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@thewirelessblade

Hi! I know I don’t post here much, but I thought I’d reply since this topic always kind of annoys me. The truth is, the most annoying female characters written by male authors are the ones that adhere too much to stereotypes (of any kind!). Girls are people first, and girls second (maybe not even second…there are other things that matter a lot, like age and experience and personality and…). So anyhow, the best advice I can give is make sure that your character is a well-developed character before worrying about gender roles.

The other thing that’s generally overlooked in a lot of today’s books is that girls are naturally less strong than boys (except, you know, maybe an average girl is stronger than a below-average boy, and so forth), so we rely on our brains more than strength. A lot of strong women in history have been tacticians rather than just tough.

Like I said, it’s hard to just define what a girl is like – the more closely detailed your psychological analysis is, the more likely you are to write a bad female character. The best way to get the opposite gender is to hang around them a lot in a friendly way. Some girls are super girly and annoying and mean (on that note, a lot of girls are mean, and they usually use back-handed compliments to be mean, but that’s a slightly different topic). Some girls are super nice. Some girls just like being tough and getting dirty. Some girls are self-conscious and shy. Most girls are various combinations of traits. We ain’t all the same.

So. Your female character should be a character first, just like your male characters – I mean, you don’t sit down and sweat about whether your same-gender characters are good representations of your gender. Then pick out things (or better, have someone else pick out things) that seem more like something boys would do than girls, and change those things.

That was long and random, but I hope there was maybe some tiny useful thing in there…

Good luck writing!!