Thinking of writing a novel with a female protagonist? Excellent choice! To help you get started, here are just a couple of things you should bear in mind:
First, your heroine should be strong. What does that mean, exactly? Well, we have a slight preference for the action hero model, but we’re flexible. Inner strength is well and good, but should probably be complemented by something a little more badass—like, say, being a brilliant geneticist.
Be careful not to overdo it, though. She should be impressive enough to deserve her place as the main character, but not so impressive that she’s a Mary Sue. We’ll question her agency if she doesn’t solve most of the plot problems on her own—but don’t have her solve all the problems, either, because the line between Chosen One and Mary Sue is, for the female protagonist at least, pretty much invisible. She should rescue her companions from mortal peril as often as possible, but she herself should never, ever need rescuing.
Now that we’re clear about the precise formula for “strong,” let’s talk about the delicate PH balance of “female.”
What you absolutely want to avoid here is a character who’s basically a guy with a thin veneer of femininity—a so-called “man with breasts”. Our heroine should be recognizably female—but not so feminine that she’s stereotypical in some way. That means you’ll want to be careful with those emotional displays. Not too nurturing or needy, and for the love of dog, she should absolutely not demonstrate a desire for babies. We are going to grumble if she’s too pretty, or if she frets about not being pretty. Frankly, the less said about her appearance, the better.
On the other hand, if she drinks and swears and occasionally acts like an arrogant jackhole, we’re probably going to dislike her. Rule of thumb: if she could fairly be described as a “loveable rogue” or “antihero,” you might to want to rethink that. If she’s the female equivalent of a playboy, we’re going to slut shame her. In fact, it’s probably safest to avoid romantic entanglements altogether, lest you inadvertently give the impression that she needs a man. Oh, but don’t make her emotionally unavailable either, because that’s a stereotype.
In sum, when crafting a winning female protagonist, balance is key. Like, say, walking a tightrope. Over a bed of pikes. Writhing with asps.
Wait, where are you going? Not having second thoughts, are you?
If you are having second thoughts, or if you find yourself doing some serious handwringing about how to craft your heroine, you are not alone.
And it’s a damn shame.
Most of us can agree that we’d like to see better representation of women in SFF. That responsibility is typically placed on the shoulders of authors, and to be sure, they’re an important part of the equation. How we tell the story matters.
How we hear the story matters, too. What we say about it afterwards matters.
Authors have their intentions and readers have their experiences, and where those forces collide is where the story takes place. The chemical reaction between what s/he said and what we heard is the story. And a collection of stories becomes a narrative.
That second half of the storytelling experience doesn’t get nearly the scrutiny it deserves. Because as far as we’ve come in terms of demanding better representation of women in fiction, the standards many of us use to judge success or failure in that endeavour are oversimplified at best—and at worst, they’re downright harmful.
Don’t get me wrong: the fact that we’re talking about this at all is a good thing. The fact that something like the Bechdel test exists and is referred to so often is a very good thing. It means the discussion has made its way firmly into the mainstream. But it’s not always a very nuanced discussion. It makes use of some pretty blunt instruments, and it’s littered with its own perverse forms of gender bias. We can do better.
We’re ready to level up. And we need to, because we’re shooting ourselves in the foot.
Mary Sues and Men with Breasts
There are two types of hero in SF/F: the protagonist and the female protagonist.
We approach them differently. Consider, for example, the wealth of articles on how to write believable women. Kate Elliott talked about it here last March. More recently, Mark Lawrence had this to say. Skimming over the titles of those blog posts, one could be forgiven for thinking there’s a trick to it, as compared to writing believable male characters. Look more closely, though, and you’ll see that in both of these examples—and in most other credible ones I’ve come across—the message essentially boils down to this: write a believable character. That is to say, there is nothing special about the process of writing a woman. Which is not the same as writing women.
This is so important that it’s worth repeating. In italics.
Writing a woman is not the same as writing women.
Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Yet as readers, we routinely conflate the two. We draw a straight line between woman and women, and that line ends up being the thin, quivering tightrope I mentioned earlier. The moment a character ceases to be an individual and is taken as a representative of her gender, she is no longer a person but a specimen. Something to be placed under the magnifying glass, dissected and labeled.
But no—that’s not quite right, is it? We don’t approach the female protagonist with the analytical objectivity of an entomologist examining a butterfly. Instead, we scrutinize and vet her qualifications as an ambassador of her sex. We judge her.
We judge (male) protagonists too, of course, but differently. We evaluate the hero’s actions as an individual in the context of his specific circumstances. And when we find him wanting, we’re usually prepared to cut him some slack. We call him an antihero.
The heroine, though, has to be more than just a realistic character we can root for. She’s got to be a shining example of empowered womankind.
So much pressure is put on the female protagonist it’s a wonder she can shoulder it. And yet she does. There are countless examples of kickass heroines who’ve won our hearts. Few, if any, have escaped the rigorous vetting process unscathed, but they’ve survived the scrutiny and endured.
Thing is, they shouldn’t have to.
We’ve been talking about this double-standard for a while now. Liz Bourke tackled it recently in one of her most recent columns for Tor.com, making some of the same arguments I’m making here. We obviously recognize there’s a problem. And yet to my eye, it’s getting worse instead of better.
What do we look for in a hero?
It starts with a well-drawn character. Someone complex and believable, with his own motivations and experiences and flaws. But a hero—one of the story’s main characters—needs to go that extra mile. He needs to be compelling enough to carry significant chunks of the story, and he should play an instrumental role in resolving important plot problems.
So—realistic, interesting, and demonstrating agency.
A female protagonist has to tick these same boxes, but the boundaries are much more tightly drawn.
For starters, she has to be realistic not only as a human being, but as a woman—a narrower subset of humanity with specific characteristics. What exactly those “specific characteristics” look like is a source of much debate, but that doesn’t matter. The character has to resonate with women readers—while at all costs avoiding stereotypes about women. Feminine but not too feminine, even though you and I might have different ideas about femininity.
That’s a very narrow space in which to work, and it’s studded with landmines. Many readers are quick to make the leap from “Character X is indecisive” to “women in Book X are indecisive” to “Author X thinks women are indecisive.” For an author, it can start to look like certain character traits or plot lines are more trouble than they’re worth.
Think this sort of self-censoring is a myth? Think again. I’ve done it myself, to my lasting regret. And I’m not alone.
When that happens, we’ve come full circle and we’re right back to using our preconceived notions of gender to define who a character should be—and who she shouldn’t be. We might be holding up a different model of femininity than the traditionalist ideal, but it’s no more empowering. Empowerment is the freedom not to conform to anybody else’s abstract ideals of womanhood.
We have a gendered view of interesting too.
Female protagonists are generally expected to be likeable, or at least relatable. The antiheroine is a rare creature indeed. Her male counterpart is not only tolerated, he’s never been more popular. Sure, he’s flawed, but he’s compelling and gritty. He might even be a monster, but so long as we give him some plausible backstory to explain why he turned out that way, plenty of readers will happily root for him.
Female antiheroes, when we find them at all, are usually pretty tame by comparison—and they take a lot of heat. We accuse them of representing some kind of “masculine” ideal of power, as if their very existence were somehow a repudiation of femininity.
And then there’s agency.
It’s fair to say that we have a lower tolerance these days for special snowflakes in general, but the Chosen One narrative still enjoys a perfectly legitimate place in SF/F. Unless, of course, you’re a woman writing about a woman.
Enter the Mary Sue.
When it comes to the representation of strong women in SF/F, I have a hard time thinking of a concept more damaging than the Mary Sue. With two small words, we dismiss any female protagonist we deem too capable, too “special,” and make her an object of derision.
The male protagonist, of course, can be Chosen from birth (Harry Potter). He can be awesome enough to beat the machines (Neo) or even a goddess (Raistlin). He can make the sky rain fiery awesome (Pug). He can even be immaculately conceived by particles of awesome (Anakin Skywalker).
But the female protagonist? She should dial her awesome back to a reasonable level if she wants to avoid being labeled a Mary Sue. Speak softly, darling, and take care not to draw too much attention to yourself. It’s not ladylike.
Perhaps I’m being a bit unfair. Accusations of Marty/Gary Stu do exist—but they’re relatively rare. Not so for the women. Show me a popular female protagonist and I will show you a heap of one-star reviews specifically citing her supposed Mary Sue-ness, even if she does nothing more impressive than shapeshift now and again. We sling the term around so indiscriminately that it scarcely has meaning anymore. All that’s required is a talented woman written by a woman.
Every time we do this, each and every time, we send a message. We contribute one more drop to the ocean of toxic groupthink telling us that a female hero has to be a certain way.
Mary Sue. Man with breasts. Damsel in distress. By applying these labels, we’re discouraging diverse representations of women in fiction. Because when we take certain characteristics off the table, what’s left behind is just that much more generic. By saying “no” to this feature or that, we’re steadily whittling away at a character until she’s just another faceless wooden doll. In our desire to avoid certain kinds of stereotypes, we’re creating whole new ones.
Nothing should be off the table. In fiction, as in life, women should appear in every permutation and combination imaginable. That necessarily includes some characters we don’t like or approve of, and even some who exhibit traits we consider to be stereotypical. We should be comfortable with that so long as it’s not a pattern among the female characters in a specific work. (The moment a pattern does emerge, we’re perfectly justified in talking about the way women are represented in that work.)
We make the leap from a woman to women so readily in part because women continue to be under-represented, and so the temptation is to make an example of each and every one. Part of the answer, then, is certainly to increase the number of important female characters. But it’s not purely a question of numbers, as the limitations of the Bechdel test make clear.
Beyond the Bechdel Test
The Bechdel test has been hugely influential in advancing the conversation about gender bias in works of fiction, taking it from more rarefied critical circles into the mainstream. A big part of this success owes to its simplicity: the test is a straightforward checklist that asks whether a work of fiction features (a) at least two important female characters who (b) talk to each other about (c) something other than a man.
But in and of itself, the Bechdel test doesn’t actually tell us a whole lot. It’s nice to have a handy scorecard, especially if it produces quantifiable data. But there’s no room on a checklist for nuance. And we need nuance. We need context.
The Bechdel test measures how many important female characters, and gives us an extremely limited insight into how they relate to each other and to important male characters. But it tells us very little, if anything, about how women in general relate to men or society as a whole. In other words, it tells us nothing about gender roles in the story, let alone gender equality or empowerment. It’s not a litmus test of feminism. (And was probably never meant to be.)
Taken on its own terms—as a quick-and-dirty way of measuring tokenistic representation of women—the Bechdel test performs admirably. The problem arises when we use it as a shortcut to assign “pass/fail” on gender. That gets in the way of a more substantive and nuanced conversation about narrative and the extent to which it challenges or upholds traditional gender roles. In other words, the use of this scorecard of tokenism can itself become tokenistic, a way to tick the box of “gender analysis” without actually asking any of the more interesting or challenging questions.
A book or film can “pass” the Bechdel test with flying colours and still send a damaging message about women and gender roles—or it can fail miserably and say something very important indeed. So why is “failing” the Bechdel test so often considered an automatic black mark, a sign that a book has failed feminism writ large? Not only is that unfair, it may discourage authors from telling a certain type of story—one we might very much need to hear. At the very least, it can create its own perverse incentives toward tokenism.
A review that boils down to “Mary Sue fails the Bechdel Test” is not a feminist critique. It’s not moving the conversation forward or even running in place. It’s a step back toward labels and generalizations. We can do better.
How we hear the story matters. What we say about it matters.
Every time we discuss a work of fiction, we contribute to a narrative about what we expect to see in the genre—what we demand. In fiction as in everything else, demand influences supply, and that can be a tremendous force for progress. Or it can inadvertently discourage diversity and stifle certain voices.
Instead of demanding the impossible from female protagonists, we should be demanding more insightful and nuanced analysis of women and gender in fiction. One that doesn’t rely on seductively simple yet ultimately counterproductive tools.
The dialogue between author and reader is a two-way street, and when it works, it’s a beautiful thing. So let’s put away the labels and the checklists and meet in the middle.
Together, we’ll tell a story.
Erin Lindsey writes fantasy and occasionally blogs about it; her latest novel, The Bloodforged, is now available from Ace. You can check out her ramblings on her website: erin-lindsey.com, or on Twitter @etettensor.
Great points! Thank you. We can’t talk about this enough.
I just discovered KM Herkes, who does terrific women characters – and male ones, and a pretty darn good gargoyle.
I wholeheartedly agree with you, thank you for making such valid points.
I’m quite tired of the whole scrutiny and dissection of every female character and I think it does more harm than good. I find it especially amusing when a female character is considered “unrealistic” because she possesses a trait that I or any female I know possesses. As you said, this creates a whole new set of stereotypes for women (always strong, always independent…)
Another thing I strongly dislike is accusing the author in misogyny just because he created a female character that are not very well-written. I think it is only natural that sometimes men cannot write as realistic female characters as their male characters, and vice versa. And because an author is not perfect (and who is), he is suddenly accused in purposely demeaning women.
Its seems to me that one very good way to transcend this narrative is to have more women in your cast in general, and take the time to actually characterize them differently… like you would any other character.
Like above, I agree that in part, the best way to get around this is to make sure there are more female characters, instead of your default/token female character that you are adding as a sop to feminism.
That said, it’s absolutely a minefield. I am not a professional writer. I’ve dabbled in fan fic occasionally because I think it’s fun…and it IS interesting going back and reading my old stuff, especially my primary female character and seeing the ways that a)she DOES fall into Mary Sue ness and also b)some of the problematic generalizations I make (or at least, the unintentional/unfortunate implications). Occasionally I get the urge to polish a few parts up.
I am also thinking about my visceral reaction to Ahsoka in the Clone Wars, whom I often deride as a Mary Sue. I still stand by this (I just feel like she is jammed into the story and I can see the strings a little too easily in the way she seems like a character created to be a fan favorite) but I do wonder how much of it has to do with her being a sassy girl character (although I can think of many other examples of sassy girl characters I love).
As an aside, Harry Potter was not the Chosen One at birth. Voldemort chose him ;)
@Lisamarie
Having more female characters is part of the solution, as I mentioned in the post. But it’s not a silver bullet, and it certainly doesn’t inoculate you against the kinds of commentary I’m talking about, which comes up pretty reliably wherever you find a female protagonist, even if she’s part of a diverse cast that includes plenty of women.
I don’t remember enough about the Clone Wars to comment on that character in particular, but I will say that being a poorly drawn character is not, in and of itself, enough to qualify as a Mary Sue (at least according to the traditional definition). Plenty of male characters (including in the Star Wars franchise) fall into the same traps, but they don’t have a handy and scathing label to accompany it, complete with its own gendered dog whistle. We just call them poorly drawn characters. No gender overtones, and certainly no implication that anybody put them in there as a sort of wish fulfillment/self-insertion. (Which, incidentally, I’m not sure why we have such a problem with. Reading can certainly be wish fulfillment; why not writing?)
The problem is that we’ve fallen into this unfortunate habit of characterizing any female character we don’t like as a Mary Sue (leaving apart the interesting question of why we don’t like her in the first place). And while the term might not be used with much thought, it sends a clear message about why the commenter/reviewer didn’t like the character, which basically boils down to “she’s too awesome” (whether or not that’s what the reviewer actually intended).
I’d love to see a moratorium on the use of the term “Mary Sue”. It’s not that she doesn’t exist, but she’s a far, far rarer creature than is generally suggested. And she can be a he.
I’ve written nothing that will likely ever be seen by somebody else, but in my attempts I’m using this formula: I write all characters without knowing if they’ll be female or male, and only at the end I throw a coin to decide their sex. After that, I decide names, and do the necessary adjustments to the narrative.
I don’t know how much of the suckitude of the final result is linked to this technique or to my own non-existant literary skills (don’t mind the grammar, english is not my native language), but for sure the resulting stories are interestingly quirky…
I’m glad Erin Lindsey brought up the role of the audience in this conversation. Modern readers bring two things to fiction that can undermine their own enjoyment and reduce the creative space for authors.
The first is agendas. In fan discussions and professional criticism, there is now an expectation that literature should reflect the political and social goals of certain interest groups. The identity of the group varies from reader to reader and fandom to fandom, but discussions usually center around “there is not enough of <identity group>” in a work, or “<group> isn’t represented in enough of an affirming/positive way”.
I like works that make me think, but I don’t want to be preached at by my entertainment. Authors should be able to write what they want to write and not face automatic demands about from readers approaching the work through the filter of their identity politics. What makes speculative fiction so wonderful is that it invites us to imagine all kinds of worlds with different takes on problems we confront in real life. Not every work has to service every agenda.
The second factor is mistaking an author’s fiction as representative of his/her own opinions. Fantasy literature often includes deeply flawed worlds and societies that evoke painful times and places in our own history. When characters behave in a way we’d reject in modern morality, it’s common to see readers (and viewers) mistake the actions and beliefs of these characters for the author’s message. Much of the mainstream criticism of George R.R. Martin seems rooted in outrage that portraying a society with so much violence and sexism is damaging to the causes of feminism and social justice.
Worlds with grave injustices are powerful set pieces for making us reflect on how far we’ve come and what’s right. Authors don’t need to be heavy-handed about portraying certain causes or groups to make us think. We shouldn’t come to literature with expectations that a cause will be advanced. We should be looking for detailed worlds with interesting and believable characters of both sexes that capture our imaginations.
@5 I think there’s some utility in retaining the term Mary Sue in describing a specific failure mode of writing fanfic, though the gender of the character isn’t relevant. HOwever, for “canonical” characters, there’s already a word for that kind of role: protagonist. I don’t see how the term adds value to criticizing characters (or their portrayals) whom the narrative is supposed to focus around.
Otherwise, I agree with the OP. It reminds of the difficulty I had in pinning down positive depictions of male gender roles in Star Trek (the only thing I came up with was Dad!Sisko). I was contrasting it to the abundant positive depictions of women in Star Trek and the negative portrayals of men in sitcoms. The problem was that I was taking it as given that a male character doing non-gender specific things is not reflecting a gender role while a female character doing those same things is. So Picard doing captain-y things is not a gendered portrayal while Janeway is. It seems like a similar double-standard to the one outlined in the article.
@8 noblehunter –
The term Mary Sue can still be useful, but in a more gender neutral way. For me, the term evokes a hero figure who hasn’t faced significant adversity in their arc. Characters who accrue advantages, knowledge, and experience without believably paying their dues are valid targets for the label.
A protagonist not portrayed well can come off as a Mary Sue, but the terms are not exclusive. We shouldn’t be seeing many of them in professional fiction if authors, editors, and beta readers are working well together.
@@@@@ 9 Halien, I find the defining element to be how the character distorts the narrative. They must exist in opposition to canonical protagonists for that to have meaning. Cheap or free power ups may play a part but aren’t necessary for a Mary Sue. In my opinion anyways :p
@8 I don’t know if there is enough consensus as to how Mary Sue is applied anymore for it to have utility.
I think that if there is a flaw in a work of fiction, its better not to use this shorthand, and just explicate what the flaws are. Halien has a pretty good example.
Best female anti-hero ever: Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, aka Queen Lucia, in the books by E.F. Benson. Which now makes me want to go off and write Mapp and Lucia … in Space!
@5 – hah, I’m certainly not trying to sound like I’ve come up with the solution to women/gender in sff! But, I do think it’s one area we can continue to make progress in (and, thankfully, seem to have been making. Or maybe I just notice it more).
Mary Sue, I suppose is kind of a subjective term. I wonder if anybody has studied how it came about and how its use evolved. For a long time I thought it was strictly a fan fiction term, and specifically about self-insertion into a fic,
or creating a character to ‘fix’ it (or to fall in love with the main character), or that is somewhat hamfistedly inserted into the story and gets to hang out with all the main characters. And perhaps at the time fanfiction was seen as more of a female domain? I don’t know if that is true or not, but I know that when I was a little more active in writing/sharing it (early 2000s), it was predominantly women. And by that label, I know my fiction and character was absolutely a Mary Sue. For awhile I felt kind of embarassed about this, but recently I’ve come around to the same attitude – yeah, it was wish fulfillment, but who cares? I wrote it for me, and it was fun and even theraputic in some ways. But, while I accept that my character is a Mary Sue in that sense and have decided to just own it – yeah, this story is primarily a wish fullfilment vehicle as a result certain aspects of plotbuilding get glossed over because, frankly, I don’t care enough to write about them (and I understand that in a ‘real’ book that wouldn’t fly) – I DO still go in and try to tinker with what I see as the actual bad/schlocky writing and characterization. Even though I fervently hope that story never sees the light of day, haha.
Regarding Ahsoka – I have asked myself that many times. Is it just because she’s a sassy, talented Jedi Padawan female that I don’t like her? I hope I’m self aware enough to avoid that. Especially as I really enjoy the episodes with the other sassy/talented female characters that I feel Ahsoka robs screentime from. It’s a shame, as I actually really admire Ashley Eckstein (the voice actress) and I WANT to like the character but she rubs me the wrong way. And I think my use of Mary Sue actually comes from the last part of my definition – she’s a character that’s just kind of inserted into the timeline; she’s Anakin star Padawan even though nothing at all in RotS seems to indicate that Anakin ever had a Padawan. At least for me – many others may feel differently – she doesn’t seem to fit organically into the story, and instead is a character that was created to be a fan favorite and it just seems very manufactured to me. Maybe it is a bit of the ‘she’s too awesome’ but I think my real objection to that is more her youth/inexperience than her gender. It would be interesting to see if I had a similar reaction if they had made Ahsoka male. I hope I would have but there’s always the possibility of a subconscious expectation of how female characters s hould be.
I kind of like your idea of not using the Mary Sue term and the way it’s rather gendered. Although to be fair, I can think of plenty of female characters I don’t like that I don’t call Mary Sues. As I said, Ahsoka is a special case, specifically referring to how she fits into the story (or doesn’t). And to be fair, she’s grown on me slightly as the series goes on. Perhaps by the end I’ll feel she fits in better.
@11 — Agree. The term has been so stretched out of its original shape that it’s become one-size-fits-all. Best ditched in favour of something with less baggage.
@13 — The origins of Mary Sue can be traced back to Star Trek fanfic (see Wikipedia). And it makes sense in a fanfic context. It’s precisely because of this very “females criticizing females writing about females” provenance that I think it’s best relegated to the antiques pile.
@11, 14 I suppose the disagreements on this thread about the meaning of the term show it’s not much use. I guess my inner proscriptivist will have console itself with the Oxford Comma.
My introduction to a character being referred to as a Mary Sue was in regards to a male character, written by a male author. I had to look the term up on the internet. What I came up with after 20 minutes of reading (which is, granted, not the entirety of what has been written on the subject) was that a Mary Sue is a character who is a stand in for the author, allowing the author to do all the cool stuff that their fantasy minds desires. Basically, the story and other characters serve as wish fulfillment for the author.
Is my understanding of the term faulty?
@@@@@ 16
Like you, the first time I read the term Mary Sue it was used to describe a male character so I have always used it as gender neutral. As far as I know (and admittedly my research is about as much as yours, lol) it is basically what you said but I would add that the character is good at everything and has little or no flaws (I guess that maybe that goes along with the whole wish fulfillment thing). I never use the term to describe a character just because I don’t like said character.
To use WoT as an example I would use the term Mary Sue for both Rand and Egwene but not for Matt or Nynaeve (all of whom are charaters that I like by the way).
And @@@@@ 4 & 13
I have the called Ahsoka a Mary Sue many, many times also.
Errrr…. so I can or can’t write a sci fi mystery / adventure novel (think: Dan Brown in space) featuring a female protagonist who specializes in hacking, racing, and has absolutely no love interests in any of the books? Because I despise romance stories… Also, she’s neither strictly female or male, somewhere in between. She’s a suave con woman though – kind of like White Collar meets Indiana Jones. Is this “stepping on the minefield”?
09jlardinois,
You can write whatever you want–zero romance, zero sex, zero mention of food, art, music, whatever–and you can be sure that someone will say something negative about it. Just be prepared for that, and don’t let it upset you. I have written both male and female characters in both SF and fantasy who had no interest in sex, or love, or having a family…and others who did. Because the entire spectrum of interest in, or non-interest in, every aspect of human existence is part of our species. Because it’s fun to write about more than one kind of person (or it is for me. Not trying to speak for all writers.)
In general, female characters will be scrutinized by readers more closely to see if they fit each reader’s notion of what “really a woman” means, as well as to see if they fit the level of intelligence, initiative, strength, agency, etc. that each reader thinks that character level should achieve. So if you want to write female characters, just expect more criticism, some of it negative. The goal, after all, is not to please all readers, but to find the readers who are disposed to like what you write. Nobody pleases all readers.
Anthony Pero: Like you, I understand “Mary Sue” to be the wish-fulfillment character, whatever the author’s wishes may be…and it’s a common (and useful) phase in a writer’s development. It’s when a novice writer is first trying to get in the head of a character, not just writing from the outside. Up through age ten, all my stories were more like moving little figurines around a map. A few years later, I was trying to work from inside characters, understand motivation. The writing itself was awful, pure adolescent melodrama, but the practice was worthwhile. Some writers use fanfic as the scaffold for this stage of learning; others work from scratch. I don’t know that it matters which. But at some point a writer needs to let main characters be someone other than the writer’s idealized self: let them make stupid mistakes, let them find their own way, especially when it’s not anything the writer would do. And in terms of female characters, the writer needs to quit worrying about whether she’s feminine enough, or tough enough, or smart enough, and just let that female character be a real person.
@Halien: In fan discussions and professional criticism, there is now an expectation that literature should reflect the political and social goals of certain interest groups.
‘Now’? There always was. It’s just that formerly, this was much more limited: in SF/F particularly, to one subset of straight white educated men. 90% of the genre pandered to their political and social interests exclusively. So comprehensive was this pandering that it became the default state, which meant that people largely stopped even noticing it – until the field became more diverse. Some of us (and I speak as a straight white educated man myself) were happy about this, as it made the field more interesting and truer to its professed values. Others panicked because they liked the way things were. But that’s beside the point: the point is, if you imagine that there was ever a time when there was no expectation that literature should ‘reflect the political and social goals of certain interest groups’, you’re kidding yourself. You were always being ‘preached at’. It’s just a question of whether you liked the message.
Erin Lindsey: Thank you for this excellent essay on the asymmetrical standards of judgment brought to bear on characters according to their gender.
I’m with those here who think that the term “Mary Sue” is better retired from serious discussion of literature. I myself first encountered the term in a comment on Tor (I don’t remember what the post was), where the commenter used it to describe Uhura in Janet Kagan’s Uhura’s Song. Once I looked up the meaning of “Mary Sue” online (which took a while, as others have reported!), I decided this was an inaccurate criticism. This led me to Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer’s Tor post on two Uhura novels, where she writes that Uhura’s Song contains “a seemingly infinite supply of Mary Sues for women and cat-lovers of all ages.” I was then happy to read John Bunnell’s comment @11 under that post: “I have to disagree with the assertion that the book is littered with Mary Sue characters. It is populated with competent characters, which is not the same thing. (I might concede Evan Wilson, but if she is a Mary Sue, then Kagan uses her in a way that plays knowingly and inventively with that concept.)” This accorded with my initial impression that the labeling of Uhura in Uhura’s Song as a Mary Sue in the first comment I read was a gendered judgment. Plenty of male Star Trek characters have been depicted in fiction as admirable and competent without getting labeled as Mary Sues.
One interesting aside: this seems to refer mostly to the field of modern written sci-fi, that I am not exactly up-to-date with. I am however an avid consumer of anime and I can assure you – whereas the word Mary Sue is mostly heard of when talking about fanfictions, the word Gary Stu is all the rage in the criticism of actual anime and their canonic plotlines. This coming from the fact that the perfect and poorly defined self-insert male protagonist has recently become a sad staple of many shows, mostly herded by a couple that also had really despicable gender politics (one of the most prominent examples being Sword Art Online, a show about players trapped in a deadly videogame where the local Gary Stu saves the day and rescues the girl while everyone else gapes in awe and sings his praises). In this sense I think the categories Mary Sue/Gary Stu do have meaning and value if properly used – what you describe seems to be an excessive eagerness to use the female one that I suppose applies to the specific field you’re thinking about. Again, by comparison, I can recall a recent anime that had a pretty strong female protagonist – she was a princess, reincarnation of a Dragon God, looking to gather the souls of her old companions in order to win back her kingdom and at the same time stepping out of her sheltered habits to learn combat and survival. Some liked it some didn’t (I did, a lot), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the word Mary Sue being thrown out once – and she was a pretty easy target in that regard.
@EMoon
I absolutely agree that authors should write what they want and try not to get bogged down by criticism. But as I argued in the piece, I think we have our part to play as readers too, and I don’t think we get a free pass to apply double standards just because it’s par for the course. It’s not OK. We need to ask ourselves some tough questions about why we’re doing this (and I say “we”, because I’m a reader first and foremost, and I catch myself sliding into gender bias more often than I like to admit).
Interesting points about wish fulfillment and the value of starting out that way. Now that I think about it, my start as a pre-teen was similar. Consummate Mary Sue stuff. And you certainly see a lot of that in fan fiction. I’ve seen some of it in pro fiction too, but… rare.
Please stop calling it the Bechdel test, says Alison Bechdel. http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/please-stop-calling-it-the-bechdel-test-says-alison-bechdel-10474730.html
I’ve written any number of stories under any number of names, often ghostwritten using the identity of my client(s). In much of my fiction, I have deliberately and even painstakenly made a point not to give the gender of my protagonist and/or antagonist, though I often give the gender of my supporting characters.
I do this for a variety of reasons: First, I truly enjoy allowing the reader to recognize my characters within the parameters of their own identities. Second, I have learned a great deal about how my readers determine the gender. This is where I see our cultural biases take root. I have heard how my characters must be a man because… and then heard the same argument about how that character must be a woman. A male reader once commented how connected he felt to one protagonist because he recognized the complexity of that “male” in himself — something which likely wouldn’t have happened had I given the gender-neutral character a female name. I have even personally seen both men and women who have repeatedly reread my stories, convinced I had “slipped” and given a gender, all because of how they interpreted that character. Gender-bias affects far more than the writer. It is a fascinating study of our own limitations.
So, what does this mean when we assume the opposite of a protagonist is not an antagonist but rather a female protagonist? How easily can we take our readers outside of their comfort zones and challenge the notions of what it means to be male or female? (How many of our readers will keep reading a story that bends the gender of our hero outside of the accepted and expected norms?) When a male and female protagonist has all the same characteristics other than gender, it is amazing at how differently our readers will interpret these characters and what they will take from the stories. Simply writing a protagonist who happens to be female may not be enough to break the stereotypes.
Fantastic post – definitely mulling all of this over in my brain. Just curious, what do y’all think about Vin from the Mistborn series? I found her to be a strong, interesting, fully fleshed out female character with depth, both moral and spiritual. But she’s a bit of a Smurfette – the only female character with a bunch of male ones. The only other real female character is Tindwyl, and I doubt she and Vin talk about anything but Eland during their conversations (although I can’t remember exactly). I don’t think Vin is a Mary Sue; although she becomes super powerful, it often proves that her powers can’t fix everything. What are your thoughts?
To force women into books just to please a certain group of people is myopic. They are either part of the story or they are not people will either love the story or they will not read it. The idea that women “MUST BE” in books especially SFF is silly. When I pick up a book and they have forced the main character into a gender just to appease a small part of the SFF reading community I find it sad. I also rarely finish those books (thanks unlimited). If you can write about a woman naturally in SFF so be it but this all sounds like whining to me.
Yes, how silly to expect that books represent a realistic proportion of genders (unless there is some plot/setting reason why that wouldn’t actually the case).
I don’t think anybody is arguing for tokenism here. Nor is the point of this article even about quantity of women per se, but the way we respond to those women characters.
Gender politics is spoiling everything. I’m a nobody, but if I were a professional writer, I would be a bit annoyed at having gender ideologues telling me which female character traits are and are not acceptable to use in developing my characters.
LOL, gender politics is not “spoiling everything.” It’s asking a little more from writers to try and get things (a) accurate and (b) interesting. This whole article is from a very clearly feminist perspective arguing that audiences should actually be a little less critical of female protagonists, (ie. siding with your hypothetical writer) so I’m not sure how you’re coming to your conclusion other than total shooting from the hip.
If writers are creating a character that’s not like them, in say, gender, sex, race, ability, or sexuality, it’s okay to ask that they do a fair amount of character research into how that character would be shaped by their cultural environment. Has the writer thought about what it means to be a female swordbearer in that society? Have they considered the racial dynamics? If race relations are intended to be allegorical to our world, have they portrayed them accurately? If they’re different, are those differences plausible within the society they’ve crafted? What does it mean to have a single leg in that society? Or to be gay? Or to be trans? Any of these questions that apply need to be researched and a writer needs to confirm with test readers that the character is being read the way they were intended.
If a writer has done their legwork, has crafted a character that feels plausible and tested their intention for the character with readers before publishing, but one of their choices as a character kicks a few people out of the story, that’s kinda a problem for you as a reader with that particular book, and not an issue of bad writing. Many complaints about female protagonists fall into this category, and the author of this article has a pretty giant point in highlighting it.
While I too agree that not every book needs to address every agenda that is out there, and that writers should want what they want to write about, (with a nod that writing is HARD, and criticism is a fact of writing), I also agree that as a reader I demand works that are interesting and in some ways fresh, that make me both think and feel and that expose me to different character perspectives. A cast of characters that is more diverse by nature offers greater potential for new perspectives. Since females are 50% of the population, a female protagonist perspective should not be a new perspective, but certainly ones that feel like real people and avoid the pitfalls of stereotypes are very interesting to me. Want more please, although I do know of some very good ones out there!
I heartily agree that larger female casts in general within a story can do a great deal toward having nuanced, realistic and stereotype-transcending female protagonists, for many great reasons already enumerated in posts above. A reason I’ll add is that in “real life” most women spend a lot of time interacting with other women, and the story and characterization opportunities from those interactions are huge. Far from feeling forced for the sake of pandering, there are many potential stories out there in which a diverse group of women playing a part is only logical and realistic. Some may choose not to read or write those stories, but I do!
As far as “Mary Sues”, I had not realized that term was for a character who is obvious wish-fulfillment for the author, I had always though of a Mary Sue/Gary Stu as a person who had a way handling every problem thrown at him/her with too little effort, whose powers or skills solved all problems to easily and who had no character flaws. Someone in whom we don’t see growth, because they don’t need it. I had never considered how an accusation of “Mary Sue” might be thrown too readily onto female protagonists who labor under the weight of being both protagonist and representative of their gender, but I do see how that can happen.
@26W: What I find interesting about Vin Venture in particular, in relationship to the original post note about how female protagonists must avoid being the “Chosen One” or else risk be labeled a Mary Sue, is that…(Mistborn spoilers below)
Vin is almost seen as a “Chosen One”…and then isn’t. There’s a whole to-do with Sazed noting that everyone automatically thinks the Hero of Ages will be male, but why couldn’t it be female? while Vin certainly seems to fit the bill, and we all willingly believe it as readers. Until the Hero of Ages turns out to be Sazed instead. Honestly, I personally would have taken her as the Hero of Ages and still not seen her as Mary Sue,because of how extremely emotionally vulnerable she is, on account of her terrifying past as a street urchin. But making it turn out to be Sazed, the less OBVIOUS choice than Vin, was a nice touch, one I see as Sanderson making an attempt to subvert the “Chosen One by Prophecy” trope altogether, rather than a slight on Vin. Still, I wonder about that now. How would the story have been different if Vin WAS the Hero of Ages?
Thinking about three of the examples. Harry Potter is entertaining and inventive, but ultimately it’s an elaborate fairytale and we forgive a fairytale just about anything. Besides, he isn’t stand-out awesome and there are many other well drawn characters around him. Rather like Luke Skywalker, special more because of circumstances than innately awesome abilities. Anakin is a different story, very much Chosen and awesomely powered, and not terribly interesting as a character – except that we know from the start exactly how his story ends.
Neo is also Chosen and awesomely powered, and could be fairly labelled a Mary Sue. Lonely hacker gets the gorgeous girl and amazing fighting skills and becomes a great hero; it’s pure fantasy wish-fulfillment. But the Matrix is a fun film despite that. I suppose the point of all this is that you can have Mary Sue characters, whether male or female, provided the story is not simply about them and how amazing they are.
I like heroic female protagonists, even anti-heroic ones, but what gets me very depressed is the number of books in the shops whose blurb follows the pattern of: a girl has super-amazing powers and attracts the attention of a super-hot boy. Maybe these books would actually be worth reading, but from the cover they scream pure fantasy wish-fulfillment.
Thank you for saying this. This article deserves an award. It at least deserves me saying it deserves an award.
I have been disappointed to find most “strong female characters” are simply ass-kickers, and I’m not looking for ass-kicking in my books. I’m looking for explorations of the human psyche and interpersonal relationships. I read and write about women because I want to know more about myself and about human beings, and “men with breasts” and klutzy-YA girls don’t really get me there: they’re poorly done characters plain and simple.
I always balk at people saying I have “strong female characters.” I’m not trying to make them strong—nor am I trying to make any social points—I’m trying to make them human.
Thank you for writing this. You’ve allayed many fears I have about putting my work out there.
Joel
“Every time we discuss a work of fiction, we contribute to a narrative about what we expect to see in the genre—what we demand. In fiction as in everything else, demand influences supply, and that can be a tremendous force for progress. Or it can inadvertently discourage diversity and stifle certain voices.”
Thank you for putting this out there. I’ve been wondering for a while to what extent people’s opinions of the entire genre are shaped not by what books are out there, but by what questions critics are asking. For instance, hardly a week goes by that I don’t see an article asking whether a book, movie or TV show is feminist enough, has a diverse enough cast, passes the B. test, or has interesting and complex political insights in its world building. I cannot remember the last time I saw an article asking whether something had a clearly worked out philosophy, deep psychological insights, or new and fascinating animals.
The people whose concerns dominate critical discourse have earned their positions by hard work writing and arguing for the critiques they want to read. But there are down-sides when particular concerns, no matter how worthy or important, seem to dominate the critical discourse.