Lucy V Hay: The Two Gender Swaps That Could Make a Big Difference To Your Writing
Very often writers try and shoehorn women into stories using a technique I call ‘just add women’. These stories may feel flat and lifeless because the writer has probably looked at their male cast list and thought, ‘Ooops! Better add some women!’ As a result, those characters may feel superfluous (at best), because the writer has forgotten that ‘good’ characters need to have role functions and motivations, whether they are female or not!
If you want to ensure people will invest in your female character’s journey, you can’t expect ‘just add women’ to cut it. But what could you do? Well, a good idea can be looking to pro writers for guidance.
Jed Mercurio is an award-winning British writer and his TV series, Line of Duty, is much celebrated for its nuanced characterisation. Actress Thandie Newton was nominated for a Best Leading Actress BAFTA in her role as DCI Roz Huntley. It may surprise you to know Jed Mercurio advocates NOT distinguishing between genders when he comes up with his characters. He told BBC Radio 5 Live’s Nihal Arthanayake in a 2018 interview that the protagonists are presented with ‘a set of goals and a set of obstacles and gender doesn’t come into it.’ Now, Mercurio has the advantage of having his series already greenlit, but we can still take advantage of this idea in our spec screenplays and novels as we brainstorm characters and their back stories.
Thandie Newton in Jed Mercurio’s Line of Duty
The second swap you could make is considering how your story world works. Most stories take place in the type of world we recognise from our own lives, where (mostly) men are in charge. But your characters could live in a woman’s world, for whatever reason. It could be overt, but it doesn’t have to be. Even a male protagonist could still live in a woman’s world, like Bellamy in The 100.
Female characters take centre stage in CW’s The 100
IN A NUTSHELL: Some writers are not sure ‘where to begin’ with a female character. It might seem counterintuitive but copying Jed Mercurio in NOT giving her a gender in the first instance as you write her back story might help. Alternatively, at the other end of the scale, why not think about the world of the story instead ... What could you gain by placing women in all the traditional authoritarian roles? How does this impact on your main characters, both female and male?
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Lucy is an author and script editor based in Devon, UK. Her blog, Bang2write, was voted no.1
in the Write Life’s Top 100 Blogs for Writers list in 2017, 2018 and 2019. Lucy’s third novel, The Other
Twin, is available to buy in paperback, and as an ebook and audiobook: http://www.lucyvhayauthor.