Writing women

I know this is a divisive topic. I don't expect people to agree with me. I freely admit that I come at this topic as a white male, but specifically one who loves to write, prefers to write women characters, and has my own strong opinions based upon my experiences and ideals. So when I come at this topic, I don't mean to be the be all end all voice on the argument. I'm just hear voicing my opinion, trying to make sense of the whys and the hows of how I personally write women, and what I like to see in women in fiction.

I often find that I'm in disagreement with people about what it is that makes a good woman in fiction. Probably the best example is in the tv show Doctor Who. I absolutely despise the character of Donna Noble, and yet everyone I seem to come across loves her. I don't get it. To me, she's the exact kind of woman that we, as an advancing society, are supposed to be ignoring and moving past. I'll try not to go into too many specifics, because it's been a while since I've watched the episodes she was in, and so my opinions may be more heavily based upon her early episodes which I more clearly remember. Suffice to say, I found her one-dimensional, and not redeeming.

I have some friends who spend a lot of time talking about sexuality, gender, and all those kinds of things. I'm not going to argue that they're not important topics, because they are, but they bore me. I don't find them interesting. Sexuality, gender, race, these things don't matter to me. Do I have stereotypes of these things? Of course I do. Everyone does, no matter how much they may argue otherwise. But I am perfectly willing to be proven wrong on an individual basis. I bring this up because, of all these topics, women are the most prominent. Women get all the attention when it comes to these arguments, and it probably won't stop being that way any time soon. Our society simple doesn't tell stories about women right now, at least not in a fair proportion. But I hate the constant arguing.

It's not that more stories need to be told about women. It's that the stories about women need to be more dynamic. One of my favorite stories, one of the few that I have ever managed to read more than once, is called The Blue Sword. It's been a while, so excuse me for forgetting some details, but it's a story about a girl, taken away from her home, who learns to survive in a new environment. She ends up becoming one of the most prominent fighters and thinkers in this new place, and finds herself not wanting to return to her old life. This story is amazing. The main character is fantastic. And it has nothing to do with her being a woman.

I'm afraid I don't remember her name, so from here on in, I'll refer to her as Blue. Blue is great because she grows as a character as the story progresses. She starts in one place, where she is limited and frankly uninteresting, and by the end of the story she might as well be a different character. She goes through an entire journey of growth, and we as the reader get to witness the entire thing. That is storytelling.

The point is, women in writing don't matter, just as men in writing don't matter. Who a character is is nothing compared to what kind of person they are. Sometimes when we're telling stories, there are characters who logically make more sense in the position of the story we are telling, and there's nothing wrong with that. Sometimes, we want our character to be out of the norm, and that opens up our options far more. And that's fantastic. All writers will tell stories that fall into both of these characters at one point or another.

The reason that the arguments that come up around this topic annoy me, is because people have trouble separating these kinds of stories in their heads. If you try to write an abnormal character into a position and pass it off as normal, it doesn't work. And if you try to write a normal character and pass it off as abnormal, that doesn't work either. To go back to a topic from a few days ago, if you want to write a medieval blacksmith in a typical setting, you can't write a woman. It just doesn't work, because women did not typically work as blacksmiths at the time. You can write one, and there were a rare few, but there was nothing typical about that. So if you're going to write a female blacksmith in the middle ages, it has to be odd. And you don't prove that she, as a female, can do anything other blacksmiths can. You prove that she, as a blacksmith, can do anything other blacksmiths can.

Gender is nothing more than a starting point. It sets up a character so we can picture them in our minds. From there, a good character is made purely off of what they do, not who they are.