First person gender bender

[StrangeLife]

I just finished the 3 first books in Alex Hughes' Mindspace Investigations series...

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It is sci-fi crime noir - Sam Spade meets Inception - and as is customary in this genre of story it's written in first person from the pow of a tough and cynic male detective with substance abuse problems and a life that sucks. A rebel with contempt for authority but a drive to do the right thing - which usually gets him in a lot of trouble. Basically the cliches invented by Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane. As such an entertaining and well written romp, if you you're into the noir genre.

But as I read through the books something bothered me. The guy is... "wrong" somehow. He doesn't react like a you'd expect him to, given the type of person he's portrayed as. It's hard to put in words, but you see it especially when facing conflicts, solving problems or dealing with the opposite sex. He is overly whiny and emotional, doesn't seem to own a shred of pride, puts no value on saving face or keeping up a front, doesn't carry a grudge against people who wrongs him and can't seem to pull his shit together and grow a pair. He tends to solve problems in a holistic rather than a deconstructive manner and when it comes to sex and relationships he is overthinking matters in a massive way..:

"I really want you, but I want to do this right so you should search your feeling before we go further in our relationship because I dont want our hearts to get hurt and.... blah... blah... blah..."

Jesus christ - JUST FUCK HER ALREADY! http://s29.postimg.org/5yvvkiler/unsure.gif


The protagonist - in spite of his macho tough-guy image - feels more like a woman than a man. so I decided to check up on the author Alex Hughes, whom I thought was a dude. Turns out she isn't....

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This ties into the question that has been the subject of a previous discussion in this forum: Can you write a credible story from the pow of the opposite sex? I used to say unconditionally "yes," but now I'm no loger so sure. The problem is that unless you understand - really understand - how the opposite sex operates, you can never get your character completely right. This goes especially for conflics and sex... the two areas where our differences are most visible.

Maybe I'm over-sensitive and I would certainly not want to dissuade any writers from playing around with crossing gender barriers, but doing it well may be a lot harder than most people - yours truly included - realized. And now that I think about it, I have yet to read a credible first person story featuring a male character written by a woman. And I read a lot.

 

[sr71plt]

I wouldn't spend much time establishing a universal "can/can't?" answer to a question like this on the basis of the work of one author. Some can, some can't, I'd be willing to bet.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Orlando by Virginia Woolf.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Put it this way, if ALL writers were equally good, then one would be able to see whether or not it is possible. But they're just not. The good writers, at least in my view, can write anything. There are, though, very few really good writers.

I think this whole idea of 'a woman's point of view' depends upon the social styles of particular eras of women, frankly.

Even if I were to look at men as an entire group, they are very different across a spectrum. Those male characters I am interested in enough to use in some writing, are actually quite rare types anyway. I meet a lot of men in the course of my 'other' endeavour - which is business and banking - and I meet about two men in around ten or fifteen years without critical flaws when it comes to larger scale financing. Two, at most. Of all of those who come into the building seeking development finance of some sort.

I think we take a lot for granted in fiction in the sense that characters in stories become accepted as reflections of broader society - which they are not. They are rarities because they are intended to be interesting enough to sustain someone's reading through a book or story. Most ordinary people are extremely colourless and uninteresting in terms of their average daily lives and in the events of those lives.

Consequently too, our idea of what constitutes even a 'man's perspective' in a story is almost folkloric, really. It doesn't reflect what men really are... It's just our expectations are already so schooled about it that we never critically analyse it.

I have never written a single character that wasn't based on my knowledge and perception and some observations of some other, real person. Are any of these people like your average, normal person? Absolutely not.

I have done women characters that are - at least to my own judgement - strictly exactly as the people are themselves who I am basing them on. And I regularly get doubt and suspicion about these characters: that they could possibly be real, possibly do, act or think this way. I recall once when I was working on a very big movie (turned out to be big although at the time the production nearly ran out of money and was expected to be a failure) that several university academics claimed my treatment of the female lead was stilted and must have been fantasy/wish-fulfilment; the critique was always around something 'wish-fulfilment.'

In fact, in hindsight I realise that there was a huge gulf between the social patterns and capacities of the place where the movie was being produced from, and the society in which the story was set.

As a younger person I had some thoughts about whether or not these academics could have been right - but after awhile I realised they were all social cripples, gauche when it came to actual sexual behaviour towards sexual women particularly, hugely self-opinionated but definitely living in towers if not exactly ivory ones. The only thing 'wish-fulfilment' about it was their wish that what I was writing about was not anywhere near true. Whereas it was.

And in another style of character type, I know real women very like the character in that Girl With The Dragon series.

It is suggested that The Spy Who Loved Me was written by Fleming's wife or partly so, and not by him. I don't know. But I do know one young lady, who based her entire life living out the role because she was inspired by it. Okay, you might not agree that Christie's Poirot is a realistic male character. Well, I am more Holmes than Poirot in looks, but I have made extensive train journeys firm in the personal secret belief that I was Poirot.

Hard-core Chandleresque male character written by a female? I think it could be done.

I do accept the proposition that it is difficult, but not impossible by any means.

It would take an exceptional writer though.

And yes there is a lot of material that is normatively stilted because the writers are not better than average at best. There is a lot of average material around. There are a lot of average people living average lives around!

 

[Aynmair]

just picking one...

I agree that it is a more difficult challenge, and tests the writer's mettle.

What do you think of PD James' Adam Dalgliesh? Successful rendering of a man by a woman writer? In my view, yes, but I am the wrong sex to really judge...

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I would suggest that the film producer Julia Philips, no longer with us, spoke and wrote like a man, and a Chandleresque one at that. And by saying that I'm not intending to say anything other than that she was like 'the imaginary idea of a man's personality' that a lot of people have about men!

I think she was most definitely a woman. A smart one, a successful one, an interesting one - and a rare one.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Yep. Definitely agree re PD James.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Canadian-Australian model and writer Tara Moss can do male characters.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I am Wilford Brimley. I look like him, talk like him, have the same charm, and love oatmeal.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

I still think the OP has a very valid question. Many people canNOT write the other gender from the first person, or even from tp narrative. But it's definitely not impossible. You'd have to think though, that the writer who can, sort of examines the opposite gender like a great painter or artist would in their studio/laboratory...

...sort of keeps a few in plastic wrap somewhere, and that they experiment on. : )

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I still think the OP has a very valid question. Many people canNOT write the other gender from the first person, or even from tp narrative. But it's definitely not impossible. You'd have to think though, that the writer who can, sort of examines the opposite gender like a great painter or artist would in their studio/laboratory...

...sort of keeps a few in plastic wrap somewhere, and that they experiment on. : )

The trick is adopting a neurotic/psychotic mindset, and seasoning with histrionic hyperbole and hysterical enthusiasm. That's the female! That is, run hot and cold simultaneously.

 

[sr71plt]

I still think the OP has a very valid question. Many people canNOT write the other gender from the first person, or even from tp narrative. But it's definitely not impossible. You'd have to think though, that the writer who can, sort of examines the opposite gender like a great painter or artist would in their studio/laboratory...

...sort of keeps a few in plastic wrap somewhere, and that they experiment on. : )

Well, true. Most people don't write stories at all, and many that do don't even true to write in the other gender. Some do and can, though. Don't think there are too many solid generalizations to make about this.

 

[StrangeLife]

I wouldn't spend much time establishing a universal "can/can't?" answer to a question like this on the basis of the work of one author. Some can, some can't, I'd be willing to bet.

Well, I obviously can't prove a negative nor will I argue out of personal incredulty. But I read a lot, so I have a fairly solid statistical foundation to base my assumption on. And so far a female author who can write a novel with a first person male pow is like Bigfoot - many claim they exist, but I havent seen one yet.

Orlando by Virginia Woolf.

Orlando is hardly a "character" in the usual meaning of the word and the story isnt written from a first person pow. The latter is important because it's the only perspective that grants the reader access to the inner dialogue, thus letting you know how he truly feels.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Well, I obviously can't prove a negative nor will I argue out of personal incredulty. But I read a lot, so I have a fairly solid statistical foundation to base my assumption on. And so far a female author who can write a novel with a first person male pow is like Bigfoot - many claim they exist, but I havent seen one yet.





Orlando is hardly a "character" in the usual meaning of the word and the story isnt written from a first person pow. The latter is important because it's the only perspective that grants the reader access to the inner dialogue, thus letting you know how he truly feels.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings could do it but I've never come across other women who could or can.

 

[Hypoxia]

... the story isnt written from a first person pow. The latter is important because it's the only perspective that grants the reader access to the inner dialogue, thus letting you know how he truly feels.

Well, not exactly. 1st-person POV makes it EASIER to establish the narrator's character, and make action and thoughts immediate, personal. But 3rd-person (limited) can also read the subject's mind, and 3rd-person (omniscient) can read EVERYBODY'S mind (which ain't always a good thing).

I'm currently revising-expanding-merging episodes from existing stories, going from 1st to 3rd person (limited). The former narrator now becomes the subject. His mind is just as open as when he told the story himself. But now I get to describe more than only what he saw and felt and did.

And I have gender-bending revisions coming also. JENNY BE FAIR was written from Jack's POV; JENNY BE FAIR TOO (when I finish) is from Jenny's. A SPOT OF MUSIC is from Bonnie's POV; A SPOT OF MUSIC TOO will be from her brother's. I may flip gender POVs in my BLACK & WHITE sequels too. Do either of the pairs sound more 'authentic'? I'll leave that to readers to judge.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I don't care for mind reading.

Characterization is elegant when its embedded in dialogue and action.

 

[StrangeLife]

I agree that it is a more difficult challenge, and tests the writer's mettle.

What do you think of PD James' Adam Dalgliesh? Successful rendering of a man by a woman writer? In my view, yes, but I am the wrong sex to really judge...

P.D. James is a great writer and I love her books, but she doesn't write her protagonist in first perspective either.

And to be honest Adam Dalgliesh is not your average man. He is basically P.D James with a cock - cerebral, artistic and analytical, but only marginally more emotional than a sack of cement. As a character he is fairly uninteresting, and even after a long series of books we don't really know him very well.

 

[StrangeLife]

I am Wilford Brimley. I look like him, talk like him, have the same charm, and love oatmeal.

I always suspected...

Hard-core Chandleresque male character written by a female? I think it could be done.

I do accept the proposition that it is difficult, but not impossible by any means.

It would take an exceptional writer though.

And yes there is a lot of material that is normatively stilted because the writers are not better than average at best. There is a lot of average material around. There are a lot of average people living average lives around!

Poirot is definitely an oddball and in many ways this detail probably made it easy for Agatha Christie to write him. No matter what she made him do, it was ok because he was Poirot and he did things in his own way. Though you could argue the credibility of a man of Poirot's intellect and psychological insight voluntarily crippling himself socially by acting and dressing like a goofball. Being self-employed I suppose it might make sense as an act of branding - like Don King's hairstyle or Dog The Bounty Hunter's attire - but he must have known that people were making fun of him behind his back. This would have riled a man as proud as Poirot.

Holmes is basically a high functioning sociopath who doesn't care about anybody or anything, except - to a limited degree - Dr. Watson. I don't know whether Doyle created him like this on purpose, but the advantage is that he could forget about the emotional life of his protagonist and concentrate on the stories. You couldn't write Holmes in first person and make the story entertaining - it would be like reading a math book.



You bring up some interesting points and you are right of course - there is no such thing as a "standard man." But there are certain characteristics in the way we think under pressure and deal with challenges. Everything is possible of course, but I am not sure that a woman can write a credible chandleresque male character. We are talking about a genre where the protagonist is under constant pressure and faces a conflict every time he turns a corner - the exact situation in which the genderspecific differences are most prominent...

 

[NaokoSmith]

Virginia Woolf puts forward the argument that women's material lives are so different to men's that we can't write in the same way. We need 'a room of one's own' to write - I don't think this is a crude metaphor for having an income, but rather it means having the mental freedom and space to write.

I think she also said, that one day a woman would be born who could write like a man. I heard the novelist Jeanette Winterson mention this, adding: "And here I am," and I thought that was pretty nauseating. Winterson doesn't write like a man in my opinion, although she does write annoyingly well for someone so unpleasant.

I normally write highflown fantasy male characters who are feminine. However for one of the FAWCs I did write from a male POV and people ascribed my story to Pilot , which I was highly amused but also flattered by, considering how I normally write. I think there were probably giveaways in the character, though, which would tell you he was written by a woman if you thought hard about it. He was, just as StrangeLife mentions, holistic in his approach and caring rather than instrumental.

 

[Aynmair]

P.D. James is a great writer and I love her books, but she doesn't write her protagonist in first perspective either.

And to be honest Adam Dalgliesh is not your average man. He is basically P.D James with a cock - cerebral, artistic and analytical, but only marginally more emotional than a sack of cement. As a character he is fairly uninteresting, and even after a long series of books we don't really know him very well.

Fair enough. Though some women might suggest that many men really are about as emotional as sacs of cement. I would never paint with such a broad brush myself.

I have only recently tried to write from a male POV, but have no clue at how successful it might be, or whether, in trying to do so, I "flattened" all the characters in the story. I'm still curious enough to take up the challenge and wonder what others are saying/doing about the issue.

 

[FantasyXY]

So what is the topic here?

Is the question here - Can a woman write from a man's POV? - or is it - Can any author write from their opposite gender's POV?

If the question is about writing in the opposite genders view...
I have written three Lit pieces from a woman's point of view (and last I checked I am a man). I think I was fairly successful on these attempts, with my most recent being cited by a reader in a comment that I got him "hook line and sinker", thinking the story was actually written by a woman. With one of my stories I was accused of being a woman in a comment, as if it were some kind of insult. I still don't get how that should be an insult, but the reader did think it was written by a woman which is what I was after.

All three stories are first person and I found them fairly easy to write. I suspect that writing from the other gender's POV in something besides first person would be more difficult.

If anyone wants to take a quick look at the stories they are My First BJ - Really ; What Possessed Me - Amanda's Story and What Happens in a Strip Club. (You can find these in the Link to my stories:, below)

Hypoxia noted that work is under way on a female POV analogy to his story Jenny Be Fair. I have done the same with my series of What Possessed Me stories, so all three of those stories may be of interest.

 

[StrangeLife]

Virginia Woolf puts forward the argument that women's material lives are so different to men's that we can't write in the same way. We need 'a room of one's own' to write - I don't think this is a crude metaphor for having an income, but rather it means having the mental freedom and space to write.

I think she also said, that one day a woman would be born who could write like a man. I heard the novelist Jeanette Winterson mention this, adding: "And here I am," and I thought that was pretty nauseating. Winterson doesn't write like a man in my opinion, although she does write annoyingly well for someone so unpleasant.

I normally write highflown fantasy male characters who are feminine. However for one of the FAWCs I did write from a male POV and people ascribed my story to Pilot , which I was highly amused but also flattered by, considering how I normally write. I think there were probably giveaways in the character, though, which would tell you he was written by a woman if you thought hard about it. He was, just as StrangeLife mentions, holistic in his approach and caring rather than instrumental.

I dont remember having read a story where you write in first person though. That would be the true litmus test of your knowledge in the field of Manology. You can learn a lot about our behavior through studies in our natural habitat, but figuring out what goes on inside the male mind is more of a challenge.

Ok - you can stop laughing now...

Fair enough. Though some women might suggest that many men really are about as emotional as sacs of cement. I would never paint with such a broad brush myself.

I may have expressed myself somewhat poorly... and insulted P.D. James in the process. I sure hope she doesn't write erotica in her spare time...

What I meant was, that Adam Dalgliesh is designed to be a steady and predictable element in a sea of changing sceneries and colorful characters. Sorta like a comedy act requiring a "straight man" in order to work. The entertaining aspect of a P.D. James novel is not Dalgliesh - he is... well, Dalgliesh. No surprises there. But the people he interact with and the environments he frequents - that's the interesting part. We need Dalgliesh in order to set the tone and anchor the story in his world. But the story is never about Dalgliesh. He is never in danger (well ok, he does catch SARS at some point), he is never wrong and he never faces any major personal moral choices.

If P.D. James wanted to, she could easily have enhanced Dalgliesh by making him more central in the books. How about Dalgliesh waking up in a hospital bed after an attempted murder and then having to figure out who wants him dead before the perp succeeds? Or he could fall under suspicion for a crime and being forced to clear his own name with help from his staff. But the series ended in 2008 with a Hallmark finale, so that aint happening.


Unless.... (thinking of erotic Dalglies fan fiction here)... naahh!

 

[Hypoxia]

You can learn a lot about our behavior through studies in our natural habitat, but figuring out what goes on inside the male mind is more of a challenge.

Ok - you can stop laughing now...

The way to a man's mind is through his eyes.
The way to a man's heart is through his ribcage.

 

[sr71plt]

And the way to get his attention is to unzip his trousers?

 

[slyc_willie]

I dont remember having read a story where you write in first person though. That would be the true litmus test of your knowledge in the field of Manology. You can learn a lot about our behavior through studies in our natural habitat, but figuring out what goes on inside the male mind is more of a challenge.

Ok - you can stop laughing now...

I think you've illustrated the point regarding writing from the POV of the opposite gender. It's getting inside the head of someone of the opposite sex. But really, I don't think it's all that complex. After all, readers have a tendency to interpret the words we write according to their own experiences, and one of the greatest determining factors in how someone perceives something is their gender identity. All we really have to do is provide enough details here and there in order to be "consistent enough" from either a man's or a woman's point of view.

I've written a few stories told from a woman's POV. I will not, however, attest that I got it all right. I didn't write those stories from that POV because I was trying to be convincing; if anything, I just thought it would be more titillating to the reader. But after those stories were posted, I did receive several comments and emails indicating at least some readers thought I was female (which, considering my name, baffled me).

But I think I got a few things right from a woman's point of view. The key is the details; knowing what women focus on. I'm not going to make a list as to what women want, because lists never work in a case like this, and no matter what I listed, I would be wrong . But if I'm writing from a woman's point of view, I go back to observations I've heard my wife and former girlfriends and lovers make. I use a lot of those remarks -- about shoes, hair, perfume or cologne, what a certain kind of car says about a person, etc. -- with variations. I think it helps that, as far as men go, I've been told I'm a "pretty sensitive guy."

It doesn't hurt -- and some people will take issue with this, but it's my opinion -- to fall back on some general stereotypes. Women, supposedly, hate their bodies and are always wondering why anyone finds them attractive when they have this birthmark and that defect, one of their tits is bigger than the other, their hair is brittle, gold doesn't look right against their skin so they wear silver . . . it's a terrible thing to relate to female readers by exploiting their shared fears, but it works.

Of course, at the same time, women wanting to write from the man's point of view should mention our constant feelings of inadequacy concerning the size of our penises, the kind of car we drive, the sports teams we follow, how deep and masculine our voices are (or wish it could be), our physical prowess both in the bedroom and in a physical fight against another man, and, when describing women from a man's point of view, concentrate on at least one specific physical area of the woman's body (tits, legs, or ass are the go-to favorites, but there are pussy men, ankle men, neck men and wrist men, too).