I need your advice, Sup Forums. I'm a femanon who's writing a story for an eventual webcomic. One of my main problems I've thought about is that there's one section of the story featuring a male protagonist, while a lot of the other characters are female. I don't have much expierence writing male characters, so I want some advice on how to properly write for one.
Some basic info (without spoiling too much) is that he's a pretty average guy in his early-mid 20s. He's in college for most of the story and has a sizable group of friends. His story is more or less a slice of life comedy/drama without many fantastic elements. My main goal is to avoid making his dialogue/actions too awkward or effeminate.
So guys of Sup Forums, got any tips?
Jaxson Howard
Make him gay
Andrew Diaz
You realize who you're talking to? It's not as if we're known for being social, or men, or not awkward. Tits or GTFO is our way of saying hello, if you recall.
Josiah Scott
Guys don't talk about their feelings, especially college guys, so avoid writing him that way. Avoid "I", "me", "myself" statements, because those tend to turn into statements about how the character feels.
Guys are pragmatic about any given situation. When it comes to re-telling events or experiences, guys only care about bullet-point facts of what happened, again, avoiding how they felt at that time.
Jack Bailey
Just make him overthink everything, and you should be good. His thoughts should be centered mostly on sex, or recent events in his social life/whatever hobby he's interested in at the moment.
Mason Bennett
I don't know, "she" said mid 20s and in college, so the character could easily be a whiny, depressed nerd who talks about his feelings when he clearly shouldn't. I might be thinking high school here, but there are plenty of college students who do this.
Joshua Flores
A slight bit of trying hard to seem strong and emotionless and shit in the character won't hurt. It can be found inalmost every man, though never pointed at or presented openly.
Aiden Martin
he should rape someone, since hes a man and therefore a rapids, he should always sit with his legs spread open and he must be wrong always, but never let him recognice he was wrong
Wyatt Gutierrez
Those are just nerds like you said, and numales too. Op said he has a "sizable group of friends", so a nerd would probably be crossed off the list, plus nerds aren't "average" guys really. Numales are fairly sociable though.
Leo Lewis
>Guys don't talk about their feelings Not that we don't have feelings, we just hardly ever talk about them unless they're pretty much dragged out of us.
Luke Hernandez
Guys don't overthink things unless they have some kind of neurosis or nervous, anxious attitude.
Christopher Flores
Make him a rapist.
Gavin Nelson
True.
Ian Hernandez
Give us a clue about what he's going to deal with.
Adrian Carter
OP here. Some life events he goes through imclude relationship dramas (a messy breakup with his gf) and one of his close friends becoming a drug addict/mentally ill.
Luis Thompson
yes every single guy in the world is exactly the same and behaves like this make sure that they also watch football and have fake testicles bolted onto their pickup truck
Lincoln Lee
but she (male) said he was going to make a male protgonist, not a nu-male one
Isaac Hernandez
>no grills on Sup Forums meme But if I were male, why would I ask how to write for male characters?
Angel Brooks
Because the average person here has no fucking clue how to be male in the first place. And that applies to some professional writers in the industry as well.
Kayden White
Op was asking about an average guy, for which what I said is true. It's a generalization that works for most men like myself. Stop getting offended.
Adrian Price
Women behave like eggs, men behave like sperm.
/thread
Xavier Rivera
I'm not gonna drop that cringey "tits or gtfo" screencap or anything, but you have to take 'girls' here with a grain of salt. For every actual girl, there are 30 grown men roleplaying as one, and saying things like "uguuu~"
Liam Foster
to be honest if this is set in modern day the average guy in his early-mid 20s is feminine and spends all his time worrying about what people think of him and racked with anxiety over dumb shit and never achieving anything on his own
Leo Foster
because you are a basement dweller without knowledge about how well adjusted men act
you arent asking about women because you believe what r9k says about them
Eli Clark
Why would you feel the need to announce to everyone that you were a grill?
Xavier Davis
There's a lot more difference in individuals than between the genders. My advice is to base him on someone you know. If you go into it thinking how do I write this gender you'll end up with a stereotypical hardass or player or whatever.
William Jones
well I do enjoy being inside a vagina and swimming as fast as I can
Jeremiah Miller
I don't think we have any tips, maybe /hyw/ does but that's a big maybe you could try your luck on /lit/ or Sup Forums, but I'd consider drawing from real life and asking your friends
Kayden Morales
Think of a woman, then add reason, and accountability.
Oliver Jackson
That's probably the first time I've ever seen this quoted in reverse.
Jason Cox
>filthy phoneposter >claims to be femanon to distract Sup Forums's attention Well played, OP. Well played.
Nathan Ross
Go to the 'how's your webcomic' thread for this sorta thing.
Andrew Nguyen
Examine men in your life and cross reference that with men in media aimed at men and women in several different genres.
Seriously, your own life is the best place you can pull from for the habits of people you don't "get."
Jack Cooper
hi obvious gamergater here whose totally not a false flag sent to poison the well yet again.
your a women so gtfo out of comics ang games there for boys only
also you smel
Carson Bailey
Nice slogan, which Hallmark card did you take it from?
Landon Mitchell
Just take a woman and give them reason and accountability.
Ian Jenkins
Just make him a vampire, werewolf, CEO or pirate and you're golden
Jaxson Parker
You write a female character, and change all the "her" to "him" and all the :she" to "he", and you're done.
Hudson Collins
Stop being dumb and develop your skills more
Jaxon Perez
You could always consider making him a trap
Christopher Morris
Just write him as if he were a normal guy and a normal character. It's not that hard. I'm male and I've written a bunch of female characters. You make a good character then add in gender traits later. It depends on how you want your male character to be.
Owen Jenkins
Might be an emotional bitch about it, but he probably wouldn't go to anyone for help. Not even his close friends. Dudes tend to bottle shit up inside, for various reasons. Unless they get drunk He might try to push his friend to get help though.
It explains why they would struggle with a dudes psych
Noah Ortiz
>sizable group of friends I can't help you there
James Young
Men are just women trying to be something they're not. Men are self-conscious, romantic, emotionally driven. They cry and lament and regret and have all the same needs as any woman. The primary difference is that they're raised to see these things in themselves as weakness and cover it all up.
So just write a woman who's trying to come across as macho and independent. Not in a condescending or humorous way, but just doing her best to appear as her assumption of someone else's perception of normal.
Mason Thompson
I'd rather read about a guy written from a woman's perspective than someone like me.
Jaxon Hughes
Don't ask "how do I write this kind of character". Ask "how do I write a character". Understand actual social interaction and how people think, and you will be able to write not just a different gender or a different culture, but an alien from another galaxy and make him/her/it interesting and believable.
You could very well base him off actual generalizations, but that's a boring way to write: truly interesting, well rounded characters are more than a set of attributes. If you write a character like a grocery list:
>Male/female/apache helicopter >Introverted/Extroverted >Has tattoo of the Triforce/a metal band on his thigh/arm >Has problems/an easy time trusting/loving people >Is very violent/calm
It's going to be about as interesting to read as a grocery list. What's actually interesting is how the character reacts to situations and the world around him, based on previous beliefs and on how these beliefs are affected by the situations themselves. And while yes, you can trace generalizations that are more or less true for large groups of people, what's the point in writing a character that behaves exactly like you'd expect that kind of character to behave?
Better to write truly vibrant characters whose traits inform the situations around them and are informed by them. You say the character has a sizable group of friends? What does he do with these friends, go out and drink? Then you could make him speak quickly, confidently, like someone used to social interaction. You say he's in college for most of the story? Does he genuinely want his degree and does he work hard for it? Then you could show him, again, confident in himself and in his abilities, even to the point of arrogance. Or was he forced into college by his parents, a college that he's lost all hope of excelling in? Then you could show him as weak-willed, unable to resist the will of other more strong willed people. 1/2
Elijah Gomez
Character first, gender second. Establish the person's personality and interests before slapping genitals on them. That's the easiest way to deal with it. Alternatively, just write a woman who's a little too concerned with her own appearance and mannerisms. Boom, you have a male character.
Carson Phillips
I mean that's what I was getting at with "draw from men in life and a wide swath of literature," but your point is much more important.
Aiden Lee
2/2
Your main goal's to avoid making his dialogue/actions too awkward or effeminate? Why? That's a character trait. Maybe he was sheltered as a kid, maybe he grew up with six sisters, maybe maybe maybe. Maybe his father was an hardass construction worker and his mother had a chronical disease and his family needed money to pay the bills, so every day after school little Billy helped his father hammer in nails and ate with the other workers, so he grew up ripped and his speech was made harsher, rougher, very direct.
You're a goddamn writer: write. People's traits are decided by their lives, they're not dependent on their belonging to a certain category. They *might be*, in *general*, but here we want individual characters that are interesting. Their characteristics can fit generalizations, but you shouldn't gather them from generalizations. They should emerge naturally from the story, from the lives they lived.
No one wants to read about yet another fucking twentysomething that drops his spaghetti when someone of the opposite gender looks at him, that shit was old when Sappho wrote about it, right? Well it depends: put an interesting spin on it, make his awkwardness something more chronical resulting from an obsessive care about how he appears to people, resulting in turn from growing up idealizing celebrities or some shit like that.
But please, oh fucking please, don't just make him socially awkward because a lot of modern males are socially awkward. That's just boring.
Hudson Wilson
is the second part to
Yeah man, exactly. No book as good as life, but beyond that, in case OP needs suggestions, I quite like Dostoyevsky for character work. Or Nabokov, or the Russians in general really.
Noah Allen
Yeah but life is hard. How do you draw from life when you don't have one?
Samuel Harris
Cowards and weaklings like you will never count as real men.
Joshua James
Draw on your experiences as an embittered anti-social loser. That's how Watamote happened.
Aiden Nelson
It seems a little uninteresting and limited to me.
Jose Jackson
Ik this is a shitpost, but I'm going to take it completely seriously to reinforce my previous point: you draw a life from not having a life ().
I specifically named Dostoyevsky because that's what his Notes From The Underground is: the story of a pathetic, poor, hateful man who spends all his time in his room ranting about the world. He recalls how he came to his condition in an extended flashback, how he came to his whole pessimistic worldview. He describes in detail a social gathering where he got drunk and embarassed himself in front of his only remaining friend and an officer he hated for no particular reason, then of how he repeatedly wanted to duel that officer to death and repeatedly failing to bring himself to do so out of his lack of willpower. He talks about his views on technology and positivism, maintaining that even if it's in man's nature to be fundamentally good, then man will nonetheless choose evil just for the sake of choosing evil. He hates his manservant, constantly berates and insults him, but is in the end utterly dominated by him due to his, again, lack of willpower.
It's /r9k/ the novel and it's pretty damn good.
Jacob Wilson
Hi Jonathan McIntosh.
Angel Mitchell
early 20s and in college = he is really a dumbass but he is certain his way of seeing the world is correct.
Caleb Morris
That... doesn't sound like /r9k/ at all, user. Robots are simply those guys whose inherent capabilities ("talents" for jobs, looks - or not being female - for sex, etc.) are insufficient to be of significant value to others, thus they lose out in every market (be it the actual economic job market, the sexual market, whatever). It's just basic supply and demand mathematics: there must be losers if there are winners.
What that does sound like, though, is depression. (Which is also largely the popular perception of such communities in the media - on the few occasions the media talks about them that is - which makes me question how much you have actually lurked there.)
Logan Harris
Last time I tried to craft a story using my lack of life experiences I realized I was basically writing an Ex Machina ripoff except without the twist.
Also the other time it's just a supporting character that doesn't really work without knowing how to write protagonists with the slightest ability to socialize.
Ethan Rogers
>he's a pretty average guy in his early-mid 20s. He's in college for most of the story Don't do this. Webcomics are already mired in late-end millennials as protags as they are.
Jason Martin
My bad, I don't go to /r9k/, I just thought of the first board that's usually the butt of basement dweller jokes. It wasn't meant as a serious statement by any means.
It depends on how good of a writer you are, I guess. I sure as hell wouldn't be able to pull it off either. Hopefully one day I will be though.
Hunter Stewart
>Guys >pragmatic You're thinking of women, user. Men are idealistic, not pragmatic.
Blake Cook
Men are under a lot more pressure to act in gender-appropriate ways than women. They are less open with their feelings and less likely to ask for help and support from others.
They tend to be more direct, impulsive and assertive because of testosterone, and our society expect them to make the first move in dating. Men are also less physically affectionate.