What makes for a good female protagonist in SF?

[Ara Pacis]

I was thinking about taking up writing again and thought wondered if I should only write about men and boy protagonists, since that's what I know or if I should try to make up a female protagonist. In reading some SF books, such as Heinlein's his female protagonists often seem to be boys in women's clothing, that is to say a man's idea of what a strong women should be, or else they're so science-minded that you can't tell the difference.

FWIW, the story I'm formulating is hard-science, not space opera, so I'm looking for reality instead of stereotype, but I don't want the protagonists bogged down in so much scientific exposition to make it a Nerd-kind with sex/gender tacked on as an afterthought.

Ignoring the obvious biological differences (or not, if you want to explore that), what nuances of situational perception or overall character traits tend to make a protagonist identifiable as female without seeming to be a male-projected stereotype of women? Or do you think the subjugation of a woman's femininity is necessary for a woman to be successful in male-dominated fields (and that I don't need to think about it to write a good story)? Or do you think that men and women are just that similar in the role of a science-minded protagonist that any reader will choose to identify with the character without needing a distinction?

What sorts of examples from literature do you consider good or bad, and why? Or do you think it might be better to leave writing of female protagonists to female writers?

[Buttercup]

Do my intelligence a favor and don't make her *PERFECT.*

Absolutely 100% PERFECT.

Because too many male authors pander to a reverse stereotype (out of fear of being charged as "sexist" if they don't?) of UTTER PERFECTION. Her hair is lustrous. She's built like a Barbie doll. Is a member of Mensa. She's always witty and wise. On and on (puke). In contrast, I suppose, to the previous bubble-headed nitwit who had to be led around by the nose by her "male superiors."

Just make her *human* please. With some strengths and some flaws (all believable).

We females are human. Start from there please.

My 2 cents' worth. :-)

[IsaacKuo]

It's okay to make a female character perfect. There are plenty of ridiculously perfect male heroes. Why not female heroes?

The important thing, in my opinion, is to not try too hard. Instead of second guessing yourself, just make a character you like to write.

[Moose]

It's okay to make a female character perfect. There are plenty of ridiculously perfect male heroes. Why not female heroes?

Because perfect characters, of any stripe, are boring. Often irritating. See Mary Sue. The wiki article cites Wesley Crusher as an example, and in my mind, a very apt example, of a Mary Sue in the wild.

Ara Pacis, a good female character is genuine. To be honest, if you try to work in recognizably feminine traits, you're going to wind up caricaturizating your character. If I were going to try and write a female protagonist, I would somewhat downplay the characterization and make an interesting character. (Meaning: with plenty of room for character growth.) Instead, if I wanted to explore gender issues like that, I would run a neutral character into those persistent minor stereotypes women have to put up with on a semi-regular basis.

True story: I spent some time on a quiet Neverwinter Nights persistent server, intending to explore that very concept. I chose a female avatar. I also set some strict personal ground rules. If someone were to specifically ask my (as in _my_) gender, I would answer honestly. Otherwise, I wouldn't volunteer that info. No lies, except by omission, except my character's extensive back-story which I would role-play where possible. I would not try to "play a female" in any way, nor would I explicitly suppress my personality, except where it would volunteer information about my gender. I would not encourage 'attention', nor would I sexualize my character in any way. I would not otherwise interfere with the assumptions people made on their own. I ran this experiment over a four or five month period.

Observations:
* Nobody ever explicitly asked my gender.
* I suspect one of my regular adventuring partners knew I wasn't female, but he never brought it up. His ladyfriend, however, clearly believed I was playing my gender. (No salacious revelations, thankfully, but I did spend a lot of time sweating that.)
* I got very, very rich, very early due to one guy being... far more generous, regularly generous, than I've ever seen anybody be to a guy gamer. Other high level players were similarly patronizing.
* I did get hit on. Once. A new joiner. I was... typically caustic on the theme of not wanting to be harassed playing a video game. Enough that he apologized, apparently sincerely. (I didn't have to break character or lie, either.)

[Edit to add:] One last observation.
* I'm normally a cautious, patient player. A sniper-type, if I'm honest. But to break through that omnipresent (benign) condescension (see next post) and be respected as a player, I had to change my play-style considerably. As a glass-cannon rogue (believed to be female) playing with much higher level characters, I couldn't hang back playing archer and let the tanks draw aggro. I sure as heck couldn't let myself be a liability and require active protection. I really had to get in up close, past the front line, get in the backstab damage, and be prepared to kite in a useful way (the hide in plain sight perk was a priority) if the boss turned on me. Basically, I had to swashbuckle way above my weight to be taken along. (I wasn't the top rogue on the server by any stretch, though I did become second on the go-to list by level 7.)

[Moose]

I'll just add: a good example of the sort of writing I mean is the character of Peri in the short story "A Quiet One" (Anne McCaffrey, The Girl Who Heard Dragons), if you can get your hands on it. Basically, among her challenges are the usual benign condescension on the part of her coworkers. Nothing overdone, just there.

[Solfe]

My screen name is deliberately ambiguous (Solfe) for the purpose of an RPG game. I just carried it over to BAUT by habit. I found that female characters are invited to parties and raids more often and get to keep more loot. I didn't want a female character so I used made up name of no clear gender.

I find that people don't bother to explain what they are, they just are what they are. If someone is genuinely described and motivated, the gender issue is gone. Personally, I have a hard time writing characters who don't believe what I believe in. In the cases where I do it well, it feels wrong.

[Gillianren]

The best advice I can give is to get a female test reader. I'm hesitant about writing male characters; my father died when I was six and I have no brothers, so my exposure to how males act was limited until I was an adult. I only saw how they acted in public, which is not necessarily the same. My presence meant they were in public. It's only in living with people that you get a sense for what they're like in private, and I'm not sure it's leaked into my writing well enough yet.

I don't think you should focus on the biological differences, but I don't think you should ignore them, either. I agree that developing a compelling character is more important than worrying about whether or not it's a compelling female character, but I do mean it when I suggest finding a test reader. Someone you trust, someone whose preferred reading is similar to what you write. Or at least not someone who hates sci-fi.

[IsaacKuo]

Because perfect characters, of any stripe, are boring. Often irritating. See Mary Sue. The wiki article cites Wesley Crusher as an example, and in my mind, a very apt example, of a Mary Sue in the wild.

Captain Kirk is also an example. Like him or not, he was undeniably a popular character.

If writing an uber-human like Captain Kirk is what you feel like writing, then I say go ahead and write him/her. If not, then don't. I don't think you should be forced to conform to someone else's idea about what is acceptable.

[tnjrp]

Instead of second guessing yourself, just make a character you like to write.

Yes, tho it shouldn't be confused with writing about a character you like.

Personally, I'm tired of borderline (or over-the-borderline) psychotic action hero types and wouldn't write one myself. But there are several at least reportedly good -- or at least popular -- works that feature such so that shouldn't taken as a lead to a quick buck.

[Disinfo Agent]

It's okay to make a female character perfect. There are plenty of ridiculously perfect male heroes. Why not female heroes?

Yeah, but AP said he doesn't want to write like Heinlein...

Basically, I had to swashbuckle way above my weight to be taken along.

That seems to be a good description of the female experience. And while the condescension may be mostly benign in gaming, it's certainly not so in the professional world.

[Van Rijn]

I was thinking about taking up writing again and thought wondered if I should only write about men and boy protagonists, since that's what I know or if I should try to make up a female protagonist. In reading some SF books, such as Heinlein's his female protagonists often seem to be boys in women's clothing, that is to say a man's idea of what a strong women should be, or else they're so science-minded that you can't tell the difference.

It's generally thought that Heinlein's wife, Virginia, was a model, or partial model, for many of Heinlein's female characters (they often have red hair like she did, in some stories they have the same nickname). There are discussions between him and Virginia in Tramp Royale (about a real life travel around the Southern hemisphere) that are very much like a typical story discussion. Of course, he might have remembered the discussion that way, and so subtly changed it. Then again, she apparently was involved in editing his books, so I expect she had some input on this.

[HenrikOlsen]

Have a mental model of her that makes passing the Bechdel test something that happens naturally.

Or write all your characters as males, them go back and change the sex of a few of them afterwards without doing any rewrites except pronoun fixes after that.

I remember several interviews with female or black actors where they mentioned that a role was the best written they'd ever had, because it was originally written for a white male and that was changed at the last moment.

[Swift]

In reading some SF books, such as Heinlein's his female protagonists often seem to be boys in women's clothing, that is to say a man's idea of what a strong women should be, or else they're so science-minded that you can't tell the difference.

I kind of hate Heinlein's female characters (even though I like Heinlein). They seem to be cartoons. He talks about them shoeing horses and then rolling around with puppies and babies, killing space aliens and then crying their eyes out on the shoulder of the male hero, and it kind of makes me want to puke.

I'm not a writer, so I don't have particular advice, but I recognize good female characters when I read them. Ones I particularly remember liking, are Snake from Vonda McIntyre's Dreamsnake and Cirocco Jones from John Varley's Titan series. Actually, Varley has a lot of interesting female characters in his short stories too.

[LookingSkyward]

Jasper Fford's Thursday Next is a female character (not exactly sci-fi) that I really like. A pretty normal person dealing with a very wierd world, well written and believable as a person.

[Paul Beardsley]

Hmm. I hadn't heard of the Bechdel test before. I've just looked it up and it makes me grit my teeth, because I see it as having the potential to do more harm than good.

I'm all for challenging lazy storytelling, and identifying specific areas of laziness are very useful. I dislike the frequency with which nice black men die in movies, for instance. I dislike characters who are motivated solely by their career, especially if their career isn't especially interesting. I dislike the nerd-package portrayal of intelligent young men. (Big Bang Theory gets a pass because the writers always seem to know what they're talking about.) I find fathers and sons resolving their issues excessively boring. I dislike the disdain for real science that some scifi production teams demonstrate, especially where it hurts the story - which is usually the case.

But having a simplistic "test" that supposedly sorts the wheat from the chaff is wrongheaded, IMO. There are already too many bogus obligations. Sure, if having two women talking to each other about something other than men benefits the story, then by all means put it in; if you are doing things that benefit your story, you are likely to have more readers. But doing it just to tick the box is a bad thing for many reasons, and hanging your head in shame for failing the test benefits nobody.

[Strange]

But having a simplistic "test" that supposedly sorts the wheat from the chaff is wrongheaded, IMO.

I don't think that is what it was intended for. It was to show how few movies pass even a minimal level of credibility when it comes to female characters. I like to think that things have improved in the last 27 years. But I'm not so sure....

A nice article on it from a Hollywood scriptwriter (or, rather, an ex-Hollywood scriptwriter): http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-...-bechdel-test/

[Paul Beardsley]

I don't think that is what it was intended for. It was to show how few movies pass even a minimal level of credibility when it comes to female characters. I like to think that things have improved in the last 27 years. But I'm not so sure....

(My bold.) Do you see what you did there?

Take Apollo 13. The main players were the three men in the capsule, and the men at Mission Control. The astronauts were the centre of attention for everyone. Should the women have been talking about something else?

In the Wikipedia article, it pointed out that Sex and the City fails the test. This is a show for women (at least I've never known any male watch more than a few minutes). And I liked Nina Power's observation about how often real life fails the test.

A nice article on it from a Hollywood scriptwriter (or, rather, an ex-Hollywood scriptwriter): http://thehathorlegacy.com/why-film-...-bechdel-test/

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out later.

[Strange]

(My bold.) Do you see what you did there?

Yes, I misspelt "possess" . Presumably under the influence of the word "test". Interesting.

Should the women have been talking about something else?

Well they could have talked about the money invested in space research and the value of sending a man to ... Doh!

[Paul Beardsley]

Yes, I misspelt "possess" .

Ah! The sentence reads better now!

Well they could have talked about the money invested in space research and the value of sending a man to ... Doh!

While I'm guessing this was deliberate, it does kind of illustrate the reason why the test is so often failed.

[Gillianren]

I don't like Sex and the City, and part of that is that it does not strike me as realistic that all its female characters talk about is men. Those women have the kind of lives where they can go off to Abu Dhabi at the drop of a hat--or, indeed, at all--but all that interests them about each other is the men they're sleeping with, or not. Dull, dull, dull. The women who watch that show are primarily watching it for wish-fulfillment. They don't want to be friends with those people. They want to have the kind of choices those people have.

Is the test simplistic? Yes. Does it pretend to be anything else? No. Is there anything wrong with having some movies not pass the test? No. There is no reason, as mentioned, for Apollo 13 to pass the test. However, when even movies intended for female audiences don't pass, that says something about the state of entertainment.

[HenrikOlsen]

Try appying it reversed. What would your reaction be for to movie, one where relationships is not the main plot, where the only thing two men have to talk about is their relationships with the women and the women do all the talking about what's actually the plot of the movie, mostly when the men are not around.

Yes it's a simplistic test. That it hits so often anyway just shows that it's targeting an endemic problem.

[starcanuck64]

I really enjoy what Joss Whedon does with his female characters. They can be tough, confident, even have superpowers and yet have the kind of cracks we all have. I agree with the people who find "perfect" girls annoying and often boring in fiction, as much as I enjoy Heinlein, I don't like a lot of his women characters, it seems to be what he would have liked women to be instead of what they really are.

Make the characters imperfect, then they're real...and interesting.

[HenrikOlsen]

As has been mentioned, not only is it what he'd like them to be, he married one like that which is the main argument to use when people claim he couldn't write realistic females.

Oh, and as far as I remember, they all have flaws as well.

[starcanuck64]

As has been mentioned, not only is it what he'd like them to be, he married one like that which is the main argument to use when people claim he couldn't write realistic females.

Oh, and as far as I remember, they all have flaws as well.

Models also exist and yet they're idealized versions of what we'd like women to be, I find the Heinlein women in that vein.

[Paul Beardsley]

Try appying it reversed.

Yes, but not quite in the way you mean.

Expanding on my earlier thoughts, I regard the Bechdel observation as a positive pointer to better writing. Now that it's been pointed out how rare it is for named female characters in fiction to talk about anything other than men, writers should be thinking, "Hmm, I must look out for occasions when my stories would work better by having named women talk to each other about stuff." Not "OMG I'm such a misogynist!"

A lot of films fall into the category of romance or action. Romances tend to cater to women and tend to be about getting the right man. Action films tend to be driven by males. So it's hardly surprising that they "fail". Offhand, I cannot think of any film that suggests that women talking about stuff doesn't happen; they simply don't show it because that is not what the film is about.

As to the OP's question, I suggest you go about creating female characters in much the same way you'd create any character. Think of two or more people you know, mix and match their character traits, emphasise some aspects that are attractive to you as the reader of your own work, include a couple of quirks that you find interesting or amusing, and decide what they want.

That last bit is key to being a protagonist. A character's story is driven by what they want, how they go about achieving it, what sacrifices they're prepared to make along the way, and how the journey changes them, whether or not they succeed. For example, a detective might be driven by a desire to bring a criminal to justice, and/or to restore her reputation with her colleagues. She might bend the law a little too far, she might take advantage of someone vulnerable to help her progress (as Sherlock Holmes did in that blackmailer story), she might have self doubts, and so on. It's up to you to decide what would she do in the situations you put her in.

Generally, if she is driven, if she's proactive, finds clever solutions for her difficulties, shows a bit of gumption and so on, readers won't care too much about her gender. That's more important, ultimately, than (for example) making her a martial arts expert, but you can do that too if you think you can do it convincingly.

[Ara Pacis]

Thanks for the responses. The story I have in mind is for all people, instead of being written for one gender or the other, so I want it balanced. I've thought about just writing a character and then changing the pronoun after the fact, but I'm afraid that would result in a superficial treatment of a character since so much of how we deal with things is based on gender and in my story, even in the future, we still have gender roles. And it also reminds me of the criticism of society that the male perspective is the natural and neutral/objective perspective and that feminine perspectives must, therefore, necessarily be a deviation from that.

Also, I was thinking of writing a story that appeals to juveniles, but with Hard science as a form of STEM advocacy. But I don't want it to be preachy or merely boring people walking through a technological wonderland on a MacGuffin hunt. I want real scientifically based tech to be seamless and in the background and taken for granted (except when it breaks as the plot demands) and let characterization balance the story. There might be juveniles in the story, and their parents, which presents another problem: I don't have kids. But I digress... So, what I want is good adult characters that can be viewed as role models without being perfect or overly dramatic, but without being so goody-good as to be boring to adults.

[Paul Beardsley]

Writing about John and then changing the name to Jane afterwards is a bad idea. You want to know your character inside out. Heck, changing John to Michael after the fact is bad because it means you haven't imagined your character growing up with the name Michael.

(Obviously changing a character's name and/or gender because you're rethinking the character is another matter.)

Do you have a premise for your story? A central idea?

[starcanuck64]

Here's a short clip from one of my favorite movies - As Good As It Gets - about how to create fictional women characters.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y9BukEBI9c

[schlaugh]

Another plug for John Varley and his treatment of female characters. In fact, IIRC some of the lead characters in his short stories change gender but darned if I can recall how it affected the story arc, the protagonist's viewpoint or, in some cases, their story delivery (because Varley wrote in a first-person narrative.) I'm thinking of his short stories because , I don't recall protagonists changing genders in his novels. But I could be wrong because it's been more than several years since I read any of his work.

[starcanuck64]

Another plug for John Varley and his treatment of female characters. In fact, IIRC some of the lead characters in his short stories change gender but darned if I can recall how it affected the story arc, the protagonist's viewpoint or, in some cases, their story delivery (because Varley wrote in a first-person narrative.) I'm thinking of his short stories because , I don't recall protagonists changing genders in his novels. But I could be wrong because it's been more than several years since I read any of his work.

I'm pretty sure I can recall one, I believe it takes place on Triton.

edit- must have been mistaken, I can't find it.