Help/advice with writing a female character

I am currently in the process of writing a sci-fi novel in which the protagonist is a young woman. Now, I'm a guy and as such don't know much about women. While I do feel that her character has a lot of depth and likability, I'm not so sure about how she is as a great female character. And there are certain parts of the story where she does have to deal with issues that are much more common with women.

For example, she is infertile and can't have a child. I'm not too sure how to go about it, while her being devastated by it makes sense within the context of her character, I'm not sure how I should handle it. I've already talked with several friends and family members of the fairer sex about this (including one that did have a stillborn, sadly enough) and while they approve of the direction I'm going with it I'm still not sure about it.

I don't want to offend anyone (reasonably of course, sometimes people do take things a little seriously) and want to make sure I can get the details right, so I'd love some advice on that. Also, are there any signs of infertility that are particularly noticeable?

Writing a woman is easy! We're not that different from guys, and there's no need to continually ram 'O HAY THIS CHARACTER HAS A DIFFERENT SET OF GENITALIA THAN I DO' in the reader's face. We're all people here.

As for infertility, like anything else, make sure it doesn't overshadow her as a person. No medical status is ever what a person is, and infertility is no different. Infertility doesn't present many symptoms itself, but can occasionally be a symptom of something bigger, such as ovarian cancer, for instance. Again, it might have just been something she was born with. Depending on her characterization, she might not even care or be that sad about it. If she's a hardcore action girl who doesn't really give a shit about romance or parenthood or has other, bigger things to worry about, it would not be logical for her to angst about not being able to conceive her own kid. Note that depending on the nature of your story, there is also adoption as an option as well, and she might just be at peace with taking that if she plans to be a parent instead.

edited 19th Aug '12 5:56:17 PM by CrystalGlacia

Well, I have no intention of ramming it in the reader's face, . In fact I made it a pretty conscious decision that there is very little prejudice in the setting and as such there is less of a need for people to present themselves in that way, instead putting the self ahead of certain characteristics.

I just want to be respectful is all, I do consider myself a feminist/equalist (if that's even a term).

A sci-fi story featuring a young but infertile woman...hmmm...

I'm not going to act like I know anything about infertility, because I don't — but if I had to offer something constructive, I'd ask a question: what does your character's infertility bring to the table? How does it change the story? Is it a quality that has thematic weight, or just a facet of the character?

Think carefully about the applications of your character's infertility — that is, focus on what it can do for her as a character, and work your way up from there. For example, let's say that your heroine and her crew go on their magical adventure and come out with the universe saved and lessons learned (not saying that'd actually happened, but play along for now). As your crew gathers around for celebratory drinks, someone asks: "So what happens now?" What are the heroes supposed to do with their lives? It doesn't have to be a question that pops up at the story's end; it's something you could have them discuss over the course of the novel. How your heroine responds to that question could speak quite loudly about her character.

Even so, I would seriously focus more on the heroine herself rather than her infertility. I'd wager that her inability to have a child wouldn't be on her mind in the midst of an alien invasion or something.

I don't recall the character in Prometheus being infertile.

Anyway, I should probably clarify that she doesn't find out until very far into the story and by that point the character has had quite a bit of development. It'd be something of a https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HeroicBSOD which gets worse in combination with events in the plot, making a Hero's Journey ordeal.

edited 20th Aug '12 6:00:30 AM by darthnazgul

Well, the page here on the site uses the word "sterile" instead of "infertile" to describe Shaw, so maybe I just used the wrong word? My mistake — that's probably why I'm not a doctor.

Back on-topic. If the heroine's actually fairly-developed and the reveal of her infertility comes so late in the game (so to speak), then a part of me is willing to think that you don't have much of a need to worry. That's not to say that infertility is something easily ignored, because it isn't; I just think that it's a facet of your heroine. An important one, but not one that should consume her. If her character arc (and by extension the story's arc) comes to a halt because of the reveal, THEN there's a problem. Well beyond the BSOD, of course — that's acceptable, but it shouldn't derail her character, mindset, and personality. If she's all about shooting alien bugs with a ray gun, then she should be that way until the very end. You know what I mean?

I'm willing to bet that you've got a handle on this thing, and you should be fine. My only concern is how other people will react to this; what may be an important, character-defining episode to some may come off as angst to others (or something that derails the plot, even if it is a subjective declaration). So I suppose you should be wary of how long the BSOD lasts — something potent, but succinct.

I have to commend you for trying to tackle such a tricky issue, and the fact that you'd even start a thread to try and sort out your ideas says a lot. As long as you keep it up, I don't think you'll have any problems. So good luck on your end, and I hope I managed to help you out a bit.

...Though I feel like I might have made a few faux pas in this post. In which case, sorry about that.

Just looked it up: "Sterility is the inability to conceive whereas infertility is the inability to carry a pregnancy to term with the birth of a healthy child."

Well, looks like I've gotten the two confused myself, sterility is the more accurate term for the scenario of my character, primary to be specific. Time to get editing.

Thanks for the assurance, I do try to treat certain subjects with care. The length of the BSOD would be an issue but I'll sort it out once I reach those crossroads.

One thing I would point out is that if this comes fairly late in the work and is supposed to affect her quite a bit, there should be some lead-up to it somehow. The trap I could see someone falling into in this situation would be writing her without much regard to having children, and then getting suddenly super-upset about not having any because, so the subtext would run, all women are super-concerned with having babies so never having babies is a big deal to every female character. Not saying that you'd do this, but it's the danger I would be cautious of.

So then what you have to do is balance how much she as a character would invest in one day having biological offspring with how much psychological trauma she'll suffer afterwards. If she's a relatively gung-ho combat expert who only cares about kids in some vaguely defined future she doesn't care to think about much, she might be upset, but she wouldn't be incapable of action. But if you characterize as wanting to have kids some day and, say, investing emotionally in the dream of one day having a family (which wouldn't be too out of character even for an actiony heroine) then it would make sense for her to be more devastated, as long as the audience knew beforehand that it's something she cared about.

And just as a last note, that shouldn't be all that she cares about, but it should at least be there if she's getting so worked up about it that she shuts down mentally.