How do I write from a girl's POV? [duplicate]

Question

Ok, I know this question might seem a little bit weird. But I really need to know. How do I write from a girl's POV? I'm a 13 year old boy and I'm trying to become an author. I'm currently working on one book, and I'm about to start writing a second one. That's how I always do my business. I write one book until I'm about half-way done and then I start another one. But that's not really the point here. I'm not very experienced in writing and I've only ever written a few things, most of which weren't even novels.

Being a 13 year old I'm very inexperienced when it comes to... well... when it comes to a lot of things, one in particular is book genres. I have no idea what book genres I'm good at writing and which ones I'm bad at, so I've decided that I'm just going to try my hand at all of them. Next in the long line of genres is romance. I plan to write a novel about a boy and a girl (both of which are 17), who fall in love. Both of these people come from relatively poor families, and both of them try to keep the other from finding out, fearing that it would embarks them and possibly make the other lose interest. You know how teenagers are, they always seem to overthink things. Anyway, the girl's father doesn't approve of her dating the boy (I haven't figured out their names yet), but her mother encourages her to date whoever she loves. The boy's father doesn't know that he's been dating this girl, due to the fact that he's purposely kept it a secret from him. His mother doesn't know either, but his sister does, and she uses this on several occasions to blackmail him into doing what she wants him to do, but I'm getting kinda off topic.

The reason why I made this is because as a 13 year old boy, girls my age are super confusing, so I couldn't imagine how 17 year old girls would be, but this novel is supposed to be written from both the guy's POV and the girl's POV. And I really need to know how to do that. Like I said before, girls are confusing, and what goes on inside their heads are beyond me.

Answer 1

Just write her like a person. There's really not much else to it.

I know it may feel like girls are confusing and mysterious at your age, but honestly, in almost any situation, you should take the same approach to writing a female character as you would with a male character, with some minor caveats. When it comes to what goes on in the heads of people with different gender identities, despite stereotypes and jokes you may have heard, there's literally almost no difference between boys and girls and others. But again, of course, this comes with some asterisks.

First of all, wanting to write a character who is different than you is great! It's wonderful to write characters who are different than you. It honestly is. It's so boring if all of your characters have the same life experiences as you do, and it helps your book become more interesting and diverse when your characters aren't just carbon copies of the author. It also helps you put yourself in the shoes of someone else, and helps your reader do that, too.

Obviously, though, there are pitfalls to watch out for here. When you're writing about an experience that isn't your own - in your case, writing a female character's POV when you are male - you need to be careful that you are doing the following things.

• She is a person first, so write her as one. First and foremost, this character is a human being. She has a personality, dreams, goals, motivations, and desires just like you do. She may be a different gender, sexuality or race than you are, but she is still fundamentally a character, so always keep that in mind. Don't write her so that "being a girl" overtakes her entire character - write her as a whole person. You're familiar with universal emotions and universal experiences, and she will have those too.

• Research, and understand how her life experience differs from yours. When writing any character with a life experience that you do not have, research it so you can do a more accurate portrayal. Think about things that a girl may experience that you have not experienced. How might a girl have experienced middle school differently from you, for example? How did her parents raise her? How would a girl have grown up differently from you, and have different hobbies? What gender roles and stereotypes was she exposed to and perhaps forced to emulate? Did she ever face sexism, and if so, where and how? All of these places are areas that you should read about as much as you can, to fully understand. It's not that you've never faced similar issues, of course, but my point here is that it's important to comprehend everything that will come into play with this character and her experiences that you may not have had. Having empathy and a sensitive approach here is incredibly important.

• Ask people to read it over to tell you how it sounds, and avoid tropes. There's an unfortunate trope with your situation called "Men Writing Women," where male authors often get... weird when writing female characters. Similarly, there's also a trope where female characters in a story often have more passive verbs and don't make as many active decisions as male characters do; they just go along with whatever the male characters are doing. It's the trope of the female action hero who just sighs and constantly berates the men for being doofuses, while serving no other purpose in the plot and doing nothing on her own. You have to be very careful to avoid those kinds of tropes, and the best way to do that is to have somebody else read over your writing to make sure you're not falling into any of those traps accidentally. It's completely understandable to mess up here on your first few attempts, but it's important to make sure this doesn't come through in your final draft.

Hopefully this helps!

Answer 2

I would honestly say to write her no other than you. Of course, the character will not have all of the same experiences, but you probably have a female who you are close to, who you can ask for help with that. I have run into this problem as well with my story. I am a female trying to write a male character, but the thing that has helped me the most is throwing gender out the door and writing a person. Because gender is a phrase, a wibbly wobbly orb of randomness. So that is the best advice I can give to you, and good luck writing!

Answer 3

First I have to say: respect. I think it's great that you are highly motivated at such a young age and even willing to write in many genres.

With that out of the way. I have to disagree about: all humans are mostly the same.

This sort of thing leads to writing a Roman emperor as you would write a modern female radio host. This is the Hollywood approach and a lot of the time it leads to hilarious characters voicing absurd ideas.

I don't want to get into how humans are not all the same. I will touch on that later. But basically people are different.

Different how? Easy. Their emotions, expectation, reasoning...etc.

Sure you can understand bad things in history and even serial killers, genocide, rape, torture...etc. But that does it mean that all humans are equal.

Merely that we posses the intelligence to understand and sympathize with all human actions.

Anyway not to bore you with theory I just do it like this

Mechanical approach. With external context and internal context.

External is where are they? What is their class? What is their family? What are the past important experiences that changed them?...etc.

All of this is solved by deciding the setting.

If I write a story about an average middle class guy in Italy who works as a programmer he is probably Christian, probably loves football...etc. Does that mean all Italians are like that? Of course not. Just the average.

A liberal activist radio host in NY. Atheist, Karl Marx, liberal in certain things, feminist, vegan...etc.

This is not to stereotype or anything. But basically how to represent the average person of the group honestly but have your own twist.

I also despise the approach of writing all characters to be a mouth piece for my and my views. Which is very popular now.

So. Before I lose you here is how what I wrote changes things.

The Italian guy might lament the control of Northern Italian football clubs and how his club will never win. He missed church one day and his mother called him to shout at him and he feels guilty. When he arrived to work to find a huge security breach because an idiot had a password of 123456789Ab.

All those little details adds authenticity to the story, Those are the little touches that when an Italian reads is like: Yep. That's how it works.

Now remove all those things and their effect and you have a grey blob of a human

So. you are always looking for those little touches to add. Like salting your food.

So. I think it is now clear that those external factors play a huge part.

A guy who a millionaire probably won't bother with checking to see if that restaurant is within his price range or not. Those moments of anxiety as you are worried that your card might get declined, despite knowing for a fact that you have enough and double checking you whole order and doing the math, and that invaluable relief when it is accepted.

This can be a point of tension in a relationship.

So. We are now connecting things. Because A is much richer B is finding A's life style problematic. Same with religion or looks or life style...etc.

Internal context.

The realm of absolute mystery and terra incognita.

Well. Not that much.

I can't even begin to mention the big five personality module.

It really helped my in my own life in general and also writing.

So. Even if you are not a writer you need to know about it. It would provide incredible insights into who you are.

I will simply say something like this: introvert and extrovert. You always want to go out, you always want to stay at home. A very common point of tension.

This is an actual problem in relationships between humans. When A is high and B is low and they are not aware of such a thing it leads to that...etc

How many parent tortured their kids for being introverted or disagreeable...etc?

Same with the rest of the big five traits. If people are not aware of those differences this leads them to believe that the other person is wrong and they need to change. Which obviously causes trouble.

We are not done yet. The internal context is the exclusive domain of the writer.

Here you can play around the most. You can create the most interesting interactions and have a character be hit with tragedy become stronger or weaker.

Here people are changed, made, altered, tested, destroyed...etc.

Because there is not a 1:1 mathematical certainty between experience and mentality here you can do what you want as long as it makes sense.

I just read yesterday this comment on a YT video

I read a story where “that guy” agreed to design his next character with a friend (they both alternated picking traits for each other’s characters) He ended up playing a Pocahontas like barbarian whose tribe was murdered by some guy Obviously his goal was to hunt down the guy, but his friend said the character wouldn’t kill him Over time this character developed from stand-offish to genuinely nice and kind, and at the end of the campaign there was a massive naval battle The guy who killed Pocahontas’s tribe was leading the enemy navy, and she walked through a hail of black powder shot and sword blows, dying only a few feet in front of him The DM allowed Pocahontas one more action so the formerly antisocial player described his character as she reached down, beaten and bloodied beyond recognition From a pocket she pulled out, not a knife or a gun, but a flower from her tribe, the tribe slaughtered by the man who stood before her She pushed it up to his chest and whispered “I forgive you” before dying Since then the player has been unable to play antisocial PCs The actual story is longer and better, but the idea of players changing by playing characters they normally don’t seems interesting at the very least

For context that guy refers to board game players, like D&D, who are really problematic from small things to basically forcing you to ban them or even not being friends with them.

I found this comment fascinating for obvious reasons.

So. Such a comment clearly shows how people. If all abused children grow up to be abusive we would all be abused. It is your job and privilege to handle those aspects. Perhaps the lone wolf paranoid ranger is a good person deep down. Perhaps the charitable princess is a power hungry manipulator. Maybe the priest loses their faith once the demon shows up in the room. Maybe the evil drug lord can find redemption.

All those plots are not only about external things but how you decide that the mind and soul of your characters act.

Perhaps I'm too much of a mechanical writer, I guess you can say architect, but honestly this just make a lot more sense to me.

Humans are complicated and solving the problems using actual proven tactics and science seems to help me figure out the larger context of people.

My female character seems to be her our person, or I hope so, because I made sure
that her background influenced her as well as her own basic psychological model

Now call it good or bad this is how I approach humanity. People are usually a lot less complicated if you actually invest the time in actually observing and listening instead of judging.

Answer 4

1

All human beings have certain things in common. From that common basis, you can attempt to understand others and write about them. There is no difference between writing from a female POV as a man and writing from a detective's POV as a non-detective. As a writer, unless you project yourself into all your characters, you always have to research what you don't know and imagine the rest to the best of your ability.

2

Currently, there is an ongoing trend to write female protagonists with "male" characteristics. Many writing coaches advise you to write male characters and switch genders after the first draft, to better achive what female readers are looking for in the protagonists today. If you look at Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games and other Young Adult heroines, they are in fact portrayed exactly like the male heroes where a few decades ago (psychologically strong, proactive, etc.), and many of the male characters have the same "feminine" traits that female characters once used to have (uncertainty, psychological weakness, confusion, etc.).

3

Except in psychological fiction, characters are figures or symbols and not real people. Think about what function your heroine has in your story and provide her with the traits that best fulfill that function.

Answer 5

Write like you would for a boy, but carefully change the pronouns to she/her. There’s literally no difference character-wise. If you feel like anything is out of character about it, go back and correct it in your editing process.