Comments on: A Writer Can be Anyone or Anything

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.

By: wayne

wayne — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:59:52 +0000

I once attended a work shop where we were instructed to write a piece form the point of view of the opposite sex. The pieces were read anonymously and the participants were asked to guess the sex of the writer. Two of us fooled the entire group.

I agree that writing from our sexual POV is restricting and heard somewhere that about 40% of romance writers are men.

By: fairyhedgehog

fairyhedgehog — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 13:22:09 +0000

The trouble with “write what you know” is that it sets the scene for those awful autobiographical rants that are entirely satisfying to the person who wrote them and to no one else.

Write what you imagine is far more interesting. Terry Pratchett writes some of the most convincing female characters I know of.

By: Most Popular Articles March 2008

Most Popular Articles March 2008 — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:50:28 +0000

[...] A Writer Can be Anyone or Anything: I attended a writers’ workshop session at which a minor, but much-published author warned participants against creating POV (point of view) characters of the opposite sex. [...]