Oh, Man.
May 29th, 2007 by Therese Walsh
I’ve finished my chiropractic edits for now and have moved on to the panoramic read: I’m going through the story scene by scene, from beginning to end, with the main goal of ensuring that the story feels “right.”
It’s hard, after spending so long slogging through a story, to see faults. But there they are in different sizes and shapes. Something that’s set off my Authenticity Alarm is the way I’ve handled one of the guys in my story. I’ve saddled an Alpha Male with some feminine motivations. I could tell you exactly what I’ve done, but I’m seriously too embarrassed to go there. Sorry. Use your imaginations and you probably won’t be that far off.
Luckily for me, I have a hubby who’s willing to help when I emerge from the pit that is my office, looking pale and desperate. He makes me a drink and teaches me something about how men think. With his gilded two cents in hand, I’ve managed to alter the motivation for this secondary character without having to chuck graphs of text; I’ll just need to make some adjustments on my next editing pass.
I also turned to Todd A. Stone’s Novelist’s Boot Camp for some tips on writing the tough guy:
Regardless of genre, as you develop the personality for a strong male character, you need to understand what makes him tick…
What does make him tick? I’ll do a quick run-down here, paraphrased and abbreviated from Stone’s book.
The Big A is:
1. Competent. He’s not asking for directions because he wants everyone to believe he knows what he’s doing…including himself. It’s hard for him to admit mistakes.
2. Focused. Alpha Dude is goal-oriented and results-driven. He wants to win. He’ll cheat if he has to.
3. Strong and Silent. He will take things “like a man” (Ugh. just…ugh.) without whining or highlighting anything that could label him as emotional or “weak,” like fear, sadness, pain, etc… (Oh, and an Alpha guy wouldn’t have put the word “weak” in quote marks.)
4. Loyal…to others and to himself. His word is everything to him. His friends and others he admires will probably also be people who stand out for their strength and individuality.
5. Action Oriented. Give him a road to travel and don’t ask him to stop on the way to discuss his feelings. This guy likes logic over intuition.
6. Sexually Assertive. Yep, Alpha Male has testosterone and likes to use it.
[Note: You can read a more in-depth take on the Alpha male in Stone’s book, pps 80-82.]
If you struggle with writing Alpha men authentically, take a page from my book: Ask someone with a Y chromosome his opinion of your characters’ motivations. Ask about the play of the dialogue, too. After all, we don’t want your Alpha saying things like: “You look fantastic in that blue swingy dress of yours. It really makes your pretty eyes pop!”
So how about you all? Women, do you have problems writing male characters authentically? What do you do to overcome this? And guys, do you ever trip over writing female characters? How do you handle it?
Write on, all!
Gaaah! WP ate my comment! It was fairly long and navel-gazy, but I’ll recap it by saying these are great tips, I want Stone’s book, and congrats on getting to this stage of your wip. Whew!
what they’d say about the dress is something like, ‘yeah, nice dress. but i’d like it better off…” it is challenging to write in a male pov, but what i have found works for me is to not make them so complex. i think most alpha men get themselves into pickles because they think things out too simplistically so you set up your character to have a ‘plan’ which of course will never work because they are missing some important component…like feelings, unanticipated emotional reactions to said plan, they underestimate their opponent’s intelligence etc., their testosterone goes into high gear at the wrong time. the point is, the alpha may never change, but he does need to learn something. an enlightened alpha are the most interesting men, IMHO