Do you have trouble writing characters that aren't your gender?

[AmysGames]

I mean even then, it depends a lot on the personality of the character. Some guys might give compliments indiscriminately because they don't care how people perceive them, some girls might worry about giving compliments for fear of sounding too flirty, etc. But maybe I just don't write scenarios where these sorts of social norms come up very often.

[BoomerZ]

I just write how I think people would talk. After living for a bit you can see the difference in men and woman. Just like how you write friends different than strangers.

[llobucervallince]

I don't think too much about it but I do use r/menwritingwomen as a reference on how to NOT write women,

just in case

[Leyelle]

r/menwritingwomen

Idk what this is lol

[Animal508]

My current novel is one of the only times I have considered gender when writing characters (namely because some of the characters are derived from gendered archetypes)

Oftentimes when I'm writing, I'll just come up with a character, and only decide the gender at the last minute.

[TheBlacKat333]

It’s less on gender, and more of gender presentation I guess. I’m a dude, but I’ve been told I come across as effeminate sometimes, and “girlier” characters are easier to write for me than masculine ones

[ladyofthedarkwoods]

Idk, I write people. Their genders are pretty much irrelevant in that regard. I don’t like to put my characters into typical gender roles either way.

[llobucervallince]

Basically is a thread in Reddit where people post about books in which men describe women... in their own way.
This includes old misoginy from the early XX century and before:

Or basically men going through physical details that usually focus on the "sexy" parts:

Again this is NOT how to write a woman, please do not think that I'm taking this as actual reference.

[Leyelle]

it always depends on the person yes, and the scenarios, but there are specific situations that men versus women tend to have different problems with, and so I was wondering how other people deal with writing from perspectives they (probably) can't relate to in the same way. While some guys might not care whether anyone likes them or not, most are wary of being fired, or arrested, so fear of coming across as harassment would still be a very real factor in their behavior

[AmysGames]

I was wondering how other people deal with writing from perspectives they (probably) can't relate to in the same way.

To answer this specific question, I try to put myself in the character's shoes to determine what their behavior would be in any given circumstance. The majority of my characters have life circumstances very different from my own, so I like to think I'm pretty good at it. Obviously I have blind spots, but it usually comes from differences in beliefs and not differences in gender.

[NickRowler]

I sometimes feel like I struggle to write women...or at least high femme characters.

I guess my suggestion is realize that men and women have more in common then you might think. Sometimes when I write women, I pretend they are male but will just flip their sex.

[UrMom]

Eeeeh honestly? I don't really think about it. Sure, certain genders act and dress certain ways depending on upbringing and social/cultural norms of the area they live in, brain... type?, anatomical development, but gender is sort of an afterthought when designing a character unless I have a specific type in mind. OR I want to tackle a specific upbringing. As far as I know I don't struggle with any of them, but I also just do whatever and say "screw it", I've met more than plenty of people who aren't "feminine" or "masculine" enough according to social standards. In the grand scheme of things we're just a bunch of advanced ape-beasts.

(I'm kind of bias as a agender leaning non-binary person, though. Gender doesn't mean much to me.)

[ThunderChicken]

As a gay guy I have very little experience with females, so I probably don't write them well. I certainly don't draw them well (I always get the boobs wrong). Between both of my stories there are two female major characters (one in each).

Wendy, in Wild Nights, Hot and Crazy Days, was my first and only girlfriend way back in high school. She was fairly easy to write because she is an actual person, so I simply wrote her as she is (and we are still in touch, so I have talked to her while writing her, making sure that I don't screw it up).

Lucinda, in Finding Daecon's Way, is a Hecate (woods witch). She is ancient and immortal (as are all Hecates), and I tried to write her as a matriarchal character because she secretly protected Daecon since his birth. I plan on introducing more Hecates in the second volume, including Lucinda's former partner.

[joannekwan]

I don't really focus too much on gender. And there are enough examples in real life and media if I have to write any characters that are super "gender-conforming".

I too wouldn't call myself cisgender, so …

[KevinReijnders]

While I don't think I struggle with it, and try to write girls/women as good as I can. I think it will be unavoidable for my female characters to have gone through a "male-lens" as it were, seeing as that is my primary experience in the world.

That said I don't focus on gender and don't weave the experience of gender in my stories. If I'm being honest it's just not something that interests me all that much.

Though I do often wonder that, since I have a female protagonist, if it's not a weakness of mine as an author to disregard that dimension of potential storytelling.

[Leyelle]

stories definitely don't all have to focus on that element of reality, but i do think it's worth noting in some stories at least, as it can play such a huge role in how people interact with the world

[IndigoShirtProd]

Not particularly, and I identify with others that say they don't think too hard about the genders if their characters when it comes to writing. But to be fair, I'm not writing stories where gender expression and identity are a cornerstone, so it probably won't come up.

[igneriss]

YES. But not always. Most scenes and interactions are fine, I don't really have trouble with that. Friendships, jokes, worries, goals, this is fine. But romance? Oh boy. I already have trouble writing girls in love, and then I'm completely lost when I'm supposed to write a guy in love I guess practice makes perfect so I should just stop avoiding adding romantic love into my stories

[DokiDokiTsuna]

Traits aside though, there are situations that tend to affect male behavior differently than female behavior. Like many men have to consider how any compliments they may want to give will sound for fear of seeming like a creep or a threat, while women often don't, and things like that.

...I feel like, if you understand nuances like ^that, then you're fine. Like, in this day and age (at least in the US), the lingering effects of The Patriarchy are basically it; outside of that, the way a female or male character will speak and act depends much more on situationally-specific details that you can control: lifestyle, upbringing, personality.

I feel like you might be afraid that there's some "secret code" to gender and that if you haven't learned it, people are gonna see through your writing and expose your ignorance...I promise, it's not that complicated. ^^; If it seems like your female and male characters are more alike than different, it's merely because people in general ARE more alike than different, and in a perfect world no one would find this suspicious.

As long as you have a decent amount of variety in your media diet (i.e. plenty of references for how people of different genders are written, even if there aren't many in your IRL life), you're probably seeing everything you need to see. I highly doubt the "breasted boobily" writers are coming up with that nonsense under totally normal circumstances; in fact I'd bet money that they're either so isolated from other media that they have no idea that that's not normal, or they surround themselves entirely with the small subset of writers who DO think it's normal.

[Leyelle]

I feel like you might be afraid that there's some "secret code" to gender and that if you haven't learned it,

i'm actually not worried about that lol, I was just wondering about other people's perspectives on writing gender. i'm not worried about a secret code for writing gender because i know people's personal experiences are each going to effect the way they act as much in one gender as in the other, i just have to get points of reference for most behaviors that don't relate to me, and that applies for men and women alike, and make note of the fact that some parts of upbringing and life experience tend to be spread more consistently across one gender than the other