3rd Place in Derby #260: Crests and Heraldry, with 487 votes!

"Ooooh," said everybody, "he writes such strong, amazing female characters! How enlightened! He must be a feminist icon!" And the press and the geeks ran with it. And suddenly everyone wanted to know the secret to writing like that. But there's no real secret. So here's the tip to writing strong female characters:

Write them like normal people.

That's it! That's all there is to it. If you're stumped trying to figure out how to write dialogue the way "a woman would say it," stop. Start over. You've already lost. Just write. Just write dialogue as if any person of that status would say it.

Surprise! Women are people, too. And if more people could figure that out, the idea that a writer could create a female character with pretty normal motivations and dialogue wouldn't be such a novel concept at all.

Wear this shirt: To Comic-Con.

Don't wear this shirt: If it's not your thing.

This shirt tells the world: "I'm sooooo geeky! Ha ha ha!"

We call this color: Can we just olive get over it already?

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