World Building Part I: Writing Female Characters

Sunday August 10, 2014

What better way to start writing about writing than to jot down a few thoughts about writing female characters, especially in science fiction. Stay with me here, I don’t think I’m going to blow any minds - especially those of ardent science fiction fans, but this is important stuff.

Women don’t get fair representation in science fiction for the most part. #FemShep from the Mass Effect trilogy is the most notable recent exception that comes to mind, mainly because she has the same dialogue and kickass abilities as #MaleShep - the only difference between them is their sex. Not so for most of the girls, ladies, and women of science fiction.

One of the primary problems with women represented in science fiction today is that they are barely represented! If you haven’t found out what just happened to The Wasp from the Avengers universe, stop reading now, and go search your browser of choice. This article will still be up in two minutes.

Star Wars (oh how I love thee despite this) has two female roles in the upcoming Episode VII, and ONE in both the original and new trilogies. TWO. ROLES. If you asked a handful of sci fi fans who their favorite female character in all of the genre is, it will be limited to a handful of memorable leading ladies, and mostly sidekicks.

The other problem is that women are written much differently from men (this will be addressed below.) Pop culture is catered to extensively in science fiction - it’s how tickets are sold, DVDs are moved, and video games are played. Even some of the hardest core female characters in sci fi end up getting saved by the leading man, in a specially heroic way, and if she didn’t have romantic / sexual feelings for him before, she does now! Nothing makes me want to scream “Bullshit!” and throw my tub of popcorn at the screen more than this one set up.

What’s more is that women are sexualized and stereotyped in sci fi. There are a handful of female archetypes, and none of them are very good: The hardcore military lady who inevitably dies, the skin tight body suit martial arts lady who gets saved by tougher male protagonists (Ahem, Black Widow.) The meek, genetically modified or surgically altered woman who needs to be protected ALL the time (except when she goes on a rampage.) Finally, there is the representation, mainly in visual mediums, of women wearing the same armor or clothing as men, except tighter, more revealing, and more bullshitty.

I may have oversimplified the archetypes above, but think back through the popular science fiction you have seen or read recently. Search your feelings. You know it’s true.

George R. R. Martin said that the key to writing female characters is treating them as people. Nothing could be more accurate. Few movies have multidimensional characters - there’s just too little time to really develop them. There’s no excuse for that in writing. Using an archetype in your writing and leaving it as is… well that’s just lazy writing. You’re writing about templates and skeletons really, and while this may be okay for an hour and forty-five minute film you’ll have trouble capturing and entrancing your readership if your work is a written medium. People want complexity, three dimensions, four if you can manage it! So here are a couple of quick rules for writing women in sci fi.

Are your women people? This test is pretty straight forward. Can you replace a female character’s name with a male name and have that character blend in with your male characters? If your writing around that character stands out as markedly different, I would go back and address those differences. Your writing voice and descriptors shouldn’t differ too much between male and female characters.
The Bechtel Test. This is more a test to see if your work classifies as feminist or not, but if you have female characters, it’s a good starting point to see if your characters are even realistic.
- Do you have two or more female characters in your story?
- Do they talk to each other?
- Do they talk to each other about a topic other than men or a male character?

That’s the test. If you answered all three in the affirmative, you pass. If not, seriously consider going back and changing it.

The reason I urge making your work include more realistic portrayals of women, making your work feminist if possible, and making your work more representational of women is that unless you’re writing about the Omega Woman, chances are your world is about 50 / 50 women / men. This is about world building! This is about making a compelling story. Having well developed male characters is important, but if you give them template female characters to interact with, your story is not going to capture as many readers, and your story is not going to be as good as it could be.