Do male and female authors write differently?

US MANLY MEN WRITE EPIC BOOKS MORE THAN YOU. I DOUBT THAT LADIES LIKE YOU COULD WRITE THE Dresden Files!

That was sarcasm, by the way.

edited 5th Jun '11 3:34:59 PM by thespacephantom

that

is

beautiful

Jeweleddragon:

Who is that person?

Female sci-fi author who went under a male pen name to avoid attention.

...that makes me feel more conflicted than it should have.

Glad I asked though. Always good to do research before reacting.

Heh, I love that author, too.

Well, I spent years thinking Lois Mc Master Bujold's name was Louis. Does that count?

I thought EB White, dude who did Stuart Little, was female.

EB White is a guy?!

I have a similar story, only not: I've always known Andre Norton was female, but I didn't realize it was supposed to be a Moustache de Plume. I just thought "Andre" was a unisex name. I didn't realize it was supposed to be exclusively masculine.

...I read that as "EB is a white guy?!"

edited 5th Jun '11 5:27:12 PM by MrAHR

Since I never realized that Eoin was the Gaelic form of John/Yochanan and thus a male name, for the longest time I thought Eoin Colfer was female.

edited 5th Jun '11 6:16:54 PM by annebeeche

Heh. I did too.

...I didn't know that.

That Eoin Colfer was male or that Eoin is a Gaelic form of John?

As a female writer I've noticed that female writers tend to splurge on Purple Prose and descriptions, where as the males often use... ehrm, more... Black Humor (cringe) That's just my opinion though. My favourite writer was Paul Jennings

edited 5th Jun '11 8:22:40 PM by sabrina_diamond

I can honestly say I've never really noticed a significant difference in the way male and female authors write. The only time I've noticed differences is when literature is intended for specific audiences; there's worlds of difference between literature written specifically for women, specifically for men, or with a general audience in mind.

"I've had too many experiences in my life of being the first woman in some damned occupation." - "James" Tiptree Jr.

Pretty interesting logic for the decision. It was in the 1960s after all.

"There was speculation, based partially on the themes in her stories, that Tiptree might be female."

That seems to indicate there is indeed some degree of difference in writing between genders.

It's funny though how many male authors were embarrassed at having stated that Tiptree is a male author. Like here: "Harlan Ellison opined that "[Kate] Wilhelm is the woman to beat this year, but Tiptree is the man." "

Sabrina, what do you mean about Black Humor being popular with male authors? I haven't noticed it myself.

I don't buy it, personally. Anne Rice is as girly a writer as you're likely to read, and even she uses black humour.

Many people have no idea that the names "Stephanie Blake" and "James Tiptree, Jr." are pseudonyms. Draw your own conclusions.

ETA: I've noticed a tendency among male writers to write about how the plot is affected by the characters, whereas female writers will write about how the characters are affected by the plot. But that's by no means universal.

edited 18th Jun '11 6:11:32 PM by FarseerLolotea

I'd second that.

Could you give some examples? It's hard for me to think about it from the top of my head. I'm not sure I've seen that, though that speculation sounds interesting.

I suppose we could call Michael Crichton the quintessential "plot first, characters second" writer. There's a bit of gray area, though—Stephen King, for one, is very character-focused.

edited 24th Jun '11 6:46:15 PM by feotakahari

Every now and then I'll see some odd connection between works that seems connected to gender. The books What I Was and The Birthday Boys, both written by British women, seem to have a noticeable focus on the vulnerability of male bodies - bodily functions being mentioned in places where most male writers would probably gloss them over.

That said, I cannot say that I have found any other kind of common gender distinction in writing style - even that observation only applies to two works by British women, which seems very specific.

I would not be a good judge of this, since I've had several experiences where I was reading an article or essay in a paper or a magazine or a Chicken Soup book and thought, just from the writing style, that the author was one gender, and then when I read the name they turned out to be the opposite gender. There was also a case where I read a short story written from the protagonist's point of view, and for the first half of the story I thought the protagonist was intended to be female, from the narrating style. Which is especially strange since the actual protagonist didn't write the narration, because he's fictional. Ray Bradbury wrote the story, and he's also male. Makes me wonder how a male writing narration by a male character managed to sound female. Sometimes I wonder if he was trying to make the protagonist sound like a teenager and ended up making him sound like a woman instead.

Perhaps it will help if I try to think of what made me think the protagonist of Bradbury's story was female. He described events and objects very poetically and in great detail. His narration was very abstract, and he seemed to focus a lot on feelings, such as describing the relationship between his father and mother. He reflected a lot, and very little of the narration was focused on what was taking place in the present — it was mostly exposition, telling the reader what his parents are like, what their relationship is like, how it changes, what his mother is like when her husband is away (he's an astronaut and goes into space often and for great lengths of time), what his father's uniform is like, etc.

Hoo boy... I just went and found the book, and I'm re-reading the story (The Rocket Man, from The Illustrated Man), and boy do I see why I thought the protagonist was a girl:

"The electrical fireflies were hovering above Mother's dark hair to light her path. She stood in her bedroom door looking out at me as I passed in the silent hall."

"The fireflies cast moving bits of light on her white face ..."

"She went away, and the fireflies, on their electric circuits, fluttered after her like an errant constellation, showing her how to walk in darkness."

The protagonist describing his father's uniform:

"And from the opened case spilled his black uniform, like a black nebula, stars glittering here or there, distantly, in the material. I kneaded the dark stuff in my warm hands; I smelled the planet Mars, an iron smell, and the planet Venus, a green ivy smell, and the planet Mercury, a scent of sulphur and fire; and I could smell the milky moon and the hardness of stars."

Describing his parents' relationship:

"But other days she would be there and he would be there for her, and they would hold hands and walk around the block, or take rides, with Mom's hair flying like a girl's behind her, and she would cut off all the mechanical devices in the kitchen and bake him incredible cakes and pies and cookies, looking deep into his face, her smile a real smile. But at the end of such days when he was there to her, she would always cry. And Dad would stand helpless, gazing about the room as if to find the answer, but never finding it."

It's hard to explain, but it just sounds too romantic and almost purple prose-y for a teenage male first-person narrator, even for something published in 1951. And then there's the fact that he's describing things that I doubt most people, let alone most teenage boys, would even notice, let alone recall later and be able to describe so poetically and in such detail. I can't really put it into words, but can you see what I mean? It just sounds to me like it was written by a girl. A romantically-minded girl, at that.

Final note: I saw an episode of CSI: Miami where an investigator identified the gender of someone who wrote a letter, based on how he worded things.

Anyway, that's my two cents. ^^