Sunday, June 8: The A.D.D. Detective
X WHY? Part II: MALE POV
by Leigh Lundin
A few weeks ago, James suggested I write an article or two about getting inside the head of the opposite sex. When I first began writing, I didn’t know we were expected to write from the viewpoint of our own gender; I merely picked the viewpoint that seemed most pertinent at the time. More on that later, but this week I focus on a few things writers should know about men.
If you’re a woman writer, what should you know beyond the obvious?
The R Word
When it comes to relationships, it’s been said that women desire to be cherished, men like to be worshiped. At one time, I might have quibbled with that observation, but now I find myself seeking to understand it. I’ve come to realize men are driven by two major motivations:
- Men need to protect loved ones.
- Men have a hard-wired need to be heroic.
This doesn’t imply all men are heroic, only that they desire heroism and feel frustration when they’re prevented and intense shame when they fail. A military instructor said that in war, men are driven forward by fear– a fear that fellow soldiers will think they’re cowardly.
You cannot underestimate how important heroism is to men or how much they admire it in others. If you want to emasculate a man, take away his chance to be heroic, which some sociologists argue has happened in recent decades.
While guys themselves want to be heroic, they honor it in every shape and form. Little Kerri Strug comes to mind, vaulting on her collapsed ankle. In the movies, the single outstanding instance of heroism I can think of occurred in The Abyss. Those of you who saw the film know exactly the scene I speak of.
Sports
When it comes to athletics, men hate to compete with women: It’s a lose-lose proposition for males. If a woman wins, girls gloat and guys feel humiliated. If the male wins, both guys and women dismiss the win as no triumph, but as a lopsided matter of a male’s greater speed, strength, or endurance.
And yet, when it comes to competition, a curious thing happens with men. These days, everyone knows the name Danica Patrick, but who remembers Janet Guthrie? In May of 1976, Janet passed the Indy 500 driver’s test. The following three years she qualified and raced in the Indianapolis 500, her best finish 9th in 1978.
Before her first race, Janet acknowledged to a sports reporter that the men didn’t like the idea of racing against a woman.
"So, that’s made it hard to compete?" asked the reporter. "Not at all," said Janet. "These guys don’t want me to fail. Those who complain the most also help me the most. Drivers crossed over from other racing teams to assist and guide me. Part of it is chivalry, but also the men feel good about themselves only when they’re assured I’m a worthy competitor."
Janet’s voice was lost in that feminist era, but her insight is worth remembering. Details like hers adds realism to your characters.
Before we leave this subject, I’ll mention the obvious: Guys love sports– most guys– remember we’re talking in generalities. Personally, golf bores me silly and I suspect if football didn’t have bikini-clad cheerleaders and a rousing half time, their audience would be much smaller. But yes, guys thrive on the adrenalin, the endorphins, and most of all the competition.
Sexual Attraction
We can’t discuss genders without discussing sex. I’ll touch on a few points that might mystify women.
In grade school, I grew up with a good-looking kid that girls swooned over. In junior high, high school girls would pinch his cheeks and coo, "I just want to eat you." Girls 3-4 years older asked him out, which lasted until his mother figured out those little packets in his backpack weren’t for making water balloons.
In college, something curious happened; he married a very plain Jane. Not homely, but a far cry from the cutesy playmate bunny types who’d been a feature in his life. The cheerleaders, the sorority sisters, and the modeling students whispered, "What’s he thinking? Like duh, it can’t last. I mean, like, would you give up a piece of this?"
But it did last and seems likely to continue. As used to stunning girls as he was, he managed to see past their looks and view something inside a woman he came to care about.
A Man’s Woman
Consider Disney’s movie Chicken Little: Everyone is found attractive by someone, even Abby Mallard, the cute little Ugly Duckling.
No girl can attract every guy no matter what some think. Inversely, no matter the girl, there will be a guy who will find her attractive.
Worried about being fat? Have you met the groom who bought his wife a king-sized bed so she could ‘grow into it’? I always thought it would take a sizable woman to pull Nero Wolfe away from his orchids.
Wear glasses? There used to be a ditty that "Men never make passes at girls who wear glasses." The great Dorothy Parker shot back, "Aren’t men asses who never make passes at girls who wear glasses? It depends on their frames!" The sexy librarian look has quite a following. Many guys (including me) find brains sexy.
Makeup? The average guy prefers a lot less makeup than what the average woman wears. You may desire to touch up your eyes or sex-up your lips, but pancake is not mancake. Don’t write your protagonist as liking lots of makeup.
Breasts? Large, small, or in between, guys tastes come in as many flavors as breasts. Puffies? Inverted? Must guys just think, "Yum!" A girl I dated had one inverted and part of the fun was… Oh, never mind, I digress from writing about writing. The point is there’s no such thing as an unattractive nipple.
About the only safe generalization is that men admire a woman’s femininity. A guy might be turned on by your voice, your scent, the shape of your hands, or the words you whisper in his ear. Someone will like you (and your character’s) body type. You never know what might turn a man on, but your characters should.
Talk the Talk
Recently, a RWA writer mentioned a workshop advised women to write men’s dialogue with short, choppy sentences. This oversimplification quantifies instead of qualifies without explaining anything.
Men and women do have different speech patterns. People who specialize in linguistics emphasize that speech texture is more important that speech timbre when it comes to distinguishing men from women. Transsexuals who undergo sex change operations are advised to learn the different way of stringing words together to better pass as women.
What does this mean in practical terms for writers? For one thing, women use more qualifiers than men. When assisting my women friends to make their characters sound masculine, I strip out most instances of "just", "some", and other indefinites.
A woman’s sentence "I just want to do some shopping for cute shoes," becomes a man’s sentence "I’ll shop for shoes."
[ It’s unfair and untrue that men usually grunt, "Me shop (for Diehard battery)." The reason it’s untrue is that men hate shopping unless it’s in the tool section of a hardware store. ]
Sociologists have proposed conflicting reasons why men and women vary in speech patterns, but writers simply need to understand we do differ.
Examples
Following are two actual examples submitted to me for editing.
EXAMPLE 1. In this sample, a husband speaks to his wife about his sister:
Hours later, (he) slipped into bed and pulled his wife into his arms. “Now,” he said as he brushed his lips across her forehead, “before I relieve you of that gown and ravish that sexy body of yours, tell me why my sister was in such a damn rush to get here. And tell me why, when she thought I wouldn’t notice, she looked like she’d been betrayed by the whole world.”
Not for a moment do I buy this is a man speaking; the conversation would be more plausibly initiated by a woman. A brother would consider his sister’s behavior none of his business unless asked directly. If he said anything at all, it would be, "What’s with Renée?" but more likely (in this conversation with his wife), "Turn out the light and let’s get down and dirty."
EXAMPLE 2. In this case, a husband speaks about his wife to his best friend interested in the husband’s sister:
He decided to get in a good-natured dig of his own. “I know you don’t have my sexual outlet, my wife and I, well, …” He let his voice trail off suggestively.
Here’s a key rule: Once past their teen years, guys NEVER talk about their wife to other guys in a negative or sexual context. NEVER. Chatting about a husband or lover is a female thing: women don’t hesitate (we have you on tape, ladies) to talk about their men in sexual and often disparaging terms. Not guys, though.
Guys don’t think this way. If you ever hear a man denigrate his wife, that relationship’s imploding in the ninth circle of hell. (Understand we’re not talking about awkward jokes guys make that only they think are funny.) And guys won’t talk about their sisters, either.
Ectoplasm – ECK!
Guys have no patience for psychic crap phenomena. They might endure conversations about it without rolling their eyes, but trust me, you won’t hear a man say, "Did you hear Oprah’s psychic predictions for 2009?" It’s not going to happen.
That said, there are two exceptions: my friend Steve and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As mentioned before, Steve watches Ghost Whisperer. However, followers of Steve and my column know that it’s the cleavage spectacle, not spectral, that fascinates Steve.
In the latter part of the 1800s, belief in ghosts, ectoplasm, and other-world communication spread throughout Britain, France, and the Americas. A. Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini are two well-known men who became interested in different ways in the paranormal and set out to study it.
Houdini debunked a number of sham operations and exposed outright frauds. Upon his death, he left instructions that if he could contact the extant world, he would attempt to do so.
Doyle, unlike Houdini and Doyle’s consummate logician Sherlock Holmes, held a deep-seated belief in psychic phenomena and spent a sizable part of his fortune seeking proof.
Modern psychic operations have generally been shown as shams, such as the Crossing Over television series. Houdini was only one of a series of magicians who set out to prove fraud among psychics. The Amazing Randi has an open challenge to any psychic which has yet to be met. Criss Angel has also exposed paranormal frauds.
The bottom line here is that if you want a realistic male character involved with the psychic world, he should
- promulgate a scam,
- expose a scam,
- or have a hell of a believable back-story.
A Woman’s Man
To me, the expression "a man’s man" often implies a grizzled guy who likes huntin’ and fishin’ and fightin’. Their world is male and women appear as mere shadows. They’re heterosexual by virtue of a lack of homosexuality.
What’s not generally recognized is that there’s such a counterpart as "a woman’s woman". You know the type: Their world is female and men appear as mere shadows.
I believe these are the most difficult for the opposite gender to understand and write about. Moreover, I suspect the inverse is true, that a man’s man or a woman’s woman finds it virtually impossible to write knowledgeably about the opposite sex.
Summary
A funny thing happened in compositing this article. In an article about men, I realized that the only photographs I included (and some I’d left out) were of women. I realized that men define themselves in the eyes of the women as much as the other way around. If it weren’t for women, we wouldn’t be men, not in the same sense, and vice versa. We need one another.
If you don’t genuinely like the opposite sex, I’m not sure it’s possible to write from their viewpoint. When in doubt, be kind to the other gender, give the benefit of the doubt, error on the side of understanding, and you’ll come closer than you think.
While it is de rigueur in the RWA world to write in third person, I believe third person makes it harder for that genre to create realistic male characters. I recommend closing the gap by writing opposite sex characters in first person. Before starting, write a biography of major characters and a psychological profile. Internalize them like they’re real, and then start living them. After that, if you like, you can convert from first person to third.
Next Week
Next week, I’ll talk about writing from a female point of view. In the meantime, I’d like you, readers and writers, to fill the comment boxes with what YOU think is important for writers to understand when writing about the opposite sex.
If you don’t wish to reveal your thoughts publicly, feel free to write me an eMail at xx_xy@humanoid.net which Criminal Brief will make available for the coming week.
Interesting post that I will take some facts away with me. Oops, did the some reveal the fact that I’m a woman? The only qualifier I’d add is that some of the nevers don’t apply to men raised by a strong matriarch. They tend to be taught a different perspective.
I asked Leigh to tackle this topic because I’d read a story of his that was convincingly written from a woman’s POV. It never occurred to me that he’d be so misguided about writing from a man’s POV.
I disagree with almost everything he’s said, except for men not liking to compete with women, although not just in sports, and husbands not talking about their wives in a sexual context.
Husbands will mildly disparage their wives to other married men, but the context will almost always be domestic and usually ends in the phrase, “but my wife won’t let me.”
As for men being less verbose than women, that can’t be true. Ever hear a man talk about his hobby, i.e., describe a fishing expedition, talk about his stereo system, or what’s special about his new tires? And what about male politicians? Maybe men can be verbal troglodytes (“You never talk to me” is a phrase most men have heard more than once), but what about all the guys who write those sickeningly romantic love poems and songs to thir girlfriends? And maybe some of it is strictly cultural. I can well imagine Lord Peter talking Harriet’s ear off.
And let’s be honest: certainly men are as fascinated by the occult as are women. I know many men who start conversations in bars with, “What’s your sign?” (and they mean it). Our Steve wrote an article about Kabbalah here only two weeks ago, and he’s a manly man. Leigh’s history of spiritualism is extremely incomplete and doesn’t recognize the fact that interest in spiritualism has been cyclical for at least three hundred years, and is now on an upswing—the 18th century had le Comte de St. Germaine and Cagliostro; we have the Age of Aquarius and New Age book stores. But then I’m a Mason, and lots of Masons are interested in esotericism so maybe I see more of this sort of thing than other guys do—but remember that Freemasonry is a fraternity, a guy thing.
Great post> You should be six foot five hairy Texan and go to conference to pitch Women’s Fiction to petite New York female agents. I’ve drawn some criticism but it’s always fun to see their initial reaction when they ask, “What do you write?”
And my best friend was exactly like yours.
Your line about librarians and glasses reminds me of a great line in the wonderful movie The Station Agent. Unfortunately it’s the last line of the movie, so I won’t repeat it. But the whole flick is worth watching.
My advice on writing men’s dialog: listen to the way men speak in any soap opera. Don’t do it like that.
It’s funny, but when I was writing the article, I thought of Travis. Thanks, Mr. T!
Perhaps I’ve touched a chord in the terminally shy, but I received a number of private communications, which was what the eMail addres was included for.
Almost every one has been on the order of, “I can’t wait to see you step in it next week, heh heh.” Thanks!
My favorite note suggested I git myself to a country music store and listen to Brad Paisley’s I’m Still a Guy. I have now downloaded it and the lyrics and chuckled from the opening line.
The song mentions a point I’d considered for the article but left out: GUYS HATE HOLDING PURSES. That’s not just an American thing, either. One afternoon I strolled through Orlando’s Factory Outlet Mall (the old enclosed one). There on a bench sat a couple of guys looking miserable, each sitting beside a purse yet somehow distancing himself as if the purses had climbed up there, sitting by themselves. One guy was French and the other looked Middle Eastern, poor things. Yes, we love you and and yes, we’ll hold your purses, but it leaches the testosterone out of us and you owe us big credits.
I have also walked Steve’s mom’s poodle, but I made it damn clear I was NOT walking it with any damn pink leash and matching pink bows in its damn frou-frou hair.
I received a couple of notes about guys not showing their feelings. That’s probably true, but there’s times when you won’t want to know what they are. Just as we don’t talk to others about you, it’s out of respect.
One perceptive woman mentioned that it’s not just a guy’s ego that wants to know if a woman climaxed. “What if a man didn’t care? Is that somehow better?”
And thank you, I have enough reminders now that guys think with their “little head”. We just don’t like you using the word “little”. (evil grin)
Great column, Leigh! Makes me look forward even more to next week’s, if it will offer this kind of insight into writing from the female POV.
And yes, I indeed remember the scene from The Abyss (a fact which probably doesn’t surprise you) and I agree completely. Best example of heroism EVER in films.
Great article. I think most men talk about their wives when wives are present, and mostly teasing, but wouldn’t speak trash talk behind their backs.
I told my daughter that if she thought girls gossiped she should hear the “locker-room” talk of guys. Most of which probably is more bragging than truth.
I think you are right-on that men want to protect and appear heroic. I also think you are correct on the”what’s your sign”—I think most would think of the Blue Collar Comedy team!
I don’t think Leigh is not knowledgeable about “spiritualism” just not interested. Like most guys. Most guys are lead to that (imho) by the holder of the apple rather than drawn all by themselves. And before anyone gets outta whack, I said like MOST guys–not ALL guys, and of course depending upon the woman in question.
Great article. Can’t wait to read next week’s. There have been several successful romance writers that are men. Only in the last couple of years had one in particular starting putting “his” picture in the back!
I told my daughter that if she thought girls gossiped she should hear the “locker-room” talk of guys.
This is a myth. Men actually ignore each other in locker rooms.
I think JLW is the first male femi-Nazi, I have ever encountered?
I will agree we have come a long way since the “John Wayne” role model, which he could not even live up to in real life.
I think JLW is the first male femi-Nazi, I have ever encountered?
What? Did I miss something?
Great post(s)! Me? I like Sportscenter and Ghosthunters! And didn’t Janet Guthrie go into sportscasting?
This is a myth. Men actually ignore each other in locker rooms.
Actually, the locker room in my statement was the myth, since I had in quotes, I thought it was assumed. So to explain, when guys are together—-they brag, they gossip.
I know this for a fact. I’m not a guy, but I was reared in a “locker room” full of them because of my brother.
‘Tis amazing the discussions I heard during high school, college and a young adult.
Ooo-kay. Allow me to rephrase:
In my experience, this is a myth, a base canard, utterly untrue, and contrary to the character of the men I know, including all my brothers by blood, arms, and affiliation—but I suppose there are some cretins out there somewhere who indulge in this sort of unmanly misbehavior.
I have two brothers and two sisters. All three of us boys were raised to be gentlemen and would ever have submitted our sisters to “locker room language.”
So I stand my claim that locker room gossip is not typical, whether there is a locker room or not. I admit to having known men who boasted of their amatory conquests, but never before a gathering of men, because to do so would have opened them up to the clear contempt and incredulity of their audience.
We do, however, curse more and tell dirtier jokes when there aren’t any women around.
Don’t confuse the antics of teenagers with adult males.
Men, defined as being over the age of 20, do not gossip about their women. If for no other reason, they would be looked down upon in the eyes of others.
Don’t confuse the antics of teenagers with adult males.
Men, defined as being over the age of 20, do not gossip about their women. If for no other reason, they would be looked down upon in the eyes of others.
hmmmmmmmm…….I guess that depends on what you call an adult male and the situations at hand. No pun. I’m done arguing with y’all. adios!
Boy’s Life magazine used to carry (and may still) an article each month featuring a boy’s heroic actions, usually saving a life.
I was reminded of that when I spotted an article mentioning 6-year-old Haden Stusak saved his friend from drowning last week.
Great column, Leigh,
As a young girl I dreamed of being heroic. I also dreamed of being saved. Now I’m a wrter and I can have both.
I never understood how the act of holding a door open for a woman was deameaning to her. I always took it and still do as a sign of respect. Plus it gives us all a moment to pause, connect to the oppsite sex, and then move on with our separate lives.
Interesting, but you might have told me some of this stuff sixty years ago when I could have made better use of it. On the other hand, maybe it’s better that you didn’t.