Help! Help!

So I'm almost 40,000 words into the book, and I just realized there aren't any women in this whole story. Sure, I could always go back during the re-writes and switch a gender of one of the characters, but I'm not sure if I should. Would it potentially damage what I have so far to try and shoehorn a woman into the story? Or should I give it a shot...?

Do women belong in it? Doesn't anybody miss them? Look forward to seeing some? (I'm being euphemistic.) Or are your characters living entirely in a man's world, like an aircraft carrier boiler room in 1943?

Because, although women may not logically be in the place where your action occurs, there are few groups of men or solo men who do not think about women. And talk about them. A lot, from what I hear. Else, why would the pinup calendar exist?

I have a similar problem with putting men into my stories and making sure they act like real men, so I feel for you.

But you don't have to make your novel like an old movie in which one woman happens to be there who is the daughter of the scientist or the colonel or whatever. That's pretty lame.

I was actually starting to think about changing the mentor character into a woman, and how that might shake things up.

It could give the main character a bit more to do and think since he's 17 and his hormones have surprisingly been kept in check throughout the whole draft. Maybe this is a chance for them to throw off his concentration.

Family relations maybe? Mother, Sister, Aunt?
A schoolfriend?

I thought about those, but I decided to turn the mentor character into a woman. Both the mother and father are dead before the story starts (they died in a car accident after visiting the father's brother in rehab), and the main character's been a bit of a loner in school.

I figured the mentor character would work the best as a woman, so the next draft will be quite interesting...

So today, since I already hit my quota earlier, I reserved tonight for going back through my draft and literally performing a sex change operation, turning my mentor character from a man to a woman. I needed to do it now since having him be a her allowed for a very pivotal scene near the end to have more emotional impact.

So all is well. Clayton is now Katherine...

lol cool, thats good you got a chance to go back and change it before the pivotal scene, should make for some fun writing next time you sit down to it :)

WIP: Ayden: 92,043/95,000 (estimated total).
Rough Editing: Lifelines: 104/104 pages.

J.C Hart

That is very cool. I think it's an interesting thing to look at your characters in a story and think about how changing their gender/age/occupation/goals/motivation would change the story.

No Excuses. Just Write.
WIP - Freeing the Flame: 31/66 scenes of scene review #3.
Eve's Vineyard: 3,375/6,000 (Sept Zing Thing)

That's interesting Ghwriter, you do realise women think differently to men. :)

http://gay_belle.livejournal.com

'Southern Scriber.'

I do realize it, yes. And it didn't take as long as I thought it would for that realization to hit.

The character always had a very gender-neutral wau of handling herself. The main thing that I added was how different men would react when seeing her.

The pivotal scene is getting closer, and thank God for Hans Zimmer's score to "King Arthur." Listening to that inspired the big moment...