Strong Female Characters

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Saskatoonistan

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Fellow Canadian and avid book review blogger Anna from Genre Reviews has a really entertaining rant on what characteristics seem to be inherent in a lot of female protagonists appearing in fantasy novels lately. It got me thinking really hard about what constitutes a strong female character and whether or not she has to wear tight leather pants, carry a gun and have a tattoo on the small of her back. Does she have to kick ass? Can she still be a strong protagonist but really on supporting characters to do the ass kicking on her behalf.

Bear in mind, I am a huge fan of female characters in tight leather pants who blow the crap out of things, but can't she be vulnerable? (Of course, I am a dude and as such I am likely not qualified to offer an opinion, but I have a female protagonist in one of my books and I've tried really hard to write her as intellectual and feminine without relying on a lot of very common themes in fantasy literature today.)

What are others thoughts?
 

Red-Green

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I'm tired of any character type that's become standardized, and it does often feel that's what happened with the "strong female character." At some point, that became code for a woman who is tough, hard, smart-mouthed, prone to violence. No biggie until you start picking up books that feature cookie-cutter female leads.

I got a couple negative comments on the female lead in my last project. The people who complained said she was too passive and delicate. Because she wins the protagonist (who's a bad guy) over to her side with the strength of her convictions and her commitment to pacifism. Most readers, however, "got" her and saw her as being strong, despite her physical weakness and her refusal to kick anyone's ass. So there's room for both tastes.
 

swvaughn

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My female protag in my urban fantasy does not wear leather pants, have a tattoo, or kick anyone's ass. She has powers she doesn't understand, and she's up against an angel and a monster (who are, of course, far stronger than her) who want to kill her - though she has no idea why. She's also a runaway (she's 19), and rather socially awkward.

This is because I'm not such a huge fan of the kick-ass heroine. I like my characters vulnerable and struggling. I'd love to read more urban fantasy without leather pants and tough, bitter loners.

That said - KAHs done well, I can totally get into. As long as they're not perfect. :D
 

Karen Duvall

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LOL! Men in skirts. I used to hear that expression a lot when the tough female cops and detectives first appeared on the mystery and suspense novel scene. Kind of the same thing, I guess.

This is a really good question, though. I think the kick ass girl is still a popular trope in the fantasy genre, but they're in danger of becoming cliche so if something about them doesn't lift them above the crowd of same-as heroines, a project featuring one may be doomed.

Like everything else, it's mostly in the execution. The philosophy behind the tough chick is a great one, very symbolic of how women see themselves or want to be seen. Female readers want to identify with the strong woman who says and does the things they wish they themselves could. Though it's possible to take things too far, and many writers do. That hardass bitch needs vulnerability to be believable and likable, and doing it well is more challenging than some writers think.
 

Histry Nerd

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My heroine tends to have unrealistic expectations of herself. She's strong, but not that strong; tough, but not that tough. She tends to bite off more than she can chew and get smacked down for her pains.

She has a hard road ahead of her, but I think she will ultimately learn her strengths lie in leading and inspiring others. And she will learn to ask for help when she's in over her head.

If I ever get that far.

For what it's worth.
HN
 

Linda Adams

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I do agree with the points Anna makes. It seems like now every female characters spends most of her time essentially being a jerk. The last urban fantasy I read was like that--I was ready to put the book down because she spent most of her time insulting people for no apparent reason other than to be "strong." Urban fantasy seems particularly bad at it, but I've also seem some mysteries with the same problem.

My lead character is male, but I do have a strong female character in the book. She's a senior level leader in the government, and she's been a very tough character to do. Too much one way, and she becomes unlikable (that happened in a mystery I read); too much another way, and she's not a realistic leader (that happened in a thriller about the Vice President of the US). Her biggest headache--other than herding other politicians cats--is dealing with a place that doesn't believe magic exists any more, but she knows first hand it's out there and she can't say anything about it. She dresses very conservatively (non-controversial clothing). No four-inch heels, tattoos, leather, or guns. She does pick her battles carefully, though if someone deserves chewing out, she will (in the words of my old army sergeant) "flame throw him."
 

Mr Flibble

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Does she have to kick ass? Can she still be a strong protagonist but really on supporting characters to do the ass kicking on her behalf.

No and yes.


Besides is possible for her ( any character, the best characters IMO) to be strong in one area but incredibly vulnerable in others.

Doesn't matter what sex they are, they have to be 3D characters, and I agree with the rant - all too often the 'strong female protagonist' aren't.

Just write real people. You know, even if they do wear leather pants and shoot the crap outta people ( and lets face it, there would be some women who would, wherever you have humans) they have to be fully deveolped or they just become a walking cliche factory.
 

ChaosTitan

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Well, my heroine doesn't wear leather pants (seriously, they chafe when wet and bloodstains are so hard to get out of leather), she doesn't have tattoos (identifying marks like that are sort of dumb when lots of things might want to hunt you), and while she knows how to kill and kick ass, she also gets her own ass handed to her a few times.

I must not be reading the same books as some folks, because I don't seem to run across the "abrasive hot chick in leather who alienates people and is crass for the sake of appearing tough" character all that often. Strong (whether physically or otherwise) characters need to have a counterbalance of weakness in order to even be interesting to me.

I wonder if part of the "hot chick in leather" cliche has more to do with book covers than with the actual character description. I mean, look at the cover for Patricia Briggs' Blood Bound. No mechanic is going to run around in coveralls with her bra hanging out, but marketing-wise, it's effective. It draws the eye, and the iron over her shoulder gives you that bad-ass heroine vibe (and while Mercy is a strong, smart, very capable heroine, she isn't what I'd call bad-ass).
 

Clair Dickson

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When a character is branded as strong and tough, I expect them to be able to fight their own battles. They may get help from time to time, but they had better take on the final confrontation themselves.

I WANT to see "men in skirts." I want to see Phillip Marlowe as a chick. I LIKE misanthropic women who have more to do with their brains than worry about how they look. But I find few of those women in the mystery genre (I'm starting into urban fantasy, though, and loving the chicks there. I think I'm in the wrong genre...)

Can a woman be vulnerable? Sure. Doesn't mean she can't still kick ass. Even Phillip Marlowe sometimes got his ass kicked, but IN THE END, he was still able to get out on his own. I never doubted it... but when I pick a female sleuth novel, more often than not, I'm waiting for her lover/boyfriend/ "platonic" male friend, etc. to come in a rescue her because she can't take care of things on her own. Not to mention the stupid, life-threatening situations she blunders into...

I think what happens with many tough characters is that it's hard to reconcile tough with vulnerable, without realizing that often those with the toughest exteriors (thickest shells and sharpest tongues) are the ones who are often the most sensitive. They just hurt when no one sees it. To me, it seems obvious, they only show that vulnerability under certain conditions. The rest of the time, they keep the wall up.

As for "tough," some writers do confuse tough with being an ass. They are not the same. It's as if the writer themselves doesn't know what a strong person acts like... (hint: they act like anyone else.)

I think female characters in general have a difficult time because they are going to be negatively branded by either the readers who like kick-ass females or those who like softer-females.

Do we have stories featuring geeky, self-conscious, unmasculine men? Or do the men somehow always come out as being heroic? Women are either hard or soft. Men seem to just be hard?
 

raburrell

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Characters have to feel real. Beyond that, I don't care if they're screwed, blued, or tattooed.

A laundry list of traits and quirks doesn't really accomplish a well-written female character, strong or otherwise. It tends to be the intangibles in the writing that does.
 

ink wench

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I guess I'm with ChaosTitan here because I just haven't run across this all that often. But since I developed a huge crush on UF, I haven't encountered too many heroines that are over-the-top tough. Really, off the top of my head, I can't name one who didn't have some vulnerability. Yes, there is a predominance of a particular kind of toughness in those books (like Red suggests, there's lots of ways to be tough), but that goes with the territory - you can't save the world in X number of pages without being a mover and shaker. I have read a couple novels where the female MC stands aside and lets others do the ass-kicking for her. I found them boring. I don't want a MC who is going to be the observer.

And in the interest of disclosure, the MC in my WIP does wear leather pants. But she bought them at a time in her life when she was very vulnerable and needed to feel stronger. It was partly a joke. So now she calls them her comfort pants, and wears them whenever she needs a boost of self-confidence. :D
 

Saskatoonistan

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All very good points. I don't know, I've always found Mrs. Miniver to be the epitome of a strong female character. Then again, she isn't dispatching vampires, werethings or zombies...
 

RunawayScribe

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Kick-ass heroines can be fun, but it's not all I want to read about. I like variety in my books.

Anyway, you don't need to be able to physically kick ass in order to be a strong person.

The MC is my novel risks her life several times and does some incredibly brave things, but she's not fearless or able to physically overpower any man who gets in her way. That's fun to read about once in awhile, but honestly, I can't relate to that. There are women out there who can wrench tall men into headlocks, and I respect and hail them. But that's not me, nor is it many of the women I know.

My MC feels fear when she takes risks. She has to battle off shaking and feeling physically ill when she copes with things becoming terrifying. And she DOES cope, but not by martial-artsing everyone around her to the ground. She's an average person, and most of us just don't have state-of-the-art combat training. She's physically restrained from going for help by a male character at one point, and at one point another male character attempts to rape her - and if not for a turn of circumstance, he would have gotten away with it.

Yet I feel the character is strong. Average as she is, through turns of good fortune, wanting to help and being as smart as she can realistically be, she saves herself and others from what would be a pretty gosh-darn sucky fate.

So yeah, some people are strong through their ass-kicking. Others are strong in other ways. Some are strong in both. Any take is valid as long as it suits the story.
 

Writer2011

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I have a female protag in my screenplay...she's really, really tough as nails and doesn't take anything from anyone :)
 

EFCollins

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In my current WiP, my main character is a female contractor. She's a "pistol" as Dolores (I think it was Dolores Haze... might have been Kerr or Soapdish) put it. She's fiery, has a smart mouth, and the ass to go with it (by that, I mean muscle). That doesn't mean she doesn't cry or want to be held or anything like that. She's a woman who clearly likes others to know that yes, she might be tough, but she's still feminine too. She doesn't wear leather, mostly jeans with carpentry loops and the closest thing she has to a weapon is a nail gun (although, you can definitely kick ass with one of them too). Personally, I prefer female characters who are strong of mind; if they have brawn to go with it, that's okay, but they better be able to think.
 

Storm Dream

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Interesting. I just finished reading an urban fantasy where I'd definitely describe the lead as "badass." It was written in first person, and I absolutely got a taste of her self-doubt and insecurities (which we might not see, if it were written in third), but she did a lot of mouthing off. A lot. I am all for well-timed sarcasm, but there comes a point (for any character) where I think, dude, just shut up before you get into more trouble.

I don't know if it's to illustrate some sort of lack of discipline (can't keep mouth shut) or to show badassery (look! I insult people who can disembowel me with the flick of a finger!) but it was prevelant in this particular novel. I don't read a lot of the first-person urban fantasy so I can't say whether it's predominant there.

I can't say I find a lot of heroines as "jerks," though. I can see where a lot of the more verbally abrasive MCs in general can come off as mean and nasty, but I tend to enjoy that aspect of a character until it goes from fittingly sarcastic to getting themselves into ridiculous trouble because their commentary ticked off the werewolf lord. I will say that I love badass MCs for the most part, and will forgive a lot if a book is entertaining, so maybe I just don't see the jerk aspect in what I'm reading?

(Romance novels, however, are an entirely different story. I could go on for days.)

Clair Dickson's commentary pretty much matches what I was thinking, so I'll just add a QFT. :)
 

Libbie

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The leading lady in one of my WIPs declares herself king. I don't think it gets much more strong than that. :D

Of course, that really happened, so it's not like I had an original idea. Ha ha.
 

SPMiller

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This is yet another reason why GRR Martin is a better writer than people give him credit for. He has subverted so many awful fantasy cliches and tropes it's not even funny. In particular, his character Brienne smashes the high-fantasy action-girl trope by portraying what a warrioress would have to be to compete with males on the battlefield, and by showing the discrimination/oppression/sexism she'd face in a male-dominated pseudomedieval society.
 

Libbie

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Good call on Brienne (love her!), and on GRRM not getting nearly enough credit for being a badass.
 

Stacia Kane

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I don't write those types of heroines. I think they're tough women, but not necessarily like that. Megan from the Demons books is more inclined to run away if she can but she'll fight if she's being attacked (as I think we all would) and stands up for herself verbally, though not necessarily with snarky sarcasm.

Chess from the Downside books is more traditionally "tough," but is still hugely vulnerable. She might threaten people with magic to get the point across but is perfectly willing to let those who actually look big and tough do the physical-intimidation-and-beatdowns.

I'm not really interested in shoot-first-ask-questions-later heroines, but I'm not at all interested in characters who won't fight back when they're up against the wall, or who will give up and let people die just because they're scared. For me the difference is motivation.

JMO.
 

Cyia

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I consider my MC a strong female character, no leather though. She starts off as a bit of a push-over, but gains her own ground as the book goes on and makes a very tough decision in the end. Real strength isn't always about who can break the most bones in the shortest time span.
 

Lyra Jean

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My Female MC in my current WIP has to deal with the sentient nanobots that are in her body. She then leads all the colonists on the ship in a rebellion against the crew of the ship. After she ousts the captain and executes him she takes over and becomes the leader of the expedition.

She's really good at delegation and has no problem with dealing with things herself. She knows what her strengths and weaknesses are. She will put the the best person she thinks can do the job even if it is someone she loves and they might die doing the job. She has three husbands and eight children. She is the head of her household.

I think she is a strong bad-ass main character. My men aren't pansies either. I don't like the totally kick ass take names later female leads cause it just kinda makes me sad cause I'm nothing like that.
 

Epiphany

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Okay, SO:

I write urban fantasy about two "species" of humans, one that is very physically keen, meaning they are swift and agile, and the other that is keen mentally, meaning that they are smart and persuasive.

FEMALE PROTAGONIST #1- She does kick ass because she is a member of the physical race, and she is very sarcastic, dry, and bitter in all senses. However, her weakness is when she tries to have a relationship with a man who is technically more feminine than she is and is a member of the opposite race, meaning that he is almost the exact opposite of her, she has to come face to face with dealing with incredibly emotional situations throughout the series, something that she isn't used to.

FEMALE PROTAGONIST #2- Has a black belt, but is very bubbly, cracks jokes all of the time, is flirtatious all of the time, likes showing off, and likes attention, but in the end knows and does what is right, attempting to be humble as much as she possibly can.

FEMALE PROTAGONIST #3- Is athletic but doesn't do much of the ass-kicking, is incredibly intellectual, curious, wondrous, and more emotional than the first two MCs. She is very analytical of her peers and doesn't fall into peer pressure, doesn't wear makeup, doesn't like to be in the spotlight, etc.

I try to make a subtle point about strong females throughout my entire series by making all of my characters as bold and as different from each other as possible. I do obvious things like make them all have boyish names and part of the "race" that is physically exquisite, but still try to give them obstacles and problems that they struggle with. Anyway, I really hope that they come off as strong female protagonists, because that was my intention.
 
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