In honor of the fact that starting August 15th I’ll be teaching Male POV and Creating Better Heroes for anyone who signs up through Orange County Romance Writers of America Chapter, I’m going to give away a partial lesson from the Male POV course for the WriteSEX crowd.
It’ll be abbreviated but I’d like you to take time and think, and think hard about the characters you write. If you’re a woman in erotica or erotic romance, this is especially for you.
Author Gender seems to be the biggest problem many writers face when creating characters and it’s just necessary! I’ve been cross gender writing for years and the biggest compliment I’ve received was regarding how well I had my editors fooled when they finally spoke to me. When asked how I write the other gender so well, I replied that observation was my biggest tool used to help me identify. Look around you at TV, newspapers, music. If men aren’t being portrayed as tough and rugged by the media, then they’re portrayed as angry and aggressive. Or as one reader pointed out, men are stupid and buffoonish.
In reality, some of them are just that. But the majority of men are just like the majority of women. They’re human beings and to understand them may not be something we need concern ourselves unless we’re creating real life characters.
Authors have to be objective in their portrayal of their characters! Men aren’t aggressive and angry for no reason at all (most anyway!) but unless we dig further into the depths of the man’s mind, and his soul, we’ll be lost forever in testosterone!
Before we start, I’d like for you to throw out EVERYTHING you’ve EVER HEARD by any other romance author regarding men unless you KNOW that romance author has a penis. Or had a penis.
I say this not to tear down those writers, but to set the record straight. The first thing I want you to understand is that man and woman are NOT equal. Well, we’re equally stupid at times, and equally smart at times. And some of us are equally attractive, others are equally ugly. (Just calling a spade a spade!) but as a whole, men and women are not equal. Hell, not all men are equal.
Example: I am very strong for my size. (Thin and tall) But paranormal author Stephanie Burke’s husband is 6’7 and weighs three times more than I do. He’s pretty built too. Strength-wise, we’re unequal. Dennis is clearly stronger than I am. I’m okay with that too.
The point is that externally or physically, which is what I believe we’re talking about when it comes to this notion of equality. We are not equal.
INTERNALLY on the other hand…well that’s partially what you’re taking this workshop for. I believe after we’ve finished our week that we’ll see a LOT of similarities between gender.
Next time we’ll cover a little more on the Way of Being, but for now, you can sign up for Male POV through the OCCRWA site
The course runs August 15th to August 28th. For non RWA Members fee is $25, $15 for RWA Members I believe.
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