There’s a quote in the movie As Good as it Gets, where the character is asked how he writes women so well. He says, “I imagine a man and remove reason and accountability.” That hit comedically, but it is no way to write female characters. As a male writer approaching the opposite gender always needs to be done with a sense of gravitas. It is one of the few ‘stay in your lane’ things a writer can get away with ignoring. Writing protagonists of a different race, for example, is often looked at as false, which is why so many white male protagonists populate the literary sphere. I say bollox to all of it, to be honest. I believe a writer is a conduit. We tell the stories of worlds that are not our own or are even approximate to our own. We cannot limit ourselves to characters who are just like us, less we become one dimensional in our writing. That being said, men suck at writing women. It isn’t say anime level bad where every female is oversexualized or turned into a whining infant. However, men do struggle writing women. So, how do we do it right?
Step One: Don’t imagine a man.
Step Two: Talk to a woman.
That’s it. I argue that all characters relate to the writer in some fundamental way. We tune into these characters because we know them on some fundamental level. However, knowing how they are going to act means talking to someone who knows the intimacies of that gender better than ourselves.