Writing the Opposite Sex

[Anonymous No.14693977]

How to write a female character convincingly?
Has anyone written essays or whatnot about writing the opposite sex?
I’m finding writing an averagely attractive, unremarkable woman , with no cute mental problems or anything to make her more remarkable, a very difficult task

[Anonymous No.14693989]

>>14693977
I have the same issue but with male characters. Is there any common mistakes I should keep in mind /lit/?

[Anonymous No.14694013]

>>14693977
bump
the only female characters i can write are sad old women

[Anonymous No.14694029]

imitate characters from real life or other books. Either that or write a male character and just say it's a female, they won't know any better.

[Anonymous No.14694032]

>>14693977
You have to construct her world around her. No girl as normal as you described lives in isolation.

[Anonymous No.14694055]

>>14693977
Write a male character, but make him significantly less or significantly more blunt in his opinions about other people. Then, change the name to a female name.

[Anonymous No.14694079]

>>14693977
Have you considered that it's normal to be weird? Infact I'd say not having any quirks is would make someone uncanny

[Anonymous No.14694104]

>>14693977
Surround yourself with women. Consume entertainment a woman would. Adopt a life of vanity. You must see their world through your own eyes. The romance genre is your friend. Watch all of Gilmore Girls.

[Anonymous No.14694301]

>>14694079
i mean like forcing it like lisabet dragon tattoo
she’s only interesting because she’s exaggerated

[Anonymous No.14694320]

>>14693977
its easy to write as a female character. just choose the 'emotionally' driven action instead of the 'logical' one at all conjectures.

[Anonymous No.14694411]

>>14694320
but this is a bit shallow isnt it t

[Anonymous No.14694417]

>>14693977
stop writing fiction, its a dead form.

[Anonymous No.14694421]

>>14693977
Imagine yourself in your 12 year old body indefinately and as a protected class of people and all men want to fuck you. You also have an overwhelming urge to care for babies that you placate by getting a dog. Also imagine you have absolutely no spacial intelligence but understand other peoples emotions extremely intuitively. You should also learn more a bout psychology and how trauma affects personality.

[Anonymous No.14694427]

>>14694411
Not really unless the woman is a high test woman. Those are actually very interesting people, like a female mechanical engineer.

[Anonymous No.14694441]

The character of Woman is entirely present in Man. That is why his relation to his soul is so similar to his beloved--they are really the same. The problem of a young male writer is not that he is not capable of writing a female character--he simply does not know how to separate those distinctly male elements from female ones; for this reason his characters lack distinction from one another. The more one knows oneself, the more one can isolate those characteristics one wishes to represent in a particular character. But proof that the young man already knows the female psyche is that partially his action is still defined by it. He is "under" the influence and therefore cannot present it to himself in thought as something distinct from his present psyche.

[Anonymous No.14694459]

pretend you're writing a man and then change all of the pronouns to she/her after

[Anonymous No.14694460]

>>14694441
Read Jung on the Anima if you're interested in this anons post.

[Anonymous No.14694468]

>>14694459
That seems like a good way to write a lesbian character but you have to add in the fundemental resentment of men and penis envy and 2008 subaru outback.

[Anonymous No.14694555]

>>14694460
this is what i was thinking i ought to read, but which text(s) should i start with?

[Anonymous No.14694586]

>>14694555
Man and His Symbols is the easy Jung overview book. Start with that and then decide what you want to get further into next.

[Anonymous No.14694675]

>>14694029
>won't know any better
Anyone would see right through that

[Anonymous No.14694680]

Obligatory, "Think of a man, and remove reason and accountability"

I know it's a meme from an oddball of a movie, but it's not actually horrible advice the more you meditate on it.

[Anonymous No.14694686]

>>14694104
>Watch all of Gilmore Girls
This sounds like a fate worse than death.

[Anonymous No.14694694]

>>14694411
It's pretty much exactly how women experience the world. It's much much more about how they feel than how they think.

[Anonymous No.14694757]

>>14694680
>Obligatory, "Think of a man, and remove reason and accountability"
>I know it's a meme from an oddball of a movie, but it's not actually horrible advice the more you meditate on it.
This, it my be an old meme but its still relevant (and funny). Also its a pretty good film (for a romantic-comedy).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-ecbGNxEHM&list=PLZbXA4lyCtqpYC6rfOfLlKxJwP7V0nZAQ&index=4&t=0s

[Anonymous No.14694784]

>>14694757
>pretty good film
I was watching it and was so confused as to wtf it was trying to be/do. Such an odd thing, but yeah, it was a fun ride. Don't think I'd watch it again tho without some protest.

[Anonymous No.14694795]

just write without pronouns so the reader cant tell unless you do it correctly

[Anonymous No.14694805]

My advice is just be a good writer lmao. Be perceptive and know what needs to be said. If you're talented and empathetic your characters will be good including the female ones. If you've lived and interacted with females then you'll start to know them better, there's no advice for you if you don't spend a lot of time with women.

[Anonymous No.14694830]

>>14694680
which movie is this i forget
isnt it delivered with an epic deadpan
>>14694586
thanks anon

[Anonymous No.14694836]

>>14694830
As Good as it Gets. Anon >>14694757 posted the scene here.

[Anonymous No.14694872]

>>14694795
Use made up pronouns.

[Anonymous No.14694921]

>>14694795
this is the best way

[Anonymous No.14694941]

>>14694055
and make him significantly more egotistical

[Anonymous No.14694954]

good fiction requires the author to have a good understanding of people. you are probably just not going to make it.

[Anonymous No.14695042]

>>14694686
Why? It's good until the last season.

[Anonymous No.14695152]

>>14695042
Men watch top gear and historical documentaries not melodramatic sitcoms about a horrible single mother raising her daughter incorrectly.

[Anonymous No.14695176]

>>14693977
I'll help you.

You have no skills that amount to anything in the real world. You have countless men throwing resources/time at you. You want for nothing. You know you're at LEAST a 9/10 and therefore shouldn't settle for anything less than a 12/10. You have all the time in the world.

[Anonymous No.14695341]

>>14695042
Because Anon here, >>14695152 has it right. That show is literally everything I'm fighting against.

Although he is wrong about just watching Top Gear. Never watched a single episode, tho I do enjoy my motorsports. Have seen a few melodramatic series in my day tho.

[Anonymous No.14695395]

>>14695341
Top Gear is pure kino. Watch Grand Tour season 3 on amazon.

[Anonymous No.14695716]

>>14695152
>>14695341
You guys sound so gay right now.

[Anonymous No.14695752]

>>14695716
Gays live life on ez mode.

[Anonymous No.14695923]

>>14693977
Find some online 'random emotional response' generator. Then whenever your female character must make a decision, roll on the generator.

The key is that it's impossible for a male mind to accurately imitate the flighty scatter-brained female mind. It's like asking a person to write down a series of 100 random numbers between 1 and 10. Research shows that few people can actually do it in such a way truly indistinguishable from chance.

[JN !!vXXhA/qzhjm No.14696415]

>>14694421
>>14694441
>>14694460
>>14694586
>>14694694
>>14695176
>>14695923
PROTIP: It helps if you've actually met a woman IRL.

>>14694104
This
Also read gay authors like Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie ), Oscar Wilde (The Importance of being Earnest), and Gore Vidal

Memoirs of a Geisha is a real estrogen-fest too.

ATM I'm reading the Tombs of Atuan which is VERY accurate. The author must have gone to Wellesley or something.

[Anonymous No.14696960]

>>14693977
anal in the ass.

[Anonymous No.14697012]

>>14695042
Rory in College, and becoming a H O M E W R E C K E R is when it got bad.

[Anonymous No.14697716]

>>14696415
tits or gtfo

[Anonymous No.14697803]

>>14693977
Become the most vapid, superficial, fickle, contemptible, lascivious void of a personality you can think of, and you might get about half-way there.

[Anonymous No.14697833]

>>14695923
this but add posthoc rationalization, righteous indignation, and pathological empathy

[Anonymous No.14697837]

Also make it so whenever a male character says something to her, she takes one or two words from his sentence out of context and replies to those words instead of actually thinking about what he really meant.

[Anonymous No.14697895]

>>14693989
Just write a female with autism.

[Anonymous No.14698177]

>>14697803
>>14697833
If women are really so empty and volatile (I’m actually on the fence about this myself), why isn’t there more statistical data (and metrical indicators) to back up this anecdotal observations?

Take IQ for example.
I get that the variability is far greater in men than in women. But in most meta-studies I read, women’s average score is -if at all- only 2 or 3 points below that of males.
Furthermore, women in the Western world outperform men in school and academia.

How can we square this with the traditional stereotypes about women (which I’m sure are for the most part historically formed (over)generalizations of real observable tendencies in the female sex and not patriarchal instruments of oppression as feminism would have as believe) -also substantiated by my personal experience with my gfs and female acquaintances-(hardly any worthwhile hobbies, narcissistic attention seekers, no interest in intellectual pursuits, lack of contemplation, sense of responsibility and self-reflection)?

Are women just more malleable and conformist so as to more easier adapt and fit into whatever educational mould society deems appropriate at any given time?
Or is it a concerted effort by leftist, feminist policy makers to skew these tests and our educational system in favor of females in order to satisfy their egalitarian/idpol vision of society? Something else? Am I mistaken?

[Anonymous No.14698201]

>>14698177
>Furthermore, women in the Western world outperform men in school and academia.
Yeah because women take classes on "women's studies" and "racial politics" while men are learning engineering and applied mathematics. It's easy to get a 4.0 GPA when all you have to do is write a paper once a semester about how white people are evil.

[Anonymous No.14698211]

>>14698177
>why isn’t there more statistical data (and metrical indicators) to back up this anecdotal observations?
A because its qualitative, not quantitative
and B because anyone who tried would get kicked out of academia, just like climate hoax deniers.

[Anonymous No.14698228]

>>14693977
First and foremost, don't take advice from a bunch of autists who have not spoken to a woman who wasn't family or a service worker for +6 months.

[Anonymous No.14698246]

>>14698228
>disregard everything (true) they said about women, they've never had sex and are incels!

[Anonymous No.14698256]

>>14698228
tits or gtfo

[Anonymous No.14698277]

>>14698228
How difficult do you think it is to find a slut online to babble to you endlessly about her daily life?
You may be overestimating your own worth, ugly skank.

[Anonymous No.14698406]

>>14694757
>>"Think of a man, and remove reason and accountability"
literally me
how do you cope with being this and also being neurotic, overemotional, submissive, unassertive, anxiety ridden and unable to take risks or make decisions for yourself as an adult male?

[Anonymous No.14698425]

>>14693977
just link her to an interesting man, that's enough for the female audience

[Anonymous No.14698448]

>>14694421
>how trauma affects personality.
>he role of personality traits in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). ... CONCLUSION: Finding that appears relatively consistent is that PTSD is positively related to negative emotionality, neuroticism, harm avoidance, novelty-seeking and self-transcendence, as well as to trait hostility/anger and trait anxiety.
>The effects of exposure to trauma in childhood have repeatedly been linked to the development of maladaptive personality traits and personality disorders
>Behavioral. Traumatic stress reactions vary widely; often, people engage in behaviors to manage the aftereffects, the intensity of emotions, or the distressing aspects of the traumatic experience. ... Behavioral reactions are also the consequences of, or learned from, traumatic experiences.
>PTSD symptoms are generally grouped into four types: intrusive memories, avoidance, negative changes in thinking and mood, and changes in physical and emotional reactions.
This is all absolutely pathetic though, how are you supposed to be a man if you're like this?

[Anonymous No.14698480]

>>14698448
>how are you supposed to be a man if you're like this?

[Anonymous No.14698509]

>>14698246
>disregard everything they said about women, they've never had sex and are incels!
basically yeah

[Anonymous No.14698535]

>>14696415
My literally homosexual friend fucking hates Tennessee Williams

[Anonymous No.14698606]

>>14698535
what a fag

[Anonymous No.14698615]

>>14698509
It's a bizarre impulse. Imagine if every time women criticized men you accused them of never having had a boyfriend

[Anonymous No.14698774]

>>14698615
To be fair, lesbians get that critique levied against them.

[Anonymous No.14698787]

>>14698448
As a man generally you just drink a lot.

[Anonymous No.14698833]

>>14698774
I find the way gays and lesbians hate each other absolutely hilarious.

[Anonymous No.14700271]

>>14698774

[Anonymous No.14702164]

>>14693977
Make sure she's constantly playing with her nipples and clit. Just like real girls do in real life really. Throw in some jokes about pumpkin spice lattes and avocado toast and you're golden.

[Anonymous No.14702229]

>>14693977

Write a man, take away his ability to reason things logically, and make him extremely emotionally dependent on the people around him. That's your average woman. They do not think on a logical spectrum, but a social spectrum.

[Anonymous No.14702269]

>>14702229
Precisely what I was looking for... Good eye anon.

[Anonymous No.14702301]

>>14693977
Who are you trying to convince?

>>14694032 is right.

[Anonymous No.14702965]

>>14702229
>Write a man, take away his ability to reason things logically, and make him extremely emotionally dependent on the people around him. That's your average woman. They do not think on a logical spectrum, but a social spectrum.
How do you cope with being like this as an adult male?

[Anonymous No.14702982]

Your brain hasn't GAN'd up a series of dialogue generators based on composite averages of irl interactions and personalities + characters from media yet?

[Anonymous No.14703091]

Heres an attempt I did at writing a female character a few months ago.
It's not super in depth but its something
Tell me how I did. I'm not sure about it.

[Anonymous No.14703092]

1. Transition
2. Detransition

[Anonymous No.14703108]

>>14703091
>typo on the first line
Why spend my time critiquing something that even the writer didn't care about?

[Anonymous No.14703130]

>>14703108
fuck i made a mistake while editing
sorry dad :(