So I was sat down thinking about the direction of my own serial over on Jukepop, and I realised there were significant changes I needed to make when it comes to editing to make some of my female characters stronger. It wasn’t that I had purposefully written them that way, just that in my haste to get to know the main character better, I had treated some of my sub-characters appallingly.
I started writing a list of things I needed to look for in my own writing, and I thought I’d share that here on my blog.
- Does she have her own developed character arc that furthers the plot?
There is nothing more irksome than a woman being included to literally act as a foil to a male character. Don’t use a woman just to make a male character vulnerable, please. Don’t use her to advance your male character’s plot and character growth only to discard her afterwards (or have her appear at the end as his trophy for winning!).
You may think this trope has disappeared from modern writing, but that’s not true. Think about Bond Girls, or even Daredevil’s Claire Temple, who only appears to patch up the hero when he’s wounded (physically or mentally). These are classic examples of the kind of female characters I’m talking about.
If your woman is only appearing to the advantage of your male characters, then you probably have run foul of this.
Examples: The Villainness Who Swaps Sides to Help the Hero, The Mystical Goddess/Witch/Sorceress/Fairy Who Aids the Hero’s Quest, The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Bond Girls.
2. Does she have agency?
Agency is an easy way to see if your character is impacting the story, or being impacted upon by the story. There’s a subtle difference. Think of it as whether or not your character is the toy of destiny (or you the writer throwing horrible events at them) or if their choices impact on their own fates (or you the writer allow them to make decisions that impact the flow of the plot).
Frozen is a fantastic example of two characters on both ends of the spectrum. Elsa may be impacted heavily by the plot, but she has little agency over her own actions. She loses control of her magic because her father taught her to conceal it for so long, she freezes the Kingdom by accident, she runs away because she isn’t accepted by others, she returns because she’s captured and in the end she gives up and prepares to die over the loss of her sister. Contrast that to Anna, who chooses to get married, chase after Elsa, return to the city for true love’s kiss and give her life for her sister - it’s clear to see who has the most agency out of the pair.
Yes, Elsa builds a kick-ass ice castle, but when it comes to every other major event in the film, she doesn’t do much.
It doesn’t have to be an attack on romance writers either. Even in romance - agency matters. Let’s stick with Disney and look at The Little Mermaid. Ariel is desperately in love with Eric, but it is through her own agency that all elements of the plot are driven forward (until the killing of Ursula that is). She makes choices and deals with their consequences. Of course, The Little Mermaid is problematic in other ways, but you can’t argue that Ariel doesn’t push her own story forward, even if it’s in pursuit of a man.
Examples: Ariel (The Little Mermaid), Anna (Frozen), Katniss (end of The Hunger Games).
3. Does she pass the Bechdel test?
The Bechdel Test is a generally basic test that can be applied to modern media. To satsify the requirements of the test the media must:
- Have more than one female character
- The female characters must interact with each other
- They must talk about something other than a man
You’d be surprised how many pieces of modern media fail this basic test. Even the most classical of tales, however, made some attempt to give their heroines lives away from men. Elizabeth Bennett, in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, may spend most of her time fighting against men and their influence on her and her sister’s lives, but there is still time given where she visits friends and travels Yorkshire with her Aunt and Uncle. She speaks to her sister about her sisters also. And yet, some modern media can’t even pass this basic benchmark.
Give your woman something to say other than swooning over how hunky your hero is.
Examples of media that passes the Bechdel Test: Legally Blonde, Mad Max: Fury Road, 50 Shades of Grey (surprisingly).
Examples of media that fails the Bechdel Test: Harry Potter (movies), Star Wars, Lord of the Rings
4. Have you described her body but never her body language?
If I had a penny for every time I’d read a male writer talking about how a woman’s skirt rode up her thigh, I’d be rich. You see, the thing is that writing for the male gaze, it’s easy to forget that women do have body language. They are not just legs and ass and breasts. They actually are doing something with their body that probably has nothing to do with the fact that you’re distracted by that ‘soft expanse of sun-browned skin’.
Study the women around you. You have a friend who is flirty and fun? How does she show that with her body? Don’t look at her clothes (we’ll get to that later), but instead look at her hands, her expressions, her feet. Does she cross her legs and uncross them? Is that why you got a look at her thigh perhaps? And if so, what does that mean? Is she flirting, or is she defensively closing off her body? Or is it just that she’s relaxed and not paying attention?
The biggest offenders for this are often fantasy writers. I remember distinctly putting down George RR Martin’s books to never pick them up again when Daenarys, a strong teenaged character, apparently spent time during her busy time trying to take over Westeros to think about how pointy her nipples were. I mean, really? REALLY?
Fantasy authors often won’t allow women to be ugly. The men can be bearded brutes, but the women are always perfectly beautiful who cry single, perfect tears. Allow your characters freedom to make ugly expressions, the flush with anger, to have their hair come out of its bindings or to cry big, fat, ugly sobs. It’s much more realistic than having them be untouchable.
Examples: Elven ladies in Lord of the Rings
5. Have you avoided harmful stereotypes?
Are all your women kidnapped and having to be saved by the hero all the time? Is your castle cook a woman? Are all the women in your novel either maiden, mother or crone? There are a million sexist stereotypes, and it is impossible to avoid them all and still tell a story in which something bad happens to a woman.
You can read about them here:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenderDynamicsIndex
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GenderAndSexualityTropes
Be aware of them. Don’t fall into the trap of having a female character who is so stereotyped and filled with tropes that women can no longer recognise her as anything other than a plot device.
6. Are all your ‘strong’ women coded male?
It happens a lot but in order to create a strong character, often all traces of their femininity get removed. The example I like best is Katniss from the Hunger Games, in order to make her strong, her behavior is coded very strongly male. The way she speaks, acts and and is portrayed in the quadriology says more about the expectations of men than of women.
There is a fantastic thought piece at the Escapist by moviebob (http://moviebob.blogspot.jp/2013/12/the-big-picture-pink-is-not-problem.html which explains this far better than I ever could.
Essentially, a woman doesn’t have to be overtly feminine at all, but there’s nothing wrong if she is. A classic example of a strong female character who isn’t coded male is Sailor Moon. She uses the power of love and pink and sparkles, she dedicates her life to love and saving the universe, and she’s the most powerful being in that universe. Yeah, she gets worried about body image, and dating, her grades at school, looking pretty, but she also kicks plenty of ass while still being coded very, very, very firmly female.
Positive examples: Sailor Moon, Maleficent, Hannah Montanna
Negative examples: Katniss
7. If you’re writing a POC, please avoid the word ‘exotic’.
Don’t compare POC women to food. Don’t write about their ‘almond-shaped eyes’. Don’t fetishize their race. Don’t wrongly associate cultures or expressions based on a stereotype.
Not all Black women are sassy.
Not all Asian women are submissive.
Not all Middle-Eastern women are modest.
8. Don’t forget about issues that are unique to women.
Okay, so we don’t necessarily want to read all about Bella Swan’s menstruation woes (and in the context of a vampire novel I’d worry about where that was leading in any case), but especially if you’re writing Young Adult fiction with teenage girls in mind, you may need to be aware of the kinds of things that are different between men and women.
Tamora Pierce’s books stuck with me when I was twelve because her female characters dealt with things that happened to every woman. They were awkward sometimes. They began their periods and had to get advice. They developed breasts and suddenly their male friends noticed making them uncomfortable. The stories were so different from the other fantasy stories I’d read because they actually paid attention to the fact that a teenage female heroine is going to be going through these changes. While the male protagonists of similar fantasy stories were angsting over growing in their first beard (something I hopefully will never be able to relate to despite how persistent that one hair on my chin is), I found something in Pierce’s heroines that impacted me greatly.
And it’s not just teenage girls. There are a whole host of things that men and woman think about differently. Motherhood is different to fatherhood, pregnancy isn’t always the stereotypical weeping and insane cravings, the menopause might hit older female characters. There’s a whole host of things that can be happening - and they’re rarely acknowledged, nevermind explored, in fiction unless the purpose of the story is to deal with those specific issues.
Postive examples: Tamora Pierce, Tad Williams, Neil Gaiman
9. Have you had a woman read your work?
Even if you’re a female writer, get another woman to look over your work. Even better yet, get someone to look at it through a feminist lens. If you find yourself responding to their criticisms by saying things like “BUT IN THAT TIME PERIOD-” or “BUT THAT’S HOW THE WORLD IS-” then stop and take a few deep breaths. If you’re meant to be inside a woman’s head, telling their story, you probably shouldn’t have to be relying on excuses to defend your characterisation of her. It means somewhere, you’ve probably made a wrong turn and you need to go through and see where you’ve gone wrong.
10. Does it matter what she’s wearing?
Spending a lengthy amount of time describing clothes is always considered a sign of bad writing - but you’ll often find it applied more to female characters over male ones. Women are coded by what they wear. A woman in pants? Tomboy. A woman in a ballgown? Princess. A woman with armor? Warrior (even if that armor is a bikini it seems).
But does it matter what she’s wearing? Just like the body language point above there’s no reason to describe what’s being worn unless it’s doing something interesting. In The Hunger Games, Katniss’ clothes are literally political messages as well as showpieces and, when in the arena itself, indicators of her ability to survive. That’s a good example of when you should be describing clothes.
A bad example would be something like 50 Shades of Grey, where after we are introduced to Anastasia Steele, we probably can guess she’s wearing jeans and t-shirts or long skirts when given the choice most of the time. It’s only interesting if it’s something that furthers the plot (and let’s not get into 50 Shades too deeply, because I could write an entire hundred point article on how that book fails on almost every level).
If you want an extreme, but humorous example, check out My Immortal, the most amazing Harry Potter fanfiction ever written. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed by the sexualisation and generally boring details of what ‘Enoby’ is wearing.