Spin off question (I'll update the original post too): What are obstacles you have to writing characters who are a different gender/race/sexuality/any other quality as yourself?

I notice a lot of people in the 1x1 section seem to stick to writing as their own gender and want to open this thread up further for discussion and advice for anyone who might want to branch out from their niche, whatever that may be.

Imma be real here and say effort.

I don't care much about what other people think in terms of my RPing and in terms of writing a novel that's what a qualified editor is for (telling you if you are off base with your style).

However, what I often worry about is just the amount of effort that it requires to radically diverge from who I am in real life or what I have a decent knowledge about in terms of social categories or things like culture. Although, I suppose this also is a result of my desire to write plausibly and with some accuracy (considering real life).

For example, I don't doubt that without enough proper research I could write a believable and high quality male, heterosexual, Malaysian pirate in a cyberpunk setting. However, the amount of work I would have to do feel like I really nailed said person would be pretty insane.

Similarly, as an East Coast Best Coast person, it's pretty easy to spot every invented idea of New York City that people write up because it rarely passes the five minutes of googling test. Which obviously, doesn't mean people shouldn't set their RP in New York City or write up NYC peeps, but it's an case study for how easily people who know stuff for reals will actually spot holes in your made up stuff.

It's the same issue I have with writing severe trauma or mental illness into an RP, I'm just not confident I have enough knowledge or even if I am willing to dive deep enough into either for a character in an RP to not just seem like some cheap pull at any reader's emotions.

I guess my tip would really be write what you know, unless you actually have the talent to write outside the box and the energy to do the appropriate amount of research.

If I were to give advice, I'd say we're all just people. We might have cultural differences and our formative years might affect a few things, but we all have wants, needs, ideas. RR is right, effort does play a part in it. I don't tend to RP as women, but I do write from a woman's perspective a lot in my original writing and its pretty much the same as writing from a man's perspective because I have their motivations and backstory plotted out. I'd say there are a few harmful tropes I tend to notice you might should watch out for when it comes to men writing women and women writing men.

Men often write women as sexual objects, but they also tend to make women helpless and complain-y. 'Men writing women' is a good subreddit to google. On the flip side, women tend to make men controlling, dramatic, and incompetent. There's about 8,000 YA novels with a male protag who gets angry with no provocation haha.

I'd say if you avoid those tropes, you're writing people more realistically than 80% of published authors. And even if we go back to race and culture, at the end of the day as long as you do a bit of research it won't be too difficult to get right if you put in the effort.

Now trying to write for Eldritch Abominations from the deepest reaches of the universe is a different animal... but that is not for idle chat.

On the flip side, women tend to make men controlling, dramatic, and incompetent. There's about 8,000 YA novels with a male protag who gets angry with no provocation haha.

To add onto that, I've noticed a lot of women writing men have a trend of giving male characters wild sexual histories including lots of past partners and one-night stands. It's not like your character can't be a playboy (and there are definitely good settings for that kind of thing), but virgins and guys who prefer monogamous, longterm relationships exist too so it doesn't make them less realistic or less masculine to have those kinds of backstories. I know plenty who don't have raging sex drives and want to connect emotionally with a partner in order to have a physical relationship!

Men, women, black, white, we're all people.

<Snipped quote by POOHEAD189>

To add onto that, I've noticed a lot of women writing men have a trend of giving male characters wild sexual histories including lots of past partners and one-night stands. It's not like your character can't be a playboy (and there are definitely good settings for that kind of thing), but virgins and guys who prefer monogamous, longterm relationships exist too so it doesn't make them less realistic or less masculine to have those kinds of backstories. I know plenty who don't have raging sex drives and want to connect emotionally with a partner in order to have a physical relationship!

Interesting. I don't know if I've noticed that but its good to take note of. On the flip side, men do make a lot of women less than experienced which frankly, is just stupid. Of course it can be written well, but I never understood the 'purity' trope as a prerequisite for a goodly woman protag.

Spin off question (I'll update the original post too): What are obstacles you have to writing characters who are a different gender/race/sexuality/any other quality as yourself?

Doing the character justice. Portraying them properly.

Spin off question (I'll update the original post too): What are obstacles you have to writing characters who are a different gender/race/sexuality/any other quality as yourself?

I notice a lot of people in the 1x1 section seem to stick to writing as their own gender and want to open this thread up further for discussion and advice for anyone who might want to branch out from their niche, whatever that may be.

I find the biggest obstacle, to me, is actually differing areas of expertise. My characters often know things that I don't, and not everything can be easily Googled; one might, for example, give their character high mental attributes and a knowledge specialty in law on their sheet, but the idea of what it actually looks like to have a career in estate law is kinda tricky to get one's head around, but necessary even if only for the purposes of set dressing - what the character's workplace looks like, how they dress for it, the kind of work schedule they have to plan their RPG shenanigans around, the sort of detail that can be ultimately unimportant but which flesh out your character as their own distinct character and not action hero John Doe #930714.

Heck, even in a more typical fantasy setting, once one exhausts the limited vocabulary of "I slashed at the enemy with my sword" learned from watching movies, one realises that one doesn't know much about sword maintenance or horseback riding, y'know?

But what with LARPers and people reconstructing medieval swordsmanship and equestrianism being alive and well, some of those are easy enough to get an idea of; you could even just go rewatch LotR and think about how you'd use words to describe the things they have and do on the screen, you don't actually need to know how it works from a technical standpoint, just what it would LOOK like XD. And I suppose in that vein I should just go watch more of those law dramas or something XDXD.

I haven't dipped my toes into the 1x1 section in ages, but I personally usually write male characters even though I'm female LOL. One major aspect of the appeal of RPing to me is the opportunities to explore things I'm not, so cue the self-indulgent dude-in-a-leather-longcoat kind of character LMAO XD, but also, honestly, why not?

Men, women, black, white, we're all people.

<Snipped quote by Dagger>

Interesting. I don't know if I've noticed that but its good to take note of. On the flip side, men do make a lot of women less than experienced which frankly, is just stupid. Of course it can be written well, but I never understood the 'purity' trope as a prerequisite for a goodly woman protag.

Probably the writer not having met many women

Spin off question (I'll update the original post too): What are obstacles you have to writing characters who are a different gender/race/sexuality/any other quality as yourself?

I notice a lot of people in the 1x1 section seem to stick to writing as their own gender and want to open this thread up further for discussion and advice for anyone who might want to branch out from their niche, whatever that may be.

To be quite honest most of the time its simply because Im not interested. Of course I dont want to do a stupid self insert but at the same time if a character is too different to myself I just cannot relate and hence cant write em

Men, women, black, white, we're all people.

<Snipped quote by Dagger>

Interesting. I don't know if I've noticed that but its good to take note of. On the flip side, men do make a lot of women less than experienced which frankly, is just stupid. Of course it can be written well, but I never understood the 'purity' trope as a prerequisite for a goodly woman protag.

A lot of it has to do with religion. A notable example was the push by Evangelicals only 30 or so years ago for "purity pledges" and abstinence from sex before marriage so that they remained pure and a good Christian in the eyes of God and/or Christ. Other than that, @Andreyich basically summarized it for me a few posts above.