By “writing women” I don’t mean women who write but creating a narrative about, as Kate Elliot says in her article titled Writing Women Characters as Human Beings, “believable female characters while avoiding clichés, especially in fantasy novels where the expectations and settings may be seen to be different from our modern world.”
She has written a lengthy and informative essay with three pieces of advice—following are just the titles of each; the exploration and explanation of them is well worth your time. The cover shown is for her first YA fantasy, coming out this August.
1. Have enough women in the story that they can talk to each other.
She makes the point that women and girls talk to each other A LOT. As a person of the male persuasion, I had never really tuned into this, and for me it’s a very helpful insight.
2. Filling in tertiary characters with women, even if they have little dialogue or no major impact on plot, changes the background dynamic in unexpected ways.
This makes sense to me—male characters with mostly males in the background would, it seems to me, behave differently if there were mostly—or at least many—women in the background of the story. The very world they inhabit would be different, one from the other, and that should impact the characters and what they do.
3. Set women characters into the plot as energetic participants in the plot, whether as primary or secondary or tertiary characters and whether in public or private roles within the setting. Have your female characters exist for themselves, not merely as passive adjuncts whose sole function is to serve as a mirror or a motivator or a victim in relationship to the male.
This is, perhaps, a corollary to her more general piece of advice:
Assume every character you write is a full human being just as you take yourself to be, with no more or less mystery than you feel for your own self.
Lastly, I want to add my thanks to Tony DiMeo for telling me about this article.
For what it’s worth.
Ray
© 2015 Ray Rhamey