Ask the Sigma: Female Authors
In which the key differences between male and female authors are explained
I would love to hear your thoughts on female authors. There was series I loved as a teenager called the Farseer trilogy written by Robin Hobb. The main protagonist is the bastard child of the king who gets hidden away and trained to be his Assassin, he captures the heart of a serving girl but is far to busy being an assassin to make her his wife, I guess she's writing about "the one that got away". Instead meeting her in secret for amorous activities before finally as an old man quitting the life to hunt her down and live happily ever after.
The series is written in the first person the whole way through from the perspective of the protagonist. She wrote about 4 trilogies in the same universe and all including some version of a brawny, heroic male figure, always a pirate, assassin or some form of outcast. Looking back now I'm certain they would all be Sigma.
I'd love to hear yours and others opinions on the main differences between female and male authors.
This one is open to everyone who wishes to share their thoughts on the subject, so feel free to put in your two cents.
There are four fundamental aspects to a novel.
Characters
Plot
Prose
Ideas
Female authors tend to be strongest on Characters and Prose. They tend to be considerably weaker on Plot and Ideas. This is why their novels tend to be personal explorations of familiar territory; there is nothing new in the novels of Jane Austen, and yet they are immortal commentaries on the human condition.
The weakness, and the appeal, of female-authored novels tends to be in the solipsism of the author. The appeal is understandable for the reader who is capable of substituting his own self-insert for that of the author, particularly when the self-insert is the protagonist. The weakness is that in the hands of a mediocre author, that solipsism turns into plot armor at best and Mary Sueism at its all-too-typical worst.
This is why inclusive modern cinema and literature and comics are so uninteresting. We know what will happen. We know that the Special Girl who just happens to look and talk exactly like the author is going to be the smartest, the strongest, and the sexiest, as well as the victor in every single encounter, violent or verbal. This not only destroys Plot, but it destroys Character, because the character who is already flawless can never change nor develop in any way.
The best female authors understand and avoid this.
“Philippe,” I muttered, “if I die –”
“Here it is again,” he said.
“If I die, see to it – make that wretch of a printer take it all and print it all. Every word. Anything unfinished even, and all the pieces he has refused.”
“This ego,” he said. “Who will care? If you’re dead. Do you think you will?”
“No. But I care now, I care this moment. Promise me.”
“Very well. As before. I promise you.”
“You. I can’t trust you. You never read a line I ever wrote.”
“Many lines. Now, how does it go – ‘Light leaving a window like blood in a faint’ – what was that?”
“Something I can’t remember. A dream I think I had.”
“Like that other dream. I could make you once. You used to yell louder than I did. I used to listen in amazement.”
“You see,” I said, “but you don’t listen to the words.”
“When you die,” he said, he swung towards me and took me by the neck, by the snowy linen of his own wardrobe, “when I kill you, Andre, I will make sure every line of your fretful oeuvre is published.
- Tanith Lee, The Book of the Damned
Solipsism and the perfection of the self-insert inevitably leads to the tedious retardery of every hero or heroine succeeding by virtue of accepting and embracing their own perfection. There are no external limits to these paragons of perfection, only their own belief in themselves.
Also, like Gamma male authors, female authors tend to be weak in their understanding of socio-sexuality. There are, of course, exceptions, chief among them being Tanith Lee, who has always been one of my favorite authors regardless of gender or genre. I noted this back in 2014.
In her latest Pottermore update, Rowling writes how she's often forced to crush the dreams of fans who nurse strange feelings for Hogwarts's sexiest Slytherin. "Draco remains a person of dubious morality in the seven published books, and I have often had cause to remark on how unnerved I have been by the number of girls who fell for this particular fictional character," she writes. "All this has left me in the unenviable position of pouring cold common sense on ardent readers' daydreams, as I told them, rather severely, that Draco was not concealing a heart of gold under all that sneering and prejudice and that no, he and Harry were not destined to end up best friends."
The more people try to deny the reality of Game, the more they are forced to blind themselves in order to prevent themselves from seeing the obvious. Draco's appeal is not in spite of what Rowling sees as his shortcomings, but rather, his appeal is precisely what she calls his "dubious morality". To young female readers, all of Harry's life-endangering, world-saving heroics are a boring turn-off in comparison with Draco's alluring arrogance, cruelty, and Aryan superiority complex.
Harry, for all his Very Special Status, is unmistakably Delta. Which is why even Rowling herself wasn’t drawn to him; she dashed her fans’ expecations and refused to reward her hero of the seven books with her self-insert’s heart; she reserved Rowling/Hermione for the staunch and more masculine Bravo Ron Weasley instead.
When it comes to sexual attraction, women don't give a damn about saving the world or keeping the lights on. No woman wants to have sex with any man due to his livelihood or his positive contributions to society unless he’s a rock star, an actor, or a CEO.
Of course, mediocre female authors all write exactly the same story, in which their self-insert is torn between her choice of two Alphas, both of whom are irrationally and unbelievably devoted to her and her alone. The plots are entirely irrelevant as are the genres, as it makes no difference if the two Alphas are vampires, executives, superheroes, or robots, the story will be exactly the same every time.
With, of course, one exception. Laurell K. Hamilton got rich writing 30 books, each of which contained her unique solution to the problem: the girl gets BOTH Alphas at the same time!
It’s not just gamma males who don't understand human socio-sexuality.
Tanith Lee was the best.
I don't read a lot of fiction, much less female authored. I previously thought this was mostly due to my more technical mindset driving me towards non-fiction, but with the discovery of a few select works I've come to think it has more to do with a lack of interest or investment in understanding the characters or using them as a surrogate for myself. My favorite work of fiction is not a book or even a movie but the a game, Metal Gear Solid V, I think in large part because of the way the characters are developed.