If You’re a Woman Writing a Male Character Avoid these Bad Writing Tips
As a male reader and writer I have been seeing some really bad advice pop up regularly about writing characters in general and specifically about writing males.
I understand, writers don’t want to offend anyone with their writing, but that’s almost impossible these days.
If you create content and give it to the masses it’ll almost always offend someone or at least one person won’t like it for whatever reason.
I also understand that for men and women it can be hard to write the opposite gender and not stereotype them. We will address this as well.
But there has been some “cool” “hip” “woke” writing advice flying around out there that needs to be addressed so that writers can continue to do what they do best, write.
So if you are a woman and you want to write a man I hope this post frees you from some trepidation in trying to write a male. 🙂
So let’s dive in!
Avoid Stereotypes
This seems to be the trope of the hour. And in this writer’s opinion it is so absurd.
And remember this is coming from a male. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
Ever heard of the movie “A Knight’s Tale?” Heath Ledger, great cast, love that movie.
You know what’s in it? A bunch of male stereotypes. (What? a male loves a movie filled with male stereotypes? Absurd!) Nope it’s true.
You have greedy men. Men that are arrogant and obsessed with their own voice. You have unemotional men that seem to only know how to express anger. You have the main character who is a bit of a macho man, but falls in love and goes after his one true love.
These are all gross stereotypes and as a male watching this movie, I personally love it.
Let’s bring up “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”
Again this show is packed with male stereotypes. Lou Grant the unemotional father figure who’s kind of a drunk, he’s hilarious. Ted Baxtor is a massive stereotype of a typical narcissistic male who is extremely in love with himself and his own voice. As a male I love these stereotypical characters even to this day.
One more, “The Office.”
Need I even draw out the stereotypes in this?
Jim, the cool guy. Darrel, the unemotional hides his feelings mostly. Michael, idiot boss, how did he become a manager? Dwight, typical power hungry competitive narcissist.
Need I go on? In fact, Toby, Oscar, Ryan, Stanley, and Kevin are all seemingly stereotypical characters as well.
Males LOVE The Office. Females LOVE The Office. And it is very much based around the humor associated with stereotypes. Creed might be the only non stereotype I can think of. Unless they were going for office creep? 😂
Should you really avoid stereotypes? Are you going to offend people by writing characters that are actually like people you’ve seen, met, and interacted with?
The point is, it seems to me like major audiences actually like stereotypes when they are done well.
And they transcend genre, it seems to be the overhyped “writers guild” that is bored of stereotypes, but the problem with listening to just their advice is, they don’t make up the MAJORITY of people that you’ll be entertaining with your story.
Keep this in mind, we are NEVER going to be and to please everyone, but we can serve a lot of people by writing well and making interesting characters.
I think one could say, you aren’t going to offend most males if you decide to make some stereotypical male characters appear in your story.
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Don’t make them an emotionless robot.
Can I say, “duh” here? Well, of course, unless there is an emotionless robot character that fans have proven to love. Wait!
That happened. Star Trek anyone? Data?
If you haven’t seen it it’s okay, but if you want to write an emotionless robot that audiences loved you could spend a moment studying the character arc of Data.
So let it be known! A successful male emotionless robot has been written and people loved it!
But seriously, we all have met the quiet, seemingly emotionless type of male before. They seem to not care about anything. They don’t say what they’re thinking or feeling… ever.
So don’t think you can’t write a character that’s like this. There are REAL people walking around today that function mostly in this way.
Now, are they REALLY emotionless? No. They’re probably a little shy. And they probably don’t have much to say, but if you married one, I bet it wouldn’t take long to see them emote sometimes.
But that’s the amazing part of reading a character someone else creates, whether they are male or female.
If you decide to make the “emotionless” father. At some point you might write a scene where we see him crying alone in his room. Our heart starts to break. This strong male figure is crying. He was supposed to be the pillar, but now he’s losing it.
You want to create moments like this. Emotional moments for your reader to latch onto and feel something.
Writing a strong male character that we get to see break is not going to offend most males.
The BIGGEST thing is, stay true to the character you’ve created. Don’t let outside opinions sway you in the wrong direction. (Even mine.) If this opinion causes you to betray the character you are creating, don’t use it on that character.
Don’t make the major mistake of changing the character completely somewhere towards the middle or end of the story. Don’t make them betray everything you’ve made us believe about them at a last second decision.
When you create a character and give them certain habits and traits, naturally we expect it to be hard for them to break away from those habits.
It would make sense if they change some over our journey with them, but not overnight.
So if you write the “secretive,” “doesn’t show much emotion” male, it doesn’t mean we can’t ever see them emote. It just means that they’ll continue to predominantly be that way the entire story. And don’t worry about shying away from making a male character that way.
It’s not offensive. Again, the reason they are written is because writers know people like this or look up to them or even look down on them.
Bonus thought, you can even share some background why they are that way. Maybe you can come up with something interesting to make sense of it in the reader’s mind.
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Don’t waste time talking about their physical features.
I can kind of agree with this. I think it depends more on your genre and target audience.
Personally, I think enough description to get the reader’s imagination going is enough.
“She saw him from across the hallway. They hadn’t made eye contact yet. She immediately noticed how tall he was. She tried not to stare but he was definitely handsome. At least, her type of handsome. Strong cheekbones, fair skin, and as he approached her she could see the green in his eyes. She hoped she wasn’t blushing as he spoke to her.”
Not perfect, but on the fly you can see through our main characters thoughts an outline of what this male looks like and we’re still moving the story forward. We don’t really stop the plot and say, “this is what he looks like.” And after some tweaking and adding a few more physical description points (hair color, maybe clothing style, freckles, etc) while still pushing the plot forward the reader’s imagination will fill in the blanks.
This is general writing advice for this specific point though because obviously the amount of physical that you want to give can change dramatically with genre and target audience.
Exercise: Take some time and study how famous author give enough description and then let readers fill in the blanks with their imagination.
The BIG secret.
In all honesty, if you’re a woman trying to write a man more often than not it is hard to tell that a woman is writing a male character. Men writing women can be a bit more obvious.
J.K. Rowling created some fantastic male characters that were loved by men and women alike.
The only thing women should be concerned about in writing males is if they “hate all males.”
And this goes both ways.
You can tell when an author is sexist, and maybe not for the reasons you might think.
One might assume that if a stereotypical male shows up that the author hates males, but what about the other males? Are there ANY good males? Is the continual running joke always and only directed towards males? Is EVERY male character an idiot? Do they ever poke fun at women too? Is every female character perfect and faultless?
This is how you avoid offending a large majority of the opposite gender. If you’re a female writer that hates all males it’ll be obvious, you’ll make every man have tons of faults and only ever make jokes than belittle men.
If you’re a male writer that hates females you’ll make every female dumb, and only ever make female references that belittles ALL the females in the story.
How do you avoid this?
Make good characters out of both genders. Make bad characters out of both genders. Make jokes about both genders. Be fair.
Here’s a BIG lesson in writing psychology; make your writing fair towards both genders.
If you want to write something that’s just for women then you can poke fun at men all day and vice versa, but if you want to make sure that both men and women enjoy you just have to treat both genders fairly in the story.
Again this doesn’t mean that everyone is perfect. In fact, it means the opposite. Both genders are imperfect and jokes can easily be made about both.
Again think of the office. Both genders are fallible and no one is safe from a jabbing joke. This makes both men and women able to enjoy a show or story.
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Final thoughts.
Don’t bother avoiding stereotypes. As long as you use them to your advantage people will still love the characters or hate them if you want them to.
You can use stereotypes to make people laugh, cry, hate, you can use them to catch the reader’s attention and help them feel whatever way you want them to towards that character.
Don’t worry about making an “emotionless” male character. It has been done well before and can be done well again. After all, as readers, we know they aren’t completely emotionless and we’re waiting for you to show us that.
The amount you focus on physical description is very much contingent on your genre and target audience.
If you want men and women to like your characters, make both sexes have good points and bad points, or poke fun at both of their stereotypical fallacies.
If you choose just one or the other the opposite gender will not enjoy your story as much.
This is just my opinion, you’re entitled to yours. 🙂
If you agree or disagree with anything in this post please feel free to let us know in the comments below!
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Hope this helps!
Happy writing!
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If You’re a Woman Writing a Male Character Avoid these Bad Writing Tips
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If You’re a Woman Writing a Male Character Avoid these Bad Writing Tips
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Oof. This post is so cringey. someone please mansplain to this guy what mansplaining is.
Dear anonymous, how do you spell “mansplaining?” One would think it would be with an “X” like explaining. So maybe “manxplaining?” Who knows?
Also, if I identified as a woman, would it still be “manxplaining?”
Hope you and yours are well!
Great advice! I think in the end the best way to create good, realistic characters is to make them as human as possible, regardless of their gender.
Hey thanks! That’s some great advice as well. Make your characters the way you see them and they will come to life for your fans despite all else.