One time, I closed the book halfway through and wondered, “Why does this woman feel like she is written by a dude who only watches shampoo commercials?” She was beautiful, mysterious, deeply hurt, and somehow she was always available to explain to the male protagonist how he felt. She never once felt like anyone who existed in real life.

I have never written a novel. I have never tried. But I have read more than most people I know. I have read everything from local paperbacks in school to the American thrillers that I consumed in grad school, didn’t even feel guilty about it.

I have read characters that have haunted me for years. And I have read enough poorly written women that I feel like I have aged twice over.

Some stories carelessly overcompensated to create a strong female character and the effect was to make her utterly unbelievable. It would issue a genius, martial artist, charming flirt, a war victim, and own a secret mansion on Mars. Then, in the middle of all that perfection there would be a couple lines about a flaw, like “she has panic attacks” or “she bites her lip too much,” and this was the author’s way to say, “I balanced that.”

I always would get the shivers.

It wasn’t that I found their ingenuity wrong or unbelievably clueless, but there was an unmistakable layer of phoniness to them. As if the author had possibly never even met a real woman and was trying to fabricate one from a pile of traits given a clinical feel.

You can tell when you see a female character and you think, “This guy has never had an actual conversation with a woman that didn’t include flirting or standing at a service counter.”

That.

I’ve Seen People Treat “Female” Like It’s A Genre

A friend of mine once told me, “You just write women like you write people.” Sounds simple enough right? However, I read a book and before this character had a chance to speak, she was described from the chest down and I thought to myself, there are…