Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

More on Out of Body Characters

In a Romance Writing Course I took between terms at New Horizon's Academy, I really got something hammered home that I thought I understood already. This was the difference between writing from a male POV and a female POV. A requirement of the course was to write a vignette from both a male and Female POV. The instructor did not seem to particularly like my male protagonist. I got the sense he reminded her of somebody she wanted to forget. My Central Character brought to the story a man's immediate need. He was attracted to the female supporting character physically, began falling in love (in his own way) but to begin with their relationship was driven by his compelling physical need. This Protagonist, was in my view, a fairly normal male and passed the authenticity test in my mind which has some experience in how a man thinks.

My female character was an undercover police woman investigating my male central character. What I had in mind was someone who gotten into the profession driven by a desire for social justice. Now I know for a fact that there are woman who work undercover in narcotics but lacked a sense for what their real motivations are. I envisioned her desire as one of revenge, linked to a job that was a ticket to a better life and once into the job continued because she was good at it. In the story she is not very attractive and it gave her low self esteem a sorely need boost. However, underneath it all she was a woman drawn by a deeper need for a family and children.

However, when I put on my female POV hat, I was thinking of a female, something like the Girl in The Dragon Tattoo, who is not your typical romance novel heroine. I simply had no frame of reference, other than my wife, who would never consider in her wildest fantasy being an undercover cop. Anyway, when I was really put to it, explaining what was going on in my female POV's mind it was a struggle. My instructor however, liked my female character better than the male. (This surprised me, because I tried to make him redeeming.)

I guess what I am trying to explain is that men and women have much in common emotionally but the differences are significant enough that in order to pass the authenticity test, the writer needs to have a basic understanding of the opposite sex and not see them as same sex with some minor differences in plumbing. For a man intimacy is more like a door that opens and closes to the moment while for a woman it is more like a window that opens and closes to the future. If a writer keeps that in mind maybe it will help keep "believability" in the ballpark. Then again, what do I know?