Do male and female authors write differently?

Apparently, I'm female. By 34 points. Heh, I'm practically gender-neutral.

I submitted a little writing exercise I did.

I'm male. Yay.

Also put in one of my friend's short stories. He's a girl by a substantial amount.

Pfft, I've run a lot of tests on the Gender Genie. I've got it pegged at pretty much exactly 50% accuracy (with a number of different writers and styles), making it about the same as random guessing.

I do.

Link for the person asking for one.

My most recent fanfic was judged as female.

My epic poem fic was judged as female.

This one got male.

The point is that the gender genie looks for certain words.

Men use articles and defining words while women use vague words and first person more.

"Masculine keywaords" Around what More are as who below is these the a at it many said above to

"Feminine keywords" With if not when be when your her we should she and me myself hers was

That's all it is.

Of course, this was made by studying newspaper articles. Women tend to be more personal in those while men use facts more. The whole thing is ridiculous.

Wooo, I'm a dude and never knew it!

The criteria it used was interesting.

Some books I couldn't imagine being written by a man, like the Kushiel series. But I don't think females necessarily write more flowery or anything. I've read some ridiculous purple prose from my guy friends, and some Hemingway-blunt prose from my girl friends.

I couldn't imagine A Song of Ice and Fire being written by someone who wasn't a foodie. Those books make me hungry!

I don't think individual word choice or style is something that goes according to gender, and I really don't think any online system could accurately predict the gender of an author (the number of people on this thread that this one's gotten wrong shows it certainly doesn't work).

But there does seem to be a tendency for male authors to be more plot-focued and female ones to be more character-focused. I've definitely read well-plotted books by women and books by men with good characterization, but at the far ends of the spectrum things seem to lean the other way. I don't think there's many women who would write books like Asimov's Foundation series (a several-book series chronicling the millennia-long history of the fall and rise of empires, with next to no character focus). And I don't think there's an awful lot of male authors who would write books like Jane Austen's, which are almost entirely character studies and social satire, with events only serving to cast light on the characters and society.

edited 27th Mar '13 12:54:47 PM by WarriorEowyn

I put a bit of my very random choose-your-own-adventure story into the Gender Genie, and it correctly identified me as male by 500 points. The male/female keywords are quite interesting. Female keywords seem to have more pronouns, while male keywords are more about descriptions.

That comment about female authors writing about characters and how they create situations and male authors thinking of situations and then fitting characters into them seems very applicable to me. I think of the plot first before trying to make my characters follow it.

edited 27th Mar '13 1:02:38 PM by JimmyTMalice

Then you have books like The Last Werewolf that are full of over-the-top (in a good way) prose, largely character driven, and ruminate on human nature...and they're written by dudes like Glen Duncan.

Men and women do often think a little differently though, so some general trends are expected. When I was taking a filmmaking course, we helped each other with our films. I noticed that the guys had a different way of directing than the girls. In general, the guys were better at synthesizing and being aware of spatial nuance, while the girls were better at characterization and demonstrating mood and tone through camera work.

Men and women, in my opinion, do have different ways of going about things in general. Note the last two words of that, women can write what is typically associated with men, and vice versa, all depending on their skill and dedication to what they are doing. Overall though, men and women have their differences, and they will naturally have writing differences overall, with of course, the exceptions. As to what those different styles of writing are, is up for debate really, I will not get into that.

I submitted part of my fanfic to the Gender Genie and got a perfectly gender neutral score for one excerpt.

I believe that segments from my aggressive jerk male got pegged as female, and some segments from my angsty, self-loathing female got pegged as male.

Gender Genie sucks. (And yes, I have character development coming.)

I certainly agree with most of the words that Gender Genie uses, but when I put my writing through it, even my "female-first-person-narrator swoons about her boss" story is judged male. :/

Looking at the (fiction) books I've read this year, I have four books by male authors: one in third person limited, one in third person with a first person framing device, one split between third and first person narration, and one in first person. I've read two books by female authors - one in third person omniscient, the other in first person. There's no clear split, but the sample size is small.

edited 13th Apr '13 6:09:36 PM by chelzero

I got male three times, female once, in a very dialogue heavy scene, accounting for the 30-something counts of 'feminine words' like me, myself and so on that tipped it into female territory.

Yeah, no. I don't thinks so.

While, yes, some women write in a style that screams 'feminine' and some men write in such a way that you can basically smell the testosterone oozing from the pages, those are usually writers I don't enjoy reading very much.

Most books I like, I wouldn't have been able to tell the gender of the writer. I know I was very surprised to learn the gender of some writer...can't remember which one it was...it was a fantasy series, though.

edited 18th Apr '13 6:53:57 PM by montmorencey