Writing from the Other Side

I have been told that I have a masculine way of looking at things.

            I’ve been told this many times, from many different people—so nobody was surprised when I, in a writing workshop my junior year of college, mentioned that, even though I was female, most of my protagonists were male. It always surprises me, though, when someone says that they have trouble writing protagonists who are unlike them—hell, if I solely wrote protagonists that met my government checklist, that limits me to White Female 18-26. Take into account other things and it limits me further—sexuality, straight, home, rural North Dakota—and, even though professors have told me that most American novelists (the serious ones, at least) write autobiographically, that just doesn’t cut it for me.

            I don’t want to write autobiographically. Sure, each of my characters has a part of me in them, whether that be an unfailing love for Keanu Reeves or repressing their emotions, but none of them are wholly me. And, like I said—most of them are guys.

            The key to writing characters who don’t share your laundry list of descriptions, I think, is to remember that people are people. No matter their differences, people are people and you have to treat them as such. Write the character first and the descriptor second—sure, a person’s personality is going to be shaped by whatever they are, but if they don’t have a personality in the first place, there’s no use trying to write them. I rarely know a character’s sexuality until they step onto the page and I can see who they have chemistry with.

            Warning: this method leaves you with a lot of bisexual characters.

            The character matters first, though. Get the character down solidly, and the little touches that make them masculine or feminine or gay or straight will come. Or hell, maybe I’ve just got a masculine personality under these dresses and this lipstick. But my characters unlike me turn out just fine anyway—because, masculine or not, I treat them like people.