Movies | July 17, 2009 | 9 comments

Girls on Film: Men Writing Women

source: http://www.cinematical.com/2009/07/13/girls-on-film-men-writing-women/

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"There's no way around it. Unless a screenwriter is writing about one-minute section of life where other sexes do not enter, or a world filled with one sex that practices asexual reproduction, men are going to write about women, and women are going to write about men. But can they do so successfully?

The best rationale I can offer is that men who can successfully write women are those who don't try to write as women. What I mean is -- they write naturally and rationally rather than with specific and often stereotypical tropes in mind. There might be classically "feminine" elements to the story, but the path and thought behind them is, simply, human.

And, of course, I'm not saying that we should let things lie status quo. Some men can write truly beautiful female characters, but the world still needs more screen words written by a women's pen.

But back to the question at hand: Is writing without sex/gender in mind the key to it all? In your opinion, which male screenwriters write women wonderfully, which crumble to gut-wrenching and terrible stereotypes, and what makes them fail or thrive?"
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9 comments // Girls on Film: Men Writing Women

  • trelk
    • 0
      trelk  

    • i agree that screenwriters should just write rationally or intuitively (or both) and let the situation work itself out on the page and the actress work it out whilst filming. but perhaps the male screenwriters who write women best (imo) are ones whom consciously write for and about the female gender. these are my favorites:

      john cassavetes
      krzysztof kieslowski
      carl theodor dreyer
      hayao miyazaki

      as far as people writing poor women characters...well, i bet every one of their characters, male and female, are written poorly.

    • 2 years ago
  • JonRaymond
    • 0
      JonRaymond  

    • It works for me to picture a character with all their dimensions as shwhites said, For me that means modeling a character on someone I know, like my wife, or maybe even a fantasy or combination of women I've met.

      I wrote a film, Escape Train, based on a woman I observed sitting across from me on the train and I imagined what kind of conversation I'd have with her. In this way you can focus your ideas on the image of a specific person and you get some some kind of authenticity from that.

    • 2 years ago
  • naty_forty
  • sgwhites
    • 0
      sgwhites  

    • I think that writing characters as human is key--though, I've often struggled with writing male characters. Not in finding the motivation, or things like that but little details, like knowing how a group of men would act with each other when no women are around; obviously that's not an experience I can have, so sometimes I worry about falling victim to stereotypes. But I think the bigger issue is--are you writing stereotypes (related to gender, race, religion, age, occupation or anything else) or are you creating a three dimensional character?

    • 2 years ago
  • naty_forty
    • 0
      naty_forty  
    • sgwhites:

      Very true, I have the same issues concerning men in what I write, and oftentimes it's a stumbling block in my writing; regardless, I just try to make the character human- like you said, "three dimensional".

    • 2 years ago
  • MarshallsCarousel
  • JamesAJanisse
    • 0
      JamesAJanisse  
    • sgwhites:

      I think part of the three dimensionality definitely comes from the writer. An actor can be excellent, but if the dialogue or actions that they're given is just flat and thoughtless, there's not much they can do without pissing off the director / screenwriter to save the character.

    • 2 years ago
  • naty_forty
  • JonRaymond
    • 0
      JonRaymond  
    • sgwhites:

      Marshal makes a good point. Actors will take what you've written and make it male or female. They'll immediately spot something that isn't right and tell you, a woman (or man) wouldn't do that.

    • 2 years ago
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