Man: hand crafted by the God of the universe, made in His own image, and given dominion over every living thing, perfect at his origin.
Man was given a special mind, a mind that had the ability to think about literally nothing for stints of 30 minutes or more. This special gift, the ability to become lost to the world for lengths of time, has had noticeable and drastic effects on literature written by men. The literary works that men produce tend to be reflective, direct, meticulous, and strongly composed. Attention to seemingly minute details, the painting of motif and metaphor are visible characteristics of most male writers. Men mostly write in historical or fiction-fantastical realms. There are few talented male romance novelists or period writers.
The lapse of thought attributes to the renewing and refocusing of the mind, thus, the pacing of a story is generally up tempo if written by a male. Often, when inertia sets in while in the thick of a story it is combatted by a re-energizing many times during the duration of the work.
Those are some of the attributes and characteristics of male writers. Here are a few of female writers.
Female writers, or just females in general, are dynamically minded. This means that they look at the task of writing and see a finished work and how many steps it takes to get there. Whereas the opposite would be a male writer, who looks at the task of writing and sees the single first step where he currently is, and after its completion looks at the next. For this reason, female writers often will have very intricate, spacey, and emotional works.
The stories of female writers seem to be longer, that is they expand over a longer amount of time, while still fitting into the same number of pages as the stories of male writers. The genres of romance, horror, and sci-fi seem to be the favorite, and the specialty of female writers. They are very apt at playing out long, paranormal sequences because of the level of emotion with which they write.
The differences between a male and a female is ultimately what defines them as a writer. However, many characteristic of writing bridge gender differences and apply to genre in and of itself, such as, romance. Regardless of what genre you write or have written before, regardless of your particular style, the flow and essence of a romance novel will always be the same. You simply cannot write a romance novel that doesn’t feel or read like a romance novel. It’s one of the many limits to a writer’s creativity.
Now, every writer abhors any mention of limit or boundary. If writing, at its basest form, is a simple expression of emotion, why does there have to be limitations? As in all things, writing, has elements to it that make it what it is. Uniqueness is found in the specific limitations of a particular action.
If I typed out random characters, I would not be writing, I would be typing out random characters. So, in genre, if I am writing a romance but want to make it look like an action novel, it is an action novel not a romance. If I were to write a romance that never had two people falling in love, it wouldn’t be a romance, it would just be meaningless words. For the record, I deeply dislike romance novels.
In the next few posts, I’m going to break down a few genres of writing and list some characteristics and limitations that make them what they are. As always, thanks for reading.
–the anonymous novelist
the anonymous novelist 