I have this discussion with my male writing friends all the time. We can never agree.

What do you lot think?

Not that it's a contest

I appreciate there may be a debate in this, but it's not one I like.

Amongst other things it suggest we are all the same, which is clearly not the case.

I'll leave it to others.

It's funny because this should be irrelevant today but it's not.

I said women take longer to write than men. Which is why most men get published or accomplish scripts faster than women.

Women take their time to do some serious legwork before they begin to write but the end result can sometimes be well worth it. While men tend to jump right into the action head first which can result in an exciting read if not very polished.

Again, this is not all inclusive or exclusive. Just a bit of convo.

The stats were interesting.

Other than that - I have no idea. There are women and men writers that I love.

Interesting that you got that chart from Grammarly. I tried them out recently for prose. It was somewhat helpful. I mean anything helps. You have to use your own judgment on which suggestions to use.

As far as men vs women, I've always suspected women or more attracted to prose, and men to screen, and that chart seems to maybe confirm why that is the case. You can do so much more with character in prose, and obviously "long, descriptive sentences" are more welcome in prose. Also, being more visually orientated, guys are more into film maybe, women more into books. I think more and more publishing is being dominated by women, but I don't know the stats.

Interesting, I feel the same way.

But, now I wonder about masculine female writers and feminine male writers and how they approach things differently?

One of my favourite ever novels is Mill on the Floss by George Eliot... Who was a woman writing as a man to get published.

Some of my favourite writers are women.

However,  generally speaking,  I don't like the majority of things I read from women as much as from men.  They tend to focus on things I'm just not interested in.  A bit like how your girlfriend comes home and talks for two hours about the minutiae of her colleagues lives,  people you don't know or have any interest in.

Same goes with female filmmakers to be perfectly honest, but it's more pronounced there.  I generally find their films deathly dull.

As far as the list goes: Long character development is probably the most boring thing in the world for me.  99.9% of the time I feel absolutely nothing for them anyway,  so it's all a waste of time and the best filmmakers can introduce characters within a second.  Very, very few writers of any gender are good enough to make long character development work. The time spent with them is rarely interesting enough and the pay off is too slight.

That being said: I think its a fact that men and women are equally good at writing.  It's purely subjective from my male point of view that I more often enjoy male oriented fiction. Speculative fiction is my favourite genre, with Horror being my standout favourite. Shirley Jackson and Mary Shelley prove women can write horror as well as any men, they just don't tend to.

Hmm. Idk about that last part? I know tons of female horror/fantasy/sci-fi writers.

So, are the stacks against women in general simply bc the readers are majority male?

Do women have to adopt the male aesthetic in their writing in order to be made or sought after for film work?

I guess this is why women usually have to develop their own production companies and have things targeted to them specifically i.e. contests

In the modern world, men play video games and watch movies. I would guess that the book market is at least 75% women now. That probably means that the percentage of women writers will end up being similar, as people who read a lot are more likely to write. As far as publishers preferring men, I don't speak from experience, but my guess is that might be true if this was 1950. But my guess is that the publishing industry itself is now dominated by women too, or soon will be.

That's why I don't understand the obsession in the screenplay world of trying to set up special programs to create opportunities for women writers. I just don't believe there is any discrimination. Sorry, I know discrimination is kind of a pet cause. Take the Nicholl's Fellowhip, for example. The judging is blind, so the readers don't know the writer's gender. They have about a 50/50 split with women and male judges. And they try to divide it up with the scripts. Every entry gets at least 2 reads, and they try to split that one woman and one man. And yet the Nicholls winners are only about 27% female. But here's another thing: only about 27% of the entries are by female writers! So it comes out about as would be expected if men and women were equally talented. I've also seen women activists complain to Nicholls, saying there should be more women winners even though it comes out even in terms of number of entries.

Well, like I said it's not all inclusive or exclusive.

But what I was mostly wondering was if men and women view writing differently, would that have an effect on results?

Vice-versa as well. Although I do feel women are a little more lenient to men on this account. (other things as well but that's another thing)

I do feel that any contest that is purposefully looking for unique and diverse voices (non-white, non-male ones) NO OFFENSE! is doing so for a reason. Lack of representation in the industry. Nothing against the writers who don't fall under the 'diverse' category but to be fair there are WAY more of those type of stories than any other.

Also, I watch movies and play video games faithfully and so do a lot of other women. In the modern world that is.

Quoted from Female Gaze I have this discussion with my male writing friends all the time. We can never agree. What do you lot think?

I judge the writing, not the gender. It's too simplistic a question imho. Plenty of women writers going way back had to use masculine nom due plumes just to be taken seriously and get their books published.

So many other factors before you even start comparing as a male/female debate.

Hollywood for example, is dominated by males which means unless great female writers are even on the map, how can you judge. Rhetorical question.

There are great writers, both male and female. I don't judge based on gender.

Finally, I'm half asleep and I haven't read through other responses yet, but there's a definite irony, and humour in the actually worded question of this thread beginning with a certain 'w' word, and possessive v contraction.

I was really hoping a writer of the male persuasion had started the thread so I could point out the error of HIS ways, and that obviously we females are better. Funny, nevertheless.

I'm guessing, (go Sisterhood!) it was a keyboard/auto correct malfunction.

I should have said don't tend to in the same numbers. There are a lot of female writers in those fields, but not so many as men (I wouldn't have thought). And a lot of the female writers tend to veer into romance/dark sexual fantasy in those sorts of genres.

I think readers of novels are majority female from what I Googled. But the majority writers are men...so who knows what that means?

Do women have to adopt a male aesthetic? Increasingly not, I would say, but I think an especially female aesthetic could be a turn off for a lot of men, or at least a particular kind of aesthetic. The sort of "women's issues" type stories. Men tend to have enough women issues all day long, and want to escape it with some mindless nonsense.

That was not purposeful and I did notice that. But, thanks for your input LC.

Guys, I hope you aren't assuming I DO THIS! I don't at all.

It was just an interesting thing I found online and thought I'd share with you all.

And no this isn't back-peddling just simple clarification

And by 'discussion' with my male writer friends, it's not nearly this straightforward, and we usually end up fighting for the other team in the end oddly enough.

Quoted Text The sort of "women's issues" type stories. Men tend to have enough women issues all day long, and want to escape it with some mindless nonsense.

Oh my! lol