Prancing Through Bloody Meadows

I am not a woman.

If I was, I’d probably have a name like Melinda.  A powerful name from parents who knew that I would know hardship in my time and wanted to give me a name that could withstand it.  I would play soccer in high school and later on weekends.  I would pursue an archaeological degree before realizing that I yearned for the structure and rigidity of accountancy.  My wedding would be the moment that changed my life forever, for I would stand at the altar on the happiest day of my life, look back on the time my parents brought home strawberry ice cream instead of vanilla and realize that was the happiest day of my life and this, the day of my wedding, was a mediocre affair that would eventually culminate in the moment I found my spouse dead on the floor twenty years of joylessness later and my first thought would be: “Oh dear.  And I was supposed to play soccer today.”

If I were a woman.

But I am not.

And I cannot speak for women.

Or for men.

But I can speak to women.  And to men.  And fellas, stuff like this has got to stop.

Before I go further, I’ll cop to a few things: I didn’t read the whole thread and I don’t really have a lot of intention of doing so.  As such, I don’t plan on really quoting people or throwing out examples or going word by word.  Really, the title alone is something I want to focus on, because it’s the title alone that says something that I feel we should address.

I get a few emails every month or so from people asking advice for writing.  I’m happy to offer it, though I find that the tips I give out seem so pedestrian: write frequently, write often, write all the time.  These are usually enough to cover all the basics.  But now, I feel like we should probably go over a piece of advice that should be like those aforementioned tidbits: so basic that it’s unsatisfying to say it, because it should be common knowledge.

And that piece of advice is this.

Women are people.  Not unicorns.

If you take any interest in publishing at all, you probably know that the majority of readers are women.  This is a statistic.  By itself, it doesn’t mean too much beyond what it says.  Yet somehow, this has been translated in some sects into mystical, cryptic riddles that you find carved in the walls of ancient tombs of lich lords.

Who are these “wo-men?”  Where did they come from?  When did they start reading stuff that didn’t involve vampires?  And, most important of all, how do we, as writers, corner and tame this all-powerful “female demographic” from which they all emerge into the night?

As I said, I’m not a woman.  It’s possible that women do vote in one overwhelming voice.  It’s possible that a lot of them do like reading novels featuring vampires (as it’s possible that a lot of dudes like reading books featuring dark elf rebels with swords).  It’s also possible that I’m totally wrong when I say this, but it’s been my experience that seizing the attention of female readers is a lot like seizing the attention of male readers, in that it’s best done by writing a good story.

I could be wrong about that.  I’m not a woman.

But I am a man.  And I’m also a nerd.  And I’ve seen this sort of strange half-reverential, half-terrified attitude towards girls since high school.  I’m not ashamed to admit that I didn’t know a lot about girls at that age, either.  I’m a little ashamed to admit that there was a time when I, too, thought that there were certain ways you could catch a woman’s interest beyond just being yourself and seeing if she liked you.  When you’re young and alone, you sometimes really want to believe that there is a manual for how to get a girlfriend.  Sometimes you act like there is.  And sometimes you just don’t let go and that’s where we get notions like “friendzoning” and “girls only like guys who treat them like crap” and “why don’t they like nice guys like me?”

We ain’t gonna get too much into those notions.  They aren’t true, of course, but that’s something every guy needs to find out for himself.

What we are going to get into is the fact that they aren’t true for publishing, either.  You can probably point to something like the sales of Laurell K. Hamilton’s books and say: “See?  It’s obvious that women like sex!”  But rather than concluding that a lot of people like sex, some people somehow conclude that these are specifically written to target some foreign part of the brain that is specific to females to subconsciously force them to buy Laurell K. Hamilton’s books.  Not being Ms. Hamilton, I won’t speculate on why she writes the way she writes, but I’m assuming that she probably enjoys writing it.

That, there, is how you get yourself a reader, male or female.  Not coincidentally, that’s also how you write a book.  Enjoy what you do.  Enjoy what you write.  Love the craft as you love your characters as you love your story and your readers will come.

I didn’t really write Kataria with a specific woman in mind.  Hell, even the fact that she is a woman doesn’t play too much into her motivations.  She likes a man, of course (many women do), she also likes hunting, meat and breaking wind.  She’s the favorite of some of my women readers.  And some of my men readers, too.  Some dudes also like Denaos.  Some girls also like Dreadaeleon.  I have no idea why and I don’t really ask (normally because, when people tell me this, I get a really warm, squishy feeling from someone telling me that they have a favorite character of mine that renders me incapable of making a sound more intelligible than “squonk”).

Look, it’s true that a majority of readers are women.  And it’s certainly true that a lot of women read fantasy.  If you’re published at all, then by default, most of your readership is probably women.  You don’t get that by sitting back, folding your hands over your stomach, looking up at the ceiling and asking: “through what mixture of literature and chemical does one induce the female to read?”

You get that by writing a book you love.  Because if you love it, so will they.  They’ll love the relationships, they’ll love the violence, they’ll love the characters, they’ll love it all.  Be they man, woman, child or sentient dogs under two feet tall.

Because everyone knows sentient dogs over two feet tall only read Clive Cussler.

Duh.

Ugly unicorn drawing by Bart Cusik’s blog.