Strong Female Characters

That list has some interesting points but I don't know if I'd much like the character that comes out of it. I am interested in female characters who know their own mind, for sure. But I am not interested in characters who are strong, capable and sorted and sane. I am enormously fond of one of my protagonists but my she has a cold and selfish streak. She also has a tendency of trying to please the wrong people. And she has the cheek to have an abortion, at considerable risk to herself, with *no regrets whatsoever* - I would say even joy, she hates her late husband so much.

The other one has black and white views, shuts herself off from people (she has to, given what she has survived) and refuses to say some simple words that would ease her friend's tormented conscience because she believes it is not right to lie. She also ends up falling for The Wrong Man and makes a mess of her life.

I'm fond of these ladies - I don't care if they are not cartoon heroes. I don't want them to be.

I think one can have the characteristics in ysabet's list and still have issues. My character Nokwahl is strong, knows her own mind, etc. etc. but is also scarred for life from a childhood trauma. I'm pretty sure she has some form of PTSD. She struggles with it, but her training helps her deal with it and still be strong.

*Blinks* You just gave me a great idea that should help me figure out the plot of my next Nokwahl novel: give Nokwahl something truly challenging. Did that in the first novel, but she got off a bit easy in the second.

I am enormously fond of one of my protagonists but my she has a cold and selfish streak.

Reminds me of my Lyria Spellspinner character. She's the protagonist, but she's not good. Nor is she evil. She's a dark sorceress with aspirations of achieving godhood (for the sake of becoming a Creator and making her own little multiverse). But she avoids most of the villain cliches and ends up grudgingly working for the side of good in the novel because it'd be pretty hard to achieve her goals if some evil god goes and destroys the multiverse before she can achieve them.

But still, she has some genuine goodness in her. And gods help you if you threaten her family, however unusual they may be. (Put this way: her family is stranger than the Addams family and the Munsters combined, and is due to get even stranger soon.)

*Thinks* Another protagonist, Lolita Leigh Smith, is smart and funny and fun to work with, but her pranks on people can get a little carried away. (She made someone think he'd killed her, once.) Her best friend B (gods help you if you call her Beverly) is much the same.
One of their friends, a girl nicknamed Sugar, used to be a bully. And the girl nicknamed Spice is painfully shy and not very self-confident.

I think ysabet would agree that having a few flaws make characters better.

The title character of my Nokwahl Viiahdah series fits that pretty well. She's a "perfect hermaphrodite," like all her species, but looks and acts female, and female pronouns are used with her. The only difference is, she has what I think could be a form of PTSD from a traumatic childhood experience, but it doesn't effect her confidence; along with her telepathic Gift of projective empathy, she got training from the Shao'Bahn Order that allowed her to turn that pain into a weapon. She and other Shao'Bahn would consider that traumatic childhood experience to be like the fire that forges iron into steel.

Also, my Lyria Spellspinner character fits this perfectly as well. She has no "domestic" skills to speak of, leaving cooking and cleaning, etc, to her servants, but she has a brilliant mind and is clever, cunning, and powerful enough that it does indeed take a really powerful foe to challenge her. And yes... she is a mother. She didn't carry her children in her womb, but she is a mother. And gods help anyone who threatens her family. You threaten Lyria's family, you'd better hope she's feeling merciful enough to merely kill you. Her specialty in magic is modifying the souls of objects and people. With sufficient reason and preparation, she can come up with punishments that even the Greek gods would think were too harsh.

Because of her power level and intelligence, her only real challengers in the book will be actual living GODS. And creatures almost as powerful as gods.

* She can solve challenges herself, without requiring rescue by some guy.
** Consequently this affects the kind of relationships she is likely to have with male characters. Those who can accept her agency are eligible for possible friendship or romance. Those who cannot are promptly classified as road hazards. It also opens the door for gentlemen-in-distress if so desired.

Nokwahl: So far has dated her partner and fellow detective, Alex Davison. But that was in the past, even in the book. I don't know why they broke up. Maybe they just decided they didn't feel strongly enough to be more than close friends.

Anyway, then she goes on to date a female human, Samantha Dryson, who also happens to be otherkin (she feels more like one of Nokwahl's species).

As to why she doesn't date within her own species... well, she lives on a space station orbiting Earth. There aren't that many of her people there.

Lyria: I have plans for Lyria and Forizano Lysvalo (the crippled scholar she healed and hired as a tutor for her daughter Meriel) to fall in love with one another. But it's not going to be easy getting to that point. Lyria is a bit antisocial, due to her past experiences in life.

* She is secure in her role and does not feel compelled to squash other female characters to make herself look more important or powerful. She is powerful in some way(s) and uses it appropriately rather than waving it around like a stick of firewood.

Definitely applies to both Nokwahl and Lyria. If anything, Lyria is a source of strong female characters. Even though a child, Meriel is a strong female character. And Lyria's second in command is Serret Antashik, an olive-skinned woman who, as one of Lyria's Zaharat soldiers, is of a superior race of humans made from the corpses of regular humans.

Lyria has been to Earth, too, so she may have read "Frankenstein." I imagine her reaction to the book would be, "Stupid men, can't do anything right." (With a grin, though, because she's not actually sexist against men.)

So, that's what I'm thinking of when I ask for strong female characters. More like that.

Have you read Seanan McGuire's Toby Daye books? It's about October Daye, a half-faerie changeling woman who is a knight for her lord (a cool guy, totally treats Toby as an equal and as a family member) and is also a private detective. First one in the series is "Rosemary and Rue."

I think you'd also like the Newsflesh series by Mira Grant (pseudonym for Seanan McGuire) which starts with "Feed." Georgia "George" Mason is a kick-ass female character. I have some strong suspicions that she and her brother Shaun are a little closer than brother and sister, if you catch my drift, but... well, okay, that's not really relevant. I just like mentioning it.

Oh, wait, no it is actually relevant. Because though George and Shaun are a team, George is the stronger character. In fact, her brother is a smidge on the pathetic side without her. But only a smidge. It's like they're actually one person in two bodies, and George is the better 2/3rds.

So I guess I like seeing the same things you do in strong female characters.

Oh yeah, a sense of humor is great too. I love humor, and I always make sure to put humor in even the darkest, most serious fiction. (Well, anything longer than a short story, anyway.)

Oh, and no character of mine, regardless of gender, should be afraid to cry if the situation calls for it.

Ooh, thank you for this! I was just contemplating how to write my main female protagonists in aeternal_eckho as strong, independent women while still keeping them interesting and real.

I think a good, three dimensional character has a mixture of strength and vulnerability that gets her through her day-to-day struggles, but not so easily that it's not a challenge. And I think she grows and evolves as she faces those challenges both within and without.

I tend to write strong women. But, they will throw real love away with both hands, in favor of pursuing obsession. (this is true of male characters as well)

Mine tend to be exceptionally icy. "Kill them then, and let's be off," one says when her man is merely threatening. She later burns her initials into her twin brother's cerebral cortex, rendering him a vegetable, and laughs while doing it. (he deserves it)

I had one where the character damn near did a John Wayne drawl with the words "A butch has to do what a butch has to do." before going off to kill zombies. (But it's clear that her more feminine wife runs the whole shebang)

I want my women smart. Scary-smart if possible. If they are stupid, it should be for a reason, or feigned. (My Maid Marion used a guileless and simple attitude to fool the men around her, which let her learn a lot) I want them unafraid, or feeling the fear and doing it anyway. I want them to carry out their responsibilities to themselves and others in the best way they can.

This might not be germane to the question but; I don't so much want to see strong female characters as to see strong characters who happen to be female.

I feel like so many comic and movie characters are presented from this male bias; A does amazing stuff, B does this other thing, and C is this miserable villain, and then we're obliged to have a girl on the team, so we get D in the group. The end result is that A, B and C don't have any particular reason they need to be male, but they're male; and D winds up having not much character other than her gender. I think it's like any other minority thing; the big reason for having a minority in your story isn't that they're a strong whatever, it's because portraying a world where nobody's ever female (except for the token character) is like portraying a world where gravity doesn't seem to work.

I really liked the example of Alien by contrast to the "motherhood" plot of Aliens; Ripley wasn't originally scripted as female, but the filmmakers thought it was an interesting idea. In Alien there's nothing Ripley does which is women-only; the only particular reason for the character to be female is that 50% of people are female.

I don't feel any need for strong female characters to be wielders of weapons or artists in combat. There's other ways to win a war, and if the society is one which is characterised by a male warrior elite, then I think it's perfectly possible for a woman to work within this world view and still come across as strong and determined.

I'm sure the medieval and ancient worlds were full of strong women who managed and organised without needing to strap on a sword. And yet their role tends to be downplayed and undervalued. Sad...