I’m working on a fantasy right now and have spent ~four hours in the last week alone researching transportation and occupations in the time period, along with backchecks to make sure different plants and foods could be harvested given the environmental situations. Honestly, though, an hour researching plausible alcoholic drinks and the types of grain and berries to be grown in a northern seaboard clime gets pretty boring.

But if you want a good example of the benefits of research, check out Codex Allera

You’re doing it wrong when you think that it should be a no brainer that people should and must like your character as a person because you want to illicit a reaction. The worst outcome is leaving readers apathetic.

But many young women do think that way. That love has to be some kind of 6th sense. Portraying that works when the girl learns something and grows up. But Twilight for example reverses that premise, that the 6th sense shallow kind of love IS “True love”. And it’s part of why it’s so popular, because the misguided young ladies are having their own ideas about love reinforced and then some.

The example about the female combatant vs the stronger one isn’t really the best one as males’s egos can be verrrry fragile when it comes to competition. But there’s either three tacks one can take as a result of that scenario. One can either have the female echo a male type competitiveness or feel sorry for herself and then come back at him. One could do that, or one could have her actually be turned on by his masculine strength and dominance.

The latter isn’t a tactic I personally use but I can see why works primarily targeted to females would.

Kenny, the idea behind your example is basically correct. Although, it’s pretty hard to know whether a guy is not ‘the one’ without a few deep conversations. I’d say your woman in that piece has to have known him for a little while, or simply finds him repulsive. But again, this is all just my opinion. Thank you for your interest, though.

How’s this read?: **“Will you go out with me?”

Even for her diminutive size, with a titanic amount of thought, so tremendous and insightful if written into books it’d fill a library, she reached a decision. “No,” she answered, as there were too many variables to consider. She couldn’t be sure if he was ‘the one.’**

Again, thanks for the good bit of insight.

I did some research on this topic a while ago for a speech (before realizing I could just recycle my old WWII topic and cut out lots of work). You are correct in the way you characterized our different methods of thinking. Though, I wouldn’t call it logic, as not all men think logically. I would stick to the term “linear”. We think in a straight line, in steps. Women have something more like a web than a path, which is very hard for me personally to comprehend.

Also, I liked that bit about body language. The deadly, female, brow-raise…lol.

I really like the above quote. Thank you, because it pointed out something so obvious yet so easily forgotten.

I would also love a follow-up to this; where you may grab a few pieces of your story, where a male character is acting too feminine, and then some edits you’ve made to make them more masculine. Would this be possible?