Comments on: A Writer Can be Anyone or Anything

By: ZiraWoods

ZiraWoods — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 20:17:32 +0000

James Patterson is a Caucasian male who retired from the advertising business to write a best-selling series of novels from the viewpoint of an African-American psychologist/ex-detective Alex Cross not to mention the viewpoint of females for his Women’s Murder Club, and Maximum Ride. Where would he be if he’d limited himself.

I can’t understand why an author would ‘suggest’ limiting yourself that way. Unless she’s trying to stem the flow of competition. LOL Don’t listen to her. There are plenty of authors who write beyond their scope of knowledge. It’s another way to improve brain power, and that’s why we have people who are willing to read and criticize.

By: Moira

Moira — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 03:23:23 +0000

I agree! Just to add another author to the list – S.E. Hinton (a woman) has written very convincingly from the POV of adolescent males.

By: Lauren

Lauren — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:20:20 +0000

Wow, yeah, I completely agree with this.

If someone doesns’t feel like they could successfully capture the pov of the opposite gender, than they could choose to portray only their gender or, hey, try to do it anyway. Basically, it’s at their discretion, and no one else should try to put a limiation on that.

By: Lynn Jordan -- Authors Tools

Lynn Jordan -- Authors Tools — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:30:04 +0000

How sad to think that all our characters should be mirror images of ourselves.

Most of us write to explore characters and worlds which are not our own.

We all have different reason that we write. However, for most of us the most important reason is that we can’t NOT write.

No one has to like (or even read) my writing. But no one can tell me what to write (unless of course they have a fat contract in their hands).

By: Patrique

Patrique — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 11:03:33 +0000

I am a man, but almost exclusively write from the female perspective. Men and women share enough commonalities to make it work, since they are all human to start with. Emotions also tend to run high in my stories and even though this could very well be done with men, I feel that I can express myself better with female characters.