The Kindness in Women Characters

What is it about us women? We talk about sisterhood and kindness and helping lift each other up, but…

Okay, so here’s the story. I’m in the middle of trying to read through the TBR Mountains that have been in my bedroom for the past ten years or so. And I’ll tell you, a lot of these books haven’t held up well over the years. Society has changed a lot. I’ve wound up DNFing six books in a row.

One of them was a chick lit style book, about two women who absolutely loathe the other women around them. There’s no kindness in them, I don’t think. I don’t know because I gave up around page 30.

But it’s that lack of kindness in women characters that got me. I’ve noticed it before, both in books that I’ve read and books I’ve been hired to work on. And I call it out then, too.

Kindness in women characters… but that’s maybe not the best way to describe it. Oh, in this particular book’s case, it is, as the women characters bitched and moaned about hating where they lived and the women around them and the lack of fashion and it wasn’t London and on and on and on. Sheesh. Give it a break. Who wants to spend 300 pages with people who are so freaking unhappy?

But in the other books, the ones I’ve read and the ones I’ve worked on, all too often, the only character showing kindness in women characters is the main character. The other women, the support cast, are… well, not nice. They’re not always people you want to be around.

Another really good example of this is Netflix’s Virgin River — but the second season. Those women were so awful to each other that I’d look at my daughter and say, “This is getting really awful to watch” and at first she asked me why. When I pointed out that the women weren’t nice to each other, she thought about it and said, “Yeah, you’re right.”

We’re not sure if we’re going to come back for Season Three, because of it. Because every time these women appeared on the screen, we’d cringe.

How is that fun?

I ask my clients to think about their characters carefully. Are you cutting down other women in order to make the main character look better? Can there be kindness in women who aren’t the main character? What does it serve to make the women surrounding the main character — and sometimes, these women are the main character’s tribe — bitchy or nasty to each other, or to the main character? Is this the sort of portrayal of women that you want people to associate with you?

Just some food for thought as you look at your own main character. Are you showing kindness in women characters? Do you think maybe your manuscript would be better if you did?

If you’re stuck or need help, reach out. The joy of doing what I do is that I’m here to help.

Kindness in women… Right? I’m trying to practice what I preach. Join me?