If You’re a Woman and Your Main Character is a Male, Watch Out for These Stereotypes
Writing the opposite gender is complicated, especially if we grew up not having much interaction or even negative interaction with our opposite gender.
If you’re a woman writing a man specifically though there are certain stereotypes that can be avoided to help both men and women accept your character. But the real secret is to not let these stereotypes scare you into bad writing.
Especially if we are dealing with your main character.
Let’s get started.
Don’t over explain physical description.
If we are trying to write our main character as a male, there may be a temptation to over explain their physical features.
I’m sure there is good intent here. We don’t want our readers to imagine them incorrectly. We want them to see them the way we do.
The problem with giving into this line of reasoning is we can easily go from good writing intentions to bad writing. Especially if our main character is male.
Think of J.K. Rowling. How much time did she spend describing Harry, or for that matter any of her male characters?
And they are some of the most beloved fictional male characters in existence at the moment.
The problem with explaining too much about physical features is that it easily becomes cheesy, bad writing. It’s easier to make jokes out of than it is to read without being distracted.
Really hone in on two things to help with readers truly seeing your main male character.
- Be sure to work closely with an illustrator
- Introduce important physical features quickly and maybe a few extra ones while you move the plot along.
If we spend too much paragraph space describing the looks of our main male character we get closer to the danger zone of “eye rolls.”
And we absolutely don’t want any of our readers rolling their eyes. Male or female.
Let’s say when we first meet your main character, we notice that he’s average height, brown hair, and rather thin looking.
A chapter later we get close enough to see that his eyes are light brown.
Two more chapters later we see a small scar on his eyebrow we hadn’t noticed.
Another chapter later we hear about the importance of a tattoo he has.
We want to give our readers a good description so they see who we see, but just like a person in real life, our views of other humans happen over time. Usually, we don’t have enough time with a person when we first meet them to see what they really look like.
So avoid this tempting trap when working on how to describe your main male character to your reader.
(Side note: you might have to worry about this less if you’re writing mostly to women, but if you want to appeal to the majority of both genders don’t overdo physical descriptions.)
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Don’t get lost in emotions.
This section is probably not what you think based on the heading.
What we’re saying here is don’t fall into the stereotype of over explaining the main male character’s every emotion when we first meet him.
This isn’t just bad writing for women writing main male characters. This is bad writing in general, but it can be especially easy to fall into with a main male character.
Sometimes we get afraid of falling into a male stereotype: The emotionless father, brother, husband, or boyfriend.
And since we don’t want to be accused of that stereotype we run in the EXTREME opposite direction.
Our main character male is full of emotions. He laughs at dinner parties. He dances on the weekends. He watches chick flicks and cries.
We want our audience to know 100% that this guy, our main male character is definitely NOT emotionless.
But how do we get them to see that well?
The same way we let them get to know and character: slowly and over time.
In chapter one he seems stuck up.
In chapter three we get stuck doing a lab project with the emotionless jerk. We learn that he’s polite and actually seems a bit shy.
In chapter four we find out he’s really close to his grandma who’s suffering from colon cancer. He can’t go to the movie on Friday. We’re mad. We find out later he plays checkers with his grandma on Friday nights. He’s been doing it for years.
This is how we show our reader how our main male character has emotion, little by little, through the way he lives his life. Through his actions.
This not only helps our reader see who our main male character really is, but it also makes a deeper connection if they see more and more over time of doing the work of reading our story compared to if we just tell them when they trust met him.
We don’t have to worry about making a good first impression for our character. If anything it works well to mislead them at first.
Then they have the fun of finding out for themselves they were wrong about our main male.
Writing an action hero.
This is actually tough. Both men and women like their action heroes for different reasons.
The key to understand writing an action hero male mostly comes down to WHO YOU ARE WRITING TO.
If you are writing to mostly a male audience, they don’t want some hidden “peace on earth” hidden message agenda. “Violence isn’t necessary to defeat your demons,” type of thing is not going to resonate with a majority male audience.
Whereas if you are writing to people that enjoy that kind of message in an action hero, they’ll go for it.
But if you’re wanting to write a main male action hero that a mostly male audience will enjoy you really have to write it as a male would.
It’s about solving problems. It’s about adrenaline. It’s about little boys wishing they had superpowers and could save the world. 😂
It’s funny, but I’m totally serious.
If you want to create an awesome male character that is able to knock heads it goes back to instinctive boyhood and one man being able to take on the world.
This is a stereotype you don’t have to avoid if you are going to appeal to a mostly male readership. Think John Wick. Everything you love or hate about John Wick most men love.
(If you’re not concerned with a mostly male audience than you can write your action hero however you like 🙂 )
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Don’t assume there has to be innuendos.
I try to keep my writing pg family-friendly so I won’t go into too many details here. Try to read between the lines.
It would be a stereotypical mistake to think that if we are writing a main male character that we have to have innuendos and scantily clad women in our writing to really appeal to males.
If we can create a good strong character that is fun to follow and has an interesting conflict to deal with we don’t have to worry about throwing in cheap tricks to try to gain readership.
There’s enough of that out there. It is not necessary if the story is good and the characters are written well and in a compelling way.
Find a real male you can base your character off of.
This is by far one of the most powerful things you can do in writing. Find real people to base your characters around.
Find a male friend or family member and base your main male off of them.
This way if anyone comes at you with a whiny voice, “that’s not realistic for a male!” You can quickly inform them that they are way off their rocker. You actually based this character on a real male in your life.
Another fun thing you can do is grab character traits from males in real life and ones in fiction.
(Be careful not to copy too much. Also, avoid characters nobody liked unless you strategically don’t want them to be liked of course.)
By combining certain traits from different male characters you can essentially create a completely new character to add to the universe.
Final thoughts
Don’t over explain emotions or physical description. Instead, give what’s necessary and find creative ways to reveal your main male character over time as you move the story forward.
If you’re writing an action hero pay particular attention to the specific audience you’re trying to reach. As different genders it seems that we like our differing action heroes for specific reasons.
Don’t assume that having a main male character means that the story must get un-family friendly somewhere.
Base your main male character on a real male in your life that you can really study. This way you can write off any haters! 🤓
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Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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