Strong Female Characters Will Ruin Your Novel (Writing Advice)

if you're thinking about writing a strong female character don't now I know you might be thinking but Jed I don't want to write these one-dimensional damsels in distress and that is a good Instinct but as Wikipedia so helpfully points out a strong female character is an equally simplistic and boring cliche that will likely ruin your novel so what's the issue with this type of character and how can you create great female characters instead this wasn't something I understood when I first started writing but as I published more novels all of which have plenty of female characters and all of which were edited by female editors I've come to understand this a lot better first what's the problem with strong female characters well this archetype is usually defined by being a tough physically competent unemotional badass with limited flaws and minimal character growth typically there is also an explicit rejection of traditionally masculine traits as a research paper from Portland State University identified there is a bias towards portraying strong women characters with more masculine gender language in order to depict them as Heroes and this character type has become incredibly widespread in many forms of modern storytelling to quote Emily Blunt who has played some fantastic female characters over the years it's the worst thing ever when you open a script and read the words strong female lead that makes me roll my eyes I'm already out I'm bored those roles are written as incredibly stolic I spent the whole time acting tough and saying tough things and right there is the problem with this character type it's one dimensional as the novelist Sophia McDougall says Sherlock Holmes gets to be brilliant solitary abrasive Bohemian Whimsical Brave sad manipulative neurotic vain untidy fastidious artistic courteous rude a polymath genius female characters get to be strong that is a huge disservice now can you have female characters who fight well maybe even better than the male characters in your book of course you can that's something I've done in all three of my published fantasy novels but physical strength by itself rarely equals a good character male or female and on the topic of physical strength and combat on average most males are going to be bigger and stronger than most emails so if you are writing a strong female character who beats up a bunch of dudes but all those dudes are a foot taller than her packing 50 pounds more muscle and have way more combat training it's going to shatter your reader's suspension of disbelief and it will ruin the story for them of course you can have things like magic or special training cleverness or the element of surprise as a way to allow female characters who might be physically weaker to actually still win these fights and using those factors will lead to a much more satisfying and enjoyable narrative rather than just ignoring the physical realities that exist within the world and that brings us to the central question of this video which is how do you actually write great female characters based on my writing experience I've seen that there are three levels that writers go through with this number one if you're starting out as a young male writer you are probably going to be writing a lot of one-dimensional damsels in distresses or these sort of trophy women that just exist as Rewards or prizes for male characters think of the old school Disney princess archetype here on the other hand if you're a young female writer you're probably going to write a lot of Mary Seuss a Mary Seuss is an idealized self-inserted wish fulfillment fantasy of an author who's usually exceptionally pretty extremely talented without any training and lacks any deep character flaws a Mary Sue will often have countless characters falling over themselves to sing her praises and by comparison anyone who disagrees with her will usually be written in a very unsympathetic light and of course both the Disney Princesses here and the Mary sus are equally flat and boring characters so then we get to the second level and that is to write a strong female character these are very much a rejection of that helpless Disney princess stereotype and in a sense it is a slight improvement from level one but the problem here as I've already described in great detail is that strong female characters tend to just be men with boobs and they are often very one-dimensional and flat and boring as well so then we get to the third level which is to write a complex flawed character who faces struggle and adversity and wins the reader's interest to their progression and growth throughout the story oh and they might also happen to be female what a revolutionary concept let's call this the complex female character now this character's femininity might be a key part of her character design it might be really important and Central to her character Arc or it might not be what's important here are five key design principles and missing any one of these five principles can unravel your character and turn readers away one she has genuinely interesting and meaningful character flaws readers hate Perfect characters readers love flawed characters and I'm not talking about surface level flaws like oh sometimes she's clumsy or sometimes she forgets people's names I'm talking about meaningfully challenging and off-putting aspects of human nature you know the kind of stuff that us real people struggle with every day as Robin McKee says to create a complex character a writer's moral imagination peers into a character's inner Realms to identify and measure the values at play in a personal and private lives maturity versus immaturity honesty versus dishonesty generosity versus selfishness kindness versus cruelty all the dynamic charges of human nature and if you're looking to write better flaws you can download my free 100 character Floors guide which contains a ton of different character flaws along with reasons why each floor can result in a satisfying narrative you can download it for free by going to jedhearn.com forward slash floors and when you do that you'll also sign up for the fantasy writers companion this is a free email newsletter I sent out every week with a fresh piece of fantasy writing advice based on stuff that I've learned from that week's writing within my own projects or stuff that I have sort of told my clients within my one-on-one story coaching program over 2 000 writers read the newsletter and you can sign up to that for free and get your 100 character Floors guide by going to jedhearn.com forward slash floors the link is also in the description down below too the complex female character experiences a compelling character Arc in many cases the arcs of strong female characters revolve around the world recognizing her innate virtue she starts the story as perfect and the world and the other people around her are flawed because they just don't recognize her Perfection as the story progresses she won't change because it's the dumb world around her that fails to recognize her magnificence and it's only in the climax that the world finally comes to realize what she has known all along that she has been perfect this whole time what's wrong with this picture there's no change there's no attempt to strive or to push through difficult obstacles and setbacks now you don't always need a character to evolve or change sometimes flat character arcs work but writers quite often seem to be afraid to give strong female characters any sort of Arc that involves struggle learning from a mentor and experiencing personal growth because of a fear that this somehow undermines her strength or disempowers her as a woman and I think that couldn't be further from the case the characters we respect and admire the most are the ones who go through the greatest struggles the ones who realize that yes maybe there is something within themselves that needs to change if they want to achieve their goals and following that painful process of change and maturation that's what stories are all about so when constructing a complex female character ask yourself how is she different at the end of the story compare head to the beginning three her antagonist presents a worthy challenge often stories with strong female characters have weak stupid and obviously evil villains with no psychological complexity or redeeming qualities within the debating world there's this concept called straw Manning where you intentionally misrepresent and dumb down your opponent's argument because that is easier to defeat than your opponent's real argument don't make that mistake in your story when you write a complex female character you have to give them a meaningful Challenge and the greater the adversity that she faces the greater the depth of character that your story can reveal 4. she is multi-dimensional a dimension is a consistent contradiction between two aspects of a character's nature which generates internal conflict and attention for example you might have this celebrated artist who is praised for her creativity but inwardly feels like she's a bit of a hack so you've got artist versus hack that is one dimension of contradiction within this character perhaps she is also a nurturing mother but she secretly wishes she had more time to work on her art and didn't have the children to distract her now you've got the second dimension of caretaker versus free spirit maybe she wishes she could just paint all the time but instead has to kind of sell her soul a little bit by marketing and trying to do publicity to promote her work now you've got a third dimension of idealistic versus pragmatic and you can keep going on like this adding multiple Dimensions to your character to make her complex and fascinating when building these contradictions you can do so through contradiction between outward facing character and the inward truth of herself contradiction between two competing desires contradiction between a conscious and subconscious desire or contradiction between two subconscious desires number five the complex female character shows that strength of character matters more than strength of muscles physical strength is just one type of strength and when it comes to writing a complex female character that inspires readers and shows the depth of Humanity's courage and soul there are so many more interesting types of strength to explore whether it's the mother sacrificing herself to protect her child the wife that supports her husband through trying times the woman who uses diplomacy and subtle Charisma to avert a war or cause one the student who ceaseless pursuit of knowledge lets her save her friends or the girl whose bravery and clever thinking inspires a rebellion or the woman who has to face down a terrifying foe despite her fear there is a vast spectrum of The Human Experience to explore and I hope that when you write complex female characters in your novel that's exactly what you do if you enjoyed that video you might enjoy this one over here where I share six exercises to develop deeper more interesting characters in your novel these exercises go super deep and you probably haven't heard of all of them before so click here to check it out and I'll see you in the next video keep writing and keep striving

Channel: Jed Herne

Views: 69,177

Keywords: writing, writing advice, writing craft, story, fantasy, author, jed herne, authortube, booktube, wizards warriors words, self-publish, indie, publishing

Id: FQnXGP-So9c

Length: 9min 44sec (584 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 20 2023