My series on writing and thinking outside the box awhile back brought to my attention that the majority of my writing is focused on females. As a mother and daughter, I feel more confident writing about females. As a new mother, I find I am even more in-tune with my feminine side from the experiences of pregnancy, birth, nursing, and nurturing my little one. But where's my imagination? Where's my dedication to all children and young adults? What's truly stopping me from trying to write from a male's perspective? Why not write for both genders?
As a writer striving to work outside of the box, I also need to question my characters. Are their descriptions, actions, personalities, etc gender-biased or have I tried too hard to eliminate bias that the characters no longer seem real?
These questions remain unanswered in my mind, but they do cause me to study my characters in more detail.
After reading Memoirs of a Geisha while living in Japan, one of my first comments to a friend who had just completed the book too was "I can't believe it was written by a man." There are numerous books that have been successfully written about characters of genders opposite of the authors. I'd like to know how they got inside the minds of their characters so well.
As a mother of a daughter and a second daughter about to make her entrance in 10 weeks, and as a sister to an older and younger sister, my day-to-day experiences with males is much less. Thus, my understanding of males is perhaps weaker. I certainly learn a lot from my husband! And he is quite a fine representative of the male gender! But if I want to write stories that include main characters who are males, I need to develop a better understanding of their lives.
What steps do you take to learn more about males and females for your writing?
No comments:
Post a Comment