I’ve already debated the merit of changing your main character to a boy. Now I’m going to let the pendulum swing the other way and ask if there’s a need for more girls in fiction. Maybe we have an “excess” of girl protagonists lately, but who are those girls’ friends? Boys.
This seems fair, right? If your readers are going to be both boys and girls, you want to represent both sexes. So if your main character is a girl, your secondary characters will be boys (and vice versa). But this balance creates a dearth of female friendships–as evidenced by the Bechdel Test.
I came across mention of the Bechdel Test on Sarah Rees Brennan’s livejournal. The test comes from a comic by Alison Bechdel in which a character will only watch a movie if it:
I’ve recently been really dismayed by reading a bunch of books where the heroine apparently has no friends, or seems to actively dislike her friends (tons of mental bagging on them) or is at least totally prepared to dismiss her friends the instant Mr Right comes along and then friends can either talk solely about Mr Right with her or hop it.
Which doesn’t endear me to the heroine, who then seems like a pretty sucky friend.
With paranormal romance so popular at the moment, I’m sure we can come up with many books about a girl pining over a boy to the detriment of her friends. But… isn’t that how romance novels are supposed to be: girl (+) boy ( -) the rest of the world?
Still, when we subtract female friends from the equation we are possibly telling girl readers things we don’t mean to convey: that their lives are supposed to revolve around boys, that they need help from boys, that friendships with other girls aren’t really that important.
What do you think–should writers create more female secondary characters?
Parker Peevyhouse
Parker Peevyhouse
lindajoysingleton
Joni Sensel
Chris Eboch
Nick
Greg R. Fishbone
I remember when the Bechdel Test came out; a few of us who wrote short stories together scoffed… and then choked, as we looked at our work and our favorite novels. Oh, woe. The things you end up reading and writing if you’re not paying attention.
It all comes back to whether fiction is a window or a mirror. I say we should “window” this and show a possibility: what if guys and girls can be friends without all of that hormonal weirdness? Especially in speculative fiction, when there can be a lot going on in terms of environment (sometimes hostile) and setting and world, it would be nice to enable characters of different genders to work together, play together, to display teamwork and partnerships that are solid without being romantic. . That’s something toward which to strive, anyway.
I think YA readers crave romance these days. Seems like you can’t write a YA book wihtout it now. MG is more flexible, but I think even it is getting more romantic.
And I wonder if that’s reflecting the time period, or what? Are we all sort of “huddled masses,” and need that relationship thing in our escape reading, to make us feel better about the world in general, or what? The truth is, some people still struggle with relationships; it must be tiring and disappointing for all of the fiction they encounter to trend that way…
I am so glad to see this post and see that someone agrees with me on the whole pathetic friendless female thing. Ugh! One of my favorite books is that way and it drove me nuts. Even the most awkward unhappy characters have friends, yet so many times we meet them and they have no relationshiips outside “the boy.” SO not true to life.
Girls definitely ditch their friends for a boy, but they still hang out, talk on the phone – have a life in my opionion. Of course there are exceptions to every rule but in most cases people have friends. And those friends don’t always have to hate “the boy!”
Great post! I think I need to go check out my current WIP to make sure I have enough girl power in my male focused story. ; )
Great post!
I so agree. And I think the test of a book/movie (where the girls don’t just talk about boys) is excellent. I’d just add: no more cattiness!
I’m okay with cattiness that gets resolved, but I get overwhelmed by stories that are just drenched in negative female relationships. On the one hand, this is what a lot of girls deal with in school, etc. On the other hand, many girls have wonderful, complicated friendships in which cattiness doesn’t really play a role.
I have to chime in and say that the girl mentally bashing on her friends is, I feel, a technique to make the audience think the MC is above everyone else, that somehow she has more virtue and intelligence than other girls. It works to a degree but do you know what I really love? An MC who puts other girls above her, who finds herself wishing she were more like her friend or sister or cousin. The way Elizabeth Bennett loves Jane, or Katniss loves Prim and Rue. They’re not self-deprecating, just expressing admiration for the ones they love. This makes me love the MC all the more, and let’s be honest we could use a little more positive relationship examples in our society.
What a great topic, Parker. I think the impulse to make our work appealing to as many readers as possible is a big culprit. That whole, “put in something for the boys” phenomenon.
But I think another factor is the need, in fiction, to eliminate characters who just aren’t that important to the story. If I wrote stories that took place at school or something, with a crowd of kids, I might see it differently. But most of my casts are only a few people, usually with the MC put into a situation that is in some way isolating (following the advice, albeit usually unwittingly, of the great Richard Peck). So while the MC might have friends in my head, or even in hers, they’re not usually important enough to get screen time.
But I think your point is valid and thought-provoking.
I have to admit there aren’t a lot of girl characters in my book, and my MC’s closest girl friends only get a very little “screen time.” I also hate to be prescriptive about fiction (ie, you MUST include girl characters).
However, I once heard some interesting advice along the lines of: when you finish a manuscript, go back and change the sex of one character. It’s an interesting way to take a different look at a story you might be feeling dogmatic about.
By the way, I was expecting at least one person to get angry and say, Why SHOULD I write more about girls? It’s funny that we get more angry about boy characters than girl characters. Do you think it’s because most of those responding to this thread are women?
I thought about that Parker and almost responded with a similar sentiment. I don’t like to be prescriptive about the sex of my characters. And I DO get a little huffy when someone says I should change my characters to a boy or girl because it will “sell” better. What does that even mean? I’m still not buying it. Not that I would never change it, it would just have to make sense with the story. I would never make changes based on marketing trends and “saleability.”
For me I just ask what purpose is this character fulfilling and if I dig deep enough often the gender is pretty specific to that purpose. If I can flippantly change the sex maybe I haven’t developed that character enough or I can cut them out altogether.
I don’t know–with secondary characters it seems like you can make a lot of big changes to them and still have them fulfill their role in the story. Certainly they’ll act a bit differently or have a bit of different view on things than they did before you changed their sex, but is gender so set in stone for a secondary character?
I’m asking because I’m thinking about the different roles a guy best friend might play as opposed to a girl best friend. They might interact somewhat differently with the main character, and their gender might influence her arc differently, but is it a HUGE change?
I’m still really exploring this whole idea of secondary character friendships, as you can tell.
(Hah! I was irritated, too, but I thought that exploding over the Boy thing the first time labeled me as the Psychotic Feminist Angsty Girl badly enough.)
I tend to write books with characters in a.) groups, b.) girls/sibling pairs, and c.) people who are isolated within their own heads. The SFF manuscript I’m playing with has a lot of isolated people whose roads are separate but quickly diverging; they all have a lot of big inner strife going on, a bit of attitude from some, a bit of desperation from others. It really must depend on the genre. I don’t want to be told to write girls any more than I want to be told to write boys — but I can see in my own writing that I need to be balanced, so this was more thought-provoking than annoying, when I gave it more thought.
The “write more boys” thing bugged me because there are too many people going on and on about why boys don’t read. And as a former teacher, that’s one I went into TOO many times.
Perhaps this argument comes down to what you said: it depends on the genre, and I’ll add, on the book.
Yes, you’re probably right. I’m thinking too hard about main characters but I can see that changing a secondary character’s gender is probably not such a drastic thing.
Maybe I’m just resistant to change. I’ll just start chanting YES I CAN! and maybe things will start to happen for me.
Ha! You know what? I use the old Churchill quote: “Never give up. Never give up. Never give up.” I have a magnet of it on my fridge.
“I’m asking because I’m thinking about the different roles a guy best friend might play as opposed to a girl best friend. They might interact somewhat differently with the main character, and their gender might influence her arc differently, but is it a HUGE change?”
I dunno. As I wrote on Kirby Larson’s blog series on gender, the key reason I often make the sidekick the opposite gender from the MC is that I think it’s more likely to give me a character who will think about and react to things differently than the MC does, so the MC has a better foil (and more potential for conflict). Not to say that they automatically are drastically different, but it increases the likelihood of different perspectives and impulses. IMO.
I know what you mean. One might be more literal-minded or have different social skills or different ways of looking at problems.