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to anon asking about writing men too feminine: there is no such thing. All men have femininity in them in the same way all women have masculinity in them, and they express it in different ways. To assume that there's such a thing as a male character being "too masculine" is to completely forget that men are people too, and express themselves thus. Write your male character as feminine as you want. If you think you're writing him "too feminine" you're in the wrong business. |
| Anonymous |
Yes and no.
While it’s tons of fun to challenge gender stereotypes in your work, having a character read differently in the text than what you envisioned is frustrating.
In this case, I assumed that the anon was asking how to write a character that was clearly masculine when they did not have experience being male themselves. I thought that, had their intent been to write a culturally feminine male, they would have simply done so and not asked for help writing him otherwise.
While I do believe that, fundamentally, all people are the same, loosing the nuances of a character’s personality is detrimental to your writing. A friend of mine had trouble writing her male characters, for a while- and, while an intentionally feminine male would have been fine, she tried to write medium-level masculine boys without really studying any- leading to a blandish, generalized sort of male character.
I leave it to the author to make their own decisions about how masculine/feminine they want their characters, while providing a variant of my usual advice, which is to -do your research-.
Thank you for your comments.
- Evvy |
