Whenever you’re writing, and you’re about to introduce a male character, think to yourself “Can I replace him with a female or non-binary character?”
If the answer is yes, do it. Fill your writing with women as often as possible.
It’s amazing how people disagree with this. It’s amazing that some people are so against putting more women in books. If gender doesn’t matter people, then I call for removing all men from books. Let’s never have another cis man in a book every again.
Also, to someone who I won’t name, who care if you’ve published two novels? I’m published. And you know who has three published novels? That woman who wrote Fifth Shades of Gray. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve published. Hitler was published even.
well. I kinda do disagree. like, if I am writing something and gender actually matters. But on the whole of the subject, def more women in literature.
If gender matters, then by all means keep your characters male! I know I have a story where a few characters absolutely cannot be female. But I was planning another story the other night, and I thought “And then the main character’s brother should be introduced.” But after a minute I decided “Why not his sister?” And it absolutely won’t affect the plot, and I get to have another woman in my story.
I think the key phrase that people forgot was “if”. IF you can change the gender of a character without it affecting their story arc/plot/etc, then do it. You were never trying to say that you HAD to change their gender and make everyone a woman/nonbinary, but IF you can, go for it! Especially if you have few women/nonbinary characters in the story already. Having a wider variety of characters in general is always better.
If possible, go for more ethnicities/sexualities too!
People seem to think that making your characters more diverse will be shoehorning
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teakepp 