Female centric stories

[anthrodisiac]

I think it's helpful to take a step back and remember that we aren't creating fully fleshed out, totally real, absolutely flesh-and-blood characters that are 100% true to a real-life person. We are, at all times, creating IMPRESSIONS of people. (This may appear to go against what I say to a lot of people, but when I'm saying those things, it's because I want them to create characters with more depth, and getting into the nuance of this particular point isn't useful.)

If we went and did an absolutely perfect faithful recreation of a person, it would bore the reader to tears. We're carefully cultivating and curating which aspects of a person we're showing them, which invariably means we're leaving out some parts that would make them totally accurate and lifelike. It means we might strip out a bit of something that makes them "super obviously female" because we decide the story doesn't need roadbumps around period pains or retouching your lipstick or dealing with that one bra that never quite fits right, but you can't adjust it because you're in a big meeting and it slowly drives you insane as you realize the meeting's going to go way, way over the 30 minutes they promised, and damn, you gotta pee so bad. Unless that's relevant to the story, we don't use it.

What we want to do is give readers the IMPRESSION that the character is male, or female, or human, or alien, or whatever. It harkens back to giving the reader the impression of dialogue, where you wouldn't do a totally faithful recreation of an actual conversation, because there are so many tangents and meanders and pauses and "wait, what?"s that it would strangle the story. You need to give the shape of a person, and ideally that shape has a lot of depth, and has lots of nuanced contours so the shape isn't just a square with a dick, but something approximating an actual person, but in the end, it's still an approximation, an impression. A (hopefully) very good approximation that comes to life in the reader's mind, but an approximation all the same.

 

[StillStunned]

roadbumps around period pains or retouching your lipstick or dealing with that one bra that never quite fits right, but you can't adjust it because you're in a big meeting and it slowly drives you insane as you realize the meeting's going to go way, way over the 30 minutes they promised, and damn, you gotta pee so bad.

Can I interest you in writing 2P POV?

 

[FrancesScott]

Wow

I intend to try. But if it’s not working out, I’ll stop and try to do some more research. It’s a challenge for sure.

 

[liliput1]

Is 750 word envy the new black ?

LBD envy would work too. Because they’re short and usually simple.

 

[liliput1]

I've been tempted to add to this thread several times, but having published only one story here. Same mfc and mmc covered in 25 chapters, so they're pretty well defined as to their preferences, personalities and general POV, so my experience in writing male and female characters is a highly limited sample.

As a woman, I believe the my mfc is "womanly," as I write from my experience.

Obviously, not all orgasms are created equally. Depending on the situation (that's why we have multiple categories, right?), the stimuli driving it are different (both physically and mentally).

How any one individual responds to these vary, so how can we say that one FC's experience with [pick a category EC, Anal, R/NC, BDSM, E&V, etc.] be more "truly" female than another's?

I think for your own self esteem, if you’re going vertical that hard instead of horizontal in your writing, you should consider word count rather than distinct stories. Looks like most of your chapters are over 10k so you’ve published a quarter million lines.

Also most of us are readers before writers, and while some people will tell you “write for yourself and fuck everyone else”? Come on. That’s a very isolating self defense mechanism. Of course we want to share. Otherwise we’d leave it in our desk for our survivors to publish after we are gone. It doesn’t matter if “everyone” likes it, but someone should.

 

[EmilyMiller]

LBD envy would work too. Because they’re short and usually simple.

Yeah - might have a slight LBD fixation. If your legs aren’t long, a short dress or skirt can help you compensate .

Real life scene:

“Um… don’t you have, like five of those already.”

I fix him with ‘the look.’

“And why not get the sixth…?”

 

[dirk2024]

Good authors are sponges. They observe and they absorb. Good authors have empathy. They can put themselves in the shoes of another person.

I've been waiting to see that word. This ability can help a writer looking to cross boundaries that hold other people back.

Good authors research. They look for articles on experiences they are unfamiliar with, or other stories.

Good authors know humanity transcends gender, or skin-color, or age, or country, or culture. Good authors have respect. They take the time to try to make their characters real. Good authors have imagination. They can conceive of things that they haven’t experienced themselves. Good authors can write pretty much anything.

Note: I edited my ‘stump speech’ to add the line about respect.

 

[Duil2]

I think for your own self esteem, if you’re going vertical that hard instead of horizontal in your writing, you should consider word count rather than distinct stories. Looks like most of your chapters are over 10k so you’ve published a quarter million lines.

Also most of us are readers before writers, and while some people will tell you “write for yourself and fuck everyone else”? Come on. That’s a very isolating self defense mechanism. Of course we want to share. Otherwise we’d leave it in our desk for our survivors to publish after we are gone. It doesn’t matter if “everyone” likes it, but someone should.

I totally agree that you can't write only and totally for yourself but that's where it should begin, I think.
In know in my case I spent years trying to figure out what to write that readers would want to read and finished nothing.
It wasn't until I put the reader to one side and 'began' by writing for me first that I finally finished something.
Then I was able to take my work, complete, and wonder - ok, who might read this and if they do what might they like to see and so the editing began.

Write for yourself first, then consider your reader.

 

[liliput1]

I won’t link to the post, because I don’t want to add fuel, but the ‘male gaze’ really isn’t rooted in one’s chromosomal pov - it’s a term coined by the feminist film critic, Laura Mulvey in 1975. It’s a really interesting article. But male gaze is not the opposite of female gaze. These are terms used to describe literature or film, but may have since been misused and misunderstood.
There’s also an interesting YT presentation of the structure of the male/female brain by Robert Sapolsky from 19:55

I confess that even as a “people watcher”, rewatching films from the 80’s and sometimes 90’s causes minor eye injuries from all the eye rolling. There’s still a lot of gratuitous slow panning going on today but they just used to put someone’s butt center frame three times in the same movie. With dialog to match. It took a long time for Mulvey, Bechdel and friends to percolate through from college coffee shop discussions to writing rooms to directors. Oddly I think Bruce Willis helped crack that nut, by doing a shower scene that pissed the establishment off. Boy butts were strictly for B movies, usually starring Shannon Tweed and that smarmy guy whose name I can never remember.

Edit to add: and boy bits were just right out.

To an extent it’s limited my enthusiasm to extend my back catalog of literary fiction I missed out on when it was new. I didn’t enjoy that mentality the first time why would I want to relive it? And it does inform my use of the back button here.

 

[lovecraft68]

I confess that even as a “people watcher”, rewatching films from the 80’s and sometimes 90’s causes minor eye injuries from all the eye rolling. There’s still a lot of gratuitous slow panning going on today but they just used to put someone’s butt center frame three times in the same movie. With dialog to match. It took a long time for Mulvey, Bechdel and friends to percolate through from college coffee shop discussions to writing rooms to directors. Oddly I think Bruce Willis helped crack that nut, by doing a shower scene that pissed the establishment off. Boy butts were strictly for B movies, usually starring Shannon Tweed and that smarmy guy whose name I can never remember.

To an extent it’s limited my enthusiasm to extend my back catalog of literary fiction I missed out on when it was new. I didn’t enjoy that mentality the first time why would I want to relive it? And it does inform my use of the back button here.

Willis showed more than in The Color of Night, good movie BTW.

Your post made think of toxic piece of shit on YT the Critical Drinker and his crew of mouthbreathing incels crying that Hemsworth showed his ass in Thor Love and Thunder while women have had, not chose to but had to be nude in movies for decades if they wanted roles

Which circles back to the topic at hand because people like that are part of why I learned to enjoy writing angry violent female characters. My own gender and their cry of male victimhood pisses me off and shames actual men.

 

[liliput1]

I definitely do notice when clothing is wrong, though. That aspect does make some sense: I've never worn a bra, for example.

But I know women, so I understand bras. I've heard them complain about fit, and about underwires poking through. I've heard their lamentations about how expensive they are. I've seen that often, when they get up after sitting for awhile, they have to do this little shimmying adjustment where they settle their boobs into the cups. I've seen sportsbras at the gym with a dizzying array of support straps.

So. I can easily include all those things into my stories, and I have. It's not rocket science. Do I know what it feels like to do that little shimmying adjustment? Nope, but I've adjusted my balls before, or shifted my boxers around my ass when things aren't sitting right, and how different can it really be?

This isn't all that difficult. As others have said, you just watch people, talk to people, and do some research if necessary. Then imagine from there. It'll be fine.

I think, all else being equal, those of us who maintained healthy relationships with enough female friends in our early 20s and extending into adulthood have a wealth of secondhand knowledge from overhearing them discussing the process of finding their way in life as a woman. I remember women badgering each other into getting bra fittings, for example, because everyone was wearing the wrong size and the right was far less miserable. Later it was motherhood, whether they were doing it, avoiding it, or battling with their spouse about it. Now it’s perimenopause. Children launching. And all through, dealing with sexism.

An “incel”, for lack of a gentler word, has nothing to build on but the writing of others and are they likely to invest heavily in reading women authors to fill that gap? No, so their women are awful, because the source material is awful.

 

[lovecraft68]

I think, all else being equal, those of us who maintained healthy relationships with enough female friends in our early 20s and extending into adulthood have a wealth of secondhand knowledge from overhearing them discussing the process of finding their way in life as a woman. I remember women badgering each other into getting bra fittings, for example, because everyone was wearing the wrong size and the right was far less miserable. Later it was motherhood, whether they were doing it, avoiding it, or battling with their spouse about it. Now it’s perimenopause. Children launching. And all through, dealing with sexism.

An “incel”, for lack of a gentler word, has nothing to build on but the writing of others and are they likely to invest heavily in reading women authors to fill that gap? No, so their women are awful, because the source material is awful.

I'm married and raised two daughters. Have I ever had a period? Of course not but have I heard everything there is that has to do with them over and over? Oh, yeah. I've asked my wife multiple times to help me dress my female characters if there is some type of high end type event in the story and she was the one who noticed at some point that I never mention my female leads wearing jewelry and that its a nice touch to add.

So yeah, if you have women in your life, you have experience and if you have a partner who knows you write, a cheat sheet of information.

As for incels-or those similar as I think the slur has gained a wider demographic-I don't think any of them would write from a female POV because that would be unmanly to them. This is the BTB type here so their women are either evil cheating whores who get theirs for hurting honorable men and the 'good ones' are virtuous loyal housewives who were virgins when they married and live by the 1950's handbook.

 

[liliput1]

Anyway, my comment was that guys don't act like that. A realistic guy, especially a young guy, would embrace the objectification, pumping his fists in triumph. He wouldn't be all broken about it and pouring his heart out to a psychologist. I remember the author being somewhat offended at my criticism and saying, "Well, MY guys do act like that!"

One of the most alienating things for me as a teenager was feeling out of place in these discussions. That even without the religious mores I had shoveled over the top, that I was built wrong and was an interloper amongst the ”real” boys. I was over 40 before I learned my “disorder” is estimated at 30% of the population. So those other boys were hiding it better or had evacuated to elsewhere.

It’s the loudest ones who get oversampled in any population. Nobody knows what the quiet ones are thinking, it’s too much work. And a market for lemons as well because the better ones have been snapped up already and what is left are a mixture of the unlucky and the rejects.

 

[nice90sguy]

teenager

feeling out of place

Freak.

 

[nice90sguy]

From an Atlantic article (about Nolan casting Nyong’o as Helen in The Odyssey):

I'd love to see Scarlett Johansson do "Othello", I'd enjoy it almost as much as Dick Van Dyke doing a Cockney.

 

[liliput1]

Freak.

I have an account on literotica I thought that was taken as read?

 

[Mastered_again]

I think for your own self esteem, if you’re going vertical that hard instead of horizontal in your writing, you should consider word count rather than distinct stories. Looks like most of your chapters are over 10k so you’ve published a quarter million lines.

Also most of us are readers before writers, and while some people will tell you “write for yourself and fuck everyone else”? Come on. That’s a very isolating self defense mechanism. Of course we want to share. Otherwise we’d leave it in our desk for our survivors to publish after we are gone. It doesn’t matter if “everyone” likes it, but someone should.

Yeah, the whole thing's over 200k words.
And, yes, I do want people to read it.
Not as widespread as I'd want, but those that did liked it. A fair number of those little red H's, so i won't complain.

 

[liliput1]

Yeah - might have a slight LBD fixation. If your legs aren’t long, a short dress or skirt can help you compensate .

Real life scene:

“Um… don’t you have, like five of those already.”

I fix him with ‘the look.’

“And why not get the sixth…?”

Emma: you know when that one wears out they won’t make it anymore. You should get a second one as backup.

 

[EmilyMiller]

Emma: you know when that one wears out they won’t make it anymore. You should get a second one as backup.

Horns, bat wings, and tail Emma?

 

[liliput1]

Yeah, the whole thing's over 200k words.
And, yes, I do want people to read it.
Not as widespread as I'd want, but those that did liked it. A fair number of those little red H's, so i won't complain.

Oh! The second half was meant to be read to the room. Sorry if you thought I was putting words in your mouth.

 

[Stanfield2025]

it moves away from visual proofs and mechanical records to actual intimacy.
So less of big fat ass, 12 inch dick destroyed her.. to more detail on emotional ups and down.. the indecisions, overthinking in critical situation and how all such thing affects you mental state..

I've written stories like this and I'm a man... I've never mentioned dick size. I like exploring emotions. And I've seen women authors mention ass sizes.

 

[Mastered_again]

Oh! The second half was meant to be read to the room. Sorry if you thought I was putting words in your mouth.

It didn't feel that way.
putting other things in my mouth a different story

 

[PennyThompson]

and boy bits were just right out.

Heated Rivalry's biggest flaw was never showing the penises, the cowards

 

[liliput1]

Heated Rivalry's biggest flaw was never showing the penises, the cowards

Short Bus broke my brain in ways you will all appreciate.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

I think what SmilingLez refers to is that, despite the best pov writing, with sensitive empathy, research and plot, there may still be those ‘gotcha’s’ when a male writer might wrongly describe how an article of clothing is adjusted, or how a woman might feel in a given situation.

So I agree with SmilingLez - we can’t fully appreciate the nuances of the other gender anymore than we can correctly describe the feelings another person, with all the unique life experience they've acquired. But if we go to a theatre to watch a play, we accept it is not real - it’s for entertainment. The format of a play and an erotic story are not so very different in that respect.

But who can say "how a woman would feel" in a given situation? There is no absolute right or wrong answer to that.

And things like mistakes about things like adjusting clothing aren't gender specific. It shouldn't surprise anyone if a female author with a small bust got something wrong when trying to describe a more generously endowed character adjusting something.
That has nothing to do with "female perspective" it's just a case of you don't know what you don't know.

I suspect there are things male authors get wrong and other guys are like "every guy knows how to adjust the carburetor on a 57 Buick, I bet this was written by a chick!"