The technology of a game doesn’t allow for a great deal of free-range character choice - in Halo, I can’t take my character outside the mission boundaries. Look at it this way: video game characters are notoriously without agency largely by design. We think of Powers like She Can Fly or She Knows Kung Fu or She Has Mastered The Ancient Art Of Laser Kegels when we should be focusing on the character’s internal power, her narrative power to push on the story, to be a well-rounded human being, no matter how vulnerable, no matter how strong. (You know, like real people do.) We think of Abilities and Skills like they’re stats on a character sheet rather than thinking about what abilities women possess inside the story to affect that story. We focus so much on their Powers, we forget about empowering them with the ability to choose, to have wants and needs and to make decisions based on those things. What makes them interesting is that they choose to fight.Īnd it’s that word - “choose” - that matters. Meaning, they can fight, scrap, throw punches, fire guns.īut their ability to fight isn’t what makes them interesting.
And what we end up with are female characters who are physically strong and little else.
Strong is a word with an often male connotation - it carries with it a lot of baggage. Even better, the plot exists as a direct result of the character’s actions. She pushes on the plot more than the plot pushes on her. This character has motivations all her own. Instead of writing “strong female characters,” try to aim for “women or girls that possess agency.” I’ve defined agency before and so I’ll repeat that definition here:Ĭharacter agency is… a demonstration of the character’s ability to make decisions and affect the story. It’s not even what makes them who they are. But for me, that’s never where it begins. I get asked about this a lot, I guess because write women or girl characters like Miriam Black or Atlanta Burns who, on paper, kick a lot of ass.Īnd that is often the focus of the question - they’re characters who can fight, scrap, throw a punch, fire a gun, and that seems to end up the focus of the question. But a lot of writers - and writing advice about the subject - seem to get it wrong. The idea of writing a “strong female character” isn’t enough.Īs shorthand, it sounds noble.
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