This is The Write Now Podcast with Sarah Werner, Episode 107: Strong Female Characters.

 

Welcome to Write Now, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise, to find the time, energy, and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m your host, Sarah Werner. And yes, I am finally doing an episode about strong female characters. I get asked this question a lot, and a lot of the questions that I get asked have to do with sort of this unwritten set of do and don’t rules about what to do when you’re writing characters who are female, so we’re going to dive into that today. But first, a couple of caveats.

 

First of all, when I talk about female characters, I am talking about characters who identify as female. However, the advice that I’m giving applies to all characters, applies to all genders, everyone on the gender spectrum. It also applies to non-binary characters, trans characters. Basically, what I’m going to talk about today is writing three-dimensional characters regardless of gender or any other assigned traits.

 

Second caveat, this episode is not just for men or people who identify as men. This episode is for everybody. It’s going to be a little bit more of a crash course, again, in writing characters who are three-dimensional and meaningful to a story. We’ll get a little bit more into what that means as we go along.

 

Finally, I am not recording this episode to make anyone angry, to call anyone out or to push any sort of agenda. Again, we are simply going to be talking about crafting characters as whole three-dimensional strong characters. We are going to be talking about this from the writer’s craft point of view. Okay, so let’s jump in and get started.

 

First of all, the biggest point I want to make is that there is not one correct way to write a strong female character. By that I mean there is not a strong female character archetype that you need to adhere to, or there’s not a checklist of traits that a “strong female character” must have. This is because when we’re talking about strength, we’re not talking about just one thing. This is the crux of the episode today. Strength does not equal giant bulging muscles. Strength does not equal massive biceps. Strength does not equal the size of the gun that your character is holding because strength is not just one thing. Human beings are beautifully and wonderfully varied in how they represent strength.

 

Now, some people are physically strong. That is one aspect of being a person of strength and it’s certainly a very visible one. It’s very easy to see, “Oh, that person is physically strong. I do not want to get punched in the face by that person.” Strength can also mean your capacity to withstand enormous amounts of pressure. I remember being greatly influenced growing up by the animated Disney movie Mulan in which the emperor, who is this very small, frail, fragile looking individual, faces off against a massively, physically strong antagonist and says something that stuck in my mind, which is, “No matter how the wind howls, the mountain cannot bow to it.” This character has great strength, even though the character is not physically strong.

 

A strong character may also be just very strong and confident in who they are in the force of their personality. This character is grounded and is not easily swayed even by the most persuasive argument from the bad guys, from the antagonist.

 

A character may also be strong in their skills. Maybe their strengths are how diplomatic they are, how easily they can talk their way out of a situation, how wonderful and good of a piano player they are. Or maybe your strong character simply displays their strength by getting back up every single time they are knocked down, they simply refuse to be defeated. And when I say knocked down, I don’t just mean physically knocked down. I mean emotionally, mentally, spiritually. There are all different sorts of ways that we can be hurt and battered and knocked down.

 

Now, a strong character, a strong male character, a strong female character, a strong non-binary character, they don’t need to check all of these boxes in order to be a strong character. That is not what I’m saying here. What I’m saying is that there are many different forms of strength. There are many different aspects to strength.

 

I remember years ago, or maybe it’s even decades ago now, when you wanted to create a strong female character, you would just slap some muscles on and give them a gun. There you go. That’s a strong female character, right? Well, not quite. That’s what we’re going to talk about now. You can give your female character the biggest muscles and the biggest gun, or the biggest sword, or the biggest machete or whatever, and that does not make them a strong character.

 

Now, strong characters can have big muscles and big swords and big guns, but it’s not the big muscles and the big swords and the big guns which make them a strong character. The question of a strong character doesn’t even mean asking if that character matters to the story. And this is where things get really tricky and really subtle, because there’s a difference between an object and a character. There’s a difference between a thing and a person.

 

For instance, there could be a big, beautiful lamp, and that lamp could provide light for the heroes to see and that lamp is an important part of the story because the characters need to see, but the lamp is not a character. The lamp does not have hopes and dreams. The lamp, as far as we know, does not have a motivation. The lamp does not have its own story arc. The lamp does not fall down and get back up and learn and grow and feel. So the question I want to ask, and the question that I want to have you ask is, is this character a person or a thing? Does this character have their own motivations, their own story arc, their own dreams? Or is this character an object that only serves someone else’s story?

 

A character, male or female, with giant muscles and a big gun, despite having physical strength, can still be used as an object in a story. If this character, male, female, anywhere in between, if this character does not learn and change and grow and does not have motivations and does not have their own internal thought life, then this is not a strong character.

 

Now, does every single character in your novel or your screenplay need to be a strong character? No. You can have side characters. You can have mentor characters. You can have all sorts of different characters. But if somebody asks you, do you have representation of strong female characters in your work, and you have one female character in your novel, and that female character could be interchanged with a lamp, then that’s where you maybe have a little bit of a problem. Must you have a strong female character in every single thing that you create? No. What you create is 100% up to you. But if you want to have a strong female character represented in your story or a strong, insert your own description of a character here, in your story who is strong, then there are a lot of things to consider.

 

A very simple test was developed in 1985 by Allison Bechdel, and you may have heard of this before, it’s called the Bechdel test or the Bechdel-Wallace test, and basically the test asks three questions of the work in consideration. Number one, does this movie, or book, or film, or TV show have at least two female characters in it? Number two, do these two female characters talk to each other? And number three, when these two female characters talk to each other, do they talk about something other than a man?

 

Again, this test is not scientific. It is not even really meant to be taken seriously, or at least it wasn’t when it first appeared in a comic strip in 1985. It was, at the time, a statement, a joke. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its merit. Because the more you think about it, these ridiculously simple parameters, you’ll find that very few pieces of media actually pass this test. The test isn’t necessarily about creating a female character with internal strength, but really looks at how women are represented. If they’re represented to serve their own story, or if they are simply beautiful lamps to serve someone else’s story.

 

The classic movie, the Wizard of Oz. Does that movie have at least two women in it? Yeah. There’s Dorothy, and there’s Glenda, and there’s the Wicked Witch of the West. Now, do those women talk to each other? Absolutely. Glenda and Dorothy have a conversation in the beginning of the movie and then the Wicked Witch of the West, who … Well, we won’t go into all of that, why this character does not have a name and is just known as the Wicked Witch of the West, but she and Dorothy have a conversation later and, hey, it’s not about a man. It’s not about finding Dorothy a boyfriend or a husband or anything like that. So technically the Wizard of Oz passes the Bechdel test. Does this mean that the Wizard of Oz is a good or a bad movie? No. Does this mean that the Wizard of Oz is making a strong feminist statement? No. It just treats its female characters like humans, like characters and not like lamps.

 

What about the 1977 movie Star Wars? One of my favorite movies of all time. It has a famously strong female character in it, Princess Leia. Princess Leia is very small, she doesn’t have rippling muscles, she doesn’t have the biggest gun and she gets stunned pretty easily by a Stormtrooper, but she has a story. She has a story arc. She has a mind of her own. She has a personality. She has a strong internal life. She has motivations, goals, hopes, dreams. She’s a strong female. But does the 1977 Star Wars movie pass the Bechdel test?

 

Question number one, does the movie have at least two women in it? Okay, so first and foremost, we have Princess Leia who is a fantastic strong female character, but I found it really difficult, off the top of my head, to think of another female character in the first Star Wars movie, other than aunt Beru. But okay, Aunt Beru counts. Aunt Beru is a character. She pours blue milk for Luke and she talks to uncle Owen about the future of their ward. Do these two women ever talk to each other though? Does Princess Leia ever talk to Aunt Beru? Not that I’m aware of.

 

The 1977 Star Wars movie, A New Hope, does not pass the Bechdel test. Does that mean it’s a bad movie? No. Does that mean that Princess Leia is not a strong female character? No. But you’ve got to ask, what are all the women doing? Are they just at home reading magazines on a couch? Why are there no women in space? Did something happen? Are there women in the Stormtrooper outfits? Are men the only people allowed to go get jobs in this global society? I mean, it’s just so weird.

 

Again, when we’re talking about representation, which we are kind of, it’s important. I want to talk more about diversity and representation in an upcoming episode of the Write Now podcast, and we’ll talk a little bit more then about why it’s important that pieces of literature and film and other media pass the Bechdel test. Because the underlying question of movies that don’t pass the Bechdel test is, why? What are the women in this world doing? Why don’t we see them? Why aren’t they important?

 

This dovetails into another trap you can fall into when trying to write a strong female character. So just as it was very easy to write a “strong female character”, so a female character that had a big gun and big muscles but no overarching goals or motivations, they were just there as a pawn or a big muscular lamp, it can also be tempting to think about a strong female character being strong simply because they are the only female character. I think that this is what happened to Princess Leia. She’s a strong character and she’s a strong female character, but she’s also the only, well, except for Aunt Beru, female character.

 

I remember reading Kelly Armstrong’s book Bitten when I was in high school, and I absolutely loved it. It was my introduction into paranormal romance. It featured a female werewolf, the only female werewolf in a society that’s otherwise very male werewolf-y. The main character’s name is Elena, and she is, or seems to be on the surface, a strong female character. She runs fast, she hits hard and she holds her own against the other male werewolves. Does the book pass the Bechdel test? No. No, it does not because the only female character is Elena and she is seen as a strong female character because she is the only female character. In this situation, her being female is what makes her different or special, and I feel like this is a really insidious twist on the strong female character.

 

When I started thinking about this, you see a lot of this in the media a lot more than I at first thought. The character who is surrounded by male characters, who is just the girl one, like Smurfette in the Smurfs. All of the Smurfs are male, except for Smurfette who is the girl one. Or like Black Widow in the Avengers. It’s like, “Oh, there’s the Hulk, there’s Thor, there’s Iron Man, and then there’s the girl one.” Is Black Widow a strong female character? I’m not going to answer this one for you. I’m going to let you think about it. Again, I want you to remember by strong character I mean three-dimensional character.

 

Let’s get into that real quick, what makes a character strong or three-dimensional? As we talked about in the beginning of this episode, there are many different aspects of strength. There’s physical strength, mental strength, there’s willpower, there’s the ability to keep getting up after you get knocked down, there’s intelligence, there’s skill. There’s different ways in which characters can be strong, but that’s not all of it. A three-dimensional character also needs to be a character and not an object. Is this character a person? Does this character have hopes and dreams and motivations all on their own? Does this character have their own story or are they simply there to serve someone else’s story? Again, it’s not just about whether a character has an effect on the plot.

 

I love Spider-Man. I love the characters of Peter Parker and MJ. However, is MJ a strong female character? Does MJ have goals and motivations and dreams? Sometimes it depends on the depiction of this character. A three-dimensional MJ has wants and dreams and motivations. She has a story that she wants to live out. She maybe grows from point A to point B in the story and changes and learns a lesson. Or maybe she is simply there for Peter Parker to save. Does she have her own story or is her story 100% the story of Peter Parker and Spider-Man?

 

Spider-Man movies do not usually pass the Bechdel test. In fact, despite the three very simple requirements, very few films and movies and books do pass the Bechdel test, even books and even movies and even stories written by women. Does this mean they are bad movies? No. Does this mean I hate Spider-Man? No. It just means that there’s not a real female character, by my definition of character, involved in that story.

 

This is why it’s important to talk about this because what does it mean if your story does not have any strong female characters? Does it mean you’ve written a bad one story? No, it simply means you don’t have any strong female characters in your story.

 

Now, more than half of the people on this globe are female or identify as female and, as one of those people, I can say I love to read. I love to watch movies. I love when I have the time to watch TV shows on Netflix. I love Star Wars. I love Spider-Man. But there is something I love even more about seeing an aspect of myself portrayed well on screen or in a book. When I discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer, my heart swelled and soared. I love scifi, I love horror, but something spoke to me in that show, female characters who were treated like human beings and not just a lamp in the corner.

 

A lot of who we are is formed by what we consume. As human beings we have a magical relationship with stories. We learn through story. Story is important to us, individually, culturally, societally. The story of Little Red Riding Hood teaches us not to go into the woods and talk to big scary individuals because we’ll get eaten. I don’t think you would ever talk to a writer or a creator who would tell you that stories are not important in a hugely magical way. When you see someone portrayed who you can identify with, who looks like you, who sounds like you, who shares characteristics with you, it’s an incredibly powerful moment.

 

So, do you care about attracting a female readership? Then start looking at having strong female characters. And as a bonus, start looking at whether your own work passes the Bechdel test. Are you treating your female characters as seriously as you’re treating your male characters? Do you have female characters or a female character who are, or is, three-dimensional? Or do you simply have a beautiful lamp in the corner of the room that can shine light when the plot needs it and can be turned off the rest of the time?

 

As another bonus, I would also challenge you to look at how you are defining and validating your characters. Are you talking about male characters by virtue of the values that they represent such as having a job, being good at fighting, being funny or smart, or diplomatic? And depending on how you’re talking about the male characters in your story, how are you talking about the female characters? What defines them? Is it the same characteristics that define the men? Is it their profession? Is it their diplomacy? Is it their wit? Is it their humor? Or is it how thin their waist is? Is it how long their blonde hair is? Is it how good they look in a dress? How are you defining the personhood, the validation, the virtue of your different characters?

 

It’s just very interesting about how we identify the personhood of a character. This can be something as small and insignificant seeming as the description of the character. For example, here are some excerpts from the West Wing, from the script, and I want you to listen to how the male characters and how the female characters are described. Often the worth of a male character is described by his profession while the worth of a female character is prescribed by her looks. There’s a fantastic Twitter account that I absolutely love to follow called @menwriteomen, and it can be a little cruel sometimes, but they recently featured some excerpts of the script of the West Wing by Aaron Sorkin. The male characters are described as, “Oh, he’s a smart businessman dressed in a suit.” And the women are described as she’s athletic and pretty without looking like she’s trying too hard. That’s what we’re told is the worth of each character.

 

The Twitter account also just has some very fantastic and often not safe for work excerpts that are just kind of ridiculous. If that’s something that you would find amusing, please do go check it out. I know earlier in this episode I said there’s really no do’s and don’ts about writing strong female characters, but there’s ways of writing female characters that just are not physically realistic. And hey, if you’re writing fantasy that’s fantastic, if you’re writing highly imaginative stuff that’s fantastic, but just know that women know how their own bodies work a lot of the time.

 

The question I want you to ask is, what does personhood mean for this character? What is the role of this character in the story? Is this person a character? Is this person an object? Does this person have agency? Does this person have hopes and dreams and motivation? Is this person here for their own story or are they simply an accessory in someone else’s? What matters about this character? And finally, one thing that we haven’t really touched upon, are you inherently defining strong as masculine and feminine as weak? I see a lot of this as well. And like I said in the very beginning of this episode, strength is not just one thing.

 

What about you? What do you think? What makes a strong female character? This is a huge and nuanced conversation that I’m not going to do justice in just a 30-minute episode of the Write Now podcast, but I wanted to talk about some of this to set us up for potentially future conversations. I wanted to just break the ice and talk a little bit about how we represent gender in our work. I would love to know your thoughts if you’d like to hop over to my website, sarahwerner.com. That’s S-A-R-A-H-W-E-R-N-E-R.com. You can navigate to the show notes for this episode and scroll down to the comments where I would absolutely love to hear your thoughts.

 

I know that gender and female characters can be sort of a hot button topic for a lot of people and so please do keep your comments kind and thoughtful and clear, and please, I know I don’t need to tell you not to call names and stuff, right? Right.

 

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Special thanks go out to patrons Amanda L. Dickson, Laurie, Leslie Madsen, Regina Calabrese, Sean Locke, TJ Bricke, Tiffany Joyner, Leslie Duncan, Lidija Hurney, Ricardo Lugo, and Sarah Lauzon. Thank you all so much for your generous continued support. It means the absolute world to me.

 

And with that, this has been episode 107 of the Write Now podcast, the podcast that helps all writers, aspiring, professional, and otherwise to find the time, energy and courage you need to pursue your passion and write. I’m Sarah Werner and I hope that you enjoyed today’s discussion.