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.