Writing Female Characters Quotes & Sayings

I love Dexter. I love Top Chef. I can't wait for it to come back. I love Friday Night Lights. I think TV is in a great place right now. It's definitely getting better and better. I think there is some of the most complete writing for women and female characters, they're done in television production and not really film production. — Alyssa Milano

Like most little girls, I found the lure of grown-up accessories astonishing - lipstick, perfume, hats and gloves. When I write female characters in my historical novels, getting these details right is vital. — Sara Sheridan

Sanctuary cities are a lot like hitchhiking. And the abstract, it feels really good until you feel dead. — Greg Gutfeld

People often ask me if I feel discriminated against as a black female director. I don't. I'm actually offered a ton of stuff. But I only want to direct what I write. And I prefer to focus on black female characters. What's most important to me is to put characters up onscreen who are not perfect, but who are human and flawed. — Gina Prince-Bythewood

I approach writing female characters the same why I approach writing male characters. I never think I'm writing about women, I think I'm writing about one woman, one person. And I try to imagine what she is like, and endow her with a lot of my own thoughts and history. — Jeffrey Eugenides

It starts with the writing. We have to think of all these characters - we have to treat them all equally. We have to think of them as having an interior life and having motivations. When I'm drawing female characters, I'm looking for that. I'm looking for subtext. I'm looking for ways to make the reader relate to them in a way that goes beyond the pure aesthetic value. You know, just drawing an attractive woman really gets kind of boring after a while. — Cliff Chiang

When people say to me, 'Why are you so good at writing at women?' I say, 'Why isn't everybody?' Obviously there are differences between men and women - that's what makes it all fun. But we're all people. There's a lot of good writers who are very humanist, but still manage to kind of skip fifty-five per cent of the race. And I just don't get that. Not to be able to write an entire gender? To me, the question isn't how do you do it? It's how can you possibly avoid doing it? — Joss Whedon

Whether consciously or unconsciously, I felt myself drawn to writing a female character who was pretty flawed and not very virtuous or wonderful or attractive in these ways that throughout literary history we've come to expect female characters to be. — Leni Zumas

As a writer, as much as I try, I can't stop writing female characters. They have so much more to offer; they have to wear so many different hats. There's so much wonderful gray matter in a female's life that it just makes for a stronger character. — Tate Taylor

I love writing about men. To get by in the world you have to know how men think. Not that all guys think alike, but women tend to think about more things at the same time, an overgeneralization, but I find it easier to make my male characters focus than I do my female characters. — Bonnie Jo Campbell

It is doubtful whether Mrs Bennet missed the company of her second daughter, but her husband certainly did. Elizabeth had always been his favourite child. — P.D. James

The beauty of 'The Hunger Games' and also 'Game of Thrones,' in fairness, both projects have really complex, three-dimensional, contradictory, strong women ... The writing of female characters is extraordinary and equal to the men. — Natalie Dormer

It's a fact, the majority of films in Hollywood are from the male perspective. And the female characters, very rarely do they get to speak to another female character in a movie, and when they do it's usually about a guy, not anything else. So they're very male-centric, Hollywood films, in general. So I think it's incredible that Ned Benson, when I said I'd love to know where she goes, says okay, I'm going to write another film from the female perspective. — Jessica Chastain

I firmly believe in and support everyone's right to freedom of artistic expression. STEEL MAGNOLIAS is my artistic expression, and it is my right to say that its female characters be portrayed by women. The concept of a play set in a beauty parlor where men portray women is a terrific idea. If that is someone's artistic expression, I encourage them to write their own play as soon as possible. — Robert Harling

[Writing in the voice of female characters] is scary. You get more cautious as you get older. I probably wouldn't write as an American either. I'd find a reason to make them half British.
I'm aware that female writers have been writing brilliant female characters for hundreds of years. I could make a terrible fool of myself unless I work out what the traps are, find bad female characters by male writers, work out why they're bad and give my wife every single book to read. — David Mitchell

I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult. — Ken Follett

We can't fight another person's battle, no matter how much we want to. — Jennifer Niven

What was the use of my having come from Oakland it was not natural to have come from there yes write about it if I like or anything if I like but not there, there is no there there. — Gertrude Stein

On Writing About Nora Hawks
I write about a female character to try, in vain, to understand two things: the purpose of life, and women. — Dennis R. Miller

I tend to like strong female characters. It just interests me dramatically.
A strong male character isn't interesting because it has been done and it's so cliched. A weak male character is interesting: somebody else hasn't done it a hundred times. A strong female character is still interesting to me because it hasn't been done all that much, finding the balance of femininity and strength.
[From a 1986 Fangoria interview] — James Cameron

To be meshed with Christ is to be immersed in his love — Sunday Adelaja

In writing, a good guy must never break any of the Ten Commandments. A bad guy must break every one. That's why writing female characters is so much fun. They're not GUYS at all. — Kimberly Black

When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters. — Kerry Greenwood

At the end of the day I have many answers for it. It has to do with my mom, who was an extraordinary woman, and a great feminist. It has to do with the people in my life. It has to do with a lot of different things, but
I don't know! Because I'm not just writing from the female characters for other people. I have a desire to see them in our culture
that was not met for most of my childhood. Except occasionally by James Cameron.
[From the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, in response to being asked why he writes strong female characters.] — Joss Whedon

I can't imagine writing a book without some strong female characters, unless that was a demand of the setting. — William Gibson

I live within the vivid colors of my imagination, soaring with rainbow-feathered birds, racing the desert winds on horseback, wrapped in ancient tribal jewels, dancing with mythical tigers in steamy jungles. — Laurel Burch

When I was in high school, my mom worked at Bed, Bath and Beyond, so I was always there. — Abbi Jacobson

I think women have such rich emotional lives that they are expressive about. I also think they're funny. I like watching strong female characters, and I like writing them. I don't know if it's conscious that I gravitate towards women, but it's certainly evolved that way. — Darren Star

Once I got over the fear of writing female characters, it actually came quite easily and I was really happy with it. I just thought about girls I knew really, really well and I'd just have conversations with them and tried to relay how they talk about certain things. — Eli Roth

A Total Woman caters to her man's special quirks, whether it be in salads, sex, or sports. — Marabel Morgan

Someone from the Internet Writing Workshop sent me a link to the Gender Genie, where you paste in a section of text and it uses an algorithm to detect whether the author is male or female. Or, if you're an author, you can tell whether you're really nailing your opposite-sex characters. I mean, nailing their dialog. — Max Barry

[ ... ] as if the next thing must quickly come along to occupy her, or the abyss might open. What abyss? The abyss that waits for all of us, when all our actions seem futile, when the ability to fill the day seems stalled, and the waiting takes on an edge of dread. — Anita Brookner

There's just a deeper level of sophistication in the writing of female characters on TV. — Vera Farmiga

No matter how screwed up life is today, today is just a collection of moments that stop and start where you want them to. And nothing upsetting matters when you know tomorrow's gonna be better than yesterday — Robyn Schneider

It's a time to reflect and appreciate all the contributions that others have made to my career and my life. My vision is nothing that hasn't been gleaned or understood from watching and working with so many people I admire before me. — Karen Kain

The startling thing about her simplifying instinct was that the more she did away with fashion in search for comfort and the more she passed over conventions as she obeyed spontaneity, the more disturbing her incredible beauty became and the more provocative she become to men. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez