Tweet of the Day: The Pros and Cons of Comparing Yourself to Other Writers
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Duh!
Well, at least in Hollywoodland but not only there. Check most spec-fiction and it is still male dominated. Of course, the truth is that skip to the next section and it might be the ladies who dominate as well. In essence this trope fits most situations where one gender domination skews the views of the producers, product and market.
And yes, I admit that even with women dominating certain sectors of the wider media markets, men are still large and in charge. May lead to plains inhabited by herds of mustachioed cross-named beasts (Hi Jo!). It also leads to many a work becoming shaped like itself (recursive, isn’t it?). That is that male writer write for an audience that they believe (sometimes wrongly, and then some) is well, like them. Add three spoonfuls of “write what you know” and well we are back where we started.
Again.
Pass the aspirin.
You can see some of the problems that this might produce. No? Fine, I can see the blinding migraine has got you down so let me explain.
No, let me summarize.
If you and everyone else shares the same trait and believe your audience does as well you might miss, oh I don’t know, the other half of humanity? Maybe? At the very least non males come off the worse for wear as characters and as part of the audience. When somebody rips off said blinders then the writer falls back to such things as tokenism or worse, hyper-correction.
Just so you know.
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Thanks for bringing up this issue. i know we talked about it before, but it bears repeating-
The horrible underuse of female characters has gotten so bad that even male directors and actors have brought it up lately.
I don’t expect a writer to write the POV of a male or female if they don’t feel an affinity for it, or it doesn’t fit the particular story they are working on. Whatever. But what I do take issue on is the 1,001 films that come out every year with an all male cast, with one token woman thrown in. Unless this was historical time/event where women would not have been, it’s absolutely ridiculous. We’re half the population! We have vastly different personalities and likes and wants… So yeah, I’m tired of being invisible- or shown in the same few, stereotypical, flat as a pancake depictions.
I agree, that’s all I can really say.
I disagree with the ‘fact’ that most writers are male. Maybe most published writers are–though I dispute that as well. Maybe they meant ‘novelists’ becaus I know just as many female writers as male. I have been to a writers conference that was completely female.
It takes a while to break into the ‘institutions’ that have been male dominated for centuries but we’ve almost come to the point in society where those institutions (publishers, producers) are completely unnecessary. I will point out that the first self published e book to make the bestsellers list was by a woman.
I don’t suppose that the authors of the original article also pointed out most romance novelists are females? Most nurses are female? Most mothers are still female too. I don’t think any of us really want ‘equality’– what we want is equity and I think that is coming through the ease of access to the internet and technology which allows people to produce and publish their own work.
BTW, have you read “Dragonlance Chronicles?” Maybe you have to go out of your way to find these non male dominated series, but this came out in the 80′s when I was a budding writer and was one of my inspirations. Sure it’s a sort of serial novel, back when D&D was spitting them out like the shells of sunflower seeds, but I think it’s also where lots of writers get inspired.
PPS, Harlequin now has a publishing arm called Luna for Fantasy and Scifi with strong female leads. This is probably the best way to ‘break’ into the mens club — starting with the women’s club.
Noelle,
As pointed out by the original article in TV Tropes and repeated in my article, most of the writers in Hollywood and other sectors of the media (science fiction, fantasy, but not let say Romance or Urban Fantasy) are male.
And yes, I read Dragonlance a long time ago, and while it had some interesting female characters, it also had a lot male characters as well and the Inn Fellows were dominated by males. As for the writing team, it was half and half. Tracy Hickman is a guy.
And even in areas where women dominate you either have a tendency to parrot established writing or worse, bring forth a series of stereotypes (I’m looking at you Romance novels) that are outdated if not downright offensive. But that is a topic for another post.
Thank you for your comments.
Yeah I commit this crime, so to speak. One of things I wanna do as a writer is write well rounded female characters — strong ones too. And I personally appreciate strong female leads. Like Buffy, for a quick example shaved off the top of my head.
I’ll repeat an advice that Tasha (our very own gypsyscarlett) once gave me. Write well rounded characters and you won’t have to worry about their sex.
Of course she said it better.
As for Buffy, yes, she is a good character model, but she has so many clones in the Urban Fantasy field that at least when it comes to things like covers it reinforces stereotypes instead of debunking them:
http://ralfast.wordpress.com/2009/09/17/the-oh-so-bland-cover/