Writing Characters Of The Opposite Sex To The Writer In 1st Person POV

I am sure this might of been asked before, but I couldn't find it...

Does anyone have any tips when writing a 1st Person POV character of the opposite sex to the writer?

I am writing as a male who currently working on a story where the female character is telling her story.

I find writing from a female POV hot.

Don't have her pass a mirror or a store window and describe her body. That's been overdone.

You can give us a nice, sexy idea of how she feels about her body (and sex) when you are writing from her POV, putting on clothes, walking down the street, watching men react to her. Good luck!

There's a thread on this in the Ask Readers forum: https://www.lushstories.com/forum/ask-readers/writing-opposite-gender-characters.

Personally, I'm simply not ready to write from any perspective that is not my perspective. Call it narcissistic if you want, but I'm not prepared to try to get inside the head of a woman - or a person of color, or a transgendered individual either, and write about their sexual feelings, attractions and experiences. My writing is pretty much guided by the old "write what you know" adage.

That is not to say there's anything wrong with doing that, but it's just not my style, so I wish I could offer more tips.

But I will suggest avoiding the obvious male pitfalls. Don't start off by describing the protagonist's body in excruciating detail down to 38DD-24-36 measurements. Make her real, and human, not some caricaturized male fantasy. Same goes for the people they end up having sex with: describe what kind of a person they are or how they make the protagonist feel as much as what they look like. It might be something more subtle than a view of a guy's muscular chest or a bulge in his pants, and not even necessarily something visual, that gets their juices flowing. Maybe Ensorceled put it much better and more succinctly: write about how she feels about her body, and sex, and the people she interactions.

Read some stories written by women with a woman protagonist. That might give you some insight.

My comp entry (see sig) is all female, with one of the women as the viewpoint. The reaction from my female Lush friends has been quite positive so I guess I'm getting something right.

One thing I rarely do is write female first person. When my protagonist is female, I tend to go third-person. Not sure why other than I feel uncomfortable putting on a female face, I guess.

Oh, and I would add some general advice: Treat characters of any orientation, gender identity, biological sex as human beings with emotions and personalities, not naked bodies to be smashed together in various configurations. Do that, and you can write from almost any perspective.

Quote by joe71
Don't start off by describing the protagonist's body in excruciating detail down to 38DD-24-36 measurements. Make her real, and human, not some caricaturized male fantasy.

Which is part of what I am getting at. I don't think I described Jill much beyond "large, soft tits" and Sadie got a short descriptive paragraph but not the "laundry list" some seem so enamoured of. Describe enough to get the message across and be a bit realistic rather than making every woman a Playboy model and every man a handsome stud.

Quote by Seeker4

Oh, and I would add some general advice: Treat characters of any orientation, gender identity, biological sex as human beings with emotions and personalities, not naked bodies to be smashed together in various configurations. Do that, and you can write from almost any perspective.

But sometimes, it just about being objectified

These three men are very helpful.

I've only read literature from Verbal and Seeker, though.

Thank you for your answers and help.

Quote by Ensorceled

I find writing from a female POV hot.

Don't have her pass a mirror or a store window and describe her body. That's been overdone.

You can give us a nice, sexy idea of how she feels about her body (and sex) when you are writing from her POV, putting on clothes, walking down the street, watching men react to her. Good luck!

I agree. By pure coincidence, I wrote only two days ago a mirror scene where my female character (Clare) was looking at her body in the bathroom mirror, going through her personal, and very private body insecurities. This, I felt could only be done successfully from her POV.

To expand a little, I have already written (atm not quite up to Lushstories standard) all 12 chapters of my next book, Clare. Of these chapters, 10 are in 3rd person POV (where it is about Clare). The other two are 1st person, where like for most of the story so far, the main male character (David) is telling his story.

However, though the story is there in 3rd person, when I read it now, two years after I first wrote it, I feel 1st person POV is the way ago. I want to get over raw emotions, the insecurities Clare has as she is exposed to a world she did not know existed. The mirror scene is just one example. Yes, I am stretching myself and any writing skills I might allegedly have, and yes I might revert back to 3rd person if I am not sure.

Quote by joe71

There's a thread on this in the Ask Readers forum: https://www.lushstories.com/forum/ask-readers/writing-opposite-gender-characters.

Personally, I'm simply not ready to write from any perspective that is not my perspective. Call it narcissistic if you want, but I'm not prepared to try to get inside the head of a woman - or a person of color, or a transgendered individual either, and write about their sexual feelings, attractions and experiences. My writing is pretty much guided by the old "write what you know" adage.

That is not to say there's anything wrong with doing that, but it's just not my style, so I wish I could offer more tips.

But I will suggest avoiding the obvious male pitfalls. Don't start off by describing the protagonist's body in excruciating detail down to 38DD-24-36 measurements. Make her real, and human, not some caricaturized male fantasy. Same goes for the people they end up having sex with: describe what kind of a person they are or how they make the protagonist feel as much as what they look like. It might be something more subtle than a view of a guy's muscular chest or a bulge in his pants, and not even necessarily something visual, that gets their juices flowing. Maybe Ensorceled put it much better and more succinctly: write about how she feels about her body, and sex, and the people she interactions.

Thank you, joe71, that was the thread.

As a male, I am with you and what you mean when you say, "Write what you know." That is why most of the story so far has been written from a male point of view, but, as mentioned in my reply above, I feel it is time to stretch myself and have a go writing from the female POV.

It is those small nuances in the way females think that I trying to include as my female character, Clare changes as she is exposed to a world and a type of life she didn't know existed.

Quote by Seeker4

Read some stories written by women with a woman protagonist. That might give you some insight.

My comp entry (see sig) is all female, with one of the women as the viewpoint. The reaction from my female Lush friends has been quite positive so I guess I'm getting something right.

One thing I rarely do is write female first person. When my protagonist is female, I tend to go third-person. Not sure why other than I feel uncomfortable putting on a female face, I guess.

Quote by Seeker4

Oh, and I would add some general advice: Treat characters of any orientation, gender identity, biological sex as human beings with emotions and personalities, not naked bodies to be smashed together in various configurations. Do that, and you can write from almost any perspective.

Thank you Seeker4. That is a very good tip about reading stories written by women with a woman protagonist.

I will also read your competition entry.

My current comp story, Summer Love, is written from the male POV. I've done this several times (successfully, based on comments from readers), and I find it fun to challenge myself to do so.

A story that I wrote from the male POV that did particularly well is this one: The First Time Chronicles - Part One: How Gary Lost His Virginity in High School.

I hope you find this helpful!

I did just that in my competition story, Solo Girl In The Dust. This was my first time ever writing from a female point of view, and I used a first person. Interestingly, I gave her the same first language as me in real life, French. More interestingly, I made her a hundred percent vaginal.

Since I "roleplay" all my characters, this wasn't too different a thing to do. It was real fun to write!

One of the big pieces of advice is to avoid falling back on easy (and often inaccurate) stereotypes as much as possible. As memorable as Jack Nicholson's advice on writing women is - a man minus reason and accountability - it's a formula based on thin (not to mention sexist) stereotypes that leaves your characters flat and cartoonish. As a reader, it's a mood killer. As an author, I mentally try to tune in to the voice of the character (inner and outer) to get a sense of their personality, and allow that to guide their behavior. Usually it's a modified extension of my own voice, but relying more on the feminine side of my personality - not that I'm trans, but we all have male and female aspects of our personalities according to Carl Jung and other old-school psychiatrists. If I can't hear their voice clearly, or don't believe in it, then I can't write them realistically.

I read one story recently where the female protagonist is admiring herself in a mirror (yeah that cliche), and claims to have "the sexiest ass ever!" Fucking hell! EVER! I stopped reading right there. First of all, it takes a pretty self-obsessed character to spend that much time staring at their body in a mirror for no other purpose than to look at it. When they do, it's usually with more ciritcality than admiration - "Is that a pimple?" "Do my thighs still look okay?" "Am I getting fat?" "Are my breasts too asymmetical?" We (people in general) are far more attentive to our shortcomings than the positive aspects of ourselves. It's just basic human nature, and that encompasses women as well as men. Even if there are parts of their body that they're proud of, it might be "Well, at least my ass still looks good," but I doubt anyone thinks to themselves, "I have the sexiest ass ever!" A guy might say that if he was bragging about some hot chick he banged, but I doubt most women (or men) would have that thought about themselves.

What was happening was that the author was trying too hard to write from a female perspective, but their concept of femininity was based on bullshit Hollywood (and/or porn) tropes and cliches. The truth is, women - most of them - are not unreasonable, nor unaccountable, nor superficial, nor self-obsessed narcissists, nor emotionally volatile neurotics. We see these cheap archetypes over and over again, and they've always been laughable caricatures, not realistic portrayals. So try to make them feminine, but don't try too hard to make them very different from yourself that they become these outlandish alien creatures.