How to write strong but accurate female action/adventure characters?

PlayfulLawyer · 2021-11-24T20:21:53+00:00

Write a good character with a strong personality, strong motivation and a character Arc, and then make them a woman, end scene

Devourer_of_felines · 2021-11-24T20:28:57+00:00

Example of well done strong female main character: Mulan from the animated movies

Example of poorly done strong female character: Mulan from the Disney live action movie

Laytheblameonluck · 2021-11-24T20:08:11+00:00

Aliens.

E-2-butene · 2021-11-24T20:29:22+00:00

Tbh, I don’t really think the problem with women in action movies is that you can’t make a strong woman. If I’m willing to suspend my disbelief that a male character has super strength, I don’t see why I can’t equivalently suspend my disbelief that a woman can beat a man in a fight. The deeper problem is that you can’t make a relatable woman because it isn’t socially acceptable for female characters to have flaws; flaws in female characters get universalized and treated like an assault on women’s character more broadly.

Compare a lot of male heroes to female heroes. Characters like Tony Stark save the day, sure, but they often have personality flaws that they resolve over the course of the story. This character development is part of what makes a character interesting and improves a story. Meanwhile, the majority of female heroes are just Mary Sues. Heaven forbid we give Captain Marvel a dark backstory or some kind of flaw to overcome. That might imply something sexist about women.

Honestly, I’m not sure of a great solution besides continually creating flawed female heroes and letting the relevant suspects collectively outrage until we simply build up a tolerance to that kind of over-sensitive nonsense.

Fabulous-Housing102 · 2021-11-24T20:14:02+00:00

Harry Potter (Book only). The variety and strength of all different types of female characters is fantastic

Im_The_Daiquiri_Man · 2021-11-24T20:38:35+00:00

Right way: Ripley

Wrong way: Rey

I would go even further to say that, while her kick ass character in Alien was great and suited the movie, her character in the first Alien was more groundbreaking and relatable.

The Ripley in the first one was just a face in the crowd in a crew of space truckers, but you could tell she had an edge on the others with her instincts.

But the important thing here is, she was not a super woman. She was fucking terrified, but not a “damsel” in any way. She had to fight through her terror with her wits and courage.

In Aliens, she is almost “Rambo” at certain points, which, again is cool but not as multi dimensional as her Alien role IMO.

Rey, doesn’t even warrant conversation. She had no journey. No challenge. No flaws. She was a quintessential Mary Sue and sadly almost all female “heroes” are like this now.

In short, modern female heroes never do the “journey” part of the “heroes journey” because women are great just how they are, shitlord.

goatismycopilot · 2021-11-24T20:13:27+00:00

It is very rare for mainstream cinema to get female action characters right. It pretty much never happens. The classic decent try would be Ripley from Alien.

On TV a decent modern example are two of the female characters in " Warrior" the Asian/Western fusion show that was on Cinemax now HBO. One of the characters is smart and a good fighter but gets the absolute shit beat out of her and is actually on the verge of death when she is tended by the other female character she is rivals with. So both chicks can fight but they are not invincible chicks with dicks.

midwestufohunter · 2021-11-25T00:57:40+00:00

Don't. Write what you know. The reason there are so many poorly written female characters is that men who don't actually know women enough to view them as whole human beings try to write them and they just fall flat because they can't capture something they don't know anything about. Just write a bro action story for bros. It will be higher quality creative content.

WilliamWyattD · 2021-11-24T21:17:41+00:00

Two of the most well known Sci Fi series have strong female characters.

The Alien films (Lt Ellen Ripley) and Terminator 1 & 2 (based on Sarah Connor).

These are stronger than a lot of male characters that came out at the time as well as there is more to them than just shooting/killing people.

NockerJoe · 2021-11-24T21:40:47+00:00

Bruh Wheel of Time was written by a BDSM fetishist and the entire thing is written under the assumption of male dominance and female submission being natural. People who actually read the books are already giving it woke points. I don't think you get how far the cultural needle had turned.

chubbybutt22 · 2021-11-24T20:19:16+00:00

I don’t think it needs to be a realistic grounded portrayal especially if there is supernatural reason or they're a “chosen one”.

fakingandnotmakingit · 2021-11-24T20:29:13+00:00

Write a strong character with a good story and a great arc.

Then make her female.

LittyKitsune · 2021-11-24T20:42:18+00:00

Do not spend the entire work overhyping her ability only to make her worthless and incompetent whenever you need an excuse for the male lead to accomplish something

Mimoxs · 2021-11-24T20:59:26+00:00

Horizon zero dawn

TheJim66 · 2021-11-24T22:22:59+00:00

It's not really hard. Magic/superpowers can circumvent the physical barrier and after that you just write a likeable woman that doesn't act like a man. People had been doing it for decades before this whole fiasco.

If your setting doesn't have magic or superpowers, then guns may be sufficient to not break the suspension of disbelief, as long as it's someone trained (think Lara Croft).

If you don't want guns either then you'll have to somehow make having a physically incompetent protagonist work. Which isn't impossible.

tonyghow · 2021-11-24T22:37:51+00:00

I watched a few episodes of "Another Life" on Netflix.

At first I thought, "look at all these strong female characters! This will be good" But besides the hodge-podge sci-fi, bad writing, and bad acting, I got the sense that the women were written as agender people behaving like men. And the men were written to be reckless and dumb. (I'm sure FDSers would love it).

I think it deserves the 6% Season 1 gets on Rotten Tomatoes.

LovesGettingRandomPm · 2021-11-25T10:12:41+00:00

I feel like a lot of films haven't explored the power of female intrigue yet, they often still use male characters for scheming and plotting while women could be more powerful and charming at it.

abaxeron · 2021-11-25T10:50:41+00:00

I have no idea why virtually no-one focuses on women's realistic advantages over men, which are as follows:

Better senses of taste, smell, color, night and peripheral vision, and possibly also touch (useful in SciFi; women might just come on top in usage of augmented reality); better short-term memory; smaller height, weight, silhouette, heat and metabolism signature (useful in SciFi; by "metabolism signature" I mean that a woman's presence is slightly harder to detect with, say, a CO2 sensor); better tolerance of long-term stress and scarcity of nutrients (useful in fantasy), and apparently higher survival rates after injuries (useful everywhere).

I think the main "oops" to avoid at all costs in action heroines is manipulation of big weights. No, even if she kills a 400-pound boar, she cannot drag it anywhere; if she needs to survive in the wilderness, make her able to build fish/bird traps. No, to defeat a man twice her size, she HAS to fight dirty or have an advantage of a firearm (No, bows, slings, and swords won't work; at best she might oppose him with a spear if she's lucky). No, an automatic assault rifle will chomp through a hundred magazines (that's 45 kilograms) in twenty minutes; if she has to shoot, make her a sniper or a close-quarters shotgunner/handgunner with insane round efficiency. If she has to manipulate insane firepower to achieve her goal... give her a laser guidance marker and a bunch of drones or air support!

I think it's perfectly okay to play with gender stereotypes if it's done in good faith. An action heroine's disadvantage in physical strength can be compensated by an experimental firearm that only thin dexterous fingers, so uncommon in men, can properly and carefully disassemble and clean. In Soviet film "The Dawns Here Are Quiet", an anti-aircraft unit gets reinforced by women because the commander demanded "someone sober"; they end up opposing Nazi saboteur team three times more numerous than themselves (alcoholism in male personnel of Soviet ground forces during WW2 is as historically accurate as it gets); the story works despite being based on real case involving men.

sernamedeleted · 2021-11-24T21:29:52+00:00

Modern movies are sexist. They portray being female as the only important thing about the female protagonist, as if she has no identity outside her gender or sex. I haven't been able to watch movies for years because my wife and I can't stand the sexism.

Radiant_Shock_7529 · 2021-11-24T20:50:14+00:00

Its not in the modern sci fi realm of action/adventure, but i thought the women in 'Godless' on netflix were all pretty badass, and not in a 'i can fight ten guys at once' way. Loved that show.

Taipanshimshon · 2021-11-24T20:58:12+00:00

Strong female characters - like strong male Characters- like strong X characters- shouldn't be perfect and should play to realistic strengths ( unless you're writing fantasy)

Looking at something like game of thrones - there were tons of strong characters. Including dwarves , eunuchs, queens, warriors, young girls and so on.

Character development in a way that make sense is key.

SouthernGrass3 · 2021-11-24T21:20:38+00:00

-Harry Potter

-Battle Star Gallactica reboot- president

-Lotr films-Arwen

-Marvel- scarlet witch- overpowered but metaphysical, rather than just excessively strong for a women, so I’m fine with it.Not a fan of black widow.

-Startrek: dr. Beverly Crusher

-parks and rec: Leslie knope

-black panther- shuri

-silence of the lambs-clarice

-Erin Brockovich

-the help- the non awful female characters lol

Teflon08191 · 2021-11-24T22:12:45+00:00

Put them in mech suits or something. Let their piloting skills be what makes them 'badass'.

LowCreddit · 2021-11-24T22:19:58+00:00

You have Mad Max: Fury Road, Alien, Star Ship Troopers, Star Trek: Voyager, Mulan, Harry Potter, Star Wars Mandalorean, and many others.

Especially in the age of the gun, women can stand toe to toe with men in the right circumstances. There are even examples of this in history with real women like Lyudmila Pavlichenko. Men's primary strengths in combat arise from their size, power, and resistance to injury and pregnancy. The gun neutralizes size and power. The car removes the injury of march. You can avoid pregnancy by ignoring its existence.

The real problem with most "strong female leads" is that they are assholes. No one wants a female Joffrey Baratheon as the main character.

IcarusKiki · 2021-11-24T22:58:02+00:00

the chick in the new mad max movie was pretty cool

manfrom-nantucket · 2021-11-24T23:52:40+00:00

Funny how they never had problems writing strong female character in action flicks in the 80's from Ripley to Sarah Connor to Princess Leah.

everythingelseisfull · 2021-11-25T02:20:11+00:00

Why do all female characters need to be strong? Why did the writers of the Simpsons give us such a diverse group of male characters, but they were so careful to make Marge and Lisa strong people. This insistence that all female characters need to be strong is replacing one narrow gender role with another.

HumanNumber348 · 2021-11-24T20:42:03+00:00

Just ditch the accuracy for accuracy’s sake. Movies targeted at children have 6 year old superheroes and detectives and shit. Do you think a more realistic portrayal of the children would improve these stories?

Kaisha001 · 2021-11-24T21:53:00+00:00

1) No Mary Sue's.

All good characters have a character arc, which involves growth. When a person is perfect from the get-go (male, female, or other) there's no way they can grow or overcome flaws.

This is why Superman has to be 'rebooted' every 3rd movie, there's no where for him to go, he's practically perfect already and perfect is boring.

2) A good character builds others up, an evil on tears others down.

The hallmark of a SJW-fest is always this incessant need to denigrate/attack men at every turn. Allies, friends, lovers, all get thrown under the bus to service the leftist agenda that 'men iz bad' and 'woman iz better'. Quickly the 'protagonist' becomes the bad guy, the writers blame sexism/the patriarchy/misogyny, but in the end they've just created a character that no one likes or wants to be like.

3) Stop trying to make women into men.

Time and again 'strong female character' is simply a male character with breasts. They act, talk, walk, and perform just like men. It's weirdly ironic that feminism is so desperate to show that women are better men than men, and in doing so denigrate femininity in the process.

Princess Leia was a great character in the original SW trilogy. She was strong, competent, and used her wit and intelligence to do things Han and Luke couldn't. She was a good teammate and made a good addition to the 'trio' that formed the heart of SW. She didn't need to be a better fighter than Luke, or a better pilot than Han, she had her own feminine traits that made her just as valuable.

4) Stop hiring writers based solely on their political/ideological affiliation.

Many of these progressive writers are just talentless hacks, who only got the job because they're singing the MSM tune. You can't expect good, creative, work from people who cannot think for themselves. Throwing billions of dollars in marketing and CGI behind them only hilights how mediocre and cliche their ideas were. The best artists have always been people who have gone against the grain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qY-GLeHS0Ik&t=600s

fwoketrash · 2021-11-24T22:44:50+00:00

You can't for a western audience. Good characters have to go through kind of a maturing or development. Western audiences have no appetite for women who are flawed, aren't constantly playing the victim card and instead learn and grow for their experiences. In the west women are always victims, never responsible for anything, and always perfect. Deviating from this will immediately be considered "sexist" and anything you write or create will be shut down.

backcourtjester · 2021-11-24T20:28:20+00:00

Think of a man, then take away reason and accountability

vivvienne · 2021-11-25T02:34:07+00:00

Quite simply, watch some older shows. I watched the first few episodes from Stargate again and as an offhand example Samantha Carter is very typical for what I expect from a decent strong female character. She has her feminine moments, not even iconic in the grand scheme of things, but she is mature and understands what's important.

If a character is always walking around with a chip on their shoulder they're not strong, just bitchy. Strength comes from doing what's difficult in the face of adversity. Sometimes that involves having control over your emotions which is in short supply these days.

In the same vein if a person is compelled to talk about how much they lift, perhaps they don't actually do much lifting as what is commonplace would be too mundane and unimportant to even acknowledge.

An example of what I consider the wrong thing to do is Arcane. It's so tropey and edgy in all the wrong ways.

I've been meaning to watch wheel of time but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

The only one I feel liked recently is Kate.

WilliamWyattD · 2021-11-24T20:28:23+00:00

[permanently deleted]

stormcloakporn · 2021-11-24T20:39:04+00:00

Arcane…so many hot buff women

lulll · 2021-11-24T21:21:27+00:00

the best female action characters i can think of are sarah connor from the terminator series, ellen ripley from the alien series, drummer from the expanse, scully from the x files (shes not exactly an action character but she's still great), and the bride from kill bill. thats just off the top of my head

i think the main reason they're good is obviously because they are all good actors and they make those characters believable. i think the main thing they all have in common is that they found the right balance of strength and vulnerability, they aren't invulnerable bad asses that plow through everything like its easy, every single one of those characters struggled severely and they are believably tough. the expanse also has a good example of a bad ass female character done wrong - naomi. the actress is obnoxiously bad and she's kind of like a lame hermione granger and they constantly use her as the magical hero tech wiz that gets them out of every sticky situation. it gets annoying fast. the book naomi is much better

NotGoingoutofMW · 2021-11-24T21:36:39+00:00

Look at Full Metal Alchemist. Olivia Armstrong and Hawkeye are good examples although they don't showcase any real flaws but are still strong and pleasent to be watch.

back_in_blyat · 2021-11-24T22:04:58+00:00

Give them a reason to be strong that would be equally as valid for a man's reason as opposed to "I am stronk because wamyn" (Wonder Woman, Ripley, Laura Croft, Catniss Everdeen, Hermoine Granger etc. example of very strong woman characters no one thought twice about). Or double down and have her strength be due to what women are actually naturally inclined towards (original Catwoman being a prime example of what I mean)

Then just don't ruin it by hamfisting insane SJW narrative points in the plot and you will likely have a great universally enjoyable piece of media

razormachine · 2021-11-24T22:48:52+00:00

Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager- A strong female character which I admired.

And Michael Burnham from Star Trek Michael Burnham the drama... and a bunch of unimportant sidecharacters. Which made me stop watching Star Trek, because looking at all those drama scenes with her wet eyes gave me ass cancer.

rosesonthefloor · 2021-11-24T23:08:01+00:00

I really enjoy the way that Pierce Brown has handled his female characters in The Red Rising books. It’s more sci-fi, but there’s a good mix of good and bad characters of both genders and varying degrees of gender conformity.

Edit: also really enjoyed the varying characters in N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth Trilogy.

The POV characters in the first book are women, but they aren’t super OP or masculine, and the main character’s driving force is to rescue her daughter who has been taken by her husband across an apocalyptic landscape.

TheBookOfSeil · 2021-11-24T23:11:47+00:00

Just write how you see them in real life. Pick a great woman from your past experience. Drawing on previous experiences is a pretty basic writing strategy. If you haven't met any great women, then take all of the best attributes from women that you've met or seen and turn them into a character.

Salt_Mathematician24 · 2021-11-25T00:10:53+00:00

Just write a character first and add everything else, like gender signifiers, later.

DOSGAMES · 2021-11-25T00:25:05+00:00

This might be bullshit since I’m a guy but Catelyn Stark from A Song of Ice & Fire stands out to me. Not in the action hero sense, instead George R.R. Martin was able capture a character with a very ‘womanly’ kind of strength.

Its impressive looking back and realizing that the series does not use any third party narration, each chapter is written entirely in first person perspective.

I couldn’t imagine how difficult it would have been to write in such a challenging way but I think it helped Martin avoid some of the common pitfalls you hear about when male authors write women.

You know the deal, describing how attractive a female character is upon introducing them or narratives like “The weight of her burgeoning breasts were poorly supported by her leather jerkin.”

I feel like those Catelyn Stark’s chapters gave me a glimpse of how an aging matron would look at the world. She was principled, brave, intelligent, and kind.

Her recollections of past events, her anger and regret, and her love and sadness for her family made it a powerful read.

slitwristlarry1 · 2021-11-25T01:34:50+00:00

Don’t have them engage in fist fights with athletic men.

SuspiciousRule · 2021-11-25T01:41:18+00:00

Reality is the best source material. Just look at women strong women in history. Marie currie was brilliant scientist but also a loving wife who moan her husband's death. Their was a talented African warrior princess who ran away with a lover to start a clan. Because her father refuse to let her married anyone. Their womanizer swordwomen who duel men and stole their wives. She kill about thirty men that way and she has the wives help clear her crimes. She because a nun just so she have sex with the nuns. The bread wienner is a good series it follows a Pakistan girl who crossdress to support her family since all the men are dead and their Muslim. Their real story in African where girl who grew up on farm and diguse herself as man and work in the mine to make money. She hated the rough work, she eventually struck rich and made own mining business. She was also accuse of rape by another woman. But prove her innocent as she not actually a man.

Stunning-Spirit5275 · 2021-11-25T01:51:51+00:00

Jessica Jones. Powerful but real female character with real day to day problems and real flaws / insecurities . Not some poster child for virtue signaling like other heroine characters. IMO hands down best fem hero written in recent times

Stunning-Spirit5275 · 2021-11-25T02:07:29+00:00

Anyone ever watch that series called killjoys ? ( Sci-fi)

M_LaSalle · 2021-11-25T02:44:00+00:00

There are writers that can do believable female characters in the action genre. It's possible, but most of the writers who try it make the mistake of writing romance or maybe erotica instead of action/adventure

The first thing I'd say is to understand this. You writing action/adventure. Do some research. It probably helps if you keep the fight scenes believable. Do some actual research on fights and combatives. Learn something real world about guns. If the first thing you describe about the character is her cup size you're probably doing it wrong.

Movies tend to be larger than life. the fight scenes in Atomic Blonde are epic, especially the one on the stairs. The best female led action movie I've ever seen is The Long Kiss Goodnight. The critics crapped all over it unfairly. Best role Samuel L Jackson ever played. Gina Davis was outstanding and it's even a Christmas movie. Check it out. I thought Mile 22 was basically about the wrong main character. The movie had a lot of problems but Lauren Cohan was damn good.

I once wrote a bit of fan fiction that included an OC (Original character), a female CIA officer who had a big action scene in which she had to rescue someone. I read up on how to run a car off the road, and I'm an experienced shooter and made the shootout as real as I could. I don't think she did anything a real person couldn't do. Someone suggested doing a straight up piece actual fiction about her. That's in the works as time permits. She's supposed to be helping a North Korean cyberwar expert defect, and it look like maybe someone on her own side doesn't want her to succeed.

EDIT: The Mary Sue problem is very real. Don't fall into that trap. Don't fall in love with your character and don't see her as some kind of a stand in for you. Remember that at some point, she's going to screw up because we all do.

Intellegent_mortal · 2021-11-25T03:19:07+00:00

Just make it realistic, make it so they worked our and trained for their abilities like any other skilled person, and give them weapons, often times women being small is a disadvantage, weapons can help. You can even make them not very strong but have very good aim and know all about guns. You can make them good at building weapons, or code, or really anything it doesn’t have to be hand to hand combat or fancy overpowered super powers. Make them have drawbacks and flaws like any other character, maybe they feel no pain, maybe they‘re raised just to kill and know no morals, maybe their lonely and have trust issues, maybe they run away from a bad situation or maybe they had an amazing family which brought out their full potential in every way but they decided to take a different route or maybe they don’t understand why many arent as great as them and seem to be so sad and limited. Possibilities are endless, just make them people man.

Plopolok · 2021-11-25T03:28:17+00:00

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was rather good. It has the advantage of starting with the wide suspension of disbelief of a world where superfighters exist.

-CuriousPanda- · 2021-11-25T05:15:00+00:00

This is a particularly difficult question as I’m writing a book at the moment and it has female characters in it. I’m constantly wondering if I’m doing ok at portraying them believably, but also interestingly.

flapperfemmefatale · 2021-11-25T05:41:46+00:00

My husband read ALL of the Wheel of Time books (and still has them), and he went from flabbergasted to amused by how upset people seem to be over the series. He thinks they're being ridiculous and bigoted. But most of the complaints he's read have been about race, not gender. I'm watching the series, too, but haven't read the books, so I can't speak to any differences versus the text.

The genres you mentioned aren't really my thing, but my favorite female character of all time in those genres is probably Vanessa Ives in Penny Dreadful.

Globbi · 2021-11-25T06:28:29+00:00

Worm https://parahumans.wordpress.com/

Complex characters with flaws. Main character is a girl clearly physically weaker than others. Gets protected a few times because of this. But can play to her strengths and kick ass.

There are more female characters, some are super strong, but many have more interesting powers and use them in clever ways.

Really there's no secret to it. A clearly weak woman shouldn't be in a group of adventurers brawling with orcs in the first place. But both men and women want to see women. And then clearly weaker group member would be boring and annoying, so they make them equal, which is also politically correct. It's even more so in games where men want to look at their hot women character, but also want to be strong.

In LOTR there are almost no women on battlefield, but Eowyn plays important part because of conviction and being in the right place, not because being magically stronger than men. But LOTR has been criticized for not enough women so that's probably not enough...

Superhero action movies aren't great in general. This includes things like James Bond. If strong women make you lose your suspension of disbelief, so should vast majority of stunts in action movies. So should any male who beats scores of trained soldiers in a brawl or shooting. It kinda works like this for me... I stopped watching almost all action movies after many disappointments. They're only good for a few seconds of cool action shots that I can watch on YT.

SSCookieLover · 2021-11-25T07:03:59+00:00

https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/40150/pith

A pretty well written female mc story

goneaway2thewind · 2021-11-25T08:28:39+00:00

Think of a man, then remove all accountability

Altruistic_Wafer4398 · 2021-11-25T08:42:43+00:00

I hate when a female action/adventure character is cold, humourless and has zero weakness or anything that makes her human. I like action characters who are funny, have realistic flaws and friends, a love interest that she doesn’t immediately push away cause she’s too cold and focused.

BlKaiser · 2021-11-25T09:35:37+00:00

I'm talking about a main character mostly and it's a personal opinion. Make her have flaws. Do not afraid to show her fail, look goofy, look dirty etc. Do not afraid to show her getting help from other characters males or females. Do not show her that she is awesome if she hasn't really earned it throughout the story.

Focus on her personal skills, qualities, her growth and not on her gender (yes, try to do it even if it's a story that it mainly has to do with discrimination against women. The story is about her). If it exists, have the gender-discrimination be present in the background but not being the dominant theme of the story. Have the audience feel and conclude on their own that she is facing more problems because she is a woman, but do not throw it on their face.

If the woman is already established as a leader or hero, NEVER have her show-off her accomplishments "despite being a woman in this unfair world". Show that her subordinates respect her command because she is efficient and smart.

FastSascha · 2021-11-25T10:20:37+00:00

I think the main challenge is to write the necessary sacrifice of feminity.

Feminin strength and masculine strength are different concepts and not perfectly mapped to female and male.

Best examples, that come to my mind are:

Sarah Connor (Terminator 1+2)
Maggie Fitzgerald (Million Dollar Baby)

Blockyhead_wigglebum · 2021-11-25T13:41:26+00:00

There are only 3 episodes of Wheel of Time and I’ve loved it so far. What have you found worrying?

TrueStorms · 2021-11-25T15:12:48+00:00

Pretend it’s a person.

CatchPhraze · 2021-11-25T19:11:12+00:00

Any movie where a male protagonist can do super human things then it's completely within the suspension of disbelief that a woman can to because of plot armor and movie magic.

If a movie or show attempts to show the meer mortalness of everyone else but one woman is an insane badass then I have an issue but not with "wokeness" but with shitty character design. There is no plot evolution if their is no struggle.

ifelsedowhile · 2021-11-26T00:30:13+00:00

My idea of a strong female lead in an action movie is a nerdy and socially awkward femalescientist who discovers a chemical or gets caught in a lab accident that gives her superpowers but those superpowers have limitations/side effects and she stays nerdy and awkward during the whole course of the movie.

just_a_place · 2021-11-26T02:34:59+00:00

I'm an amateur writer (still figuring out my writing style and how to build characters, environment, mood, themes, and worlds) and my approach to writing female action characters is to write them as how would real women act in that situation.

Most female lead characters in movies today are cringy because you can tell they are just body-swapping and gender-bending. What these terms mean is that the role is written for a male character but they cast a woman in it. It's still a male role except the character is wearing a female skin, the audience detects suck sloppy writing and mind fuckery that they get turned off.

It annoys me to no fucking end how modern woke imbeciles pretend like they are the pioneers of everything that has come before. Like that dumb ass actor from Shang-Chi who said he is a pioneer for all Asian actors and that he is opening doors for Asian actors in Hollywood as if Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, Lucy Lu, Michelle Yeoh, Bolo Yeung, Zhang Ziyi, Sonny Chinba, Roy Chiao, etc, etc.. are all a joke to him! Fuck that guy.

Also, we already have a lot of prestigious female action and female-lead characters! Ripley from Aliens, Celine from Underworld, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider, Sarah Connor from Terminator, Wonder Woman. etc And I am not even counting all the women that are really good and strong character who just don't happen to be the main character like Miriam from Indiana Jones, or basically EVERY female character in Harry Potter including Umbridge and Bellatrix who make real good villains as women and not as just being male villains played by women.

One can go like SEAL Team, but that leaves female characters as peripheral. Since there is variance within women, you can write some exceptional female characters, and treat them as such.

Dude that is literally the plot of Aliens! Ripley rescuing the Marines to the best of her ability which is really what a real woman in the real world would do. The movie is sci-fi but her actions as a character are still the actions of a woman.

upalse · 2021-11-26T03:51:20+00:00

SEAL Team

Just don't. Play up feminine strengths and perception of the world.

Good female characters are not the ones playing the Rambo Ripley schtick. Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching for example.

WilliamWyattD · 2021-11-26T09:20:48+00:00

Update. Just finished watching Wheel of Time part 4. I don't usually engage in online discussions about gender, race, sexuality etc. outside of PPD. And I assume the people here are FAR from a representative sampling.

So I ventured to bring up some observations on these fronts about Wheel of Time on the WoT sub. Much closer to typical people on these issues, though still far from a random sample of the population. All I can say is, WOW. It is one thing to understand that many people believe in modern, politically correct ideas about gender, race, sexuality, etc. Another to encounter them. I made some pretty tame and qualified posts by PPD standards. But man, triggered some people badly.

Had such a hard time getting people to admit that the showrunners were clearly updating the source material to conform to more modern ideas about these topics. At first, I thought that these people were blind. But now I think that it is more like a fish not knowing what water is. It's just expected that of course you do that. So why would they even have to say this is happening. It is like expecting them to explicitly tell me that the sky is blue.

Wow. Being in Asia for 20 years, I don't really get to see the new reality in North America. But that is just how it is.

Insidious-Sid · 2021-11-26T18:35:04+00:00

Watch The Walking Dead and recap the character development of Carol Peletier played by Melissa McBride.

She's strong, she's weak. She's a skilled zombie slayer and solider. She's a gatherer who likes to bake. She's a mother-figure, she's a lover. She's a nurturer, she's a hard-ass. She's warm, she's cold-blooded.

And they pull all that off creating a genuine, believable, relatable character who many TWD fans have come to love. And, she went from being a kind of weaker and dependent character who you THOUGHT would be "killed off" by now into one of the toughest most resilient characters on the show. She even goes off on a journey of self discovery and lives on her own to find herself while most others cling to the safety of larger communities.

Strong female characters can be written by those who know how to write.

But taking "SuperAmazingMan" and just changing the name to "SuperAmazingWoman" is not a good way to do this. Neither is giving the character omnipotent power.

Lately, Marvel is making female characters that can fly, travel time, fly in space, and throw planets around. Total omiscience and omnipotence. For lack of a better word, Gods. Even Loki had limits. Even flesh-and-blood hulk was able to subdue Loki with a substantial beating.

But if she's a god, why doesn't she just fix everything? You don't even need a movie. How do you develop an omniscient character? What happened to Dr. Manhattan?

Given women god-like powers to women in the name of "empowerment" does not make relatable female characters. What makes female characters relatable is what makes ALL characters relatable:

Facing adversity, struggling, failing, getting up and persevering.

God-on-god battles are of limited use to writers. It's the human struggles people relate to.

Write human, relatable, fallible characters. The trouble is, the word FALLIBLE goes against the feminist narrative of "women can do everything and do it better than men can". They can, but they're as fallible as men are, are they not? The "women are fallible and men are weak" flip-the-script thing is just failing miserably. Tring to write the fallibility out of female characters is where these feminist writers will continue to fail.

Valuable-Ant6808 · 2021-11-27T16:42:39+00:00

Mikasa Fe attack on titan

szclimber · 2021-11-29T05:52:20+00:00

I like Arya Stark from the asoiaf books.

Plopolok · 2021-11-24T20:57:22+00:00

I think if you want to write "action/adventure" it's gonna be skewed towards male characters. You can still manage to have a female main character - you can even have a hobbit if you do it well - but since women are naturally less skilled at action, the story might be less heroic. However you could also write "intrigue/adventure", "crime/adventure", "exploration/adventure", "strategy/adventure", ... In Game of Thrones, Cersei and Daenarys are much more interesting characters than Brienne and Arya.

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Skeleton_Sceptre · 2021-11-24T21:13:34+00:00

have her be the captain of a squadron of men. the men who fight for her are all willing to take her orders and fight to the death because at the end of every night she lets the men gangfuck her around the campfire.

although the more i think about the more unrealistic it is, what kind of men would take a woman like that seriously?

ya stumped me op

ToughAnswers · 2021-11-24T21:28:17+00:00

write for a man but remove all sense and reason

Title	How to write strong but accurate female action/adventure characters?
Author	WilliamWyattD
Upvotes	18
Comments	276
Date	November 24, 2021 8:06 PM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/r1dx9e/how_to_write_strong_but_accurate_female/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/how-to-write-strong-but-accurate-female.1086728 https://theredarchive.com/post/1086728