I've been thinking about this a lot lately and just wanted to get this out there.
I think the reason female characters seemed so hard for me to write was that I live in a society that made me think they were the incomprehensible (and sometimes irrational) "other."
Writing women was supposed to be hard.
But it got a whole lot easier when I stopped thinking of them as this alien species and more just like people. They have the same wants, needs, desires, thoughts, flaws, and defects as everyone else. They just have it harder because everyone seems to forget that.
And it was because of the constant attention that's being drawn to this phenomenon lately that was able to change my pre-programmed and automatic thinking about this. Otherwise, I'd have continued living blissfully unaware. This is why we need more stories about women and featuring women, and not just in the "strong female protagonist" role, but as bad guys, side characters, main characters, everything. Slightly more than half of our population is women, the cast of our books should be, too.
We will never have a greater understanding of our fellow humans if we narrow our experience to only understand and read about and empathize with people that look, act, and sound exactly like us.
That's the great thing about reading and writing, we can be all these other people and broaden our experience.
We just need to be open to it.
I think the reason female characters seemed so hard for me to write was that I live in a society that made me think they were the incomprehensible (and sometimes irrational) "other."
Writing women was supposed to be hard.
But it got a whole lot easier when I stopped thinking of them as this alien species and more just like people. They have the same wants, needs, desires, thoughts, flaws, and defects as everyone else. They just have it harder because everyone seems to forget that.
And it was because of the constant attention that's being drawn to this phenomenon lately that was able to change my pre-programmed and automatic thinking about this. Otherwise, I'd have continued living blissfully unaware. This is why we need more stories about women and featuring women, and not just in the "strong female protagonist" role, but as bad guys, side characters, main characters, everything. Slightly more than half of our population is women, the cast of our books should be, too.
We will never have a greater understanding of our fellow humans if we narrow our experience to only understand and read about and empathize with people that look, act, and sound exactly like us.
That's the great thing about reading and writing, we can be all these other people and broaden our experience.
We just need to be open to it.
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