Month: October 2025
Female Writers, You’re Probably Making These Mistakes About Men
Hello, good evening and welcome, I’m John Lazarus with Stories’ Matter and D&E Publishing. Everyone knows male authors have trouble writing female characters. There are entire Twitter accounts and subreddits devoted to “boobs breasting boobily” and “tits titillating tittily.” Even my own prose hasn’t emerged unscathed, though in my defense, the women in my early novels were so two-dimensional only because none of them had speaking parts.
But just like how we have to die in wars and fend off the sexual advances of our beautiful young secretaries, male characters in fiction don’t always have it easy. There are a lot of things female authors get wrong about men, and I’m not just talking about the fact that most of us don’t have six packs, or the fact that we actually jack off way more than you think we do.
In any case, it doesn’t matter if it’s a man writing about a woman who looks like a JAV idol and talks like your mother, or a woman writing about a man with a Pringles can in his pants where his mommy issues should be, the key thing we’ll focus on this video is author wish-fulfillment. Bad writers fill their stories with their fantasies. And I get it. You’re at home, locked in an office, you’ve lubed up your nether regions because you’re going to be sitting for a while and you don’t want your skin chafing. You can’t watch porn because it distracts you from your writing but this erection (or lady erection) is gotta take care of itself somehow. So you let those urges seep into your story. And now half your book is filled with archers with rippled backs and devilish eyes who won’t even think about cumming until the heroine finishes her character arc.
We’ll remember that men are actually pretty goddamn disappointing on this edition of Stories’ Matter.
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Now, you might be asking, John, why are you doing this video? Aren’t male characters in fiction doing alright? That’s only true in the sense that this issue has gone underreported. In fact, it’s such a largely ignored problem that it was really difficult to find online articles to copy advice from like I usually do when I make these videos.
But the publishing industry is getting filled with more and more female authors. I was surprised how many female authors came in for pitch meetings at D&E, because our old office was located in a dangerous part of town and women got snatched off the street and thrown into panel vans all the time.
My point is this rise in female authorship has seen a reduction in veracity when it comes to male characters. I always felt bad having to tell a prospective author that she had great prose and plotting, but that she didn’t understand males and male relationships. Especially because that also meant her sending back out onto Stinson Boulevard.
So to all the prospective female authors watching this video, here are some tips to make your males a bit more authentic.
Tip 1: Closely observe the men in your real life
Great writing comes from great research. So get to know your subjects. Record the conversations you overhear male coworkers having. Or follow a stranger around and see what he does.
On the plus side, unlike if the gender roles were reversed, it’s not likely law enforcement will get involved. On the bad side, most men are starved for attention and if you are even a little bit good-looking, that man will advance on you sexually. Keep mace on you at all times, and if the law permits, a 38 or an equivalent sidearm with real stopping power is even better.
Tip 2: Don’t be afraid to use stereotypes
My father used to say, stereotypes exist for a reason and that’s because they’re 100 percent accurate. While I can’t say I agree, there is truth in every stereotype. After all, look at this map of binge drinking rates in the United States.
Perhaps archetype is a better word. There’s a comfort that readers get from identifying that this character is the ladies’ man, or this one is the sage. Not every character needs to be completely original or deeply sketched. Even in real life, most people are actually quite obvious and easy to decipher.
Tip 3: Don’t make them completely emotionless, unless they’re sociopaths (which is only like 10 percent of the population)
I think most women get the mistaken impression that men are unemotional beings. I know all of my wives thought so. But that’s only because I was really wrapped up with starting D&E Publishing when married to Wife 2, and was hiding affairs from Wife 1 and Wife 3.
I think the trick, female writers, is to be sparing with your emotional reveals when writing your male characters. Some examples of this could include: Throwing a remote at the TV when the Islanders fail to take advantage of the power play, laughing when a frisbee hits a friend in the throat, a violent burst of tears during orgasm.
Tip 4: Male friendships barely count as relationships. Write them that way
A man can share an office with another man for years without learning his name. I mean, you’ll never have sex with each other, so what’s the point? And if society collapses and we need to hunt each other for food, knowing each other’s names will just make things harder. If that seems insane to you, well… you’re not thinking enough like a man.
Male friendships after college exist for only a few reasons: to make business connections, to get access to secret societies or to get time away from small children. In any case, don’t write these relationships like you would female ones. The only time men might really open up with each is if some sort of initiation ritual at those secret societies demands it.
Tip 5: When in doubt, give them lots of flaws
In honesty, this should go without saying. Flaws are what make characters interesting. What doesn’t make sense to me is that every girlfriend or mistress or wife and even lots of the hookers I’ve been with never had any trouble pointing out my flaws. So this shouldn’t be a big problem for female writers.
Blood Shot Audiobook: Chapter Six (Trap)
How To Tackle Social Issues In Your Writing (so people will finally think you are smart)
The Grapes of Wrath. The Jungle. The Handmaid’s Tale. Tek War. Modelland. All classics rich with commentary on important social issues of their day. From labor rights to suffrage to making sure people can’t clone fashion models, these books have sought social justice for real world issues while also being entertaining pieces of fiction in their own right.
Of course, not all stories do this. Some stories are just trying to excite us with good old fashioned space battles and courtroom dramas. But if you really want people to respect you and think you’re smart, and still not have to learn a bunch of difficult math or some shit, weaving social commentary into your writing is a great way to do this.
It could even be argued that fiction is a great way to sway public opinion on real world topics, perhaps even more than a newspaper. If you’re a good writer, your reader will sympathize with your characters and their plight, whereas most people just shrug about all the people who die on the news. Upton Sinclair used his fiction to get labor laws changed, and as I mentioned before on the channel, my novel Slight of Hand led to a three percent decrease in hate crimes against pygmy street performers.
You don’t have to be an especially progressive person, necessarily. You simply need to have an issue that’s near and dear to your heart. While my political views are a bit complicated, I think my weapons arsenal would at least prove that I’m no bleeding heart liberal. But I hate seeing immigrants in the United States demonized just for trying to find a better life for them and their family. The ones I hired at D&E Publishing were mostly great workers, always diligent and positive, even though it was frustrating to have to hire an interpreter to translate their break room conversations recorded by my hidden wiretap I put there when I thought somebody was poisoning me. Anyway, my novel Storming the Gates of Heaven really shined a light on the economic and cultural hardships immigrants face.
We’ll try to build a better world, or at least do some virtue signalling, on this edition of Stories’ Matter.
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Now you might be asking, John, do I really want to go down this path? What if I piss off the wrong people? Do I really want to have to go take dead animals out of my mailbox every morning and then have to bury them in my yard because the game warden at the local park says you can dump them there any more even though you don’t see why, I mean, you’re just returning them to nature?
Unfortunately, just like traffic, taxes and alimony, social issues are something you can’t avoid.
Look, people are going to hate you no matter what you do. I mean, I once tried to show solidarity with battered women by attending one of their meetings so I could hear their stories and be more sensitive in my writing. But they said that first, men usually aren’t allowed at those meetings, and second, personal firearms absolutely aren’t allowed at those meetings. I tried making up for it by writing A Dressing In Disguise, about a woman who murders an intruder and then gets a taste for bloodlust, going on a rampage to kill forty male sex traffickers along the Eastern seaboard. But the support group didn’t like that because I guess any kind of violence is a trigger for them. And a lot of my old fans didn’t like the idea of a woman who used a knife to do anything besides carve a turkey. So when you get down to it, there’s just no pleasing some people. Just be true to yourself.
Let’s see how we can make sure we approach these issues delicately and powerfully through our fiction.
Tip One: Make your issue part of the story, not the whole story
Your first goal as a writer, besides making a lot of money, should always be to write a compelling story with memorable characters and engrossing drama. Any asshole can just say how they want society to look. That’s what Twitter and podcasts and the White House Press Room are for.
But unlike the White House Press Secretary, a fiction writer has to be able to hide the fact that they’re full of shit. Let’s say you want to write a story about gun violence and how we need more gun control. I mean, I’d think you’re crazy, but that’s beside the point. Give me a story about a man who lives through Vietnam. His arc should be about dealing with his PTSD of the horrors he saw. Maybe he does this by befriending a nun or coaching a little league team or something. And then kill him at the end in a random act of street violence, saving the nun or little league team in the process. You have social commentary about gun violence while the narrative stays true to the character’s arc.
Tip Two: Decide if you want to use a metaphor or be direct
To be honest, this is a good advice for anything in life. When I ran office meetings and had to talk about important issues to my employees, sometimes I’d yell at them to clean the break room, because the break room was dirty. But sometimes I’d yell at them to clean the break room because it was a metaphor for the sloppiness with our editing and press releases.
If you want to directly tackle the issue in your novel, that could work great. But then you have to make sure your research is impeccable, which will require access to a college library, a place that some people might be banned from for various reasons.
If you want to go the metaphorical route, just make sure your audience is able to connect the issue in your story with the issue in real life. Fahrenheit 451 is obviously about censorship and The Expanse is about prejudice and how billionaires always fuck things up for everybody else.
But audiences were confused by my sci-fi novel Defrosted. I thought it was clearly about science going too far – in the book, a group of scientists clone a murderous Santa Claus – but many of my right-wing readers took it as an allegory for the war on Christmas.
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