I'm a teenage girl. But I can't write girls or teenagers.

Whenever I try to write a female character, they fit into one of five stereotypes.

• Yamato Nadeshiko
• Stalker with a Crush / Yandere / Other frightening Love Interest
• The Ditz
• Shrinking Violet
• Flat Character

Whenever I try to write a teenager, I just can't develop them beyond a single defining trait. I theorized that I do that because whenever I create a new character, I think of their occupation first and how the job affects them, like how the act on and off the job, what they've learned and what they've gained from the job, etc. And most teenagers don't have jobs, and if they do have a job, then it's for college or something like that. Which leads to most of my characters being older men.

How and why would that even happen? Is that normal at all? I always hear from some books that you should be able to write what you don't know. Have I maybe taken to heart too much?

edited 18th Feb '11 10:50:47 AM by CrystalGlacia

Interesting, I got the same problem: I'm a boy, and yet I suck at writing male characters. The stereotypes my males fall under are usually The Manly Man, The Handsome Lech, The Casanova (who usually fails at getting the heroine >:3), and The Boisterous Bruiser.

edited 18th Feb '11 10:53:01 AM by SandJosieph

Try thinking of them as a person first and by their gender second.

What you really need to do is practice. Try writing up a series of short stories with random topics like buying things at a garage sale, or exploring a windmill, or even looking for a job but have the lead be a girl. Force yourself into writing in a way you may not be used to. this is how I got some of my male characters like Terrence, a 10 foot tall gothic (yet still rather cheerful) Titan.

This implies you're capable of writing males, so I suggest making your average male character like you normally do, but switch their gender. That's all.

That might lead to her writing manly girls! D:

I'm a girl that sucks at writing girls too. I have a tendency to write tomboys the most often. It's probably because I'm a little tomboyish in that I hate dresses and make-up and I cut my hair short as a boy because I hate taking care of it (but I like dolls, horses, and have a boyfriend). Almost all the girly girls are completely unimportant to the plot people. @_@' Though the tomboys I write are usually more extreme than me. One of them is so One of the Boys that the Nakama considers one of the men as a girl rather than her.

And teenagers. If you like starting writing from thinking about occupations, even if teenagers don't have a job, they usually have an idea what they want to do or not ever do (the teenagers who want to work in fast food forever are few and far between). And unless lazy or the sorts who prefer to whine obnoxiously, usually make some effort to get to or away from certain jobs. @_@

Put yourself in the story.

Ettina's point is good; there's at least one teenage girl viewpoint you should know well enough to write — your own — so you might want to start off imagining how you would be like if put in the situation of your character.

It can be a little uncomfortable doing that if you're shy and not comfortable with putting yourself in a story, but don't think of it that way —It's not you, just a character that works like you.

I can't write my own gender either, and I think I know why. Luckily, changing their gender in the early stage of developement seems to work for me.

For some reason my female characters are easier to write for, problably because they're more female archetypes than males.

Try looking at all the different female character types, and see how you can put a twist to them.

If you're a teen girl, you have an in— a couple, actually. First, you, and second, other teen girls in your classes. I know it's obvious, but seriously— study from life to get true characters. Observe others. Study their behaviour (how they dress, talk, act, behave, etc.)— yes, even if you don't like them very much. Make quick notes about them, one or two line descriptions of something they said or did. If they say something funny or stupid or insightful, write it down. And don't just go for the obvious candidates, like "popular girls"— observe the girl whose eyes are as red as the streaks in her hair, or the girl who wears dirty pink jogging pants and walks with a limp and gives everyone she meets a zoned-out smile. Do a couple of five-minute writing sketches of them, and ask yourself: What would they do if a dragon crashed through the window?

There's no easy way to write realistic characters, but studying from life will not steer you wrong. Look at people, get a brief outline of them, then figure out what their reaction would be in X situation. It's all about interactions.

I'm writing teen characters now, and it's been a while since I was one. One thing I've started doing is thinking about adults in my life and wondering what kind of teenager they were. For example, my mom would have been very studious and hard-working in school, but flippant and jokey out of class. My uni friend Nick would have been the guy who always pestered the teacher with smart-ass questions that weren't ever as smart as he thought they were. If a dragon crashed through the window, Nick wouldn't run— he'd stand there, flabbergasted, too shocked to do anything but gawk. My mom would be shocked, but she'd gather enough sense to try and get people out safely. She'd be the last one to leave the class, and then the dragon would lunge at her, and bam— there's a story.

In some ways, a writer must be an actor, since writing good characters and dialogue is just as much roleplaying as it is literature.

Take some time to really understand what your characters go through moment to moment, day to day. If their lifestyle is too different from your own, try and interview people you know who are more like them, or, for instance, if they are mostly different because of their profession, see if you can find interviews for people with that kind of job. The importance is to see how they react and think about their situation, and then to internalize those mannerisms and habits that they picked up because of their lifestyle and circumstances.

After that, just be 'yourself.'

Just write a character and then Retcon in that their a teenage girl, never state age or gender until after your down writing them, until they are finished and your on editing.

Try this on for size for practice: A town out in the wild west just had its sheriff shot and killed and the only person who is willing to take his job is the man's teenage daughter.

In fact, we could all probably try this out. What kind of personality would this girl have? What kind of history does she have with her father that makes her think she can take over his role? How does she deal with crime?

My take would be: Rough and tumble lass, who learned the ways of the gun from her pa, is stepping up the justice with gritty determination and a steady aim.

...

OK, so that may not be the best way but it was a shot.

As of now, I have two well-developed female characters- Marlene Kunstler, the adopted daughter of Viktor, the protagonists' family friend; and Lien Thi Khang, the sister-in-law of another family friend. I've realized that genderbending Lien wouldn't really be practical because her main tactic that she uses to avoid suspicion when she's filching information for the government involves using her husband's wildly overprotective and vaguely chauvinistic nature to make herself seem like a stupid housewife.

An even stranger thing that I've found is that my friend has recently persuaded me into genderbending all of my guys for a Genderbent AU, which focuses mainly on random events that occur when my genderbent protagonists are teenagers. I've let her mostly have the run of it because she knows more about the 'verse than I do, and every last thing I've written so far focuses on my teenaged protagonists, who are probably the least-developed out of the lot. This led me to believe that starting them out as a guy then changing their gender doesn't work.

However, I have not been able to use my more-developed adult characters who have had decades to know what kind of person they want to come off as yet. We'll have to see how that goes.

I sympathize. When creating characters of the same gender you tend to be more likely to slip into comfortable shoes so to speak. Maybe its a residual boosterism or a fear of letting yourself slip into it too much.

When creating any character of any type I start with a fragment of my self. A true emotion or tendency that I can use as a central framework on which to hang all the other stuff. A head space that I can sense is instinctively real. Then I write it as I go. I throw the scenario I need the character into and define the personality by the first couple of story needs. Then I go back. Extract the mess from the work and then use that to work out who this character is. I then go back and edit the most likely haphazard and out of character moments that I wrote when I wasn't sure who I was dealing with.

For example. If I wanted to create a teenage girl I would start with one of my teenage emotions or a teenage obsession. Heck I might even just take a moment from my life at that time and see what melange of emotion comes up. For me the most strongly associated emotion I have with teen hood is bewilderment. The constant feeling that I was making things up as I go. That every time I laughed at a joke or used a buzz word I only vaguely grasped what I was saying. Repeating what I had heard others say.

I would then take this bewilderment and use to to reflect off of the story needs. Say I needed a villain or at least an antagonist. My oh so very teenaged lead needs someone to bully him. I take the bewilderment and use it to construct a plausible stream of consciousness for my bully. Call him ted, or since I am giving girl advice Tabby. So tabby is mean to the protagonist but she isn't even really certain why she is doing it. I need tabby to be able to physically threaten the protagonist so I throw on something that will make her dangerous. Size is simple, but I want it to be brutal when she beats the ever loving hell out of my heroine. I want it to be excruciatingly uncomfortable as one person hurts another for no more reason than a simple confusion. So I can make Tabby larger than average and I can throw in some sort of martial arts or sports. So, why then would we have a confused creature instead of a leader. An outsider. A foreiger perhaps. Someone who doesn't speak the language well or has some cultural angst. Well, lets take that martial arts bit and say that she is an israeli and is trained in krav maga. That fits in the brutality theme and it is always better to be hyper specific on secondary details. We can then fill out a home life. We want her to be mean but cluelessly so, so we can make her home neglectful or overbearing. Absent father? A little cliched... so instead of filling in this part we can leave it grayed out until a moment in the story demands that it be filled and then use that fractal to further inflate the character.

The best part of this method is that it suggest character relations for Tabitha before I even need to write them. She has some girls at school that she is seeking approval for, she has a troubled relationship with her family and I can tell that a monstrous fighter such as her will probably still maintain ties to a shihan of some type.

So there. Whenever I write in Tabitha's voice I touch the emotion of my teen bewilderment and need for approval and filter that through the things that I worked out she has to deal with. I can imagine the conversations that she might have with her master when he finds out that she shattered my heroines jaw in ..... not school, that would get her expelled, a park, and her shame and inability to explain to him why she misused his teachings. The best part is that now she is helping write the story. Suggesting locations that the protagonist can go to and people that she might have to deal with if she wants to stop getting the crap kicked out of her.

I can also alter the level of sympathy she gets by either obscuring or revealing her thoughts. Both work both ways. I can show that in the red moment as she feels bone crack she gets off on the power and make her look bad or I can not show her perspective at all and make her look bad based on simple reader assumptions. A complex character can fulfill simple roles based on how much of them you let the audience see but the iceberg of development below the surface will prevent them from falling into cliche. And while the tropes on this site are fun, don't steer a character away from something that they would do based on the construction because you want to avoid a trope.

edited 20th Feb '11 9:08:16 PM by Shrimpus

Try taking an archetype and developing it. You mentioned The Ditz, so how about, say, making it so there's one thing she's really, surprisingly good at? And she acts like a carefree Genki Girl, but she's really sick of everyone seeing her as stupid, so she's not as happy as she seems. She works at this hobby she's good at to cheer herself up.

Or maybe she's not really stupid, she could actually be quite intelligent, but she dumbs down her image so she won't be seen as a nerd. She doesn't let anyone know she prefers books to parties.

Ehh, those have been done before, but you get the idea.

You can also try this:

Make five characters. Do NOT assign gender to them, but feel free to make them "masculine" or "feminine." Do not try to make "girl" characters, make "guy" characters, if you so wish to,

number little bits of paper to correspond with the characters. Withdraw three of those at random. You now have three girls and two boys.

It's just an exercise, but it might help you disassociate gender from the equation.

Disassociating gender from a character is generally a bad idea. Unless they live in a very weird society, their gender will affect what other people think of them and how they treat them. This will in turn affect who they are as a person. Don't make gender the focus of a character, but you should definitely factor it into their personality based on how people in their environment treat people of their gender.

Alk: Well, in this world, influences can be so vast, that it's plausible to have any type of way for gender to effect them. Once you get into fantasy worlds, the possibilities go through the roof.

And while gender will affect how you are raised and how you perceive the world, some personality traits will shine through regardless, and honestly, any character can be interpreted to have been influenced by their gender no matter what their traits are.

There are also a lot of people out there who don't necessarily meet societal gender expectations, though it's true to say that they will have had to deal with and negotiate through those.

My fantasy world is fairly egalitarian as to gender and sexual orientation, for instance — at least in the characters' homeland. Other places are different, but not necessarily equivalent to our gender roles either.

Don't try to give them big detailed personalities from the get-go. Just think of a single defining personality trait(s) and plant it on a typical person. They just evolve from there.

Sounds like a good idea, but my girls never evolve from that one trait. It could be because I think more about the characters I have who are more plot-relevant (almost all of them are male), but I've found that even writing a story with one of my girls as the focus character doesn't lead to them evolving anywhere.

For instance, my friend got me to do a Genderbent AU with our characters. Okay, fine. So I genderbent probably my most complex female character, Lien Thi Khang into Lanh Vien Khang. The skit that we're using Lanh in basically follows how people begin to perceive him as a miracle-working peasant doctor, but he's not any more complex than the Generic Fantasy Healer.

I think it may have to do with how many of my characters rely on Double Standards as part of their character. When I was genderbending, I found that a ton of my characters instantly became more "normal" or traditionally acceptable just by becoming female. The tall, menacing-looking man with albinism became Tall, Dark and Bishoujo combined with White-Haired Pretty Girl. The boy who liked gardening and kept getting Mistaken for Gay because of it became a cute girl who likes flowers and butterflies.

And so on. Not sure what to make of that.