For me, the number one reason I’ll end up hating a book is poorly depicted women. Nothing makes me more uncomfy than male writers trying to write women and totally failing, and nothing makes me more angry than female writers trying and failing at writing women. Like, girl. Come on.
But honestly, I don’t even blame the writers, I blame the culture. We’re taught to believe women have very particular roles in our stories, and sometimes it takes a concerted effort to write real women. Of course, you should always write the version of your story that is truest to you, but if you’re wondering if your story is in fact feminist, these five steps will help determine that for you.
Step 1: Count your women
This is the simplest test, yet many stories fail even this. Count how many women have a real role in your story. Compare it to how many men have a role in your story. Women play a part in every story, even if it’s some historical piece. Women were there, even if our
history books would say otherwise. What roles do they have? If there’s only one woman in your whole story and she’s the love interest, you need to do better.
Step 2: Create a vision board for your characters
I’m a huge user of Pinterest, and one of my favorite ways to use Pinterest is creating storyboards for my stories (peep my page). My storyboards help me visualize my characters in a new way. Whether you use Pinterest or not, create some kind of visual board in which you can see what your characters look like. Look at your women—are they diverse? I don’t just mean having a few blondes and a few brunettes. I mean are they tall? Short? Dark skinned? Light skinned? Chubby? Thin? Old? Young? Maybe they have tattoos or scars or outlandish hair. Maybe they dress modestly or maybe they dress promiscuously, or maybe they just like hoodies. Make sure you look at your girls and make sure they don’t all look like they came out of a magazine.
Step 3: Run the Bechdel test
So, you have a few women with substantial roles in the story, and they’re looking pretty good and diverse. Now let’s look at what they say. The Bechdel test is a simple, three-part test that writers use as a quick guide to seeing if their story has good enough roles for their females. The test is as follows:
Have at least two women (as per my own step 1, you’ve already got this down pat. Good job!)
Have them speak to each other
Have them talk about something other than a man.
It’s that last part that really gets a lot of writers. Surprisingly, a lot of women in stories will end up having conversations that circulate around the men in their lives. Their boyfriends, their fathers, their sons, or just their male friends. This turns out to be the case for a lot of women in secondary roles, but sometimes it even happens to main characters. Don’t do this to your female characters. Let them have friendships or rivalries with other women that are based on things besides men. I can honestly say most of my own conversations with my female friends don’t involve talking about boys. If we are, we’re probably talking shit on frat boys, but that’s beside the point. Back to the steps.
Step 4: Examine their motivations
If you passed the Bechdel test—congrats! But let’s look more closely at your female characters. It is not always about what they say, it's what’s in their heads. This is the hardest thing for most writers to get right, in my opinion, though it is also the simplest idea in the world. Let your girls have real motivations that aren’t about men. Why is your character pursuing her goal? Every character, even the minor ones, have their own goals in the story. If most of your female characters have goals related to men, they suck. Bottom line. This isn’t to say that no female characters’ goal can’t involve a guy, because honestly there are girls in the world that let their life revolve around a dude. But most of us (the sane ones) don’t.
Step 5: Do a gender swap
If all else fails, do a gender swap. I’ve mentioned this before, but this is one of the best ways to determine if your female characters are real people and not just, well, female characters. Switch the gender of all of your characters in the story and see what happens. If your women seem ridiculous, you did it wrong. You wrote them as women and not as people. This test is also useful for detecting overwhelming masculinity in your male characters. If your dudes seem silly as women then maybe you made them too macho. Unless being overwhelmingly masculine or feminine is an integral part of the reader hating your character, then don’t do this to them.
If your story passes these five steps, then congrats! You probably have a feminist novel. This isn’t to say your story will single-handedly destroy the patriarchy, but it will give your readers female characters that seem real and well thought-out. It will show your readers that women can be just as evil or heroic as men. Most of all, it will be a clear sign of good writing.
Peace out,
Grace
*I’m operating in the binary of gender here, so please excuse me for that.