Writing Male Characters

[TheRedChamber]

* In the US, guys tend to look for women their age or younger. On average, the groom is two years older than the bride and has been for years and years. If they have similar education and career paths, then the guy should make about as much as her if they are the same age or more than her if he's older
* Poor people in the US are more likely to substitute cohabitation for marriage
* The expectation that men do more housework and childcare doesn't really effect the three goals of wanting to be financially successful, marry an attractive wife and be respected. It really kicks once they have kids, which is typically long after they become a couple. The disparity between the amount of housework and childcare men and women do is still quite large
* I can't find any statistics to back this up, but I think women who are financially successful struggle to find husbands. The best I can find is a speed-dating study mentioned in the WSJ in 2013. That study "found that while women prefer men to be intelligent and ambitious, men have these preferences for women only to the point where women threaten to earn more than they do."
* I can't think of many financially successful celebrity women who are happily married, and a lot of those are married to men who are even more financially successful than they are. P!nk is really the only woman that comes to mind who is a financially successful celebrity woman with a happy marriage to someone who earns far less than her, and her marriage was rocky for many years

If you relate all this back to story-telling, you can still make interesting male protagonists.

A quick Google has the number of marriages in the US where the wife earns more than the husband at about a quarter (or 38% if including cases where the husband is not working at all) and growing. This dynamic can lead to marriage issues which may lead either the husband or wife to straying - however you want to frame the story - she's upset because he's not man enough, he finds an extramarital affair boosts his confidence, or he finds other ways to earn her respect other than money.

Yes, there's a still a disparity in the amount of housework done, but it also means that when the hero of our story is actually doing the majority of it (in a failing marriage for example) he isn't necessarily going to get the recognition for it. In divorces and disputes over child-custody, men are usually the ones to loose out - again there's potential from drama when our hero is in the right.

Everything can be mirrored - women who are financially successful struggle to find husbands and equally men who aren't financially successful struggle to find wives. Again, a typical set-up to a story is the guy who shoots out of his league and somehow wins her over - because of good characteristics which aren't just related to financial success.

For highly successful males there is a choice between picking someone who is just as successful as you verses picking someone less successful. For someone like a CEO or a brain surgeon it might make sense, as he's already earning enough money to support a family comfortably, but working all hours, to find someone who is able to devote more time to raising children. At a more basic level, someone in a highly stressful job may find that dating someone in an equally stressful job isn't much fun. In anycase a story where the protagonist has to choose between the two can be interesting - although I feels it's far less common than the typical 'marry for love, marry for money' choices presented in a lot of romances. (probably because they're not going to end up 'poor' regardless)

Celebrity marriages are, for sure, likely to rockier than normal marriages, but I think there's some reporting bias there - you only think about the rocky marriages because these are the ones that are reported on. Pick a celebrity at random and look at the Wikipedia page for their personal life - for example, Kate Bush has been married for thirty years to a guitarist most notable for playing on her records - happy or not I've no idea. Similarly, Annie Lennox had a couple of divorces but has been married to an AIDS charity worker for the last twelve years.

 

[pumpkindice]

That ↑ After 14+ lustrums walking this planet my observation is there is only one real difference between the genders (I am only addressing the two biological ones) when it comes to emotion: males are trained from birth not to show it or talk about it while females are encouraged to do so. Men have the same type of doubts, wants, fears and wishes as women, but the code says you ain't suppose to talk about 'em. Observe: what happens went a male child gets hurt? If they cry they are called a wussy, a baby, a wimp and many other things designed to teach them they shouldn't show hurt or fear or any other emotion. A little girl gets hurt, she's cuddled and held and told it will be okay.

The way I've always stated the excellent point you made: every man was once a young boy, who was encouraged by others to be honest about his feelings. One day, he made the mistake of being honest about his feelings, he observed the results, and he resolved that, for the rest of his life, he would never be such a giant fucking idiot as to make that mistake ever again.

The reason why men do not show or talk about their emotions and feelings is not because we don't have them, it's because we have eyes to see, and we've seen what happens when we do.

 

[Bramblethorn]

That ↑ After 14+ lustrums walking this planet my observation is there is only one real difference between the genders (I am only addressing the two biological ones) when it comes to emotion: males are trained from birth not to show it or talk about it while females are encouraged to do so. Men have the same type of doubts, wants, fears and wishes as women, but the code says you ain't suppose to talk about 'em. Observe: what happens went a male child gets hurt? If they cry they are called a wussy, a baby, a wimp and many other things designed to teach them they shouldn't show hurt or fear or any other emotion. A little girl gets hurt, she's cuddled and held and told it will be okay.

Maybe true in some contexts, as a generalisation. But it is far more acceptable for a man to display rage than for a woman. Just turn on your TV and you'll see endless celebrations of male rage.

 

[NotWise]

Maybe true in some contexts, as a generalisation. But it is far more acceptable for a man to display rage than for a woman. Just turn on your TV and you'll see endless celebrations of male rage.

I don't know what TV you're watching. I watch pretty much just live sports, and any coach or player who goes into a rage is likely to be warned and/or thrown out of a game. That goes for women as well as men. Raging about isn't tolerated--well, maybe in Pro Wrestling.

The state Senator I know has a tendency to get loud and lose his temper. That tendency has now led to public calls for his resignation. That's not exactly a celebration of male rage.

When I think back to the TV I used to watch, the only times I can think of characters going into a rage, they were usually antagonists and there were consequences. Fictional protagonists like Rambo can go into "righteous" rages, and that seems to be tolerated.

 

[Comshaw]

Maybe true in some contexts, as a generalisation. But it is far more acceptable for a man to display rage than for a woman. Just turn on your TV and you'll see endless celebrations of male rage.

True that. I stand corrected. In general, the ONE emotion men are allowed to express freely, without reservation, is rage. And as you pointed out, it seems that is celebrated on screen.

Comshaw

 

[lovecraft68]

* In the US, guys tend to look for women their age or younger. On average, the groom is two years older than the bride and has been for years and years. If they have similar education and career paths, then the guy should make about as much as her if they are the same age or more than her if he's older
* Poor people in the US are more likely to substitute cohabitation for marriage
* The expectation that men do more housework and childcare doesn't really effect the three goals of wanting to be financially successful, marry an attractive wife and be respected. It really kicks once they have kids, which is typically long after they become a couple. The disparity between the amount of housework and childcare men and women do is still quite large
* I can't find any statistics to back this up, but I think women who are financially successful struggle to find husbands. The best I can find is a speed-dating study mentioned in the WSJ in 2013. That study "found that while women prefer men to be intelligent and ambitious, men have these preferences for women only to the point where women threaten to earn more than they do."
* I can't think of many financially successful celebrity women who are happily married, and a lot of those are married to men who are even more financially successful than they are. P!nk is really the only woman that comes to mind who is a financially successful celebrity woman with a happy marriage to someone who earns far less than her, and her marriage was rocky for many years

A thread about how to write a male character is now devolving into mansplaining of what women want.
And there's the answer to the actual topic at hand. Be

I am not so sure about this. I have known couples that seemed to be quite happy and that stayed together where the wife made a lot more money than the husband.

There is some truth to the stereotype. Some men want to earn more than their wives, and some wives want their husbands to make more than they do. But's it's much less true than it used to be, as a matter of necessity, because of how many women work now in prestigious, high-paying jobs.

Whatever the statistics are, they shouldn't stop authors from writing male characters who vary greatly from perceived norms and are in relationships perceived as unusual.

A thread about how to write a male character has now drifted into mansplaining what women want.
This is truly classic.
Kind of answers the actual topic of the thread as well. Just write a character not only obsessed with women, but who knows everything about them and is always happy to tell them they know all about them.
Some of these exchanges remind me of conversations I had with my friends about what we thought girls wanted....back at 16

 

[SimonDoom]

A thread about how to write a male character has now drifted into mansplaining what women want.
This is truly classic.
Kind of answers the actual topic of the thread as well. Just write a character not only obsessed with women, but who knows everything about them and is always happy to tell them they know all about them.
Some of these exchanges remind me of conversations I had with my friends about what we thought girls wanted....back at 16

What a stupid but typically Lovecraftian thing to say. Nobody's mansplaining. People are providing perspectives and thoughts that are based upon years of observation, and also years of experience writing. You just love to barge into conversations on your moral high horse and delude yourself that people are committing sins so you can play the role of hallway monitor. The funny thing about it is that you're such a hypocrite because you so often criticize others for doing the same thing.

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

I am not sure women know what all women want. It seems more like they know what they don't want based on bad experiences and what they personally want.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I don't know what TV you're watching. I watch pretty much just live sports, and any coach or player who goes into a rage is likely to be warned and/or thrown out of a game. That goes for women as well as men. Raging about isn't tolerated--well, maybe in Pro Wrestling.

I wasn't thinking so much of sports - I don't watch a lot - but I think you're somewhat understating it. Yes, players are discouraged from physically attacking one another, because that kind of thing has inconvenient legal consequences, but the reason they have to be discouraged as often they do is because aggressive posturing is part of the culture in a lot of sports. Ever seen a haka?

I was thinking more of... well, a lot of the examples I'd want to offer would quickly descend into political bickering, so let me just observe that "red-faced angry man ranting about Those People" is an entire genre of TV personality. It's hard to think of a female counterpart; mostly women are expected to be a bit more genteel even when being vicious.

And most of all, I was thinking of fiction, where the inconvenient consequences aren't so much of an issue. There are so many movies out there where men exact violent revenge for some wrong; far fewer with women.

The state Senator I know has a tendency to get loud and lose his temper. That tendency has now led to public calls for his resignation. That's not exactly a celebration of male rage.

Uh huh. And has he resigned? How much has it hurt his vote?

I recall one politician who was convicted a couple of years back of assaulting a reporter. He's a state governor now.

When I think back to the TV I used to watch, the only times I can think of characters going into a rage, they were usually antagonists and there were consequences. Fictional protagonists like Rambo can go into "righteous" rages, and that seems to be tolerated.

Far more than "tolerated", I'd have said, and it's revealing how much work writers put into coming up with excuses for those protagonists to go into righteous rages.

Heroines suffer their share of trauma too, but it seems to be much rarer that it's used as an opportunity to go on a killing spree.

 

[NotWise]

Uh huh. And has he resigned? How much has it hurt his vote?

I recall one politician who was convicted a couple of years back of assaulting a reporter. He's a state governor now.

Not yet, but the letter asking for his resignation came out Tuesday (Wednesday your time). I don't expect him to resign for that letter, because it contained no actionable complaints, and some of the complaints date back to before he was in the Senate. The pending ethics hearing might convince him to resign, and even if he doesn't resign he's unlikely to get re-elected. He told me after the last Democratic primary that he would have lost to any woman who ran against him. Things aren't getting any easier for him.

Far more than "tolerated", I'd have said, and it's revealing how much work writers put into coming up with excuses for those protagonists to go into righteous rages.

It makes profitable cinema, I guess, but it's kindof lazy writing. Having the protagonist raging about seems like the modern equivalent of deus ex machina, where the character is suddenly capable of super human feats.

I think that in real life, a sustained rage is usually associated with drug use and/or psychosis, and they may not survive their rage.

Heroines suffer their share of trauma too, but it seems to be much rarer that it's used as an opportunity to go on a killing spree.

We seem to fall back on films when looking for literary examples. I think that's unfortunate, because cinema is a different medium from the written word and some things work differently.

The female protagonist in my Pink Orchid story is annoyed into cursed threats against her ex-husband, but she's stopped at that point by the men around them. She wonders later what would have happened if she'd kicked him--which is what she wanted to do. No killing spree.

 

[jehoram]

I hope some of them are eccentric enough to be entertaining. But the things they do and why they do them can only be plausible within the constraints of the genre, like Batman or Superman.

A review in the New Yorker of the latest Batman movie pointed out, quite accurately, that the Batman is not really a character that you can put a lot of weight on. He's an orphan, he's rich, he's moody, he has no friends, he kicks butt... and that's about it.

As you know, I edit for a woman here on Lit, and she for me. She's asked me from time to time to comment on whether her portrayal of men is accurate, in the same way I've asked her if my portrayal of women raises any red flags for her. I've come to realize that she has less of a problem in that respect than I do. IIRC, she commented long ago on another thread that women spend more time studying men and trying to figure out what makes them tick than men do studying women and trying to figure them out, because figuring out men has a big influence on how women have to navigate a man's world.

It's been my observation that when a guy meets a gal, he's mostly interested in how he can get into her pants, whereas when a gal meets a guy, she's mostly concerned about how much she can learn about a guy before she lets him into her pants. That may be just another way of expressing what Athalia was saying.

 

[TheRedChamber]

A review in the New Yorker of the latest Batman movie pointed out, quite accurately, that the Batman is not really a character that you can put a lot of weight on. He's an orphan, he's rich, he's moody, he has no friends, he kicks butt... and that's about it.

Haven't seen Definite-Articleman yet, but Batman should in theory be an interesting character. The typical modern reading of his character is that he is basically as twisted as the villians he fights, and only his refusal to kill and that fact that he targets the worst criminals prevents him from being a monster. I think the problem with the Batman movies is that there are now about 10 of them and they've had about four reboots (plus the Arkham video games and of course the comics) and so they end up repeating the same story beats again and again. There has to be a connection with his parents dying. He has to meet a woman who gets close but not close enough. He works alone dammit. There's not a lot of ways for the character to grow because most sensible ways of having personal growth would involve him stopping beating up criminals dressed like a bat. And of course, it's the villians who usually steal the spot-light - and then as long as they're hamming it up and Bats is being Bats everyone's happy. I guess another problem with the character that Peter Parker has a personal responsiblity to be Spider-man but he also wants to be Peter and the superheroing causes problems for his personal life. Batman doesn't really want to be Bruce Wayne so we end up with a character who is super-stoical all the time. I think this is why the Lego Batman movie works, by introducing the idea that Batman is incredibly lonely and that his super-hero antics are just a cry for help, it actually gives us a more relatable character than the serious movies. Relating this back to the topic of the thread, I wonder if the reason for Batman's popularity is that he respresents the ultimate stoic ideal of duty over happiness which, I posit, men especially like - especially as the duty is derived from his own personal moral code. (James Bond is somewhat similar, but he goes where he's sent and actually seems to enjoy driving the fast cars and sleeping with the Russian secret agents)

 

[jehoram]

I guess another problem with the character that Peter Parker has a personal responsiblity to be Spider-man but he also wants to be Peter and the superheroing causes problems for his personal life. Batman doesn't really want to be Bruce Wayne so we end up with a character who is super-stoical all the time.

Good point. Now that I think about it, the only time I've seen Bruce Wayne enjoying himself is at the party in the first Michael Keaton movie, and a few times in the Christian Bale series (particularly at the end, when Alfred glimpses him at the cafe). That third Bale movie was really about Bruce wanting to retire from the Batman role, being thwarted by Bane, and finally achieving the goal by having the world think he was dead.

 

[pumpkindice]

Good point. Now that I think about it, the only time I've seen Bruce Wayne enjoying himself is at the party in the first Michael Keaton movie, and a few times in the Christian Bale series (particularly at the end, when Alfred glimpses him at the cafe). That third Bale movie was really about Bruce wanting to retire from the Batman role, being thwarted by Bane, and finally achieving the goal by having the world think he was dead.

The way I always learned it is that in DC Comics, the secret identity is the mask, whereas in Marvel, the mask is the mask. In other words, Steve Rodgers is who Captain America really is, the costume is the mask to hide Cap's real identity. In DC, Bruce Wayne is the mask, and Batman is the real person. Bruce Wayne is the mask that Batman puts on to allow himself to mingle with regular society and to prevent people from figuring out he's Batman.

It's what I found jarring about the new film, and was something I thought the Nolan films, particularly Batman Begins, nailed: the awkward things Bruce Wayne has to do as a billionaire playboy to hide the fact he's Batman. If someone told you that Kim Kardashian put on a mask and tights and went out at night and fought crime as a super-hero, you'd never believe it. The image of Bruce Wayne, the image of the billionaire playboy, is the image of a Kim Kardashian type; the purpose is to make everyone instantly dismiss the Bruce Wayne = Batman idea because of the utter ridiculousness of it. That doesn't work if there is no tonal difference between Bruce Wayne and Batman.

In the Nolan movies, if someone told you, as a man on the street, that Bruce Wayne = Batman, your reaction would be "that idiot rich guy who got drunk and burned down his own house?" Bruce allowed that narrative to persist because people believing it benefited him.

 

[pumpkindice]

Haven't seen Definite-Articleman yet, but Batman should in theory be an interesting character. The typical modern reading of his character is that he is basically as twisted as the villians he fights, and only his refusal to kill and that fact that he targets the worst criminals prevents him from being a monster. I think the problem with the Batman movies is that there are now about 10 of them and they've had about four reboots (plus the Arkham video games and of course the comics) and so they end up repeating the same story beats again and again. There has to be a connection with his parents dying. He has to meet a woman who gets close but not close enough. He works alone dammit. There's not a lot of ways for the character to grow because most sensible ways of having personal growth would involve him stopping beating up criminals dressed like a bat. And of course, it's the villians who usually steal the spot-light - and then as long as they're hamming it up and Bats is being Bats everyone's happy. I guess another problem with the character that Peter Parker has a personal responsiblity to be Spider-man but he also wants to be Peter and the superheroing causes problems for his personal life. Batman doesn't really want to be Bruce Wayne so we end up with a character who is super-stoical all the time. I think this is why the Lego Batman movie works, by introducing the idea that Batman is incredibly lonely and that his super-hero antics are just a cry for help, it actually gives us a more relatable character than the serious movies. Relating this back to the topic of the thread, I wonder if the reason for Batman's popularity is that he respresents the ultimate stoic ideal of duty over happiness which, I posit, men especially like - especially as the duty is derived from his own personal moral code. (James Bond is somewhat similar, but he goes where he's sent and actually seems to enjoy driving the fast cars and sleeping with the Russian secret agents)

I think it's a lot more basic than that. Batman works because he's the spiritual successor to a long and storied history of heroes that follow his arch-type. He is the most peerless it is possible for a normal man to be without the aid of supernatural powers, he is the world's greatest detective, and his personality is often defined by his rage and his anger as much as by his stoicism. Those arch-type elements go back in human history, and human story-telling, to the very beginning. You see many of them in the heroes of Homer's Iliad. Like Odysseus, Batman is a master of tactics and is the smartest guy in the room, like Hector, he is the peak of what a mortal man can be without the help of supernatural powers, and also like Hector, he is often able to fight against, and defeat, beings with those supernatural powers by using his skill and his wits.

As a comic book fan, I remember the first time I read the Iliad and one of my big take-aways from that reading was that Achilles' powers worked on the exact same principle as the Incredible Hulk's: both beings got stronger the angrier they got. One of the beings (Achilles) had his powers based on super-natural origins (he's semi-divine) and the other (the Hulk) has his powers based on modern sci-fi concepts (Gamma Radiation) but the way they functioned was similar. I found that fascinating.

These mixing and matchings of heroic arch-types is ancient in the extreme, and goes back to how myth and legend were established and perpetuated in the distant past. In Ancient Greece, for example, there was the city Dionysia every year in Athens, where the most gifted play-writes of Greek society would gather to write plays whose plots were drawn from a common stock mythology. This is very much akin to the creative process of writing comic books, and was taking place, and was a highly prestigious competition, 2,300 years ago.

Everyone familiar with Greek mythology knows the story of how Demeter would not allow the Greek Ships to sail for Troy at the port of Aulis. Based on that old legend, the Greek Play-write Euripides wrote "Iphegenia at aulis" to tell the story, and entered the play in the city Dionysia. The reason it caught on was for the same reason any great comic book story catches on today: it's an interesting interpretation of events in the mythological canon, and it makes sense to people that these beings of great power would behave in this way. It makes sense that Agamenon's pride and arrogance would cause him to sacrifice his own daughter in order to placate demeter and get the winds to change directions so that his ships could sail for Troy. It also makes sense this would enrage Agamenon's wife and lead to the great chieftain's eventual downfall; being murdered in his own bathtub.

The story was emotional and human, and featured larger than life characters. You know how every Marvel and DC movie has a post-credits scene? This is my favorite single panel in comics, and it functions as a post-credits scene to what was a really great comic:

https://abload.de/image.php?img=9x5j7z.jpg


Here's the page that supplies the build-up and context to it:

https://abload.de/image.php?img=8e5kpd.jpg

These are from a 2005 DC comic called Infinite Crisis. Infinite Crisis was a comic book about nostalgia, and how a longing for, and attachment to, a past that you feel has been taken from you can be toxic and can lead you to make bad decisions to try to reclaim something that can never really be reclaimed, and about the people you hurt along the way to doing so.

I'll admit, I didn't like the tone of DC comics at that time, and when I got to the last page of this issue (first image above), and I saw Kal-L, the original, Golden Age, Action Comics #1 Superman burst forth from the confines of his paradise dimension for the first time in 20 years and resolve to clean up the mess that the DCU had become, I cheered. These characters had been locked away since the last issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, they had not appeared in DC comics in 20 full years, and now, finally, the heroes of the original crisis were here, reassembled, to take on the new generation's threat of division and bickering and petty differences. I hoped Kal-L would straighten everything out, but the entire thing only became an even larger quagmire.

That's the kind of story that can only be told when the source is a common stock mythology. The 1985 original crisis was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, and the modern 2005 comic was created by Geoff Johns and Phil Jiminez, Johns and Jiminez drew from the common stock mythology; and in this mythology, Kal-L, the earth-2 Lois Lane, Alexander Luthor Jr. and Superboy-Prime were all still in the same spot they had been when we last saw them. Johns simply sprang them from their paradise dimension prison and got to play with these characters again.

That's a big part of the appeal of these characters, the common, shared mythology creating larger than life arch-type heroes and villains who keep getting bigger and bigger in the collective imagination every time the story is told and re-told.

 

[lovecraft68]

Generalizations and statistics be damned. I want the readers to know about the characters' challenges and conflicts, and how they deal with them. Characters are defined by the choices they make.

I like this and will add just worry about making your character interesting while doing the same for the story.
The gender debate is overthinking at its finest.
In addition to always adhering to Nike's immortal "Just do it" my basic approach to anything I want to do is blunt force trauma. I throw myself headlong into it, do it and see what comes out of it.
Many more stories could be written if people worried more about actually writing than 'how do I write this?"

 

[8letters]

I think it's a lot more basic than that. Batman works because he's the spiritual successor to a long and storied history of heroes that follow his arch-type. He is the most peerless it is possible for a normal man to be without the aid of supernatural powers, he is the world's greatest detective, and his personality is often defined by his rage and his anger as much as by his stoicism. Those arch-type elements go back in human history, and human story-telling, to the very beginning. You see many of them in the heroes of Homer's Iliad. Like Odysseus, Batman is a master of tactics and is the smartest guy in the room, like Hector, he is the peak of what a mortal man can be without the help of supernatural powers, and also like Hector, he is often able to fight against, and defeat, beings with those supernatural powers by using his skill and his wits.

As a comic book fan, I remember the first time I read the Iliad and one of my big take-aways from that reading was that Achilles' powers worked on the exact same principle as the Incredible Hulk's: both beings got stronger the angrier they got. One of the beings (Achilles) had his powers based on super-natural origins (he's semi-divine) and the other (the Hulk) has his powers based on modern sci-fi concepts (Gamma Radiation) but the way they functioned was similar. I found that fascinating.

These mixing and matchings of heroic arch-types is ancient in the extreme, and goes back to how myth and legend were established and perpetuated in the distant past. In Ancient Greece, for example, there was the city Dionysia every year in Athens, where the most gifted play-writes of Greek society would gather to write plays whose plots were drawn from a common stock mythology. This is very much akin to the creative process of writing comic books, and was taking place, and was a highly prestigious competition, 2,300 years ago.

Everyone familiar with Greek mythology knows the story of how Demeter would not allow the Greek Ships to sail for Troy at the port of Aulis. Based on that old legend, the Greek Play-write Euripides wrote "Iphegenia at aulis" to tell the story, and entered the play in the city Dionysia. The reason it caught on was for the same reason any great comic book story catches on today: it's an interesting interpretation of events in the mythological canon, and it makes sense to people that these beings of great power would behave in this way. It makes sense that Agamenon's pride and arrogance would cause him to sacrifice his own daughter in order to placate demeter and get the winds to change directions so that his ships could sail for Troy. It also makes sense this would enrage Agamenon's wife and lead to the great chieftain's eventual downfall; being murdered in his own bathtub.

The story was emotional and human, and featured larger than life characters. You know how every Marvel and DC movie has a post-credits scene? This is my favorite single panel in comics, and it functions as a post-credits scene to what was a really great comic:

https://abload.de/image.php?img=9x5j7z.jpg


Here's the page that supplies the build-up and context to it:

https://abload.de/image.php?img=8e5kpd.jpg

These are from a 2005 DC comic called Infinite Crisis. Infinite Crisis was a comic book about nostalgia, and how a longing for, and attachment to, a past that you feel has been taken from you can be toxic and can lead you to make bad decisions to try to reclaim something that can never really be reclaimed, and about the people you hurt along the way to doing so.

I'll admit, I didn't like the tone of DC comics at that time, and when I got to the last page of this issue (first image above), and I saw Kal-L, the original, Golden Age, Action Comics #1 Superman burst forth from the confines of his paradise dimension for the first time in 20 years and resolve to clean up the mess that the DCU had become, I cheered. These characters had been locked away since the last issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1985, they had not appeared in DC comics in 20 full years, and now, finally, the heroes of the original crisis were here, reassembled, to take on the new generation's threat of division and bickering and petty differences. I hoped Kal-L would straighten everything out, but the entire thing only became an even larger quagmire.

That's the kind of story that can only be told when the source is a common stock mythology. The 1985 original crisis was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, and the modern 2005 comic was created by Geoff Johns and Phil Jiminez, Johns and Jiminez drew from the common stock mythology; and in this mythology, Kal-L, the earth-2 Lois Lane, Alexander Luthor Jr. and Superboy-Prime were all still in the same spot they had been when we last saw them. Johns simply sprang them from their paradise dimension prison and got to play with these characters again.

That's a big part of the appeal of these characters, the common, shared mythology creating larger than life arch-type heroes and villains who keep getting bigger and bigger in the collective imagination every time the story is told and re-told.

I'll open this by saying that I'm not a Batman fan, I've not read a lot of Batman comics and I haven't seen any of the Nolan Batman movies or the more recent one.

To me, there's two sides of Batman. One side is Batman as the master detective. He's cool, calm and collected. He's got technological resources that the police department doesn't have access to. He's the one the police turn to when they encounter a master criminal beyond that their ability to catch. Then there's the vigilante side of Batman, where he's almost as violent as the criminals he hunts. He's full of rage. He's the champion of all those who believe that the justice system is too soft on criminals. He prowls urban streets, looking to serve justice on the criminals who prey on the vast majority of law-abiding citizens. My impression is that the Batman movies is almost all vigilante and no master detective. Watching Batman interrogate the Joker in "The Dark Knight", there's no master detective, only dumb rage. It's the Joker who is cool, calm and collected, outsmarting his physically more powerful, violent opponent.

 

[Athalia]

As you know, I edit for a woman here on Lit, and she for me. She's asked me from time to time to comment on whether her portrayal of men is accurate, in the same way I've asked her if my portrayal of women raises any red flags for her. I've come to realize that she has less of a problem in that respect than I do. IIRC, she commented long ago on another thread that women spend more time studying men and trying to figure out what makes them tick than men do studying women and trying to figure them out, because figuring out men has a big influence on how women have to navigate a man's world.

That would be me. And I think I have said as much in another thread or two. I do believe that women grow up in this society being encouraged to get inside a man's head and determine his motivations (which may have as much to do with power as with sex). Compare any issue of Cosmopolitan with Field & Stream or Esquire, and you'll see what I mean.

It's been my observation that when a guy meets a gal, he's mostly interested in how he can get into her pants, whereas when a gal meets a guy, she's mostly concerned about how much she can learn about a guy before she lets him into her pants. That may be just another way of expressing what Athalia was saying.

Well, no. At least, that's not how I write my male characters. They are respectful and courteous, and very solicitous of a woman's needs and wants. They are admittedly fantasy figures, and perhaps not true representations of the sex, but I choose to populate my stories with men I want to know and admire and have sex with. I don't think I've ever written a story where the woman wasn't in the driver's seat, so to speak. That's not to say that I want my men to be submissive to my female character's every whims, but they act with the understanding that the woman's needs are as legitimate as the man's.

 

[AWhoopsieDaisy]

I'm a bit odd with my approach to writing characters in general. I have stories where the main character changes gender in different drafts with minimal changes to the story itself. In some cases changing the gender added a layer of clarity.

I've noticed that my fanfiction tends to be almost exclusively male meanwhile stories I have to setup from scratch and worldbuild myself have a female majority cast that gets closer to a 50/50 split as the cast gets larger. So in a cast of 5 more often than not the male character is either a token or not present at all. But by 20 characters it's usually 8 women, 8 men and, 4 nb.

In a story about trauma passed on through the matriarch or a story about the struggles of girlhood I write these characters as women and to some extent I think it shows. In the same way I write stories about the expectations of manhood, bro culture and internalized homophobia with male characters and their masculinity is inseparable from the plot.

Granted I am queer so the exploration of both sides of gender is somewhat inevitable. Most of my characters are written in a way that doesn't assign a gender at the first draft if its not a key element of the story. Though this approach doesn't quite work for erotica.

The things I worry about in writing male characters is accidentally alienating male readers. By making them hit too close to home with the psychology or making them too soft. Its very difficult to write a male understanding of emotional intelligence as someone who's been raised female. And that's not to say men don't have emotional intelligence, I'm just keenly aware that boys aren't socialized to learn it to the same extent girls are.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've come to realize that she has less of a problem in that respect than I do. IIRC, she commented long ago on another thread that women spend more time studying men and trying to figure out what makes them tick than men do studying women and trying to figure them out, because figuring out men has a big influence on how women have to navigate a man's world.

Oh, I think this is very true. It can be comical at times.

I think women can overthink men sometimes. They might interpret a man's silence as disapproval, or as a sign of a problem in the relationship. In reality, he's just thinking about the interception that the quarterback on his favorite team threw during the game the previous day. Or he's just flatlining.

I remember once being on a long car ride with a girlfriend, and neither one of us said anything to the other for a while. And she broke the silence to apologize to me for being quiet, and my reaction was, "What? Huh?" She hadn't done anything wrong, and I was every bit as responsible for the silence as she was. I was sort of flummoxed. It would never have occurred to me to apologize for being quiet. I was just looking out the window. Sometimes there's nothing going on at all. Men go into full "Homer Simpson" mode, and it means nothing. "Oh look, there's a cow." Sometimes it's no more complicated than that.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Men go into full "Homer Simpson" mode, and it means nothing. "Oh look, there's a cow." Sometimes it's no more complicated than that.

You forget to add that you were thinking of the implications of adding "hu" to the bovine descriptor.

You're a more complex fellow than you give yourself credit for, Simon.

Mind you, having seen that dead fish on the beach, and seeing where that went, a better word might be "disturbed" .

 

[SimonDoom]

Mind you, having seen that dead fish on the beach, and seeing where that went, a better word might be "disturbed" .

I'll take it.

 

[LimiNalia]

I am male and writing from a male point of view at the moment. I find it difficult to articulate the depth of the character even though I fully understand it. The reason for this is that I fundamentally disagree with many of the above comments about men being more black and white, rather than having their bands of grey.

I hope what people mean by this is that men typically appear black and white because of how they behave, what they _don't_ say etc. But the reality is that men are just as complex. These complexities often just aren't apparent at first glance. Finding a way to narrate in a male voice, showing but not saying the complex thoughts is more difficult than for a female character who easily narrates feelings, thoughts and concerns.

 

[Auden James]

To come back to this thread's original post, I tend to disagree with the OP's observation that female authors wouldn't (or shouldn't) have any difficulty writing male characters: it's my impression that they tend to have rather noticeable difficulties indeed!

Take, e.g., Donna Tartt, best-selling author and Pulitzer-Prize winner, and her critically acclaimed debut novel "The Secret History." The book's first-person narrator is ostensibly a young male, named Richard Papen, from Plano, California, but at no point did he ever convince me of being genuinely male; the longer the story lasted, the less male he appeared to me. His thinking as well as his actions (or rather inactions) did never strike me as particularly male, though not really female either, but rather some crude kind of inconsistent mix-up.

In contrast, take Tartt's fellow writing pal Breast Easton Ellis's second novel "The Rules of Attraction." The book features many different first-person narrators of either sex, male and female, and every single one of them is convincing as a male or female narrator, respectively. But, admittedly, Easton Ellis is a homosexual, so that may have something to do with it . . .

But then take decidely heterosexual Gustave Flaubert and his immortal "Madame Bovary," featuring one of—if not the single-most—convincing fictional female character ever: the eponymous Emma Bovary!

And taking the notions of some of the above commentators into account, I'd like to know their answer to the question of how the supposedly utterly one-dimensional male mind of Flaubert could have come up with such a profound characterization as in the case of Emma Bovary?

The fondness of women for gay male fiction is interesting to me. I wonder what is at work there.

I'd think the answer to this is pretty straightforward: since females tend to find males sexually attractive, it's only logical that they might like to read erotica which features most prominently what they find themselves sexually attracted to, viz., the male body, naked and in a state of tumescent arousal.

 

[Whanmore]

Being male its easier because of course I understand being a guy, but I don't think women struggle nearly as much writing men as men do women.
Partly because-prepare to be butthurt guys-men are simple to write, we're not nearly as complex emotionally or mentally as women, we're a lot more basic.

Why? because\-more butthurt-men don't have to worry what people think if we act like dipshits, women have far more to worry about in how they're perceived; because of men. and I
Another reason-butthurt roll here- is I don't think women are as concerned in general about 'nailing' it because there isn't much to nail, especially in a simple erotic story, if he has a dick and wants to fuck, its all you need.
There is less fascination with the workings of the male mind and persona because there's simply less there. Not a dig, just going back to being more of a simple mindset.

Thing is too that the internet is a different place for women than men, they ask a question the answers often come in the form of pandering "Let me tell you how it is, little girl" and they don't need that. Or the overly eager, "Let me help you" so I can PM you and eventually get pervy. "Not trying to creep into your boat" as one stalker here likes to say translates into I am creeping into your boat.
No matter what the topic, women deal with that. I think this forum is far better than others here where not every guy wants to perv on you, but mansplaining is universal.

Which brings me to...maybe women don't ask because they're not worried about it.

Men seem more concerned with 'being' a convincing female because I think its harder. I always say I write lesbian scenes like a man writing lesbian scenes, which means I don't think I'm convincing other than the readers are horny and thinking sex, not who is writing this. I don't see women thinking "Did I portray that horny thinks with his dick guy the right way?"

I guess my overall opinion, mine as I'm speaking as a guy and myself, not a woman or women in general, is maybe women aren't as insecure and also don't need to give guys openings to be guys.
Look at all the "I need a woman co-author" threads. Why? Is it that you can't write it, or you looking to get your rocks off talking to a woman about erotica?
Could be wrong, but I don't recall many "need a male co-writer" threads (not counting role play which is for a different reason)
Final answer CMI

I agree Its easier to write from a Male Perspective for anyone since There is very little required motivation for a male to want to engage in sexual intercourse. Very believable that a man might want to fuck someone without knowing anything about the female. It can come off as lazy but much moreso if the same were done with a female character. Honestly I've had more trouble writing males who were reluctant and I've associated that trait with more females ...for obvious reasons.