Advice please?

I'm about half way through writing the second part of my serial story "Bank Holiday Weekend" and I've run into a problem. For some insane reason I decided to try to tell the second part of the story from the female main characters point of view (despite being my being male), but now that I'm roughly 1,350 words in I've done my first edit and re-read and I can't help but feel the tone is a little off. It just doesn't feel like a woman's perspective. So I was wondering if anyone has advice on how to write stories from a woman's perspective? Is there really that much difference when writing men's and women's perspectives or have I just been badly advised when in the past (when I was in school)? Would anyone be willing to read what I've written so far and give me a few tips before I wade even deeper into this part?

My thanks to anyone with advice or who can help,
Nswitch/thereader0987

Do you have a woman you can trust to read your part of the story? I write from a woman's perspective quite a bit. Women have a huge sex appeal to readers when talking about any type of erotica in general. Grab a book by one of the female authors and find a page that deals with emotions and erotic overtones. Preferably one written in first person. Read a few letters by authors here at the library that the authors have written in the guise of female characters. That might even be the best place to start. Try KatieB for example. She's really good.

B

I write from a woman's POV all the time. But when I do so, I'm merely writing with a tone and sensibility that I have seen in other works. I just mimic that style and tone. Is she brash or quiet and refined? An earthy type or an intellectual? Country gal or city career woman? Modern era or some other period in history? An example is "A Pirate's Tale" a letter supposedly written by a young woman in the 19th century. I've read enough parts of bodice rippers that I think I know what that sounds like. So my advice is to read a number of books written from this POV and see if you can't get into the character and replicate the character's speech and mannerisms.

Great minds think alike, Rollin.

I write from a female PoV a lot, I tend to do it more than a male PoV. I have no idea why, it just seems to fit. I can't really offer advice here, because it just seems very natural for me and readers seem to agree. Not entirely sure what that says about my masculinity . What rollin said is very pertinent and it applies equally to either gender. The tone has to be right dependent on when the story is set and what sort of person you're writing about or whose point of view. Research can also be important. I tend to set the stories in settings I'm familiar with so that cuts down on the research, but I've done one large historical piece and I had to research that one, I also reread A Christmas Carol when I wrote my own spanking take on it last year.

Hmmm...a women'a POV you ask. My question would be is a women's POV so different then a man? I find a POV offered in writings is based not on the gender but on the individual character in the story.

Maybe I am wrong, and I know women look at things somewhat different, but not all women's POV on any one subject would necessarily be so different from a man's that one could tell a difference in a short story (less then 25000 words).

My other comment would be is that whoever writes the story presents the POV of whomever they want, so who can tell that a woman or a man would not have the POV as described in the story?

I agree with the other commenter's about doing research and many of their points are valid, but I would wonder just how much is necessary?

CS

You're most likely right CS, but there is an issue with the perception of the reader.

We've discussed narrative realism in these pages enough for us all to be familiar with the idea that a story has to be internally coherent, and in my opinion that runs to the stated thoughts and attitudes of the characters as well. If they seem - in a potential reader's mind - to be too masculine for a female character or too feminine for a male one then there's the risk of this becoming a distraction. Sometimes I find myself thinking from my own limited (and incontrovertibly accurate I'll have you know) knowledge of the character that this person is behaving in what appears to me to be a weird or unbelievable manner and the suspension of disbelief becomes punctured.

Now of course, there are many people who act in unusual ways in real life, and even if there weren't, this is fiction, so they can fairly be written, but the ability to read smoothly without such distractions intervening is important and so unless the character is genuinely intended to be a girly man or a mannish girl it's best to try to get the feel right using the methods described above by rollin & Seegee.

Like CS, I'm not convinced that there's any significant difference in contemporary society in the way men and women express themselves. In the past it probably would have been different, for example, a woman would have been expected to refer to her husband's opinions rather than having any of her own!

First, get a sex change.

After that, it becomes just a little bit more difficult . . . .

This board regularly has the best and most well written stories of any place. They are routinely sensual from whichever viewpoint.