[alison]

I'm very interested that women are so prominent in Australian fantasy writing. (This author forum seems symptomatic, although there are many others - Isobel Carmody, Sara Douglass, Jennifer Fallon, Lian Hearne, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Natalie Jane Prior, Kate Forsythe all spring to mind - and there are many more - ). It gives the lie to the idea that fantasy is boy's business, all that Warhammer stuff. Anyway, it made me wonder if women bring anything different to the genre - is there a difference between SFF written by men and women?

[Tari]

Hey Alison,

Have you noticed that female fantasy always have heroines and most of the time they fall in love with one of the other characters. mind you that happens with most female protagonists. also female writers bring a feminist look at what is (most of the time) a world where men go to war and women fear and hide? It gives Fantasy a look through a womans eyes rather then through a mans and how writers in general . . . . well people in general it is considered that females can easily show emotion whereas men have difficulty and i think that can flow through into the characters in the books.

[alison]

Well, in the classic fairytale, the beautiful princess marries the handsome prince: so maybe that's not exclusively a woman thing. Is it true that women are less likely to write the kind of plot that involves helpless and large breasted females being rescued by heroes? Or might the romance plot be a different version of that same thing?

I'd like to think that there's not a great deal of difference, ultimately; at least, no more difference than between different individuals of the same sex. Men can certainly write attractive heroines (in YA writing, there's Phillip Pulman's Lyra, and Garth Nix's Lirael and Sabriel). It seems to me that female protagonists are more common than not, these days. But I think that it's true that women are more likely to bring a feminist perspective; Le Guin is good at that, in some of her science fiction and the later Earthsea books.

[tuttle]

Hi Alison and Tari,

I think men and women generally think differently in that they approach problems from different perspectives, not just in fantasy writing, but in life in general. This would tend to make the stories different based on the sex of the writer, but those differences are minor when measured against indivualistic styles.

In a broad sense, I think women writers are more descriptive than men, while men tend to weave a more intricate plot, but there are many exceptions to this generalization. If you want to have fun some dreary weekend, have a friend prepare some reading material for you (excerpts, or books without covers so that you cannot tell who the author is). Read a chapter and try to guess the sex of the writer. It can be fun!

An interesting twist would be a book written by a mix team. One of the examples I can think about off the top of my head is Raymond Feist and Janny Wurts. Their Empire Trilogy was, in my opinion, a much greater work than either of them had put out alone. I would like to read more fantasy written by a male/female team. Better yet, I would like to team up with a female and write one, but that is not on the schedule in my immediate future.

[Eventine]

There was a thread about this in the main forums a while back, and basically there were as many opinions about how well women write men and vice versa as there are days of the year.


Have you noticed that female fantasy always have heroines and most of the time they fall in love with one of the other characters

I'd like to mention Robin Hobb's Farseer books as having one of the most believable male characters I've read, so I'm not sure if the "always" is really valid there :)

[glendalarke]

I asked that q on another Message board, and several male respondents said that women writers are far too kind in their portrayal of male characters, attributing them with far finer motives than men actually had... :D .

[alison]

I like the idea of noble male characters. It is fantasy, after all... ;) where else are we to find them?

But it's kind of interesting to make these generalisations and see if they hold true. For instance: if women do tend to be more descriptive, does this make the highly descriptive prose of Tolkien (who has pages of descriptions) or Mervyn Peake (who is almost nothing else) feminine? If a man writes a romance between a man and a woman, is it a more manly romance? I'm willing to bet that in most cases it would be hard to tell the sex of the author. At various ends of the scale, I'm pretty sure that I would guess that Anne McCaffrey is a woman, because she imported aspects of romantic novels into fantasy; it would be hard to guess Le Guin's sex from the early Earthsea books, though a woman would be much more likely to write the kinds of critiques of male-centred knowledge in her last two books. But still, it would certainly not be beyond a perceptive man.

Perhaps a more interesting question might be why so many more women are attracted to writing SFF than in the past.

[TheBob]

Jennifer Fallon is australian?? wow, thats so cool, shes one of my favourite authors, apart from you, Alison and Trudi Canavan. I find fantasy books with women as main chararacters are really interesting and I prefer them more then books with male main characters, like the latest Tamora Pierce book, Trickster's Queen, Aly is so evil in that. (has anyone read that yet? :confused: )

[glendalarke]

Alison, I suspect that it is not so different to mainstream writing - there are just now so many women out there developing the confidence to go for it, no matter what the kind of writing. There's also less discrimination...

The interesting thing is not just that women are writing great female characters, but so are men. Gone are the days when women in fantasy, as portrayed by men, were either the well-endowed Amazon with sex on her mind, or the virginal simpering heroine who had to be constantly rescued. Now we get men writing many-faceted women characters who are also the main protagonists...

Certainly at the moment in Australia we women are dominating the numbers though!

[Tari]

Tamora Pierce book, Trickster's Queen, Aly is so evil in that. (has anyone read that yet? :confused: )

I shall refer you to my friend Emma who is Tamora Pierce mad and i know has read Tricksters Queen.