What do female writers think about males writing from a female POV?

[Lifestyle66]

There are too many sphincters in the way...

Once the tentacle gets past the first sphincter ....

But let's ponder: what's the squid's motivation to make it a good character?

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Once the tentacle gets past the first sphincter ....

But let's ponder: what's the squid's motivation to make it a good character?

At a risk of fatally derailing the thread:
The squid wants to get to know the other characters better, what they are feeling like inside. Of course, its squid brain can't handle metaphor.

 

[jehoram]

At first, I didn't admit I was oggbashan and my stories got a reasonable response (and I got some unwanted male attention possibly because of my avatar).

I can't imagine why.

 

[MillieDynamite]

At a risk of fatally derailing the thread:
The squid wants to get to know the other characters better, what they are feeling like inside. Of course, its squid brain can't handle metaphor.

Tentacle humor. LOL

 

[EmilyMiller]

I’m told that I can be quite in touch with my female side (by people who never read Club Emily I guess), but what do women writers think when they read a work where the narrator is a female, but the author is a male?

All of my work is like that. Does it grate? Do you think “why the fuck does he think he can express what having my clit licked feels like?”.

I kinda worry that I am overlaying what things feel like from a male POV onto my female protagonist. Not that I am wholly against overlaying my female protagonist of course!

I think it can come across as quite pretentious sometimes. I’m not saying that the female experience is so different as to render it inaccessible to males, but it is the female experience. I’d suggest asking partners what fucking felt like and taking notes.

Em

 

[DaddyAnal1966]

I think it can come across as quite pretentious sometimes. I’m not saying that the female experience is so different as to render it inaccessible to males, but it is the female experience. I’d suggest asking partners what fucking felt like and taking notes.

Em

I guess that’s the point of the question.

For example, I have been fucked in the ass with a strap-on, but I never asked the lady doing the fucking to compare and contrast with her own experience of me ass-ducking her. Somehow it was never a post-coital subject. I assume some things are similar - maybe the feeling of your external sphincter being opened, but some are different - AFAIK women don’t have a prostrate gland.

Making an assumption here, what does it feel like for you to be sodomised?

All in the cause of literature or course

 

[EmilyMiller]

I guess that’s the point of the question.

For example, I have been fucked in the ass with a strap-on, but I never asked the lady doing the fucking to compare and contrast with her own experience of me ass-ducking her. Somehow it was never a post-coital subject. I assume some things are similar - maybe the feeling of your external sphincter being opened, but some are different - AFAIK women don’t have a prostrate gland.

Making an assumption here, what does it feel like for you to be sodomised?

All in the cause of literature or course

Could it be you just want girls to talk dirty to you? I hear there are sites where you can pay for that.

 

[DaddyAnal1966]

Could it be you just want girls to talk dirty to you? I hear there are sites where you can pay for that.

There are indeed. So why would I be spending my time here instead? You also assume that I have a dearth of women who would talk dirty to me IRL Methinks you do assume too much.

 

[EmilyMiller]

There are indeed. So why would I be spending my time here instead? You also assume that I have a dearth of women who would talk dirty to me IRL Methinks you do assume too much.

I don’t know dude. I have an older guy fetish, but you are enough to make me reconsider it.

Em

 

[DaddyAnal1966]

We seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, mail me [removed] and we can maybe discuss less heatedly.

 

[XerXesXu]

what does it feel like for you to be sodomised?

I once asked a fuck-buddy, who had an anal habit, that question. The gist of her answer was 'profitable'.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Just popped in to see how this thread was getting along...oh, hell no.

There are certain observable & measurable rules to how ELL (English Language Learners) from certain countries like Armenia, Russia, & Iran (elsewhere in your case) either make English grammar "mistakes" (inconsistencies due to anxiety/stress, forgetfulness, & basic human variation) and "errors" (consistent incorrect use due to lack of knowledge). It really all boils down to their head language's grammar system.

Because of learning that & studying those grammatical differences as a long-time writing tutor for ELLs in my particular area, I not only spot them as consistent errors to address sooner... but it made it even easier to understand, fundamentally, how some people speak.

One of my (unpublished) characters is an Armenian immigrant. He speaks English well enough, but one of the most prominent grammatical errors is the missing indefinite article, or the inappropriate use of a definite article in its place.

"She is a beautiful woman." becomes...
"She is beautiful woman."
Or, "I saw a dog." becomes...
"I saw the dog."

There is another big one to do with moving around certain types of clauses and other things like that. Also, I've observed some Armenians may sometimes say "he" on accident in place of "she," probably due to the lack of any gendered pronouns in the language. It's just the one.

I grew up with Armenian family so that helps, too. It's cool to see that and then be able to apply this research & experiential stuff from work.

(Though I grimace typing things like "errors." Yes, it's an "error" in Standard American English, but I understand these people perfectly fine!)

My wife is a native Chinese speaker and I've spent decades working with Chinese native speakers with mostly excellent English. The problem with writing dialogue for ELL characters is that you need to consider not only what that character would actually say but also how that is likely to be perceived by readers. Mixing up genders, as you describe for Armenians, is also very common for even very advanced Chinese speakers of English ("He is my wife"), but I don't think I'd ever actually put it in a story (unless it drove the plot in someway or there was a big 'teaching English' aspect to the story), readers would just be confused by it. Similarly writing 'She is beautiful woman' can give the impression that the speaker is uneducatied/bad at English even if advanced speakers still do this more than occassionally. Plus readers can find grammatical errors distracting and may 'blame' the writer rather than the speaker for them.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided that the best way of handling things was not to include grammatical errors and, if at all story appropriate, to always make it clear that my non-native speaker characters have excellent English. I'll try to write some L1 habits into the speach if they're not to distracting - i.e. Chinese speakers often overuse 'very' (relative to natives) or Japanese speakers will often add 'isn't it?' to the end of a sentence.

[And, of course, if you're writing the character anywhere near the bedroom, you need to avoid the 'comedy Asian prostitute' stereotypes of broken English at all costs].

 

[Bramblethorn]

My wife is a native Chinese speaker and I've spent decades working with Chinese native speakers with mostly excellent English. The problem with writing dialogue for ELL characters is that you need to consider not only what that character would actually say but also how that is likely to be perceived by readers. Mixing up genders, as you describe for Armenians, is also very common for even very advanced Chinese speakers of English ("He is my wife"), but I don't think I'd ever actually put it in a story (unless it drove the plot in someway or there was a big 'teaching English' aspect to the story), readers would just be confused by it. Similarly writing 'She is beautiful woman' can give the impression that the speaker is uneducatied/bad at English even if advanced speakers still do this more than occassionally.

Is this a problem you've encountered here, though? Unless a character is only making a very brief appearance, there should usually be opportunities to convey their education/etc. even through poor English, and I think most readers these days have met enough non-native speakers to understand that imperfect English doesn't necessarily mean uneducated.

I've written several characters who were non-native English speakers, and I've included those kinds of linguistic quirks where it made sense for the character to have them. RJ came to Australia as a migrant and worked hard to put his Greek origins behind him, but occasionally his studied English slips just a little when he's had too much to drink. Nadja OTOH purposely speaks English lazily, leaving Russian patterns in her speech, because it plays into the general fuck-you attitude she tries to project. But on the rare occasions when she's trying to be nice to somebody, she makes the effort and speaks near-perfect English.

I doubt many readers, if any at all, notice those shifts. But thinking about them helps get me inside a character's head, because I have to understand that context before I can gauge how they'd speak.

I've never heard that my readers found it confusing, or that they thought less of the characters for not being perfectly fluent.

[And, of course, if you're writing the character anywhere near the bedroom, you need to avoid the 'comedy Asian prostitute' stereotypes of broken English at all costs].

Yeah, this is definitely one of those things that can go badly wrong if done from ignorance.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Male writers, who also wrote under women’s pen names.

L. Frank Baum as Edith Van Dyne
Dean Koontz as Deanna Dwyer & Leigh Nichols
Domenico Starnone as Elena Ferrante
Dav Pilkey as Sue Denim
Sean Thomas as S K Tremayne
Martyn Waites as Tania Carver
Todd Ritter as Riley Sager
Daniel Mallory as A. J. Finn
Michael Hinkemeyer as Vanessa Royall
Vince Brach as Fran Vincent
John Creasey as Margaret Cooke
Benjamin Franklin as Mrs. Silence Dogood

John H. Watson Jane Watson (Oops, that’s not right. My Elementary fangirl is showing)
This is list is totally incomplete!

 

[TheRedChamber]

Is this a problem you've encountered here, though? Unless a character is only making a very brief appearance, there should usually be opportunities to convey their education/etc. even through poor English, and I think most readers these days have met enough non-native speakers to understand that imperfect English doesn't necessarily mean uneducated.

I've written several characters who were non-native English speakers, and I've included those kinds of linguistic quirks where it made sense for the character to have them. RJ came to Australia as a migrant and worked hard to put his Greek origins behind him, but occasionally his studied English slips just a little when he's had too much to drink. Nadja OTOH purposely speaks English lazily, leaving Russian patterns in her speech, because it plays into the general fuck-you attitude she tries to project. But on the rare occasions when she's trying to be nice to somebody, she makes the effort and speaks near-perfect English.

I doubt many readers, if any at all, notice those shifts. But thinking about them helps get me inside a character's head, because I have to understand that context before I can gauge how they'd speak.

I've never heard that my readers found it confusing, or that they thought less of the characters for not being perfectly fluent.

Maybe I'm being to cautious about it. I don't tend to get that many direct comments about anything in my stories, so I doubt readers start complaining if I stepped up the intensity a bit. However, with non-native English speakers, I've generally taken same approach as with dialect that a little goes a long way.

I don't think we are too far apart though. I'm happy to put quirks or speach patterns in. What I tend to avoid is out-right grammatical mistakes . It sounds like your characters are mainly long term immigrants or highly educated with lots of opportunities to speak English. Some of my characters include a Japanese/Chinesestudent, a Japanese business man on their first trip to England or a Chinese office worker in Beijing meeting up with an English speaker for an illicit laison - characters who have not spent a lot of time immersed in an English speaking environment. In real life, such people are often able to communicate successfully but the differences between their L1 and English mean they tend to make a lot of grammatical mistakes - what are quite fundamental things like subject-verb agreement or tenses. Even intermediate Chinese speakers of English might say things like "Yesterday, I tell him not come here." For such characters, I tend to tidy the grammar up (or have them be 'top of the class' at English) but indicate their non-native status in nicer ways - occassioanly have them ask for a vocabulary item or try out a new English idiom seems a more positive way of indicating they're still learning English.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

character would actually say but also how that is likely to be perceived by readers. ...Plus readers can find grammatical errors distracting and may 'blame' the writer rather than the speaker for them.

... I'll try to write some L1 habits into the speach if they're not to distracting - i.e. Chinese speakers often overuse 'very' (relative to natives) or Japanese speakers will often add 'isn't it?' to the end of a sentence.

Less is definitely more when it comes to using non-standard English. I use a lot of it for my characters, and dialects. Mostly just coming naturally, but then I have to decide how best to represent say Scots on the page, which is a different puzzle. To do that I also have to decide how much I want to make clear to people unfamiliar with those versions of English, which may depend on whether the other characters are meant to understand or not.

I have a general rule that an apostrophe to show an accent is allowed about once per Lit page. More than that is annoying. One instance of "You're 'avin a larf!" gets the accent across and after that just needs a few appropriate word choices to keep it in readers' minds. "Pass us that."

Usually a fluent non-native speaker can be evoked with a couple words and slightly formal wording. Maybe more use of the simple present tense, but unless there's a long speech it comes across as less fluent than it would in person. For example I have a shopkeeper saying "Ah, you are not dead or moved away, alham'illah! Why I not see you, so long? You sick?" Reading it, it sounds like a very strong foreign accent, which isn't necessarily the case. It might well be a perfect local London voice, like my local shop guy I nicked the phrasing from, but as it's the only thing he says in a whole series, it's not too important.

Appropriate terms of endearment and a couple dialect words or usages go a long way.

 

[Bubo_bubo]

Less is definitely more when it comes to using non-standard English. I use a lot of it for my characters, and dialects. Mostly just coming naturally, but then I have to decide how best to represent say Scots on the page, which is a different puzzle. To do that I also have to decide how much I want to make clear to people unfamiliar with those versions of English, which may depend on whether the other characters are meant to understand or not.

I have a general rule that an apostrophe to show an accent is allowed about once per Lit page. More than that is annoying. One instance of "You're 'avin a larf!" gets the accent across and after that just needs a few appropriate word choices to keep it in readers' minds. "Pass us that."

Usually a fluent non-native speaker can be evoked with a couple words and slightly formal wording. Maybe more use of the simple present tense, but unless there's a long speech it comes across as less fluent than it would in person. For example I have a shopkeeper saying "Ah, you are not dead or moved away, alham'illah! Why I not see you, so long? You sick?" Reading it, it sounds like a very strong foreign accent, which isn't necessarily the case. It might well be a perfect local London voice, like my local shop guy I nicked the phrasing from, but as it's the only thing he says in a whole series, it's not too important.

Appropriate terms of endearment and a couple dialect words or usages go a long way.

Curses are also a good thing to show some foreign influence (When I'm really angry/upset/surprised I curse in my mother tongue - usually the classic godverdomme or godverdomse + insult - and I think most people would).

But a multilingual person might have picked up expressions from other languages that they like which are neither English nor their mother tongue (I'm myself prone to using the occasional Insh'Allah or wallahi)

 

[MillieDynamite]

Occasionally, I'll insert some Spanish (mostly used in Mexico) insults or profanities, Mierda (shit or crap), Joder (close to the same as FUCK but not a strong), Qué cabrón’ means, literally, 'what a big male goat,’ only using it like saying You Bastard, La Concha de tu Madre (Motherfucker), Puto he equivalent of both ‘asshole’ and ‘fucking,’ Verga is used for Fuck or Awesome so be careful to use it correctly for the situation.

​

 

[Bramblethorn]

Maybe I'm being to cautious about it. I don't tend to get that many direct comments about anything in my stories, so I doubt readers start complaining if I stepped up the intensity a bit. However, with non-native English speakers, I've generally taken same approach as with dialect that a little goes a long way.

Agreed there. I try not to overdo it, and of course as you suggest with "very", errors aren't the only way to flag a character's imperfect English. Things like limited vocabulary, avoiding complex grammatical constructions, and dialogue that's grammatically correct but unusually formal/informal for the situation can all work here.

I don't think we are too far apart though. I'm happy to put quirks or speach patterns in. What I tend to avoid is out-right grammatical mistakes . It sounds like your characters are mainly long term immigrants or highly educated with lots of opportunities to speak English. Some of my characters include a Japanese/Chinesestudent, a Japanese business man on their first trip to England or a Chinese office worker in Beijing meeting up with an English speaker for an illicit laison - characters who have not spent a lot of time immersed in an English speaking environment.

Ah right, yes, that is a difference. You're correct that most of my characters are close to native-speaker level. Fair.

 

[LdyHoneybee]

Just popped in to see how this thread was getting along...oh, hell no.



My wife is a native Chinese speaker and I've spent decades working with Chinese native speakers with mostly excellent English. The problem with writing dialogue for ELL characters is that you need to consider not only what that character would actually say but also how that is likely to be perceived by readers. Mixing up genders, as you describe for Armenians, is also very common for even very advanced Chinese speakers of English ("He is my wife"), but I don't think I'd ever actually put it in a story (unless it drove the plot in someway or there was a big 'teaching English' aspect to the story), readers would just be confused by it. Similarly writing 'She is beautiful woman' can give the impression that the speaker is uneducatied/bad at English even if advanced speakers still do this more than occassionally. Plus readers can find grammatical errors distracting and may 'blame' the writer rather than the speaker for them.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided that the best way of handling things was not to include grammatical errors and, if at all story appropriate, to always make it clear that my non-native speaker characters have excellent English. I'll try to write some L1 habits into the speach if they're not to distracting - i.e. Chinese speakers often overuse 'very' (relative to natives) or Japanese speakers will often add 'isn't it?' to the end of a sentence.

[And, of course, if you're writing the character anywhere near the bedroom, you need to avoid the 'comedy Asian prostitute' stereotypes of broken English at all costs].

I have noticed that native Russian speakers tend to mix up pronouns also.

 

[Bisexguy70]

Are you writing to please others or please yourself? Are woman offended if i dress up as one and act like one? I agree at stepping out of your boundaries. What about woman who wear strap ons? At the end of the day its just about pleasuring each other and having some fun.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Speaking about me, I write for myself and hope others like it. I have no issue with anyone dressing any way they want.

 

[Lovecraft_Lore]

I write for myself, I will use whatever POV I want.

One of the nice things about writing from the female POV or third person is that it allows for her to say one thing while thinking something else.

 

[TheRedChamber]

Not everyone speaks "excellent [Standard [American]] English." As someone who works in postsecondary education with people from 18 up to over 65, I find this very limiting and not representative of how the world works. Especially "my" world where I live. Many people who immigrate to the U.S. never learn "excellent" English. This is because there is no incentive to...

Sorry if any part of my post came across as judgemental. It certainly wasn't meant to. This is something I have been thinking a lot on as I write and it may well be that my decisions on this are not necessarily the best. To be clear, when I say 'Excellent' English, I'm not talking about flawless, I'm talking about good enough to communicate effectively - as I'm generally writing English as a Foreign Language characters (i.e. educated in the language, but not immersed in it) reaching this standard is an achievment. My stories tend to be fairly middle-class for sure (and British) so I wouldn't attempt to write anything substantial featuring the sort of Mexican Americans immigrants you describe. But obviously someone who was writing them might approach language differently - especially if it helped convey something important in the story.

However, speach in stories, even from native speakers, is an idealized form of what we actually say - we make a whole bunch of mistakes, hesistation, corrections and speak in fragments much more than complete sentences. Authors tend to smooth all that out when writing down dialogue. Similarly, I wrote a story recently with characters with a strong Yorkshire accent and was constantatly going back and forth over my draft going 'too much' then the next day 'not enough' when looking at how to convey the action (for reference I'm technically a Yorkshire man born, but not bred having left the shire at the age of one). When looking at a speakers level of competenance in a lanuage there's all sorts of things to consider (as I'm sure you know) - overall speed, hesistations, appropriate chunking of phrases, intonation, word choice, sentence length and pronunication (which as long as it is comprehensible is really the least important aspect). The problem with writing it all down is that you can only catch some of those facets directly in the words you put on the page and with grammar especially it tends to fossilize - i.e. that speakers might be developing in all the other areas still keep making some basic grammatical mistakes, even after decades. You can decide that focusing on that adds authenticity or you can think that it risks giving the reader the wrong impression of someone's English actual level. And again, I don't think there's anything wrong with trying to convey a certain amount of linquistic quirks and first language sentence patterns in their speach when it aids characterization.

 

[geronimo_appleby]

I have noticed that native Russian speakers tend to mix up pronouns also.

there's a lot of confusion with pronouns thee days.