Nobody is surprised that women writers accurately represent male characters over and over again, no doubt because everybody knows that women understand men much better than vice-versa.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
James Patterson has a way with female characters. He understands women in a way that a lot of male writers don't.
If you look at most women's writing, women writers will describe women differently from the way male writers describe women. The details that go into a woman writer's description of a female character are, perhaps, a little more judgmental. They're looking for certain things, because they know what women do to look a certain way.
I love writing about men. To get by in the world you have to know how men think. Not that all guys think alike, but women tend to think about more things at the same time, an overgeneralization, but I find it easier to make my male characters focus than I do my female characters.
I'm not an especially male novelist, but I think men are better at writing about men, and the same is true for women. Reading Saul Bellow is a revelation, but he can't write women. There are exceptions, like Marilynne Robinson's 'Gilead,' but generally, I think it's true.
It used to be that you had to make female TV characters perfect so no one would be offended by your 'portrayal' of women. Even when I started out on 'The Office' eight years ago, we could write our male characters funny and flawed, but not the women. And now, thankfully, it's completely different.
I find women as writers and as characters are operating within narrow confines. They inherit a kind of ghetto of the soul. I'm trying to enlarge the spectrum.
In terms of showing their emotions and acting on them, my women characters are a lot more advanced than the men.
As a writer, as much as I try, I can't stop writing female characters. They have so much more to offer; they have to wear so many different hats. There's so much wonderful gray matter in a female's life that it just makes for a stronger character.
There are a lot of women screenwriters, but they are obviously outnumbered by men. And it still is a very much male-dominated industry.
I am tired of women playing action heroes like men, because they are not men. But sometimes they are written like men.
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