My struggle with writing girl protagonists

 I've written very few girl protagonists.

No, it's true. If you were to look at the list of all the protagonists I've written, the list of girls would be much shorter than the guys. Even when I think about my latest WIP, it's pretty guy-heavy. Let's take a look, shall we?

Jack, Thief's Son: The protagonist is Jack, a guy, and the villain is a guy.

Javi and the Boats in the Sky(2018), has a boy as the protagonist. 

NaNoWriMo 2017, Spectacular: Guy protagonist.

Robbing Centaurs and Other Bad Ideas(2019): Not one, but 2 guys as the protagonists. In addition, the mentor is a guy, and most of the main characters are guys too, something that I'm trying to fix, because I want more girls in there.

Why do I write so many boys, you ask?

*scratches head* Honestly I'm not sure. That's what I'm here to explore. Honestly, I couldn't even figure out all these reasons by myself, so I had my sister discuss with me. Thanks, Rach, you're the best. <3

Writing girls carries unnecessary pressure

I think one of the reasons I struggle to write girls is because writing girl characters is unnecessaroly difficult. There's a lot of pressure riding on it. Similar to writing different ethnicities, if you get even one small thing wrong, people will descend on that detail like a hoard of vultures and pick it into little pieces of fleshy prose. Okay, that was graphic. I apologize. 

But for real, what's with this? Even if something is written by a female about a female, it's criticized to the point of absolute absurdity. 'This isn't realistic, that's wrong, I hate that trope and that one.' Why can't we just see girl characters as just plain old characters?

Guys are more universally relatable

Sorry, but it's true.

Sure, there are some things that guys do that don't make sense to girls, but on a whole, girls can relate to guy characters more than guys can relate to girl characters. I could be wrong, feel free to let me know if I am. But I think that guy characters are just more relatable across the board. Anyone can watch a guy character struggle through school and sword fight and everything, but it's harder for the whole audience to relate to trying to get your eyeliner even and remembering to lock your car doors when you walk into your job because you never know what kind of weirdos there are out here. Even if the girl character was also struggling through school and sword fighting, she would have an entirely different set of problems that the guy character wouldn't. I'll expand on that point more later.

With that being said, though, that's no reason not to write girl characters. None of the points in this post are reasons not to write girls. In fact, we need girl issues and girl characters to become more normal! No one can get used to something if they never do it, and it's important to step out of your comfort zone. To be honest, this is more a self-examination than anything, so that I can figure out what's holding me back from writing more girl characters.

It's very personal

I am in fact female myself, but the problem is I don't really think about it. Yeah, my chromosomes are all x's(not really, I know, don't @ me), but I just think of myself less as a girl than just a person. To write a guy character is to slip on another person's life and wearing it like a coat as I document, but to write a girl is to try to move all the facts I know from my own life and try to put them on the page in a way that seems natural and not forced. I want the way I write a girl to be relatable, but I don't know how to make it sound right.

Girls have limitations on what they can do

In almost any situation, a girl is at a disadvantage. That's just the facts. Girls are the weaker vessel, the physically weaker gender, and they can easily be overpowered, taken advantage of, kept out of things, told no. If my character is a girl, there are certain things that she can't do or will have to struggle through, and it makes it harder to tell the story when she's gotta dodge all these roadblocks. I love all my characters, and I don't want them to be anything less than spectacular. I want them to be able to do anything they put their minds to, to move mountains. I don't want them to have to suffer with any kind of limitations. I only want the best for them.

So this was my examination of why I haven't written a lot of girl characters/why girl characters are harder to write. I hope you enjoyed!

I really do want to write more girls. Actually, the project I have planned for after I finish the RCOBI trilogy features a girl character who works in retail! There are so many things I am going to enjoy about that one.

And I really do think that writing this post helped me figure out why I wasn't writing very many. If anyone else is struggling with this same issue, I hope this helped you! Or at any rate, at least it was an interesting ride. XD

I'll see everyone again on Tuesday with another post! In the meantime, you can enjoy one of these:

The Rabble King: A Trope and Why It's Great

Why I don't write a lot of instructional posts