You have to admit though, that due to the usual “era/period” of fantasy, women aren’t usually equal in society to the men, and, more often than not, are wenches or whores or some such.

In re: “era/period” stuff, we’re actually making whole new societies. So long as the motives behind female status are believable, you can probably do whatever.

I’m curious, Mark. Did you consciously write your female characters the way you did, or did they just turn out that way?

By that, I mean did you sit down and very deliberately design them so they didn’t fall into stereotypes or categories, etc etc?

To use a more concrete example – the lead character in my book Empire State is a big black guy. I didn’t particularly intend him to be a big black guy, but that’s how he appeared to me. Likewise, I have female lead/main characters in my other books, including miners, scientists, marines and engineers (ie, possibly male-dominated roles) simply because that’s who they are. I didn’t think, oh, I need two female characters here and one male character here, and so on. I’ve found I really don’t have much control over characters – they appear as they are and they do what they want.

Interesting post.

If I don’t react to a character of the other genre than the writer, I think the writer has “got it”. Haven’t read City of Ruin yet, but I had no problem with your female characters. I’ve had female friends with many of their characteristics.

Being male, I have of course reacted more to male characters written by female authors. And I think male authors are better at avoiding stereotypes in their female characters than women authors are in their male characters. Of course this has to do with the fact that male authors run the risk of being called sexist if they do something that’s perceived as wrong. -But that unfairness is perhaps another debate…

To quote “As Good as It Gets”,

“How do you write women so well?”
“I think of a man, and I take away reason, and accountability.”

I don’t see it as a problem limited to male authors, myself. I’ve picked up enough of my girlfriend’s preferred reading material (romance, historical romance, paranormal romance, etc) to see that the majority of women writers create female characters that are just as wooden, one-dimensional and ultimately misrepresentational of their gender. You’d struggle to defend post-Narcissus in Chains Anita Blake or Bella Swan as great examples of women in fiction on the basis they were written by a woman.

While there’s not going to be a sea-change in the representation of women in literature as a whole – simply because masses of people continue to buy awful books – at least it’s nice to know that a few people are taking the time to think of all their characters, and not just the women, as something more than MacGuffins to keep the plot going.

On a side note, I have to give you kudos for the “Mum’s gone to Iceland” slogan, made all the more ironic considering Iceland’s comparatively progressive stance on women’s rights.

Another great post, Mark. Thanks for linking to my review.

I would like to reply to some of the comments here, but please bear in mind that I am not a writer nor do I ever plan on being one. My comment will come from a reader/reviewer point of view.

“You have to admit though, that due to the usual “era/period” of fantasy, women aren’t usually equal in society to the men, and, more often than not, are wenches or whores or some such.”

First of all, the “some such” really did not go down well with me. It sounds dismissive and I am pretty sure this is not what the commenter intended to come across as, but it serves perfectly to mirror what Mark tried to say in his post. You have to THINK about what you write.I believe that writing can be a conscious effort without losing creativity, freedom etc.

In that sense, I can never understand when a writer says that they don’t have much control over what they are writing: what do you mean by that? Surely characters do not exist in a vacuum. They are YOUR creation, coming from inside your head. Whenever I hear this, from a reader’s point of view, I just hear an excuse for not taking responsibility by taking into consideration matters as gender and race. Does it sound harsh? Possibly. Do I expect a lot from writers and that is not fair because we are all humans? Probably. I just don’t know how to read in any other way. And do you know? This is a learning curve as well, I am not the reader I used to be three years ago, two years ago, one year ago. It is because of posts such as this, and the genderfail and racefail issues that I am much more of a conscious reader. I don’t think it is too much to expect the same conscious effort from writers, is it?

Second, there WERE women in all times and periods who did not exactly fit the status quo. There are several accounts of women who ran breweries in medieval times, who had to take over running castles, etc. They were not ALL wenches or whores, you know. In any case, aren’t we talking Fantasy here? You can do whatever you want with your female characters and heck, getting a female character to BE much more than what she is supposed to be in her society sounds like awesome conflict to me. That also means, of course that your female character can be a whore if that is who your CHARACTER is (and not you know, because the character is a woman and a whore is all she can be). I believe this is what Sam is trying to say too, right?

Pretty much, Ana.

To elaborate, though, what a writer means when he says he doesn’t have that much control over his writing is that the characters take on lives of their own and do their own thing, regardless of what we might want to happen.

Basically, it boils down to the author writing something involving a character and then pausing and asking: “Is this really what he would do?” It might be easier to swallow if he goes for Option A, it might be more appropriate to the times if he goes for Option B, but in the end, if his motives and his personality dictate that he goes for Option C, that’s what he does.

This is basically a choice for both the reader and the writer. There are readers out there who will look at Option C and say: “You know, I really don’t want to read this anymore.” That’s fine. There are authors who say: “Some people won’t like Option C, but there it is.”

That said, though, this is absolutely, positively NOT carte blanche for the author to write absolutely every offensive, ridiculous or just ignorant thing he can and expect to roll his shoulders and go “welp, out of my hands, can’t get mad about that.”

Ideally, a good author makes it clear when Option C is the character’s path, not his own.

I’m with Sam. To me, good characters have an almost abstract gender. Also agree with Andrew that the issue of “getting women” is just as present with female writers. Quotation marks because this kind of issue makes me fret if I “get men”. Then I realize nobody gives a crimp if I’d choose to portray men like big lumbering destroyers of all or fat lazy dumbasses who like beer, as long as they are well-rounded characters that fit the story. Nobody whines about stereotypical heroes as a “male issue”, only as bad craftsmanship of the author (flat, 2D character)

E. M. Edwards said: “half your potential readership out there doesn’t have a pair of testicles”.
Now, I don’t have a pair (though I’ve heard it whispered they may simply not have dropped from the 4th or 5th or whatever dimension they’re hiding), and I get what you’re trying to say, but my first reaction is: is he saying the testicle-free have *different* needs? What am I, some kind of spaz?

Do I need more strong and well-rounded female characters in my fiction?
Not really (with inner voice uttering a slightly panicked “Ack!”). If the characters are written well, I don’t care what sex they are and what sex they are having and what world they live in and certainly not how the male/female relationship is.
Besides, turning the talking vaginas and men with breasts into packaged deals of solely strong, intelligent, caring and whatever else “good” stereotypical traits, might appease some warriors of the female cause, but I sincerely doubt its real value to emancipation.
It might be a good idea for a genre though: FEF! Female Emancipation Fiction, with its own rules, market share and shelve space, as for Dark Romance and so on. Just to keep the bad writing penned down in a category.

As to the milkmaid suggestion: the stable boy is inherent to the mould of the fantasy quest story. If you break free from it by using a milkmaid, you’ll have to make clear why and make sure the story remains interesting and believable. And trust me, there’s a million ways to get it wrong, starting with whether you choose to have a 12 year old run-away raped or not at the first run-in with big bad men.
Conclusion: ever wonder what happens if all the smart, pretty and strong girls leave their burnt down villages? Well, the surviving villagers rebuild, and are left with the ugly female idiots that grow up to become serving wenches in the taverns the male heroes later visit.

I have to take issue with Anna’s bizarre final paragraphs. The rest of her comment is equally stupid but these ones are exacerbated by the fact that although she uses them to reply to Eric she complete fails to take his point that gender roles are not as static as some are assuming them to be in the real world, never mind in the unlimited world of fiction.

As to the milkmaid suggestion: the stable boy is inherent to the mould of the fantasy quest story.

For what possible meaning of the word “inherent” is this true? It might be familar, comfortable and well-established but that is hardly the same thing.

If you break free from it by using a milkmaid, you’ll have to make clear why and make sure the story remains interesting and believable.

Why do you have to make clear why? It is the author’s perogative to write what they want. There is a such stunning artistic conservativism behind this statement that I can barely comprehend it.

And trust me, there’s a million ways to get it wrong, starting with whether you choose to have a 12 year old run-away raped or not at the first run-in with big bad men.

I don’t think it is actually a natural law that 12 year old girls must automatically be raped and 12 year old boys must not. It is the author’s decision whether a character gets raped and the author’s responsibility to deal with the aftermath of this.

As for her supposed conclusion, what is there to say but: WTF?

One last thing:

I didn’t get a chance in my previous posts to ask a question I have, open to anyone really. I’d love some opinions from both writers and readers here:

How hard do you think is it for male/female authors to write female/male characters (strikethrough the gender based adjectives of your choice in the line above) – correctly? And what exactly, does that mean?

Should it really be that mysterious a process? Are we always in the dark about the opposite sex? We live with and around each other on a daily basis (with rare exception), most of us have grown up knowing both sexes, and nearly all of us have read works of literature which contain both, written by both.

Yes, I’m not, nor am I likely ever to become, a woman. But the same applies for all of the following: wizard, assassin, elf, dragon, general, king, goblin, innkeeper, giant rat, nobleman, blacksmith, beggar, god (well, in my own mind I suppose), thief, sentient tree, explorer, etc., etc.. Does this mean I can’t create believable characters of this sort, full stop? And before someone screams that gender doesn’t equate profession – the point I’m trying to make is that we write about a lot of things that we are not, or know only as much about as we can uncover or imagine through the power of our minds. People like to tell things about themselves. So we really have no shortage of chances to hear from others who do know more, what it is like for example to be a male or female in a particular society/time period (where records of such still exist). The rest I suppose, we make up.

I’m fine with that. After all, no two males or females (or I suppose bisexual hermaphroditic sentient tree-frogs) are exactly alike. What am I under onus then, to get?

Before you think I’m being snide, I assure you, I ask this in earnest. I do wonder at times and personally question if I can portray the complexities of a gender I only know second hand. But then I remember all of the above. Outside of the realm of my skull – it’s *all* second hand. That’s the step that makes it fiction. You’ve got to give it the best educated guess you’re can and hope that some of the time, you get it reasonably right – or at least right for your story and your readers.

While we may get tired of beautiful female assassins with a hot bod and a flair for hanging upside down while firing a full sized repeating crossbow – they are not really any more silly than all the muscle bound, handsome, impossibly skilled swordsmen/mages/male chosen ones lumbering about in the same fare bedding every tavern wench and princess in sight. This isn’t even a question of female writers not getting male characters either. Most of the time, fantasy authors of both sexes are often equally guilty of writing fantastical and let’s face, unrealistic characters by the page-load. If there is a problem with that, is it truly one of mistakingly sketching gender by those who are of another, or just the more general malaise of a lack of realism and well rounded characters that affects the genre?

I’ve even seen some comments on other sites, decrying the move towards darker, grittier, more realistic fantasy simply because of the loss of that utterly fantastical element. Each their own, I suppose.

Food for thought. And I’m looking forward to your answers.

Eric

@Martin: in the unlimited world of fiction, it’s certainly the author’s prerogative to write whatever he or she wants. But in the marketable world of fiction, s/he’ll have to know what to name the child. And once the child is named, s/he’ll have to know where, why and how it diverges from the genre or subgenre.
Which, BTW, is where “inherent” comes into play. There’s no fixed set of rules what is or what isn’t a certain genre, only a bunch of elements that by consensus (market’s, not author’s) “exist essentially or permanently” in said genre. Elements that are familiar and well established *stick* to a “definition” of a genre (ah, gotta love good old Latin).
With this I certainly did not want to imply an author can’t colour outside the lines, only that the usual and sound advice to beginning authors is: know the genre your writing in before you do. Besides, it helps to know what label to put in the flipping query.
Furthermore, I deliberately left the choice about the rape open (“whether”). I believe it’s perfectly possible to have a good, enjoyable quest starting off with a runaway girl that doesn’t get raped. Rape doesn’t even have to come near the character. There’s other ways to toughen up a chick, and I’d even prefer to see the other ways, since there so much that can go wrong with having your character, male or female, raped (in character development and examples that are set).
Point is: in good writing it doesn’t matter whether she is or isn’t, since the female character is a person first, a woman second. Even if it’s a suffragette.
Whatever you do as a woman, there’s always two measures, two weights.

@Eric: I think the gender imbalance is well enough on its way of getting evened out just because there are more female authors. Not sure whether we need the “help” of male authors to shorten the distance. That sort of smacks of good old affirmative action, something I’ve an ambivalent attitude towards. The idea that an art would need it flat-out makes me cringe (getting spooked here by the phantom of 50% of shelf-space in bookstores reserved for female authors, and as a reader losing out on excellent writing by male authors). And, not saying man aren’t allowed to write female characters. Simply, to me gender don’t matter. Not of the author and of the character(s).
If you can’t help but notice that the female characters are all bubbleheads, I feel it’s probably because of bad character development, and then it seems to me the priority issue is bad writing and not genderfail.
What’s more: if a not particularly gifted male author writes a story filled with underdeveloped male characters, he’ll be criticized for bad writing. If he writes a crappy story with underdeveloped females, he’ll be criticised as a misogynist. The discrimination goes even deeper: I’m pretty sure that if I, a woman, were to write a story featuring flimsy male characters, I’d be criticised for bad writing, and not as a man-hater. I’d probably have to work really hard to earn that particular badge. There’s simply no justice in this world.

I could never understand how those who say that New Sun is misogynistic could also infer that Wolfe himself is a misogynist. The way I see it, Severian is the (fictional) writer/narrator of New Sun. Wolfe writes from Severian’s point of view, so the voice includes his, Severian’s, personality and attitudes, not Gene Wolfe’s. And there are many places where Severian and Wolfe are completely different, but Wolfe never changes this practice throughout the text. Never does Severian become a mouthpiece for Wolfe’s ideals, etc. So, call the fictional character Severian a misogynist, but not Wolfe.

I apologize Martin for my comment, since I thought you were talking about Ana. But again, I think using the word “stupid” was wrong to use.

I think the main thing I got out of the comments here is that many more people are writing about milkmaids than I would ever have guessed. JV

Not you too Jeff! Say it ain’t so.

I’m trying to carve out a name for myself as the foremost emergent writer in the sub-sub-genre of the New Milky Weird.

Give a starting author a break, people.

The Unlikely Ones (which is a twist on the plot of Aeschylus’ Eumenides for you literary types – with a liberal does of speculative weirdness and yes, milky goodness in between all the mud, blood, and killing) is going to put milkmaid driven speculative fiction, squarely on the fantasy map.

Let a cow and its maid have their day. That’s all I ask.

Eric

Daniel, back in comment #1, said:

“You have to admit though, that due to the usual “era/period” of fantasy, women aren’t usually equal in society to the men, and, more often than not, are wenches or whores or some such.”

This is a wrongheaded comment in several ways, some of which have already been discussed in this thread, but I have a couple of additional points.

Firstly – and this is contra both you and, later in the thread, Anna – women are only not ‘equal’ to men in such fantasy settings because writers choose to write their stories and their settings that way. It’s fantasy; so long as your world is internally consistent, there’s no more reason for all your women characters to be whores than there is for all your men characters to be whores. Imagination: that’s what we read for.

Secondly, even if all your women (or all your men) *are* whores in your particular world, it doesn’t follow that they all must share the same two-dimensional personality and the same storylines. What the post that Mark quotes is arguing is not that there is some eternal essence of Woman to ‘get’ – as Sam @ 2 rather straw-man-ishly suggests – but that it makes a refreshing change to read a book that treats its women characters as individuals, with their own character traits and their own reasons for doing what they do, which are separate from the needs or plot of the male character(s).

Finally, the picture you paint in your comment leads me into another disagreement – this time with the recurrent argument that female characters should be characters who just happen to be female. This sounds fine, superficially, but it rather ignores what should be a big part of any character’s life and identity, and thus his/her/its responses to any given plot situation. A person’s gender is – like their race, or their culture, or their occupation, or whatever – an important filter through which he or she experiences the world. Not least because assumptions in the world around them re. gender affect how the world treats them: e.g., if this *is* a society where all women are whores or wenches, any female character who wants an adventuring career (or loves to read, or has a knack with numbers, or develops a talent for magic) will face very different challenges than a male character in the same world with the same abilities and aspirations would.

Being a (stereotyped) woman should not be the sum total of who a female character is and what role she plays in events, but it shouldn’t be entirely disregarded.

In the end, it’s all grist for the mill of Story, right?

Leiali:
I didn’t mean that gender has no consequence to a character, but that personality (winning or not, so not *what* kind of personality, but that there *is* a personality at all) matters, and in that way, she could as well have been a man since her gender at that level is abstract. Whatever her personality, she will be well written with her own likes and dislikes, and if she’s a lead character and thus gets plenty of exposure I’d probably be able to invent a short interview with her (not even considering if it’s the type of woman I’d actually want to interview).

Zeborah:
Of course if there’s comparison possible you can have suspicions or not. But if there’s only either male *or* female characters? I stand by my point that there’s a bias out there that is not always against us poor discriminated-against women.

As for fully fleshed out female main characters in fantasy, the first that spring to mind are also from female authors (Mary Gentle’s Ash, plenty of women from Tanith Lee, and of course, Elizabeth Moon’s Paks is as milkmaidy in origin as they come). Zelazny’s women are, you know, women, though in supportive and not main roles and not quite that type of fantasy.

Nic:
I never said the fantasy writer had no choice in the way women are presented. Only that in a fantasy genre mainly given form in the ’30s it’s only naturally that you see social relations reflected from that age still, since as the genre grows into what it is by emulating those times/lifestyles all over again and thus a certain view of things is part of its mainstream. Why does Conan always gets mentioned in discussions of the value and role of the female, and nobody gets even slightly annoyed that female hobbitses only seem to cook, clean and produce more hobbitses all day? Both books are products of their time. Over time the genre and social relationships within grow and change and get explored in all directions and possibilities: great! But does it mean I should take as much, or less, or more, offence with the women Elric beds as opposed to those that Conan beds? My point was: in good writing you’ll never pose the question since in good writing whatever the role of the female (main character or supporting, princess or whore), it will be a natural fit for the world and the story. Thinking about the issue might lead to better writing, and that is a good thing. But good writing does not explicitly need a thought on the issue, social relations should not get updated to our current norms simply cuz. As you say, imagination is why we read, but you have to take into account that it may lead to worlds of equality between the sexes, or worlds where women are more than men, or worlds where women are considered less than men. It’s not the equality between the sexes that’s important, but the quality of the writing.