How To Write A Strong Female Lead
By Nicole Rose
I don’t know if you’ve noticed but there is a Netflix category called “Strong Female Lead”. I don’t know about you, but I was enthused to see this. I thought to myself: “Finally us strong women have our very own Netflix category!! The wait is over!” I was so happy that I want to inspire more writers to write strong women. So I decided to provide you with some tips on “How to Write a Strong Female Lead”:
Before you start, you must ask yourself this question: “Am I a male?” If the answer is yes, then you have nothing to worry about: males are generally better at writing strong female characters. If the answer is no, then unfortunately you are a female and this might be more difficult for you. Having first-hand knowledge about what it is actually like to be female can only hurt you in this process: you might write a character that is too realistic. What a shame that would be! No wonder, you’re being paid less. Either way, I hope these tips will help.
First of all, these women should always have jobs which are typically held by men; to put it simply, any job with authority. Think along the lines of lead detectives, high-ranking military officers, district attorneys, world-renowned surgeons, etc. It takes a strong woman to fill one of these positions. Rule of the thumb: strong women must have successful careers.
Similarly, keep your female character away from the domestic sphere. You should never show her cooking, cleaning or anything like that; women who do these things aren’t strong. Keep away from stay-at-home moms or traditional housewives.
Your character should be a rule follower, a goodie-two-shoes, a straight arrow; however you say it, the truth is she has a real stick up her butt. She should always nag her fun-loving, male co-workers. She ruins everything; she is a bitch. Don’t worry though: over time her male co-workers will teach her to loosen up.
Your strong female should never wear skirts, dresses or, god forbid, pink. Keep to blazers and pant suits. She shouldn’t wear a lot of makeup or paint her nails; strong women don’t worry about silly things like that. Basically, she should dress like a man. However, she should still be pretty. Her eyelashes should be naturally long, her skin naturally clear, and her lips naturally red. Also, she should be skinny, but she should never be dieting or trying to lose weight. Strong women don’t have weight issues.
She should like sports, cars, guns, or something interesting like that. Strong females don’t like romantic comedies, gossip magazines, or anything regular females like.
At some point, your strong female should have some sort of office/workplace romance. Shes the boss and she isn’t supposed to sleep with her employees, but that doesn’t stop her; she may be a strong female, but she is still a female and everybody knows that females are always tempting their poor male coworkers. There should be lots of sexual tension. You should leave your viewers wondering: “Will they? Won’t they?” Spoiler alert: They will. It’ll be a scandal: maybe it’ll last, maybe it won’t. However it ends up, there should be a pregnancy scare involved.
If your character is in a crime drama or a lifetime movie, at some point she should be raped. And it should be the real kind of rape: the kind where she is attacked in a dark alley, not the kind where she is too drunk to give consent: strong women don’t get themselves raped like that. She shouldn’t talk about it; that would be demoralizing and just embarrassing for her. Instead she’ll internalize it and be strong.
In general, she should never cry, even when shes on her period; strong women don’t PMS. In fact, you should just ignore the fact that your character even gets her period: you wouldn’t want to make your male viewers uncomfortable.
Alright you’re almost ready; just one more thing to remember: anytime you write a female character she automatically becomes a role model for all women everywhere. Young girls are very impressionable; They aren’t independant thinkers or good judges of character, so its up to you to help them learn how to be strong. We can’t have another generation of weak females!