ㅤ

[Deleted member 89995]

ㅤ

 

[Drytron]

Just write a male protagonist, genderbend him to female, then make the story GL.

 

[Nekroz]

Ah, you see I once suffered from the same thing. But all you need to know is this; the difference between writing a male and female character is the difference between the sun and the next nearest sun.

Which is to say you write a character that is a female. Or in other words, Character comes first, not gender.

(And if you're Christian you can always rely on God for help if you don't understand.).) the second one IS a wink.

 

[Kilolo]

would you even want to read a story with a believable female protagonist?

the reason why people loves those female protagonist is because they're unrealistic and every nerd wet dreams man. just write the kind of girls you're into and screw the realism.

 

[unlimitedpower]

Just write a male protagonist, genderbend him to female, then make the story GL.

that won't result in you learning much about writing a female character though and usually those novels aren't very good either althugh it is true that a female character and male character do not have to be all that different.

 

[HellerFeed]

She's believable until people catch evidence about her lying.
So don't leave any evidence about lying, and boom she's believable!

 

[Cipiteca396]

There are very few real differences between female and male characters. What makes a character unbelievable is when you play into negative stereotypes or prejudices; or when they break established character traits(probably to play into stereotypes or prejudices).

So yes. Write a normal character. Just have her do the things 'a normal person' would do in her place, unless she has personality traits that would cause her to do something different.
And try to recognize when your personal experience influences the things you want her to do. Imagine how a different person's different experience would make them act instead.

If you're having trouble imagining it, then write it out. One by one, every possibility. Then read them back and see which ones are most 'believable'. Or have someone else tell you what they think about it.

 

[RockiesRetriever]

i dont understand women

With writing, a difficult reality is, the best writers are ones who have gone out into the world and experienced things. Find some method with which you can interact with women more. Being able to share your writing with women is also a plus.

The bottom line however is this: experiences can be undergone by anyone, of any race, class, gender, etc. The personality of people also will fall into common patterns. The thing that changes is the setting, the circumstances. A boy can feel distant from his parents; a girl can feel distant from her parents. Maybe for the boy it was because his father disapproved of his desire to be an artist. For the girl, perhaps it was because her parents thought she was very gifted, and pushed her way too hard - and that after failing to succeed in college from tons of stress, has incurred strong disappointment from her parents.

Notice that the two scenarios I described above can be mixed and matched. The boy could be the character under too much pressure, the girl the one who feels her parents do not support her desire to be an artist.

Again, what changes is the little flourishes. Think beyond trying to make the dialogue sound like the character is a girl, and try to make the dialogue sound like an individual, who has personality and motivations. A girl who is interested in sports, and in being active in dating, is going to talk differently than a girl who keeps to herself in the library, reading her favorite mystery novels.

In general, search for meaningful depth. It isn't just a female characters thing, but an all characters thing. Male characters benefit from this just as well.

And again, when you are writing about something or someone you are not familiar with, be it girls, people of a particular race, from a particular country, someone with a specific occupation - do research however you can.

In the end, writing fiction isn't like an academic text. You will not win any awards for your meticulous research. Most readers will probably not even think about the research involved. But if you write something with depth, that you obviously went out of your way to learn about, people will subconsciously find your characters more real.

In my eyes, a great character is one that despite circumstance, connects with anyone. My favorite female character in fiction is Vin from the Mistborn series. The author got me to care about a thief girl's struggle with femininity, torn between her disdain for nobility and her fascination with the opulent life they live.

It is a real struggle we can relate to - torn between two opposing feelings - and drapes that internal conflict with her past suffering, her personality, and struggles specific to women.

It takes many years to get great at character, and like all things, takes much practice.

 

[Corty]

Don't stress out 'what would a woman do' and other similar thoughts. Write YOUR story the way YOU want. That is how I did it. Is it realistic? Dunno. Don't care. Every person is different, no matter what is between their legs. Focus on the story and characters, their personalities and think about how they would react to something in your world, based on that alone. Not how they would react to something because what they have or don't have down there.

 

[Poleg]

i dont understand women

Just write a man and remove all Sense and reason.

 

[Ilikewaterkusa]

i dont understand women

Women are tsunderes. So just write a tsundere or just a sentient cat

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

Focus on their feeling and emotion when something is happening, and how MC feel about something, and her opinion about it.

its feeling focused development instead of action development. Her feel good and happy mood is the focus, while the action and the plot is just the guide rail for why she feel that way.

it helps to hide your bullshit female characters. Remember, most romance female novel were filled with bullshit Mary sue female MC and the "man of my dream" full-perfect-muscle male lead that will do anything that looks romantic for the female MC.

Or you may start to watch ghibli movies and try to analyze their thought process and their flaws ? It sound hard and practically even harder.

But there's should be a book or guide about character building somewhere the internet.

 

[Goosebumps_Deguzman]

Maybe read some good female protagonist with no romance or read a romcom novel usually they have the FL Pov so gain experience i think?

 

[K5Rakitan]

First of all, listen to us when we talk.

 

[MajorKerina]

Just write a male protagonist, genderbend him to female, then make the story GL.

THIS
But seriously, humanity is a spectrum. Any person you can imagine probably exists because there’s like 8 billion out there… And there’s a ton of repetition. Honestly write from what you know first as a person. Gender/sex is just the backstory. Figure out what kind of story it is and always be sincere with your characters. Do your best not to fall into stock standard cliché. Just write those characters genuinely. Don’t idealize or try to copy exactly people you know. Let your characters be people. Writing a female character should be in formed from what history you decide to give them and what aspects of their personality you highlight. Their psychosexual development can inform that but here’s an example. So you have a story with a little kid in the bed hearing bedtime stories told by an elder. Something like the wraparound for the Princess Bride. There’s not gonna be a lot of differences if you have a little boy versus a little girl listening to that story. The young character is going to have concerns and hopes and wishes and parts they enjoy more than others and there’s also going to be a sense of trust in storytelling as they listen to that story. Characters want to hear about characters that are similar to them so a little girl listener would be more interested in whether the princess is going to do this or that rather than the swashbuckling hero but she may also find the hero character interesting as well. The boy wants action of course. It’s said that girls are more interested in who and boys are more interested in what.

Now if you’re writing a fantasy with certain characters and you have say a young woman who’s working on the farm. She’s going to be concerned about the well-being of her family, about their neighbors and whether the Earl of some thing is going to provide for the community, she’s going to know a group of people in that community that hopefully they can trade with and have certain connections with and she can get information about who has what and deal with her relationship with them. A boy who works on the farm is going to be much more individualistic and perhaps mainly hang out with the patriarchal figures and perhaps other boys in that community but he wouldn’t necessarily know the ins and outs. All this is of course flexible but kind of gives a perspective on how one might try to write a character. If you flip the script then you get a tomboy or you get a sensitive boy.

 

[RavenRunes]

I don't understand women either and I am one, so I don't write them too much. Otherwise, just write 'she breasted boobily down the stairs'* and you'll be fine.


*please don't do that.

 

[tounokenja]

I like to use females from NTR Doujins done solely by male artists who have been NTR'd in real life by a woman as a measurement. I don't think anything's as clear about a woman's psyche as when she's fucking done enough to go that route, voluntarily or no.

 

[Tsuru]

Try reading more
especially the ones that both show MC and FL
or some yuri works
Or look at Houshou Marine and other Vtubers

https://mtlnation.com/novel/national-transfer-nurse-is-so-popular

This novel (mtl quality) also show some nice pov of female characters

 

[Africanchieftainsson]

No...never again.

watch ghibli movies

 

[TheEldritchGod]

i dont understand women

The primary difference is the environment and problem solving.

A male protagonist is usually defined by his ability to IGNORE his environment. He is a man in spite of the world around him. No amount of hardship or bullshit is too much for the male protagonist. He doesn't need anyone else. He operates best alone.

A female protagonist is a product of the environment. Socialization is important. Her mental health is much more dependent on the people who raised her, who she grew up with, and what her history was. To know a female protagonist is to know her history. You need to know her parents, her siblings, who she was friends with, her first love, her first friend, how she was rewarded and how she was punished and what she was taught.

Another way to look at them by looking at how they would be antagonists. The Sorcerer and The Sorceress.

The truth is violence and the threat of violence has solved more conflicts than any other single action in the history of this world or any other. Because violence is so random, we hedge our bets and give that power to governments because as long as we all follow the rules, no matter how the rules screw us, we get to live if we play by them.

The sorcerer is a villain who seeks power so he can control the world by breaking the rules and returning to the most fundamental of truths, might makes right.

The sorceress is a villainess who seeks control so she can have power by using the rules we have established. Without society, the sorceress has no power and anything that threatens society is a threat to her.

A properly made female protagonist works WITHIN the system, playing by the rules, and winning because she can rally her allies to overcome her enemies. The male protagonist goes it alone to solve the problem, usually taking on the role of the DETERMINATOR. You can knock him down, but he will keep getting back up.

Whereas the female protagonist traps you by recording your words to use against you, by character assassination, by poisoning the well and turning allies against you.

Here:

Hara-Kiri Nonfeasance - Chapter 64 – Death By Chocolate | Scribble Hub

www.scribblehub.com

Start there and read on, focusing on what's going through Lilith's head. She is a 'Villainess' in an Otome Game who is becoming slowly more self-aware of what she is and becoming "real". As you read about her, you will notice that everything she does is subtle as FUCK, but she also understands the results of her actions, the rippled across society because of her actions and the power of rumor. In the end, the MC could just walk up to her and murder her without a thought, but he is also at her mercy, if she decided to turn society against him.

The only reason society HASN'T turned entirely against the MC is because he has OTHER female allies who can play the game covering his ass.

But I think if you want to write a female protagonist, you focus on her history and make her a PRODUCT of how she was raised, where as a male MC is usually a rebel against his upbringing.

That, I feel, would be the primary element you should use if crafting a female protagonist. Everything else is just fluff. You can make her a tom boy, lesbian, fem fatal, wide eyed waif, battered and long suffering abused wife, perky adventuring princess, or whatever.

The Female MC is a result of her social environment FIRST, then everything else will be so much more believable.