Helping Boys Relate To A Heroine

It's actually a fairly interesting situation: The heroine I've got is a fairly girly girl complete with a love for dressing up. About the only thing masculine she does is that she fights demons, gets seriously injured (i.e. loses a hand and foot and must get Replacement Limbs), and likes blowing things up. Other than that she's just a regular girl. My question is, how do you make a feminine character boys can relate to?

I think it depends on the individual and not just genders. Everyone is different and relates to characters differently. For example, I am male but I have related to both male and female characters (ranging from Batman in my sadder moments to Sakura Kasugano).

What kind of target audience do you have in mind?

Personally, I relate equally easy to protagonists of either gender. I think the gender matters much less in this case then what you have her do in your story. If you spend most of the time describing her shopping tours, complete with Costume Porn, then yeah, the male readers will not be exactly thrilled. But if every time she goes shopping, she is attacked by fire-breathing zombie demons, they'll buy it.

The trick to writing female characters appealing to the male audience is IMO to balance out strength and vulnerability. Strength, so that she doesn't become overshadowed by males around her and doesn't come off as The Chick. Vulnerability, so that the ancient male instinct to always protect the girl is hit hard repeatedly.

edited 7th Jan '11 4:03:38 PM by Koveras

What kind of vulnerability are we talking about? I'd rather have my audience saying, "I hope she's alright..." rather than "Oh no! Don't let her get hurt!"

edited 7th Jan '11 4:20:14 PM by SandJosieph

No. No. No. No. NO.

We do not need stereotypes. A girl character is still a character. The problem isn't that guys can't relate to girl characters, they just don't want to, mostly for social reasons. It's uncommon. My advice is maybe do a bait and switch, with a guy for a character at first, but then go to a girl, so that the male readers are still hooked, maybe.

Just write her as a character. Have fun with her. If you make her feminine, make it a positive and fun trait, not a negative or naggy trait (something that really only seems to be done with gay males, for whatever reason).

The blowing up thing seems like a fun trait all by itself. Wise-ass grin to go with it, and it would be at least an entertaining read.

Basically, if she's entertaining, or the plot is, the relating part will come in as well. Gotta lure them in.

edited 7th Jan '11 4:59:10 PM by MrAHR

I actually had a really fun idea of having the heroine pulling of a really cute pose as an explosion goes off behind her. >:D

Sounds interesting, although it might be a bit hard to pull off in a book. Maybe she keeps scrapbooks of all her detonations?

I second the part about not making girly behavior a bad thing. Real Women Never Wear Dresses is a terrible ugly thing.

Eww, no way! Girls Have Cooties!

^ I haven't personally seen that trope in Real Life since I was like 8.....17 years ago.

Don't be stupid. Just don't.

That out of the way, stop thinking in terms of gender or sex.

That out of the way, you should probably write, as an exploration, in a mindset where there aren't any readers, because if you can ask something like this, your character doesn't much exist there. Think deeper.

You mean like creating gender neutral situations that just happen to be dealt with by a girl?

I have to object to the idea that the protagonist's gender has no effect on the resolution of a situation. There are scientifically proven differences between genders, both biological and psychological, and all of them factor into the character's actions. For instance, the "stereotype" that men get into physical fights more readily has very real reasons, such as the fact that male bodies, on average, weight about 15% more than female. This makes a substatial difference in a fight, since more mass means more inertia to take blows, more kinetic energy to put into a punch, etc.. Therefore, if you write a scene where a male burglar breaks into a martial artist's home, a fistfight is a far, far less likely outcome if the artist in question is female, than if he is male.

Don't get me wrong, I do acknowledge that stereotypes derail many works badly. But that's because the authors don't research the actual sex/gender differences, but instead rely on other author's opinions and visions that often have little relation to reality. Therefore my advice is: learn about the actual gender differences and keep them in mind when writing opposite sex. It won't necessarily increase your character's appeal, but it will make them more real, which is always a good start. So instead of asking "how to make her more appealing?", ask yourself how she would realistically handle a situation typically handled by male heroes in fiction. You'll find that it's not radically different, but there are substantial differences, nonetheless.

As for the vulnerability part I mentioned earlier, you can decide on the scope yourself. Your goal is to have the readers go "Oh God, I want to hug her and tell her it's gonna be alright." ("Oh no! Don't let her get hurt!" is also good, since it means that the readers will hate you and your antagonists when she does get hurt, and any fictional story that invokes strong emotions is a well-written story.) Whether you can pull it off depends only on you. If I had to write such a scene, I would imagine the character who can and would comfort her and write from their point of view, then remove them from the scene and have her crawl out of it on her own. It's cruel but Suffering Builds Character and everybody loves a Stoic Woobie.

That said, vulnerability should be a characteristic secondary to badassitude in your case. So most of the time, your girl should be kicking fire-farting zombie demon ass and only occasionally find herself wounded and alone, only to grit her teeth and move on.

edited 8th Jan '11 5:15:00 AM by Koveras

But WHY should she be vulnerable? Unless Josieph is specifically making a woobie character, it makes no sense!

That's one way to make her appeal to audiences. Plus, it makes it harder to overpower her. A hero needs to get smacked down every now and then to keep things interesting, regardless of their gender. *shrug*

edited 8th Jan '11 8:27:21 AM by Koveras

A hero needs to get smacked down? or they need tough obstacles to overcome?

If it's a fighting story, like the one described in the opening post, then both. :)

Btw, when I was asked why the heroine needs to be vulnerable, it was in a tone suggesting that it was I who wrote in the opening post that she will get injured and lose two limbs over the course of the story.

edited 8th Jan '11 8:34:48 AM by Koveras

Don't describe in much detail her clothing every ten minutes, don't describe plot unimportant shopping at all (unless it serves for character development, obviously) and stuff like that.

I'd normally say forget about what we boys would think of her and just write the damn thing, but "girly" elements in a work is a point against it for me.

On the other hand, it's not so much "girly" elements as "badly written scenes where females do things males usually don't", so don't think to much of it.

EDIT: Oh, and if she didn't have her lost limbs replaced with artificials, that's some sympathy gained from me. Not a suggestion, of course, just saying.

edited 8th Jan '11 11:54:22 AM by Dealan

I find that people who write girly characters tend to not have fun with them. Like, if you look at camp gay guys, you NEVER see a girl written like that.

So uh. Why do you need boys in particular to relate to this heroine?

I'm guessing Josieph heard about how males only relate to other males, but females relate to both genders, and wants the full audience.

As long as you don't go overboard about female centric subjects like cosmetics and dresses you should be fine. It sounds like you've got some fighting in there and the artificial limb thing speaks to me that she's no weakling. With that you should be appeal to appeal to most boys.

"You mean like creating gender neutral situations that just happen to be dealt with by a girl?" (sand)

I mean like creating situations and having them dealt with by a person. There are things that will effect how this person deals with the situation, things like temprement and world view and physical capability, which can all to some degree be influenced by gender/sex, but all of this, unless the story is about, as a main focus, a character finding, revelling in, questioning, or coming to terms with their gender, all of this "masculine characteristics" "Feminine behaviors" stuff should take a backseat to a more individual-personality-based flow of characterization.

Here's a trick, I've done it too because as much as I wish we're not blind to gender/race steryotypes—write the character a man (probably a camp gay one). Their appearance remains much the same, their backgrounds and childhoods are besides-the-obvious identical. Find who they are as a character, removed in your eyes from any assumptions you would have made. Switch her back eventually, but only after you feel like you've gotten to the heart of things.

edited 8th Jan '11 2:07:19 PM by DaeBrayk

If you want to reach both audiences then put the character in situations that would have the same effect on the readers regardless of gender.

I used to have a long explanation here, but since Brevity Is Wit I will keep the following short.

Write the story, worry about whether the reader understands what you are saying during the editing.

I'm actually quite pleased with my heroine as I actually made her as someone I myself would look up to in Real Life. And I'm rather proud of the fact that she started off the drawing board as a girl rather than as a man whom I merely GenderFlipped. In fact, most of my characters (aside from the villains) are the kind of people I'd look up to.