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18 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 52: My Inner Woman” -
Gary Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 5:04 am
Am I being simplistic here? If I think people are just people? And if you put them in situations they react like people?
I once wrote 180,000 words entirely from a woman’s perspective. Women said I nailed it.
And because I used an androgynous pen name the editor thought I was a thirty-something lesbian, instead of a sixty-something heterosexual male.
When she found out, she had to sit down and have a cup of tea.
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Jen Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 5:47 am
Long-time stalker, first time commenter. I just wanted to say ‘yes’! Except as a woman trying to write men. Or as a straight person trying to write gay characters.
I think with enough practice you can separate ‘here is some human behaviour’ from ‘oh my god dude this dude is different waaaaaaah’ I find I’m becoming better at imagining how people would react to the world based on where they come from vs. the cartoony surface characters I used to do… a combinatinon of practicing writing and just plain getting older and actually listening to more people?
Thanks so much for your finish your novel series, by the way. It is awesome, I recommend it all the time.
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Bonnie Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 7:40 am
Having dreamed last night that I had a long visit with Nora Roberts, I’m feeling rather blessed in a writerly way today, and so will take my courage in both hands: what you are describing is what I imagine it must be like to really be “in the zone” as a writer. Not being very athletic, I’ve seldom had that sense of letting my body take over and do what comes naturally, trusting it to be right–since the prerequisite to that is way more training than I’ve ever had (a few brief illusions of it, maybe, when skiing a couple decades ago). But I imagine this transcendental moment when you move from dogged plotting and planning and your characters take on a life of their own. Mannerisms of speech and gesture that you may have been unconsciously observing all your life animate your characters and imbue them with personalities you never dreamed of. At least that’s how I imagine it might work when you’re having a really good day!
It’s Simeon’s ultimate irony, maybe, that he has the capacity to deeply love, but what he fears is how that love makes him vulnerable. Poke isn’t afraid to love but has enough sense to still fear women, in a different, more realistic way.
Some writers can adopt a “foreign” voice and do it well, whether it’s a different gender, ethnicity/class, sexual orientation. Some do okay, some blow it completely, some are amazing. If you haven’t, read Woman Lit by Fireflies by Jim Harrison. It’s just a novella so doesn’t take long, but I am astounded that such an uebermacho guy can write from a woman’s point of view so well.
The all-female part of Queen worked for me, for what that’s worth, and as I think I told you I had a mental picture of Austin Scarlett cutting Rose’s hair! It’s probably harder for me to access the point of view of a person whose parents would sell her into prostitution, but I didn’t question the femaleness of the characters for a moment.
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EverettK Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:37 am
Thank you, Tim, for making me laugh the first thing in the morning. Not by what you wrote (sorry), but that picture you chose for the column. Yeesh.
As for what you WROTE, I’d say that it’s a sign of your growing maturity (note that I didn’t say ANYTHING about your advancing age) as a writer. As I was reading CRASHED, my interest definitely perked up when Trey, Rina, Thistle or Doc were in the scene. The other characters were fine, but when I think about the book now (about three weeks later), those are the characters that stick in my mind and thus have to be the ones that leaped off the page for me. Besides, Junior, of course. 
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Laren Bright Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:51 am
Yes. You’re saying that women are not just men in dresses, that no man can really know what it’s like to be a woman, but you were willing to see if you could somehow channel a woman’s consciousness such that it was real an believable.
Having ready all your books and not thought about it until you brought it up, from a male perspective, you seem to have been successful. However, it will be interesting to see what the women think.
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Larissa Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 8:51 am
That’s a tough one. I tend to feel the same way about guys sometimes though-there is a character in my one attempt at writing that makes sense to me-and he’s a boy. I also found that the boyfriend of my main character is easier to write than my female main character.
I don’t know why that is for me either exactly-maybe I feel more comfortable writing someone who feels or acts in ways that I inherently believe could never be attributed to me so therefore I don’t have to worry about what people will think of the character aka me…
maybe I’ve spent more time analyzing the opposite sex than I have women because I’ve had to to be able to read their emotions, judge what they’re saying, etc. without putting the “female twist” on things that sometimes happens…
Maybe it’s a Freudian thing and it goes back to the basic relationships and feelings of understanding between parents and family dynamics…
Who knows. It could also be that the characters we’re writing that happen to be male or female are just the “right characters” and it’s not actually about gender. It’s just what needs to happen for the story. Which sounds a little bit touchy feely especially in relation to your previous post about visual arts….which I’ll be commenting on later (c:
Writing characters or split personalities, however you want to put it, is a strange process. Thoughts and ideas don’t really have genders I don’t think(unless you’re first language isn’t English-go read that study sometime. It’s cool.)-but they can be molded by the minds that get a hold of them into something identifiably male or female.
I dunno. Now I’m going about in circles. (c:
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Suzanna Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 9:33 am
Hi, Tim
When I was studying child development about six years ago the research behind gender differences was very interesting. I learned that there are some very distinct differences between the sexes. How they see the world, how they act has been studied and completely mapped out.
But the way I see it there are men and women who defy all of the academic research. Traits that we assign a specific gender are less pronounced or more pronounced depending on the individual person. So in that sense I think that it’s probably a good idea to stay flexible in your perspective about those gender differences. I hope this doesn’t confuse you more!
Over the past year whenever you have brought up the fact that you feel unsure about how you portray women in your books I have to admit I’ve been a little confused. Because while I understand that writing from the female perspective probably is very intimidating to you since you feel that for the most part you’ve only portrayed women in roles as useful as “furniture,” to borrow your word, I have to vehemently disagree with your self-assessment.
You may not have had any sisters, or daughters but you have a remarkable power of observation, a fertile imagination, and your writing talent to give all of your characters, male and female, a high degree of believability.
Perhaps it’s just the simple fact that featuring females more prominently in your work feels like new territory that makes you feel unsure, but I also think that feeling a little unsure is a great thing for an artist because it’s exciting to push your limits and tackle something that is a little scary.
I think that over time the more female characters that you spend time with on the page the more your female characters will come to life as effortlessly as Miaow. At least that’s what I’m betting on!
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 11:53 am
Okay, I’m about to second many of the others in this. You have been observing, and writing, and living for some time, and what you call your “multiple personality disorder” is really a result of empathy. The ability to get into the skin of another doesn’t necessarily follow gender lines. You are married and you know women, and you have a great imagination. Miaow is delightful, and very real and refreshing, even if you haven’t had a daughter. Somewhere you have seen someone like her, and she is now one of your “pearls” as it were, grown from some part of your vision. All this is my humble opinion, of course.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 2:54 pm
Wow, I had NO IDEA this post would ensnare so many of you. But now that I have you, and the doors are locked — Are they locked, Igor? — yes, at last I can tell you my (heh heh heh) plans for you. (Regard those italics and weep, Gary and Everstt.)
Okay, too much coffee.
Gary, you’re NOT a thirty-something lesbian? Wait until Ursula finds out. Well, maybe it’s just my hangup, but I never felt that I had any idea at all what women were like when we (I) weren’t (wasn’t) around, and having lived through the Sex Wars of the 70s and 80s, I was a bit — which is to say, totally — intimidated. And I’ve never actually felt like I understood women other than the amazing one I married. So it’s a great surprise that all these female characters seem to have lined up for me to write them.
Hi, Jen, and welcome to cyberspace’s most polite melee. I love your line about “imagining how people would react to the world based on where they come from vs. the cartoony surface characters I used to do . . .” Boy, that’s growth, to be able to look back on earlier writing and see its shortcomings without getting all nuts about OHMIGOD I DON’T HAVE ANY TALENT and WHY AM I BOTHERING and other drama-queen (king>) negativity. Probably the bigest step to improvement is being able to do that and taking the ability to live with occasional failure as a license to write on tiptoe all the time, trying to do things you don’t know how to do. Congratulations. And I’m so glad you like the stuff on the site.
Riss, great response. I also am sometimes more comfortable writing a character no one would mistake for me. In QUEEN I originally wrote a couple of short chapters first-person as Howard, and I absolutely could not allow them into the book. My editor rescued me with the brilliant suggestion about writing him in close-up third person at the very end of the book — one of the best suggestions I’ve ever had. And clearly you’re right about the characters being, from one perspective, just what’s needed by the story, although they’re also the people who create the story — plot is, after all, what characters do — and that’s another reason I think the women I wrote in the old days were primarily reactive. I didn’t feel I understood them well enough to hand the plot to them.
Laren, right, they’re not just men in dresses but neither are they another species. Channeling a woman’s perspective was precisely what frightened me, and for some reason Miaow was the thin edge of the wedge that opened the whole thing up for me. The reactions to my writing that have made me happiest this year were the reviews written about QUEEN by female critics, every one of whom bought into Rose’s world without qualifications, or at least without any qualifications they expressed.
More to come, including everyone I seemed to skip — it’s an artifact of how seriously this computer takes the PAGE UP key.
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Phil Hanson Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Tim, I know you’re always open to new challenges and to testing previously unused “literary muscle” as a means of extending your range as a writer, so here’s a challenge for you (if it seems familiar, that’s because it’s based on an old challenge, but with additional requirements):
Write a full-length novel, told from the 1st-person POV, centered around the exploits of a strong, 30-something female protagonist. Raise the level of difficulty by making her bi-sexual (writing her as strictly straight or lesbian is too easy) and giving her sexual encounters with both men and women (not necessarily at the same time–get your mind out of the gutter).
To successfully meet the challenge, your character’s thoughts and actions and dialog must be believable to men, straight women, lesbians and bi-sexual women–in other words, pretty much everyone.
I’m sure you can do this, Tim; the question is, dare you?
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Sylvia Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 5:05 pm
The first time I wrote a story from a male perspective, I was lucky enough to have a very good friend (male) who read it and said straight out that I’d done a bad job. Since then, I’ve improved a lot (I HOPE) and I’ve also read some totally tone-deaf characterisations by men writing about women or women writing about men. So although I like the idea that “people are just people”, my experience is that it is very obvious when someone tries to write about the opposite gender without being very careful about their portrayal. It’s not just about attitudes – speech patterns are *very* different and what’s left unsaid is really a giveaway to me about how well the author is able to portray the gender.
I think that I specifically mentioned to you that I liked the way you portrayed your women of Patpong as being both straight-forward and complicated. (If I didn’t, I meant to!)
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Hi, Bonnie — So did Nora have any good advice? Ask her to drop in on me some evening. Regarding being in the zone, it happens to me ONLY when I’m writing daily, or at least five days a week. The problem is that when the characters start to talk and move around on their own, they’re sometimes no more interesting than I am. The trick (for me) is to give them their head and see where we all wind up. Invariably in the act of writing, say 15 pages, there will be a dozen places where things could have gone one of two or three ways, and if what I wind up with is dreck, I go back in the scene and take one of those alternatives. Sometimes a purely technical approach will make things better: once the scene is written, decide to start it halfway through, which forces you to confront just how little information the reader needs to understand what’s happening. Often, in deleting the setup for a scene, you’ll lose a false start on a character’s part, and suddenly it all works better. But do my characters ever just start talking to me? All the time, and I think that’s true for most writers. The problem sometimes is getting them to shut up. And I’m very happy the women in QUEEN worked for you. I can’t tell you how many times I almost tossed the whole book.
Everett, thanks for being so nice about the women in CRASHED. I keep forgetting about Trey, but when I was writing her I liked her a lot. I especially had fun writing the scenes where she and Thistle locked horns. They were so different and so alike at the same time. It’s funny about Thistle — as dumped-on as she is, she was still a star for much of her life, and stardom really does change people. She has that button available to her in her dealings with other people, but it’s useless when she’s alone with her fears. I laughed at the photograph, too.
Suzanna, why are you so nice to me? What have I done to deserve all the things you say? (Full disclosure: when I met Suzanna, she was four years old.) I appreciate your kind words about the women in the earlier books, but I really have to remember that I wrote them through Simeon’s first-person, so any shortcomings in the way they’re treated is really his fault. He’s learned a lot about women since his last outing, though — he hasn’t even met Madison face-to-face yet in PULPED and he’s already looking at her differently than he did the female characters in the first books. I also have to say that part of my issues with writing women was probably rooted in hearing many, many women say that men couldn’t write women, although most of then weren’t willing to concede that some women also have trouble writing men.
Hi, Lil, and thanks to you, too. I love Miaow, and writing her definitely opened me up to the possibility of writing more girls and females — even the central character of the big stand-alone thriller I’l be writing in six months or so is a woman. I still find it interesting. (Miaow is, by the way, based on a real child, a homeless girl I met in Bangkok 25 years ago. I’ll tell her story in a blog some time.)
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 22nd, 2010 at 10:00 pm
Hey, Phil — Gosh, why not have her speak Urdu and be burdened by an exoskeleton, too? It’s enough of a stretch for me to have this whole gallery of women who seem to be waiting for me to write them (I’ve even been thinking of a thriller with THREE female protagonists. Maybe I could divide those characteristics up among those characters instead of giving them all to one.) But you don’t mention their politics or their religious backgrounds or their . . . Well, you mention quite enough. Seriously, it’s a stretch for me to get to the end of every page I write. And I’m flattered to think you believe I could pull that challenge off, because the very prospect makes my palms perspire.
Sylvia, it’s interesting that you think you failed on the basis of just one reaction. Characters are pretty complicated, and gender is only one aspect. I really do like the idea that what’s left unsaid is different for men and women. That’s something to think about, since I seem to be writing a high-IQ woman who uses her intelligence mostly to second-guess herself and who passes judgment not only about the things she says but even the things she thinks sometimes. I have to think about that. Writing is so much about what they say and so little (for me, anyway) about what they don’t say. Hmmmm.
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kathleen lockhart Says:
November 23rd, 2010 at 3:45 am
Here’s my thought on how men and women differ: men are about things–that’s what they talk about. Women are about people and about feelings. If you want to make a man squirm, ask him how he feels about his daughter, son, wife. The room goes silent. Sometimes, just to be difficult, I wait the man out, staying silent myself. I’m sure men have their own version of this game, from the other side. But how can I relate to a CAR, for pete’s sake???
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Debbi Says:
November 24th, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Elayne Boosler once said, “I’m just a person trapped inside a woman’s body.”
I think that pretty much sums up my feelings.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 24th, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Hi, Kathleen, and thanks for coming by. I think the trick of writing either men or women is finding a character who contradicts just enough of what’s expected to make them hard to predict, but who are recognizable enough to be “realistic,” whatever that actually means — realism is just convincing artifice, I think. But I haven’t given it that much thought.
Debbi — NOW YOU TELL ME???? You’re partially responsible for my being in this position in the first place. Debbi is the reviewer, everyone, who gave BREATHING WATER a great review but had reservations about Rose, calling her “arm candy” — and, partially as a result of that comment, I wrote THE QUEEN OF PATPONG. If it hadn’t been for that, I might still be writing about characters named Biff and Spike.
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Debbi Says:
November 25th, 2010 at 7:14 pm
LOL! I guess I’ve never been big on defining people based on gender. The way I see it, everyone’s different and it’s hazardous to generalize simply because someone is male or female.
And if my comment contributed toward your decision to write THE QUEEN OF PATPONG, well, that just kind of blows me away.
Um, glad I could help?
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
November 25th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
Debbi, it absolutely did. I knew I was going to go back in time with Rose sooner or later, but your review persuaded me that sooner was a good idea. So you can blame yourself for all this whining I’m doing about female characters.
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