Thirty Days of Fanfiction: Day Six

6 – When you write, do you prefer writing male or female characters?

For fanfiction? Predominantly male characters. There are lots of reasons for that, but what it boils down to is that the fictional archetypes I love rarely show up in female form. If I want to write about middle-aged women arguing about politics and then trying to kill each other, well, there aren't many source texts that are going to provide me with the basic material. I've written more female characters in my recent fandoms (notably Doctor Who) because more of them appeal to me.

I used to feel bad about mostly writing men, until I started writing more original fiction. Not that I've ever finished any of it, but almost all my protagonists in those stories are female. When I make them up, the female characters can be the types of people that appeal to me most as a writer. Almost all the original characters I've ever written fanfiction about have been female, as well. (Not that there are a lot of them, but there was that story about Crais's mother and also the female Peace Keeper captain who shows up in that story about Larrell and a few others here and there. I'm also generally more likely to write about minor female characters than the major ones.

( The rest of the questions ... )