Characterisation: The Ranting

[kiya]

This is a rant more or less directly related to an ongoing conversation on rasfc.


(Brief context note: There is currently a certain amount of discussion on rasfc about whether or not women can convincingly write male characters. This irritates me.)

I hate, hate, hate with a passion the idea that there's something particularly difficult involved in writing a character who doesn't share one's traits. Any of one's traits; sex continues to be not a special case, though that's not the usual version of "sex" I mean when i say that.

I'm not writing women and I'm not writing men. I'm writing people, many of whom have sexes. Trying to wodge a character into a box defined by their sex -- or any of their other adjectives -- seems likely to cause them to break down as plausible people, because the questions come down to "does a man behave like that" or "does a Muslim behave like that" or "does someone with a degenerative bone disease behave like that", when the important question is, "Does Fred, the guy I'm writing about, behave like that".

Might Fred's maleness, his religion, his medical history have some impact on how he behaves? Of course. But that doesn't mean that I write Fred by calculating an intersection of the 'male' template with the 'Muslim' template and the 'denenerative bone disease' template; I write Fred by writing Fred, and the manifestations of those traits show up as they're relevant, rather than by crimping my thinking where they're not.

But I am constantly amazed at how often adults ask me "How on earth did you *ever* make up such a strong female heroine (sic) as Cimorene?" My first reaction is always to blink and say "Make up? Don't you know any actual women?" (Children, interestingly, never, ever ask me this question. *They* want to know how on earth I ever managed to make up a six foot eleven inch insubstantial floating blue donkey with wings. I consider this a *much* more sensible question.)
--Patricia Wrede, posted to rasfc some time ago

I don't have a template for male characters. I don't know of any things that hold universally true about men to start with, even if I thought it wasn't a completely fucking stupid way to go about things. As I said on rasfc, I can't think of a single rule for building such a template to which I do not know multiple exceptions, including "has XY chromosomes". (*waves at griffen*)



I'm writing from the point of view of a male character, primarily, for The Devil's Due. I couldn't write it back when I finished The Devil's Dance a few years ago. Not because he's male. Because he speaks in a significantly different register than I do; because I strongly suspect that he's significantly more intelligent than I am, besides.

He's not that hard to write, now that I have the hang of his mode of speech. He's damaged, driven, generous by nature; he is compelled to master every art he takes up or the closest he can manage to do it, because he is a perfectionist driven by a deep personal conviction of inadequacy; he fights well, and with conviction and duty, but it does not appeal to him of itself beyond being another form of perfection to strive after; he has an excellent sense of timing, judges people carefully, and is categorically incapable of violating a vow or really even denting it slightly; he is profoundly, devotedly devout, and wishes Jaci would stop needling him about it; he is a researcher, a scholar by nature, an explorer of the theoretical, one who wishes to expand the known and the possible; he is slightly vain, not about his looks, but about his clothing, for he has cultivated elegant tastes and poise as a defense against loss of status and because it is something that he could control; he does not cut his hair, for similar reasons.

His mother was assassinated when he was eight or so; his father hated him for complicated reasons; he lost rank and status and was a pariah among his kin and their employees for somewhere around a decade. It was his sense of justice that brought him and Jaci together, and he tempered her sense of vengeance and swung her around to at least something that orbits what passes in these parts for sanity. He loves her dearly, despite the fairly short time they've known each other, though he cannot readily say so, and is convinced that she only vowed to him to give him protection and some sort of kin-right; he perceives that he is in unwinnable rivalry with her long-dead lover.

When he killed his father, it was in profoundest mercy.

That's all him. Not a man, Mikel, starting from there, from him, the fellow in my head who Graydon called "terrifyingly civilized" when I was talking about him.


Writing Fred isn't all that different from writing Ethel. There's a person there on the other side of the words, and people transcend their merest adjectives.

A man once asked me--it is true that it was at the end of a very good dinner, and the compliment conveyed may have been due to that circumstance--how I managed in my books to write such natural conversation between men when they were by themselves. Was I, by any chance, a member of a larged, mixed family with a lot of male friends? I replied that, on the contrary, I was an only child and had practically never seen or spoken to any men of my own age till I was about twenty-five. 'Well,' said the man, 'I shouldn't have expected a woman [meaning me] to have been able to make it so convincing.' I replied that I had coped with this difficult problem by making my men talk, as far as possible, like ordinary human beings. This aspect of the matter seemed to surprise the other speaker; he said no more, but took it away to chew it over. One of these days it may quite likely occur to him that women, as well as men, when left to themselves, talk very much like human beings also.
--Dorothy L. Sayers: from "Are Women Human?" 1938 (which Dorothy Heydt just posted to rasfc, enabling me to snag it for this and my quotes file, both)

Comments

[pameladean]

I am so very much afraid that this is one of those Eternal Arguments.

My favorite thing to think of when it comes up is Pat Wrede's saying that there are just a few basic things that really are different, and telling the story of the woman who boldly undertook a male protagonist, and thought and thought, and did research, and triumphantly presented the results to her husband, who said to her gently, "Honey, men don't pee standing up."

And I have NEVER seen that story told ANYWHERE but that somebody male has piped up and said, "Well, I do," or "Well, it depends," or "Sometimes we do."

Some people can't be told, you know; they have to learn the hard way.

Pamela

[kiya]

I fear you may be right about the world-without-end-la-dee-dahness of it. It's still frustrating to me, vastly, massively so.

I have no idea how I could have gotten that character starting out with "what is a man like". The question is too . . . generic. It doesn't have a hook into anything, no person-ness, no . . . meat, even if I believed it were answerable.


I'm feeling like proclaiming that someone who cannot find the distinction between "I don't have male characters and female characters" and "I have characters, some of which are male and some of which are female" is probably not well-suited to attempting to write anything where nuance is needful. This would not, however, produce more light than heat, so I am reduced to muttering about it repeatedly.

[pameladean]

I feel that way too. "How can you possibly think that way and produce any writing worth reading?"

I know, however, that there is often, more with some writers than others, intermittently with some, and probably not with some, a serious disjunction between what people think and how they write. Sometimes one's characters blithely ignore one's theories.

Pamela

it's a tool use order choice

[(Anonymous)]

It's a function of how people construct character from categories; if character is selected from categories, and moreover the categories are themselves constructed in a thick walled, essentialist sort of way, you get the difficulty of belief about how anyone in bin A could ever seen into bin B.

If character is described in terms of categories, in an actively and conciously non-essentialist way, you don't get that, but you also don't get any belief that it's really possible to see the world that way. (Someone told me on usenet not that long ago that it was impossible for me to see East Asians as people before noticing that they were East Asians.)

That's where there's still a useful angle on that argument, I think; it's not really about gender, it's about how it's possible to see.

Re: it's a tool use order choice

[kiya]

Ah, disjoint thought-processing and rupture again. :/

[brooksmoses]

Heh. I figured that this was a topic that was likely to get a rant -- or, at least, an email making oblique reference to and commenting that people were being incomprehensible again -- from you.

I expect that there are people who write by pulling their characters from bins marked "male" or "female" and then specializing them from there, and for them making this distinction is pretty important to their process. And so that aspect of the conversation didn't really bother me -- what bothered me was the part where it went beyond that into claims that one couldn't possibly write characters that would ring true without doing things in that way. As I posted, that sounds just as one-true-wayest as "thou must write an outline of yay much detail, and then thou must write a first draft, and then thou must write a revised draft, and so the number of thy passes through the story shalt be three...."

On the other hand, I do think that some of the point that men (in general, and in Euroamerican society) tend to behave differently than women may be valid; I wonder if on some lines I find it ignorable because leaving much of it out is part of me writing a fictional society that I would consider sensible -- and, quite honestly, I think there's a fair bit of "typical male behavior" that I didn't really get, although I can see it in the over-extreme explanations given.

[kiya]

I'm reminded of back when I was writing "The Things Children Know" and asked for advice on how to write tight third without using pronouns (because I still don't know what's in Daani's underwear). And got some horribly affronted responses, that Children Are Issued Pink Or Blue Blankets In The Crib And That's Just The Way It Is.

(My baby blankets were green and yellow, respectively. Further evidence that I was born Martian, I guess.)

I think that there's a lot of typical socialisation that I don't get, a lot of stuff that I wound up missing entirely. It tends to leave me on the edges of some conversations, especially among polyfolk; my internal response to things like, "How did you escape the inculturation of Monogamy As The Only Way To Be?" tends to be something like ". . .uh, inculturation? Wha-huh?"

This whole thing is reminding me also of something Nancy Lebovitz said once, I think on rasseff: I have a notion that one of the functions of gender myths is to half incapacitate both sexes in complementary ways so as to force them into couples.

[brooksmoses]

Hmm. My blankets were pretty much plain white, except that the larger (hand-crocheted) one did have a pale blue border.

And I think there's a rather distinct element of truth to Nancy's comment, indeed. And it does point up the point that, if one allows that there is a distinct socialization input following that pattern, there will be very definite "male" and "female" categories amongst the people who have been molded by it. And, if there are people who have been molded by it to the extent that they can't see past it to other possibilities, they will probably be of a mind that ignoring those categories is something which breaks their suspension of disbelief.

I seem to be using rather a number of commas.

[kiya]

I think you're allowed; it's to be certain that I'm having a very semicolon day.

[brooksmoses]

Well, I suppose that works. If we start running low on commas, we can resupply them from all the apostrophes you've absconded with from other people using them inappropriately, and you should be set for the upper dots what with all the periods that we've saved by making such long sentences.

[kiya]

I love you.

[humanx.livejournal.com]

I certainly hope so.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

(My baby blankets were green and yellow, respectively. Further evidence that I was born Martian, I guess.)

Oh, good. I'm not the only one. I was dressed in yellow until I was 1. My baby blanket was cream courderoy with red lions all over it. And I had a crocheted green, yellow and white one too.

[keshwyn]

My baby blanket was pink and blue paisley, with green bits. :)

[(Anonymous)]

> (My baby blankets were green and yellow, respectively. Further evidence that I was
> born Martian, I guess.)

*giggle* The truth is out at last.

- Aga

[pameladean]

I just wanted to note that that discussion (if it was the rasfc one) arrived in these parts in very bad order, and that at least one of those remarks about pink and blue blankets was made in ignorance of the background of the story. I also know there's a generational thing here.

Some of those comments were also not about essence, but about perception. And as you have just had cause to note, perception of gender is still incredibly rigid and stupid to this day, regardless of innovations in the matter of baby blankets. Gender essentialism is terribly pernicious and sneaky. It has Hydra heads. Cut one off and it grows two more somewhere else.

I tried to have this discussion, the one about writing characters different from oneself, on the small remnant of the Fidonet WRITING Echo, and was solemnly told that perceived gender differences, even if exaggerated from reality and damaging to the intellectual potential of their victims, were the only reason the human race has been able to propagate itself, so I should embrace them. The promulgator of these views was a thorough gender essentialist and clearly found women an alien species. And in this case, his work reflects this and I can't read it without gagging.

I've also had this discussion on a Wiscon panel and been personally sulked at by a very famous sf writer for daring to suggest that men and women do not really essentially think very differently from one another and that science fiction is not the place to be repeating tired old stereotypes of human behavior.

People can take it really, really personally. It's so maddening.

Pamela

[kiya]

. . . perceived gender differences, even if exaggerated from reality and damaging to the intellectual potential of their victims, were the only reason the human race has been able to propagate itself . . .

I cannot help but smack that up against the idea that children, if ever exposed to positive images or comments on homosexuality, will immediately become gay. Because heterosexuality or even bisexuality just isn't natively appealing, I guess.

Nancy's comment about crippling the sexes in complementary ways to force them into pairs continues to feel apropos.

Forget the men; I'm trying to figure out how I would write someone who thought like that. I'm now wondering if I write SF stuff because it means that for the most part I'm writing about cultures that don't have bits that break my suspension of disbelief like reality does.

[autumnesquirrel.livejournal.com]

Forget the men; I'm trying to figure out how I would write someone who thought like that.

This brings to mind a specific trouble I have with, in particular, the religious right. I will wonder off to my journal with it now for it is tangential and I've been meaning to write it down anyway.

[baratron.livejournal.com]

That's certainly why I read it... and why I dislike sf with more science than people, and why I absolutely can't stand the sort of sf with unbelievable science and one-dimensional people!

[pameladean]

Yes! It's all natural and right, the only way to go, but it's SO TERRIBLY FRAGILE that huge unnatural efforts must be made to sustain it or the entire human race will fail utterly. WORDS fail ME. It's a pity they don't fail people who believe this.

Yes, I think Nancy is onto something.

I once tried to write somebody like that. He turned out to be the Devil. (No, really, I am completely serious. Very few people have noticed, but that's how it happened.)

Pamela

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I hate, hate, hate with a passion the idea that there's something particularly difficult involved in writing a character who doesn't share one's traits.

I think it's difficult. But then, if I were to use myself as a character (as opposed to writing an autobiography) I don't think it would be any easier. Ok, I would instinctively know why I acted as I would, but I'd still have to turn it into a plausible series of motivations and coherence before anyone will believe that someone would 'act like that'

And from that, it's only a small step sideways to doing the same for someone else. I will admit that I do have a slight niggle at the back of my mind when it comes to the current attack novel - I need to know whether other people (men or women) find that the relationship between my two main characters is believable. If it was a sexual relationship, it would ring true, but it's _not_ - and yes, I feel that if it was between two women or a woman and a man, I'd have a more finely adjusted radar for 'what's plausible.' because I have at least *some* experience. There is truth in 'write what you know' - but it means that anything else needs more research, not that it's impossible.

Far more interesting to me was the discussion of the military, because that's where I'd expect my radar to be *really* off - I've never served, I've never been part of this mostly-male culture - but surprisingly, I found that I could work out pretty well what was going on and why each of the characters in question was acting as they did.

I mean, we're science fiction writers. We're making other people believe six impossible things before breakfast. And we're supposed to fall flat at the very first hurdle, that of ordinary human interaction? If I can't write two men in the living room, how on Earth can I write a spaceship captain in 2304, a seven-tentacled alien, or an immortal ghosthunter caught up in a conspiracy that's a few numbers too big for him?

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

And we're supposed to fall flat at the very first hurdle, that of ordinary human interaction? If I can't write two men in the living room, how on Earth can I write a spaceship captain in 2304, a seven-tentacled alien, or an immortal ghosthunter caught up in a conspiracy that's a few numbers too big for him?

Because with seven-tentacled aliens and immortal ghosthunters, you're much less likely to have to worry about any of them reading your manuscript and complaining about all the bits you've got wrong ?

I've never been overly worried about biological gender of my characters, but there are certain social roles I can't get inside, and others I am wary of - because the conditions of soldier, or very domestically focused homemaker, or member of minority oppressed on racial grounds, are ones which there exist people who have lived all their lives, and I've not come close to any of them, and I'd sooner not try to do them than do them in such a way as to come across as resoundingly false to someone who actually has those experiences. Not that I'm not trying to expand my range, but it is something I'm more comfortable doing a little bit at a time. With a soldier in a force based in orbit around Jupiter in 3077, I can be in charge of the surrounding social context and reactions from that, but with a soldier here and now, there are things I just won't have.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

Because with seven-tentacled aliens and immortal ghosthunters, you're much less likely to have to worry about any of them reading your manuscript and complaining about all the bits you've got wrong?

If the characters don't mirror an aspect of humanity, I don't think they should be written about.

It's a time-honoured tradition to strip a setting of the familiar, the 'I was there last week and that's not what it's *like*' to allow a sharper, more focussed view of the issues at stake. Whether you do that by setting your book in the past or in China; the future or Faerie does not really matter. But even the strangest character, if I am to feel any kind of empathy for him, has got to have traits I can feel empathy _with_. so, in some ways, must be 'human.'
And so (natural novellist, yep, that's me) if your seven-tentacled alien isn't consistently characterised, doesn't ring 'true' for whatever alien traits he's got, he'll fail. That's not a problem of tentaclicity, or maleness, it's one of characterisation - a writing problem rather than subject matter.


I've never been overly worried about biological gender of my characters, but there are certain social roles I can't get inside,

If you can't, then maybe you shouldn't, but that doesn't mean that it can't be achieved. I'm neither a mother nor a father; stepparent, sibling, carer...

and others I am wary of - because the conditions of soldier, or very domestically focused homemaker, or member of minority oppressed on racial grounds, are ones which there exist people who have lived all their lives, and I've not come close to any of them, and I'd sooner not try to do them than do them in such a way as to come across as resoundingly false to someone who actually has those experiences.

But the people who are in those roles are not homogenous - what one might experience will sound false to another. I'm a member of a suppressed majority - I'm female. That doesn't mean I understand what it's like to be black, or Jewish, or protestant in Ireland; but I know the general mechanism of it, and at the same time I've got little in common with a good many rampant feminists (some of whom were male!)

Writing is a balancing act between what you know and what you feel you can imagine correctly. Err too much in either direction, and you'll fall flat on your face - and yet I think it is better to stretch yourself as a writer and fail than to write the same character ten times over, or sticking to flat, stereotyped, 'safe' ones.

You can read the memoirs of people who were there, you can watch documentations and talk to reenactors and talk to people in similar situations and run your imagination past them to see whether it works - but in the end, you'll always be doing sideways slips and extrapolation in your characterisation, and seven-tentacled aliens are a lot more difficult to question than mere men.

[meranthi.livejournal.com]

I find it interesting that I do similar things with gaming characters. In general, my characters are female because I am, but I do occasionally get one which says, Nope, guess again! I don't create them that way, certainly not by starting with a male "template" or whatever.