If
you came here to find a misogynistic article to hate on, you have come to the
wrong place. While my title may fit the definition of “click-bait,” it is more
of a tongue-in-cheek way of summarizing the struggles I have experienced in
writing effective, believable female characters as my writing
style has matured and been polished.
As
a writer, my goal is always to get into a character’s head. I want to know why
they feel the way they do and why they do the things they do. In essence, your
character must be real in order to
convince the audience that they are real. To do this, you must have real
motivations and actual problems that drive them.
When
I first started writing in grade school this came easy. I was still operating
with a young child’s understanding of the world, and all of my characters
essentially fell into two molds. There were people like me (the good guys) and
people who were different than me (the bad guys). The good guys all shared traits
that I valued and respected, and this invariably meant that they were flat,
one-dimensional beasts who were more or less me (or at least my idealized
vision of myself). They were also invariably male.
As
I grew in age and writing experience, I started to flesh out the idea of
character empathy, working my way into character archetypes that varied from my
own personality. This allowed me to add neutral characters, and it also allowed
good guys that had personality traits I might consider annoying or less than
ideal. They were, however, invariably male.
The
next evolution in my writing technique came with bad guy empathy. This one was
very hard for me, as I’m very much a “black-and-white” kind of person when it
comes to right and wrong. However, I learned with practice to put aside my own
values long enough to step into the mind of a given villain. I then realized
that most of my bad guys through the first twenty years of my life were nothing
more than mustache-twirling figureheads who cackled maniacally, representing
evil in its purest form. By working to give them proper motivations I was able
to create deeper bad guys, those who came across more as the angel fallen from
grace. Still, however, there were no female leads, even in the bad guy camp.
I’ve
always accepted that my writing projects were a build-up, practice for the real
thing one day when I came across an idea I could take seriously. Dawnbringer is that project for me, and
in its pages I have worked with every fiber of my being to bring a great
variety of characters to life. I don’t necessarily want a given character to
fit neatly into the realm of right or wrong. These people are meant to be
believable human characters, and as such they should all inhabit areas of gray
from time to time. Even if there is no malice in a character, it makes sense
that they would occasionally do something wrong.
With
all that said, I was determined to bring at least one female lead into play for
the very first time. Her story started out simple enough, but as those who
write will tell you it rarely stays that way. Complications arose throughout,
and before I knew it I had a full-blown tragedy written into this young woman’s
life. As I started to navigate her character through the issues, I felt like a
driver just as he hits a patch of black ice.
Anyone
who knows me well can tell you that I am a sensitive person; I hope my wife
agrees when I say that her feelings and opinions mean a great deal to me.
Still, trying to reach into the head of this female character proved to be a
struggle that I wasn’t initially sure how to navigate. It seems to me that some
of it comes from cultural norms; we all throw around light-hearted jokes from
time to time.
Women can’t
drive.
Men will not
read instructions.
Characters
on television don’t help matters in this regard; the American father has been
made into a figure of complete idiocy in all the sitcoms of late. These
stereotypes only damage our ability to truly understand one another.
So,
I unashamedly started visiting sites for women in similar predicaments to my
character. What I read on these websites made my heart break. I experienced the
realization that women have the same feelings of failure that I do when they
fail to actualize society’s expectations. This is something I’ve always known to be true, but knowing something
and being rocked by its actual affect are two completely different things.
I
think it’s unfair to call what I went through an epiphany, but I definitely had
an eye-opening moment as I realize all the false constructs our society sets up
between the sexes are just that: false. Again this is something we all know,
but I had a very real moment of empathizing with these women as they endured
problems that I as a man cannot go through. If I were to summarize what I’m
trying to say into a single sentence:
Women and men
are alike in far more ways than they are different.
Now,
this is not to deny the inherent differences between men and women. To pretend
that these differences don’t exist is a lie that belittles our nature as human
beings and attempts to hide some of the wonderful gifts that come to each sex.
However, sometimes I think society as a whole tends to exaggerate the
differences to the exclusion of our similarities. Men also experience societal
expectations that they sometimes cannot fulfill, or choose not to fulfill. The social stigmas, awkwardness, and
frustration are, I imagine, much the same.
The
process of writing this complicated character has helped to actualize me as a
person, and it has also caused me to urge others to make attempts at empathy.
This doesn’t just apply to the opposite sex, it also applies to those with
different beliefs, skin colors, and all the other wonderful things that make
humanity diverse. We each have our own struggles, victories, and
accomplishments that bring us to be who we are. Take the time to put yourself
into the shoes of another, and appreciate what they go through in this life.
To
those of you who read Dawnbringer one
day, I desperately hope that I’ve brought all
my characters to life, male and female, big and small. In my eyes, anything
less would be a failure.
