dogketcham-blog asked:

Do you have any advice for male writers on how to write female characters?

This question gets asked a lot, and a lot of the time I see the very dry response that you should just write women “like people”. This pretty much suggests you write women interchangeably from men, ignoring all that it means to experience life as a woman, and to that I say BOO.

The best way, I think, is to have women in your life with distinct traits and desires and experiences, with whom you can empathize. And that goes not only for women, but any gender, sexuality, ethnicity, social class, age, etc. If you can empathize with people, I think you can write them from, at very least, an honest place. This is a process.