By John Ramsey Miller
A female editor once told me that I wrote female characters better than most women authors she had worked with. My agent said the same thing, and I was flattered by it. Great compliments, coming from two knowledgeable women. I don’t know how well I actually write female characters, but I’ve known a lot of women, and hope I understand a little something about the opposite sex. Most of what I know I learned the hard way, which is how I learn most things, and I keep on learning as much as I can about my craft. Knowing people and human behavior is the part you never stop learning, and you have to understand individuals to understand relationships, which are always complex and interesting. I have been blessed to have known a lot of strong women and so most of the women I write are reflections of them. But in the course of publishing seven novels I’ve yet to have any woman ask me why I am qualified to write female characters. I have also written a lot of black characters and I am “porcelain” white and have never to my knowledge been anything else.
I recently heard a segment on NPR centered around a book a female author had written that was set in the deep South during desegregation. Just so happens I was right there at the exact time. This particular panel was discussing the fact that it was amazing that the author was white but had dared write from a black female character’s point of view. (I’m paraphrasing here from memory). A black man (I only assume he was black but it was radio) on the program said that in this particular case it didn’t bother him much as he was able to set aside the fact that the author was white and get into the story. The author obviously got it. Well, of all the audacity. It seems it was forgivable in this case because she did such a good job telling the story from that perspective and she got the dialog right enough to squeak by. Hell, I don’t see why a black author couldn’t write from a Klansman’s point of view if they wanted to, although I can’t imagine why he or she would. A writer writes from his or her experience and imagination based on his observations, and imagining the perspective of someone other than yourself is the stock and trade of a good author. James Patterson, a white man, writes Alex Cross, who isn’t, with perfect pitch. Why does an author have to be something to write it? Or why does he or she have to be specifically something to understand the character’s perspective? You don’t have to be a homosexual to write a homosexual character any more than you have to be a woman to write from the viewpoint of one. I get tired of hearing “You can’t write that!” “The Hell, I can’t! You just don’t want to read it.”
Censorship comes in many forms, and I hate it in any form it takes. I don’t write to hurt feelings, but characters are characters and I write what I see and hear. If I want to write a gay detective, which I don’t at the moment, I’ll write one without having to sleep with other men to qualify. If I want to write a lesbian cop, I can do it and I imagine I can do it convincingly. If I’m not comfortable doing so it will show in the work. Most of us are expected to write with kid gloves on and steer clear of certain subjects, and we all hate it as creative people have to. The market decides what it will or won’t accept and those rules change so frequently that we can’t keep up with them. Political correctness has less than nothing to do with a good story or the characters that we choose to depict.
Do you have to be a black person in Mississippi not write about what it is like being black in Mississippi in the 60s? If you saw it from a white boy’s perspective, you should still know what the black person was seeing and thinking. You don’t have to have been shot to know what being shot feels like, or give birth to imagine that mixture of pain and joy. You don’t have to have sipped from a “Colored Only” water fountain to know what that degrading experience felt like. If you watched “Miss Jane Pittman,” you felt her bravery, her pain, and the sheer determination it took to go to one marked “White Only” and how delicious the water tasted and how huge a step that was for her. I can write that, and so can you.
Let’s get real people. No area of writing should be off limits to anyone and it shouldn’t be. As artists, we owe our readers as good or great a book as we can produce, and that is the only limit we should be expected to place on our work. How many of you have had an editor or agent turn you away from what you wanted to write with a simple, “You can’t write that.”
John, I always look forward to Saturday mornings when I can sip my coffee and enjoy your thoughtful posts full of insight and emotion. And I would recommend to anyone that enjoys them to find more of the same level of quality prose in your books.
I’ve written 4 thrillers that have a female lead character. Granted, I have a female co-author, so that helps. But I can’t tell you how many times someone has come up to Lynn and I at a book signing or conference and commented that they bet Lynn wrote a particular scene because it was so much of what a woman would say or do. In most cases, I just stand back and smile, knowing that the reality it, I wrote it.
I believe that the best a writer can produce often comes when they step out of their comfort zone. Certainly, writing as the opposite sex or a different race are zones few have the guts to enter.
Thanks, Joe. I always write my Saturday blogs with you in mind.
I agree, John. We don’t have to “be” a gender to write as one, any more than we have to “be” a serial killer to write a convincing one. Although it might help. Cheers, Kathryn
One of my early legal thrillers had a lawyer fighting alcoholism, attending AA and so forth. Some time later at a conference, a man walked up to me and whispered, “I’m a friend of Bill W., too.”
I didn’t know what he meant. He saw my look and explained, “You know, Bill W. AA.” Then I got it. (Bill W. was the founder of AA).
He continued, “I know, because I read your book. You couldn’t write that unless you were a friend of Bill W., too.”
I had to sheepishly tell him I’d never been to an AA meeting nor battled that demon, and he was genuinely surprised. I still find that one of the best writing compliments I’ve ever received.
What I do remember doing was a lot of research, then putting myself through that “experience” via “substitute sense memory,” an acting technique.
I would hate to be limited to that old saw “Write what you know.” Half the fun of being a writer is getting to enlarge your territory.
Like you (and the others) I would hate to be limited in my writing. I can hardly begin to experience what it was like to be a woman in 1910s England but I can imagine it just as (I hope) I could imagine any number of different characters across the gender/social spectrum. (Although my husband is a little worried about the number of lesbian characters in my books…!)
Censorship starts with the author. We, as writers, must decide whether these ideas merit our passion and time, regardless of what others might say. To underscore this point, here is an excerpt from a PBS article on Tony Hillerman and his fascination with the Native American culture he wrote about:
“Encouraged by his wife to pursue writing, Hillerman enrolled for a Master’s degree in English at the University of New Mexico. There he encountered writing professor Morris Friedman, who encouraged him to write in the first person (a taboo for reporters) and introduced Hillerman to his agent, Ann Elmo. She was soon at work, selling his essays to magazines until Hillerman was ready to move from freelancing to fiction. From 1967 to 1970 he worked nights and weekends to complete his first novel, The Blessing Way, featuring Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. Upon reading the draft, Elmo famously counseled Hillerman to “get rid of the Indian stuff.” But Hillerman felt the Navajo Nation and culture were the most worthwhile parts of the manuscript, so he sent the book off to Harper & Row editor Joan Kahn, who’d been quoted in Writer magazine saying that she liked mysteries more involved with character and culture. True to her word, she liked the book enough to publish it in 1971.”
Hillerman did not let criticism stop him from writing about a people he admired and studied. The rest is history.
I read female authors who write with male protagonists. I read white authors who write with black protagonists. I read black authors who write with white protagonists. Hell, I read a Koontz book supposedly written by his dog. And you know what? If the story is good, it’s good, no matter who (or what) wrote it.
Right on, John. I’ve never killed anyone, but I can write convincingly about those who have. I’ve never been a cop, but I can put words in a cop’s mouth (even a female cop!!!) that sound realistic. I’ve never been to the sun, but I can write about what it feels like on my face during a hot summer.
All the other criticism anyone might level at you is PC crap.
Well said. If I had to have been my characters, or do what they did, I’d have probably not lived to tell about it. My knees still hurt just from trying to be a normal military dude.
And…I will never put on a corset again…never.
The cartoon “Maxine” is drawn and written by a man. I read an interview where he was saying that she is a combination of his mom, grandmother, and several aunts. I think he does a great job with her.
I agree with Mike, the rest is just PC junk. And is mostly designed to take away indiviuality of any kind.
Keep writing great books, and we’ll keep reading ’em!
Pffffttttt . . .
My thoughts on not being able to slip into another persona.
Yes, it requires research and empathy. Writers got that!
I have a novella under contract with a small horror pub. It is the story of a man turned into a werewolf by his best friend. It is set in the Depression. It’s pretty good although I’ve never been a man, a werewolf, or in the Depression.
My WIP is about female suicide bombers even though I don’t even own a vest of any type.
In the shorties I’ve pubbed I’ve written as a husband-killing novelist, a government scientist working on biological warfare, dying of cholera in a tsunami, point man on patrol in Vietnam, best, suicidal in county jail, and, one of my best, walking into a deserted storefront in Baghdad.
All products of my overactive imagination and the sum total of my reading and research.
Terri
I am a Dutch straight woman currently working on a novel about a gay Chinese man. I expected a great challenge but half-way the book I realised that it’s not that difficult if I remember that we’re all human beings with similar emotions.