This is a topic I’ve wanted to discuss for a while now. Not because it’s something that bothers me, but because it’s something that is asked of me…a lot. I recently put out the second book in my sci fi “Alpha Core Trilogy” and it still catches me off guard when I get email and comments from men about my books. To give a bit of backstory, for ten years previous, I wrote historical romance fiction and my fan base was generally female. Not that that’s a bad thing, but when they email, it’s about fashion I mentioned or how hot the hero was. That was what I was used to.
After the release of Edge of Darkness, the first book in my trilogy, I was stunned at how many men liked it. Don’t know why. Just as women are suspicious of male romance writers, I’m sure men were more than suspicious when I came into the picture. But they did contact me and as I cringed reading my first few reviews and bits of emails, I was pleasantly surprised. And the reaction I got from a lot of them was that they thought I had someone helping me because my main character wasn’t a women, but a balls out, hard core man’s man and they could not conceive how I was able to get him on the page as well as I did.
Now, that may sound like an insult, in fact one reader asked if I was a lesbian. I’m not, not that being a lesbian gives you the instant ability to write like a man, but do you know what does? Having a career in a man’s field. And that’s where I got my balls… so to speak.
I grew up in the advent of tech. When my dad’s job transferred in 1980, my parents specifically chose our new house because it was in the only school district in that part of the state that had a computer science curriculum. That may sound trivial now, but in 1980, it was anything but. I can still remember the look on my guidance counselor’s face when I asked to be added to that segment and she said to me, in hushed tones, “You do realize it’s all boys?” And with a smile, I nodded and said, “Yup.” Not because I was thinking “Gee, I’ll be the only girl, I’ll get so much attention”, but because I was thinking “THIS is going to be a challenge.” And I love challenges. It didn’t hurt that my father was an engineer and I had been tinkering around his basement workbench since I was a kid because I love to learn how things work, like tinkerers do, which lends itself to why I can write realistic male characters.
Your given gender does not make you a specialist on your gender. I mean, I am not a typical female by a longshot. I don’t do girly. I can, but I choose not to. Stereotypically, women are emotional, tend to be organized and have that mothering thing going on that helps them multitask like the mothers they are. I don’t have all that. I’m rarely emotional and tend to think logically, like a man (which again I feel is an after effect of being brought up in a male field). Though my life is generally just a daily scattering of tasks, my work areas are organized. And I’m not real good at multitasking unless I’m on a deadline. Mothering? Didn’t get that gene. Not at all. Which is good, given the fact that I am an author and tend to hole myself off from the world for months at a time. It’s not real conducive to raising children.
And like I said, I spent the better part of my life in a man’s field. Moving on from my high school comp sci classes, I worked summers making serial cables for a PC company. Eventually I got my real jobs in the tech field, working many years as a hardware and software consultant, a dB administrator, a web developer and a Microsoft trainer. I also worked in the space tech field (oooh ahhh) as a consultant for the satellite division of Lockheed. In all of these jobs, I held positions of power and had people under me and let me tell you, in the early 90s, it was nearly unheard of for women. When I didn’t have balls, I had to fake having them. Eventually, it sticks.
With all that in mind, writing male characters is easy for me because I tend to think like a guy. Perhaps not on all things, but in writing, definitely. And, I have a lot of guy friends who allow me to be a part of their little club at times and are open about any questions I ask. When I write scenes that are a bit touchier, namely when they deal with my male characters interacting with women, especially sexually, I brainstorm with my guy friends. I ask deeper questions and they answer me candidly and often bluntly, which I prefer.
Also, I’m a female. And I’m not young. I’ve lived with my fair share of men over the years, from friends to boyfriends. None are alike. I know which ones are dogs, and which are gentlemen, and which are in between, so I know who to ask which questions at any given time. And in having spent a greater portion of my life in the company of some pretty fabulous Alpha males, I can say with some satisfaction that I get the male psyche. I understand the thought processes. I know where their minds are going in the situations I put my characters in. And of course, they talk to me. My characters, I mean. I can hear them clearly, how their voices resonate. Their pitch, their timber and their attitude. It’s all there.
So if you’re a woman trying to write a believable male character, especially if it’s your hero, you have to first consider what kind of men you know, who you want your character to be and then ask questions of both of them. All of the questions. This is no time to be squeamish. In my first book, my hero jerks off in the shower in the first chapter. It’s not gratuitous. It’s a common behavior and it fit where the hero was in his head. (And yes, both of my parents have read my books. You just have to suck it up and move through what awkwardness that causes) You don’t need to get into the nitty gritty of the actions, you just have to give them life. People jerk off. People blow their noses. People do a lot of gross things. Their actions have to be natural, organic, otherwise they won’t be believable on the page.
And a good portion of my character narrative is head talking. You learn so much about a character if you see and hear what’s going on in their head. What are their immediate thoughts about a situation? What do they feel? Use the senses. Men are very visual. They tend to react quickly about what they see. Listen to how men talk. Go to a common area like a café and eavesdrop on men talking. Watch and listen to how their candor and stance changes around other men, around other women. It’s all about observation. And then you just inject that part of yourself that’s needed to get your character to breathe.
And then from there, you just sit back and watch.
Bio: Vikki Romano is an admitted techie, geek and nerd. Her love of sci-fi goes back to her influential teen years when she read William Gibson and Philip K Dick with fervor and hoped that one day she’d live to see a Bladerunner world. She lives in the Poconos with her two parrots, and two cats, who oddly get along, and her bearded dragon, who could care less. Her most recent book, “Breaking Point”, is available on Amazon and at most booksellers. You can find her at VikkiRomano.com
Excellent article. You do write amazing characters. And now it makes a lot of sense why.
Thank you for the article! Well done, Vikki.
Aside from the various stereotypical generalizations of what makes people male or female, there’s also this:
“All of the questions. This is no time to be squeamish. In my first book, my hero jerks off in the shower in the first chapter. It’s not gratuitous. It’s a common behavior and it fit where the hero was in his head….You don’t need to get into the nitty gritty of the actions, you just have to give them life. People jerk off. People blow their noses. People do a lot of gross things.”
Which would sound totally cool if the implication wasn’t that by “people” you mostly mean men, and that’s how you write men. “Men are the ones that jerk off in the shower and blow their noses. That’s how they’re different, doncha know? That’s not how you write ~women.”
I’d say more, but I gotta go find some tissue and take a shower.
Viki’s not like all those other illogical, motherly girls! She has balls, everyone! Also, most chicks are too squeamish to write about things like male masturbation (do chicks even masturbate? We just don’t know).
What a pile of inane gender-essentialist horseshit.
“I’m rarely emotional and tend to think logically, like a man”
Some of this sounds like the age old “not like other girls” brag-insult. You say that the description of women is stereotypically emotional and then go on to brag you’re logical like men, not emotional like women. Not only is this insulting to women, it’s insulting to men to perpetually tell them that they can’t be emotional the same way women are. Toxic masculinity can be enforced by women as much as men, and it’s unhealthy for everyone.
Maybe there’s a type of old-fashioned female writer who would find this useful in her old-fashioned way, but so much of this is insulting to both sexes, perpetuates a false binary, and sounds like you’re claiming superiority over your own sex.
Thanks to this article I, a woman, have discovered that I possess the ability to blow my nose and the knowledge men masturbate in the shower. This is some riveting life affirming shit. You did it. You, stalwart hero of House Not Like Other Girls, opened my eyes.
So what you’re saying is, you’re not like those other girls?
I prefer Dorothy L. Sayers’ approach: “A man once asked me how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a large, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. ‘Well,’ said the man, ‘I shouldn’t have expected a woman (meaning me) to have been able to make it so convincing.’ I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.”
I have to agree with deaconbrodie. If you write your characters as if they were real people, then it doesn’t matter what gender/sex they are or what gender/sex you are.
As a childless lesbian in a STEM field I’ve hit hate bingo for this article. Or is that too emotional and illogical?
You’re at the very least in your late 30s and you never grew out of your special snowflake phase… Lord help us.
Well! Isn’t that special.