My debut novel, The Tick and the Tock of the Crocodile Clock, will be out on 3rd May. A month or so ago, during an interview about its imminent release, I got asked a question I hadn’t been asked before: why did I, a man in his thirties, write a novel where the main character is a woman in her twenties?
Honestly, up until that point I hadn’t even considered it. For a moment before I answered I was hit by a wave of uncertainty; was I wrong to have created my protagonists, Wendy and Cat?
In reality, there are many reasons why the story is what it is. The most petulant sounding is probably the one that sprung to mind first: that’s just who the story is about, when I dreamed it up the main character was a woman and there’s nothing wrong with that. Fortunately, there are more reasons than that.
The most obvious explanation is that this book began as a play that I wrote in 2014 when I too was in my twenties, and that play was written to address an imbalance in Scottish theatre at the time. Prominent arts columnists such as Lynn Gardner had rightfully pointed out that the ratio of genders on stage was generally two men to every one woman, and I had no interest in contributing to that. Also, many of my actress friends had pointed out that younger roles for women are not only thin on the ground but often not very interesting, so I wanted to write a flawed character that an actress in her twenties could enjoy the intricacies of.
But that was the play, and that was almost a decade ago, I could have changed it for the book, right? But why would I? The characters of Cat and Wendy are based on an amalgamation of people I’ve known over the years, and those people were women. Most of friends throughout my life have been women. I’ve always been around incredible, complex, flawed, and interesting women. It was only natural to me that I would write about women.
There’s a lot of fear around just now, perhaps it’s genuine or maybe, dare I say, it’s cynically manufactured. There are writers taking to Twitter to protest the fact that they “can’t” write certain characters anymore because they’ll be “cancelled”, they’re outraged that “wokery” is curtailing their “artistic vision” and… I’m going to end that sentence there because I’m running out of sarcastic quotation marks. Of course a writer can write another gender, and it’s a good thing too, because imagine what literary masterpieces we’d have been robbed of if everyone only wrote characters that matched their own.
Men can still write women, but if the women in your life tell you you’re doing it wrong, listen to them. It’ll make your writing better; I know it massively improved mine
Imagine how much poorer we’d be if Robin Hobb hadn’t written Fitz, if Terry Pratchett hadn’t written Granny Weatherwax, If Ursula Le Guin hadn’t written Sparrowhawk, Neil Gaiman hadn’t written Coraline, Agatha Christie hadn’t written Poirot, authors writing characters of a different gender from them isn’t new and some of the greatest literary characters we have are a result of it.
If women authors write lead characters who are both male or female, but men limit themselves to writing only male characters then what you’re left with is, once again, an uneven balance of male characters, and that’s a step in the wrong direction. You can write a different gender from your own, you just have to do it well. Sebastian Faulks argued that he couldn’t describe his female characters without people being offended or him being “cancelled”, but that dubious revelation didn’t arise out of people being “offended”, but people being amused en masse that he described a female character’s breasts as mysterious white flowers that rode her ribcage, which many suggested was not a way any woman had ever thought about her breasts in the whole history of the human race. It wasn’t that he wrote about a woman, it’s that the way he wrote about the woman was super weird.
People don’t have any more patience for female characters that have no autonomy in their own story, they’re bored of ladies who are sex objects even in their own narration, they’re sick of men describing the physics of breasts or the inner workings of female anatomy in a way that ranges from offensive to hilariously misinformed.
I’ve discovered one simple little trick that really helps when you’re writing a different gender from your own: if you’re writing a female character, then let a real-life woman read it. Simple, right? I’m incredibly fortunate to have a loving wife, supportive mother, and female friends all of whom have an honest relationship with me, and who care enough about me that they won’t allow me write descriptions that make them feel like a topiary.
I’d be mortified if someone were to read those first drafts of my novel now, littered with the little flaws I’d never have spotted without those honest opinions. One example that springs to mind is the villainous character of Lindsay who in the early drafts I’d described as “podgy” or “chubby”. It was my wife who pointed out to me that the only reason I’d made the character overweight was because of the deeply ingrained, stereotyped, notion that being fat, particularly as a woman, is a lazy shorthand for being unlikeable, and that I’d subconsciously chosen those attributes for her because of that. It was a horrifying realisation that I’d fallen into those harmful and hurtful tropes.
Other changes were less extreme. One was a frankly ridiculous scene, in retrospect, where I suggested Cat wanted to be an influencer despite it being totally out of character, simply because somewhere in my head I thought that’s an aspiration that lots of young women have. I’m grateful that that one was shot down unanimously by every one I trusted to read the first draft. Men can still write women, but if the women in your life tell you you’re doing it wrong, listen to them. It’ll make your writing better. I know it massively improved mine.
I hope to never join the ill-reputed pantheon who are bestowed with the hashtag #menwritingwomen, but if I am then I won’t be taking to social media to protest about my artistic licence being revoked. I’ll be – well, primarily hiding my head in shame – but secondarily I’ll be trying to learn from my mistakes.
Can a man write a woman? I believe so. Can this man write a woman? I guess, in a few weeks when my book is released, you can tell me.
https://ift.tt/oZr1LUf
2022-04-21 13:51:57Z
CBMiRGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRoZWJvb2tzZWxsZXIuY29tL2NvbW1lbnQvd2h5LW1lbi1jYW5hbmQtbXVzdHdyaXRlLXdvbWVu0gEA
0 Commentaires