I’m writing what I consider to be my first romance. It’s chick lit first and foremost, in both style and voice, and my heroine is the star of the show, but for the first time I’ll be developing a romance—and a romance that is integral to the plot. My heroine’s guy is a cop named Ben, and I’m in love with him. He’s exactly my type physically, looking remarkably like Billy Crudup. Ben is the strong, silent type, but deadly funny and surprisingly tender at just the right moments. He listens more than he talks.
Yesterday I read the Romantic Times (RT Bookclub magazine) review of my new novel (out in mere weeks!) and it was one of those make-your-day reviews, but there was one bit that has had me thinking about how I write men:
“If Christopher sometimes has the sensibilities of a woman, and if Lucy is a bit too understanding of her turkey-throwing man, neither diminishes the deliciousness of this story.â€
I’ll take the deliciousness. But my beloved Christopher has the sensibilities of a woman? What?? Christopher is one of four main characters and the only male. He’s a recently separated dad with weekend custody of his baby daughter, and his storyline is primarily focused on how he deals with these changes. Mostly every Christopher scene is with him and the baby, so we mostly see him in the context of fatherhood. There’s no heroine for Christopher; he’s on his own all the way, so he’s never in “hero†context. And he’s surrounded by women. So I wonder: do I write men with female sensibilities, or is it about context?
When I first delivered the manuscript to my editor, she said, “Wow, Christopher is an absolute guy.†So maybe it all comes down to who’s reading and their sensibilities. Or, perhaps it’s a difference in characterization in romance and chick lit. The Lucy character mentioned in the review has a husband who ruins Thanksgiving dinner by pushing the turkey off the table with all his might. This happens at the start of her storyline; she then discovers his New Year’s resolution is to leave her, and she reacts the way I think many women might, with shock and confusion. In a romance novel, there is no husband shoving a turkey off the table. There are only ex-husbands who do this.
In my WIP (work in progress), my strong, silent cop does not have the sensibilities of a woman. Ever. At least . . . I think not. But then I didn’t think that Christopher did, either. Perhaps it’s simply that Christopher is a chick lit character, and my strong silent cop will be more a romance novel hero character. Very different in depiction.
Yesterday and today I’ve been trying to come up with men from novels or movies or TV shows who do “sometimes have the sensibilities of a woman†and those who definitely don’t. Immediately on my Definitely Don’t list: my beloved Greg House, M.D. I am nuts about that show. Nuts about the character of Greg House, and nuts about Hugh Laurie, who I first fell in love with as Stuart Little’s dad. (Talk about a different role. And come to think of it, Mr. Little definitely sometimes had the sensibilities of a woman.)
Now, it may be that I’m forty and finally have a clue about good men, but Greg House, heroic as he is as a brilliant doctor (in diagnosis, anyway), is a man I would have fallen madly in love with at twenty-five and thirty, and would now, at forty, run screaming away from before the first course was served. (I would also run screaming away from Billy Crudup, but Clare Danes is in her twenties, isn’t she?ïŠ (insert grin here, and no offense to twentysomething RTB readers! I’m strictly talking about myself here.)
You know, if I do give the men in my fiction the sensibilities of women, perhaps that’s my secret fantasy. My husband is guy all the way. If he were a bit more like my female friends . . .
Anyway, any time I start thinking of Greg House, M.D., I lose all train of thought. So can anyone give examples from fiction, movies or TV (or your own life!) that depict a male character as sometimes having the sensibilities of a woman? All I can come up with is Ross from Friends, who of course, I adored! What do you think of these types of guys (to generalize) as lead characters?
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I don’t know what ‘female sensibilities’ are, so I can’t answer your question.
I mean, does Mrs Thatcher have the same sensibilities as Florence Nightingale? Would ‘female sensibilities’ unite Jane Austen and Emily Bronte. And sometimes people say that a particular writer is great at writing ‘real guys’, but they’re not like any of the men I know. Does this mean that the men I know aren’t real men? I don’t think so.
Maybe people generalise from their own experiences of the men and women they’ve met. And if someone hasn’t met a man who looks after children, they’ll think he must have ‘female sensibilities’ as that’s the only way they can deal with a man doing something that they put in a category of ‘a woman thing to do’. Like some people would put a woman who’s a successful Prime Minister or soldier into a ‘manly woman’ category. They’re still trying to go for just two categories for all adults, but as that doesn’t really encompass all the differences, they get confused and try to make subcategories or reject any portrayal of a character which doesn’t fit their own idea of what constitutes ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’.
“Female sensitibilities” mean just that, actually.
A friend of mine explains it this way: Back in the caveman days, men went out an hunted the great wooly rhino. When faced with the beast, it came down to a spear it or run decision that has to be made immediately or you could be dead. Men worked in tight teams to get dinner on the table. They naturally select their leaders within that team (any room of men do this even today–it’s pretty cool to watch and is usually over in under about 2 minutes), and every man knows his place and his job and it’s all happy. This is why modern men like to fix things–it’s their way of “spearing the rhino” and making their women happy enough to get nookie.
Women, OTOH, were back at the cave with a lump of clay to make into something out of. A woman thinks about what they already have, what other women are marking and takes time to consider what is the perfect thing to make with her lump of clay–along with tending children, dealing with food issues, etc. Her thoughts (as today) are far more community-oriented than the men’s, which is geared just to get the job done.
When you have a male character who is far more concerned with community (however community is defined), then he will be perceived as having feminine sensibilities. Men FIX problems, they don’t think about what ripples those fixes might have in the bigger pool of things. They’re very goal-oriented in general. What I generally see in a male character when this term is thrown around is that the guy wonders what repercussions his actions MIGHT cause (female), instead of what it DID cause (male).
At least what you got, Melissa, was “female sensibilities” and not “a woman with a dick” commentary that I’ve seen before. Sounds to me like you’re still on the right track with your guys.
I think when it comes to dealing with emotion, men have more traits thought of as “female” than women do.
I could give a bunch of examples, but my favorite is the Meredith/McDreamy/Addison triangle on Grey’s Anatomy. Both women know what they want in terms of a relationship. But the man? When Meredith demanded a decision, he dithered and fretted. In fact, he is still dithering and fretting.
I would guess your character was likely dealing with some strong emotional situations as a single Father rearing a baby. Because of the way he dealt with that emotion, Christopher inspired the perception that he had feminine characteristics. I haven’t read your book, but if that’s the case, I’d guess you nailed the character.
In terms of emotion (well, in terms of many things but that one is relevent just now), I am convinced that women are the “stronger” and the more “stable” gender!!
Two actors come to mind. You mentioned one of them.
Billy Crudup.
His portrayal in STAGE BEAUTY (Danes co-starred) as a “sexually confused” hero is a classic. He expresses a range of (female) emotions, yet retains an underlying semblance of masculinity. The romance between Crudup and Danes is very moving and believable. This movie is a must see.:wink:
Steve Guttenburg’s portrayal in THE BOYFRIEND SCHOOL with Shelly Long and Jami Gertz is another great example. Guttenburg plays a cancer survivor in love with a woman (Gertz) who doesn’t know he exists. Long is his meddling sister (an award-winning romance writer). To catch Gertz’s eye, Long turns Guttenburg into the classic bad/boy romantic hero. I still giggle when I watch this one.
Tanya
Hmmm, that’s a good question. I’d have to give this some thought.
It’s interesting that you should write about how readers view your male characters since that’s currently an issue for me. I got some feedback about my WIP. During one scene, the reader said that a man wouldn’t say a particular line unless he was gay.
Since my hero is heterosexual, I edited it.
Eh. Sure, once in a while I’ll read a male character where if the dialogue tags were removed, I’d have assumed he was female, but it doesn’t happen all that often. More often, I hear readers or reviewers complaining about anything other than the grunting caveman type as being too feminine.
Something like that has more to do, I think, with the reader’s own personal experiences or expectations than with the author’s skill.
True story: my husband & his former boss, both very manly army officers, recently had a conversation in which the former boss apologized for his tone of voice in conversation months earlier, & said he’d been stressed at the time and wasn’t being fair, to which my husband replied that no, HE was sorry because he thought he’d disappointed the former boss.
IRL, nobody’d ever think either of them had ‘feminine sensibilities,’ but you couldn’t put that in a book.
I think the people who complain are the same ones who say they won’t date a guy who has a tidy apartment because he’s ‘obviously’ either gay or secretly living with another woman.
Frasier and Niles Crane come to mind as feminine. OTOH, I love Joe, the husband in MEDIUM. Although he helps with the kids and in understanding, he doesn’t seem feminine to me. Guys can–and should–so their share around the house. The sexy ones do.
Melissa–
I will take a sensitive guy over an alpha male any day. Not that I like wimps, but a guy who does housework and cooking, a guy who will actually go out and buy his own clothes??? What a dreamboat.
As you might remember from the days when you edited my books, writing alpha males doesn’t come easily to me. (I recall a comment from a certain, unnamed editor, not you, who asked in her rewrite letter, “Where is the sock in this guy’s pants?”) So I am perfectly okay with reading about guys who aren’t cavemen. (And I’ve never had a problem with any of the men in your books!