. When writing male characters, I don't think I've ever though "is this how a bloke would act?" - I just wrote it.

That's what I was saying, too. If I tried to think about that while I was writing I would never get anything done successfully. Over-thinking is a major hurdle most writers need to overcome.

Honestly, I write guys a lot better than I write girls.
I'm also better at writing when writing from first person, and as a male.

I really do not know why, but I just think I construct their personalities better.
When I write as a girl/about a girl they all seem to be the same.

Then again, I mostly write slash.
Except for oneshots, really.

I probably fail at writing from the other gender. My character, Ollie, is pretty much a hippy or very indie. Girl characteristics with guy parts. But I love Ollie, he's awesome. :P

For me, I think it's easier to write guys than girls.
Yes, I don't know exactly how a guy's mind would work, but I can always ask my best friend, who is a guy.
With girls, I think what happens is we want to write a girl who's prefect, and we can't. I have a harder time giving girls good faults. Sure, I can give them some, but finding their Achilles Heel is sometimes really hard for me.

Usually, when I'm feeling uncertain if my male characters are unrealistic, I take example of works from male authors to see how they would present a male character. But to tell you the truth, I don't really think there is a huge difference. Just like there are a thousands of different ways to present a female character, same goes for male characters. Their personalities could be whatever the author wants it to, regardless of gender really.

I have no idea if my male characters are too girly (besides the ones that are intentionaly written like that), but really, as long as a guy doesn't start crying every second and isn't too...fluffy lol then I wouldn't say there is really right or wrong here.

I find writing girls a lot easier than guys, since almost my entire family and group of friends are female, but I'm starting to write guy characters. I'm pretty sure I suck at it, though.

"I think when people say to female writers, 'Your male characters are not realistic,' they mean, 'They don't adhere to the current society's standards of masculinity.'"

And what would those same readers think of the characters if they didn't know the author's gender? Would they still think the male characters were unrealistic if the author was male?

My friend Grace used to conduct this experiment on writing forums: She'd write a short story and post it twice (with time between postings, and a different title so as not to be obvious), once under her own name and once under a male pen name. The responses, she told me, were... enlightening.

As herself, she'd be told that her male characters were unrealistic, that 'girls don't write sci-fi anyway, they should only be allowed to write romances and girl stuff' (NEVER a good idea to be around Grace after she'd read some comment like that - she yells a lot when she's angry), and that she should stick to writing things that female readers like.

BUT... As her alter ego Thomas Flint... Suddenly the same people who had, a few months before, hated that same story, were giving it glowing reviews, talking about how skilled the writing was, how detailed and imaginative the setting, how complex the plot... But they thought the female characters were totally unbelievable.

The only difference? The name used by the author.

My sister-in-law Kate says that men can't write female characters, which is why she refuses to read anything by a male author. "They can't write anything that a woman would want to read," she says. (Is it just me, or is it unkind for her to say that in front of her husband, also a writer?)

I don't think about it much, but I probably have about an even mix of male and female major characters in my fiction. Of course, I don't believe that there is such thing as a distinctly male or distinctly female personality, beyond what a particular culture tells people is acceptable. The first story I ever wrote in first person has a female protagonist, and I think it turned out just fine. (Read it and judge for yourself: Finder's Fee )

Which leads to something I've noticed myself - readers often assume that, with a first-person story, the protagonist's gender is the same as the author's. They confuse which "I" is telling the story.

^ Wow. that's very enlightening actually.
It's like I've been saying. What you should actually do is figure out your character as an individual not a sex or orientation or anything else. "What would Sally do?", for example, as opposed to "what would a girl do?". I think a lot of authors are too hard on themselves (and as you pointed out, sometimes dick readers who don't know what they're talking about ) I don't think I've ever really encountered any fiction where I was just like "What kind of man/woman acts like this? Totally unrealistic gender portrayal!" If I thought something was not realistic or cool, it was because I couldn't see any person acting that way. (i.e. a man that cries at the drop of a hat is equally appauling as the woman that does to me. If I'm gonna poke holes and cry "wimp!" I'm gonna do it regardless.)

but there's a difference between a guy acting like a "girl" in a story because it's his characterization and all the guys acting like girls because someone doesn't know how to write masculinity.

^Well, I'll give you that one, I suppose. I hadn't thought of that really. I chalk that one up to an issue in characterization more than anything. Not everyone can be a girl.
I guess my way of looking at it is, I have a hard time saying "this is how guys act" or "this is how girls act" because I've written and personally known so many different types of people. It hasn't necessarily harmed my writing. I guess, my theory is more like: people are people, gender, color, orientation, etc never made much of a dramatic difference because it still comes down to the individual and his/her experiences.
However, as you said, if all the boys are girly or what have you for no obvious reason than just a young and/or inexperienced author then that's different.

Whenever I write about my male characters, I usually think about certain males in my life.
When writing, I usually think about my friends. But then again, most of my guy friends are rather feminine. They are rather masculine, but they do have feminine moments, so I think my characters reflect that most of the time.
But when I do want my characters to act more..."manly," I guess I can say, I typically think about my ex-boyfriends or my cousins, who are way more masculine than any of my friends are.

I actually find it rather difficult to write for my female characters, as well. I'm not exactly the most feminine of girls and neither are my female friends, so I'm not sure how to express my female characters most of the time. Half of the time, I make my characters act how I would or how my friends would. But the other half of the time, I make them act how I think a typical girly girl would act.

I think people are a lot more complicated then we give them credit for. It's easy to just make guys cocky macho jerks and girls bitchy whiners, but when you have to look into their thoughts and write their inner dialogue, it's not nearly as black and white.

For me, it's easy to write both genders, but I've noticed that my writing doesn't really change much between the two. I mean, the guys are generally more blunt, they swear more, and they don't really like to think about what they're feeling, but their thoughts aren't that different from girls.

I like writing from a male's point of view better though. I'm kind of obsessed with over-the-top emotions, and guys usually hold in their feeling until they erupt into moments of crazed passion and love and regret. Those are my favorites(:

My characters, male and female, are based off myself in personality and back history. I find it easier writing through a male's point of view simply because it's more appealing since I'm female. Most of the girls I'm around are extremely critical and sarcastic of others, even those in their specific "groups". I try to make my girls seem nice in my stories mainly because of the real girls I'm surrounded with.

We're like wolves at my school, we travel in packs and fists tend to fly if we come in contact.

loveislouder:

I think people are a lot more complicated then we give them credit for. It's easy to just make guys cocky macho jerks and girls bitchy whiners, but when you have to look into their thoughts and write their inner dialogue, it's not nearly as black and white.

I don't read a lot of macho jerks as men, but maybe that's 'cause I don't read het? I don't read het because in my bandom a lot of the girls tend to be one-dimensional. I hate one-dimensional characters, period.

I dislike writing girls because I dislike het for one thing. I really do enjoy writing Elizabeth Berg, but I only write her every so often. When I write girls, they tend to be a little more crass and a little more "rude" than other girls I tend to see in fics. Haley is the nicest girl I write and she's never more than a background character.

Because I write slash, I write guys a lot more. Occasionally one will say a macho thing, but the guys I write about aren't macho. Ryan tends to be more introspective so I guess people might call him "the girl", but I try not to write him feminine unless that's the point.

^
I hope you didn't take that offensively, because that's not what I meant at all. I just meant people can't really say that a guy isn't masculine enough or it too masculine, because it isn't that simple. I don't read or write about macho guys, it was just the first stereotypical description of a guy that came to mind.