Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Dorothy]

While I have some amount of Irish heritage, I identify much more with my French/Cajun heritage, so Mardi Gras and Bastille Day are more important to me than St. Patrick's Day.

 

[Caitlin]

We're not all idiots, I swear. xD

Sure we are! It's just that some of us have charm while we're being idiots.

 

[Lugion]

Who's this Lugion fellow and why have I never heard of him before?

 

[AceTrainer14]

St Patricks Day is just an excuse anywhere to get drunk, like some sort of free pass to drink yourself silly and throw up. Its big here; we even had ads for a 'St Patricks Day sale' at a big kitchenware/home and living store -__-

 

[AetherX]

I live on a college campus so pretty much every day is an excuse to get hammered.

"I FINISHED MY EXAMS! TIME TO GET FUCKED UP!"

"I HAVE AN EXAM TOMORROW! TIME TO GET FUCKED UP!"

"IT'S THURSDAY! TIME TO GET FUCKED UP!"

All St. Patrick's day changes is everyone wears green.

On the topic of America being stupid, I strongly disagree. We have an incredibly vocal minority of dumbasses, but I wouldn't say everyone's an idiot (at least, no more of an idiot than the rest of the world). It might just be that I live in the best place ever the Pacific Northwest, but everyone I know is cultured, respectful, and well educated.

 

[Lugion]

On the topic of America being stupid, I strongly disagree. We have an incredibly vocal minority of dumbasses, but I wouldn't say everyone's an idiot (at least, no more of an idiot than the rest of the world). It might just be that I live in the best place ever the Pacific Northwest, but everyone I know is cultured, respectful, and well educated.

You know, I live in Texas (TEXAS FFS), even work at Walmart, and I can tell you the majority of people I've met are of middling intelligence. Oh, there are some real morons out there, and some real geniuses, but it all averages out, really.

It's just the REALLY stupid people you hear more about.

 

[Beth Pavell]

I think it's certainly true that Brits tend to get very snooty about America and American culture. I could go on about this for quite a while, but I'll content myself with this: America gave the world peanut butter. That sure as hell's gotta count for something

 

[Tophat Dragoneye]

I live on a college campus so pretty much every day is an excuse to get hammered.

"I FINISHED MY EXAMS! TIME TO GET FUCKED UP!"

"I HAVE AN EXAM TOMORROW! TIME TO GET FUCKED UP!"

"IT'S THURSDAY! TIME TO GET FUCKED UP!"

All St. Patrick's day changes is everyone wears green.

Sounds a lot like the same thing here in Denmark. In fact, the fact that some students gets hammered Thursday night was actually covered recently on the national news (Yeah, my country is that small).

 

[LightningTopaz]

America gave the world peanut butter. That sure as hell's gotta count for something

How about CHOCOLATE peanut butter?

 

[AceTrainer14]

Sounds a lot like the same thing here in Denmark. In fact, the fact that some students gets hammered Thursday night was actually covered recently on the national news (Yeah, my country is that small).

We get the same stuff covered here

And on the subject of dumb nations, I do think that it would be difficult to declare an entire nation stupid, and its not as if America would be the dumbest country in the world; New Zealand is full of quite a lot of stupid people, or at least my area seems to be

 

[Beth Pavell]

America gave the world peanut butter. That sure as hell's gotta count for something

How about CHOCOLATE peanut butter?

Oho, well, so much the better!

I don't know if anyone's ever seen this, but I just came across it while actually net-surfing (Go go nineties slang, away!) The Female Character Flowchart. It's killed fifteen minutes or so for me, might be worth a gander

 

[Instrutilus]

I never really got the difficulty in writing female characters. Just write a character and when you're done, make them female.

 

[AetherX]

Nice find, that's pretty cool actually. Although can someone explain why having a character that represents an idea stops them from being strong? All of my characters represent ideas. Same deal with dying before the third act. People seemed to like Harry well enough.

 

[Renewal]

I never really got the difficulty in writing female characters. Just write a character and when you're done, make them female.

That's definitely the simplest and most efficient method, and ensures you have strong characters. But I think the thing is--and I'm not going to pretend I'm at all qualified to speak about it, since I'm both male and an inexperienced writer--is that characters created this way aren't particularly female (which, just to be clear, is not inherently a bad thing).

So if you think of a fairly competent hero, with a fully fleshed out backstory and complex issues and struggles and relationships, then simply make the hero a heroine, then of course you've got a strong character. But such a method makes gender almost slapped-on: the hero could function equally well as a man or a woman. That's by no means a bad method, because a strong character is always going to be better than a crappy female stereotype, but it doesn't really explore gender issues. Which is fine for most stories.

But that leaves you vulnerable to the issue of implicitly stating that what is feminine is undesirable. If you work from a gender-neutral default, then slap gender on last, you're ignoring a lot about the female experience. So you're almost implying that things that are typically labeled feminine are detrimental, or--even worse--that the default for strong character is the male experience.

And this is a really complex issue, so here's a jumbled mess of half-formed and barely-understood ideas.

 

[Instrutilus]

But that leaves you vulnerable to the issue of implicitly stating that what is feminine is undesirable. If you work from a gender-neutral default, then slap gender on last, you're ignoring a lot about the female experience. So you're almost implying that things that are typically labeled feminine are detrimental, or--even worse--that the default for strong character is the male experience.

And this is a really complex issue, so here's a jumbled mess of half-formed and barely-understood ideas.

Since when did I say I wouldn't have feminine traits in the mix? Males can have feminine traits as well, y'know.

 

[Renewal]

Since when did I say I wouldn't have feminine traits in the mix? Males can have feminine traits as well, y'know.

Well, since all you wrote was (bolded emphasis mine):

I never really got the difficulty in writing female characters. Just write a character and when you're done, make them female.

I interpreted it as making gender an afterthought to a character. Sorry about the misunderstanding--absence of evidence not being evidence of absence and all that. My apologies if you thought I was critiquing you personally; I was just commenting in general on the idea that gender is always best served as the last consideration of character-building.

 

[Instrutilus]

I interpreted it as making gender an afterthought to a character. Sorry about the misunderstanding--absence of evidence not being evidence of absence and all that. My apologies if you thought I was critiquing you personally; I was just commenting in general on the idea that gender is always best served as the last consideration of character-building.

Sorry, I seem to have come off as a bit haughty. And yeah, I can see the misunderstanding. I'm just weird: I don't consider any trait to be relegated to either gender, both are completely equal in my eyes, barring biological events that do require thought behind them.

 

[ShinyFlareon]

Honestly though, I think there is a lot more to it than just writing a character and slapping a set of anatomy on them.

Hear me out: yes, making a good character is the primary concern here. But no matter what your character's gender, that gender is going to influence their character in some way. If they're female, then their identity as a female is going to have an impact on their personality, and that impact is going to be different than if they were any other gender. The same goes for sexuality, race, age, and pretty much anything else you can think of. These traits do not - and should not - define a character, but they are still an intrinsic part of the character themselves, and should be taken into account for each individual character, not just swapped around interchangeably between characters of any demographic.

 

[AceTrainer14]

Gah, I really don't see why it is such a big deal about writing female characters; if your not good at writing them, then either learn how to or just don't write them? Female characters can be exceedingly easy to write, as they are just characters at the end of the day, same as male characters, same as gay characters, same as black, white, Asian, fantastical, magical, whatever - you just need to write whatever your comfortable with and be done with it. Things like that chart both over simplify and over complicate something that is only made into an issue by people deciding to view it as an issue. Its like the credit crunch; if the news didn't report on it, people would continue spending to their hearts desire, but the only reason they don't is because they think there is some issue holding them back. The internet wants us to think that unless every single female character you write is a strong female character than you are some evil sexist pig, but really you can just write characters however the hell you want to; people will always find stuff to nitpick about your stories if they feel like it, when essentially there is perhaps no story in Hollywood or all of theater and literature that you could not find some plot hole, some uneven character flaw, something that you can tear the story down for. My advice to anyone is to just write your characters how you want to write them and not fret about things, otherwise you will beat yourself up and will never be able to grow as a writer.

Rant done. *sighs* I'm doing this instead of my four assignments, so people better read it

 

[ShinyFlareon]

Gah, I really don't see why it is such a big deal about writing female characters; if your not good at writing them, then either learn how to or just don't write them? Female characters can be exceedingly easy to write, as they are just characters at the end of the day, same as male characters, same as gay characters, same as black, white, Asian, fantastical, magical, whatever - you just need to write whatever your comfortable with and be done with it. Things like that chart both over simplify and over complicate something that is only made into an issue by people deciding to view it as an issue. Its like the credit crunch; if the news didn't report on it, people would continue spending to their hearts desire, but the only reason they don't is because they think there is some issue holding them back. The internet wants us to think that unless every single female character you write is a strong female character than you are some evil sexist pig, but really you can just write characters however the hell you want to; people will always find stuff to nitpick about your stories if they feel like it, when essentially there is perhaps no story in Hollywood or all of theater and literature that you could not find some plot hole, some uneven character flaw, something that you can tear the story down for. My advice to anyone is to just write your characters how you want to write them and not fret about things, otherwise you will beat yourself up and will never be able to grow as a writer.

Rant done. *sighs* I'm doing this instead of my four assignments, so people better read it

Except that's not what we were saying at all? We're not talking about "strong female characters," we're talking about good characters who happen to be female. And not only is there is a big difference between the two, it is a really important thing to be discussed. Like it or not, it IS a legitimate issue, not just people choosing to see it as one because they're not a straight white male. Just "writing what you're comfortable with" is nothing but an excuse to not consider how being a member of an under-represented demographic actually affects people, and is ALSO a one-way ticket to stagnating as a writer.

People are people, no matter what. No one is disputing this fact. Neither is anyone saying that people of any race, gender, or orientation must have certain personality traits. I, at least, am trying to say that these factors in a character are still important and need to be considered, not that they should define the character. Yes, we'd all like to live in a utopia where those factors aren't a major part of society, but even if that were the case, they would still help to shape and define the characters because it's part of who they are, and to just ignore that is not only really insensitive, but also just bad characterization. Part of making believable characters is making varied characters, and that includes ones of different ethnicities and orientations. The fact that straight white male is considered a kind of default for writing is a sign that anyone who is not in that demographic is "different" enough to be considered abnormal.

We need people writing good female characters. We need people learning how to write good queer characters. We need people learning how to write good characters of non-white ethnicities. Because then we can not only grow as people and as writers, but we can help grow as a society as well.