New Twitter game hilariously shames bad male authors

A new Twitter game has taken the internet by storm!

Many women have noticed how female characters can be so badly written, especially by men. It is almost as if those male writers don’t see women as people, with complex personalities and 3-dimensional lives. The strange and often nonsensical over-description of women’s bodies can be most irritating, and when a male writer has a female character narrating, it often becomes embarrassing for everyone involved.

Writer Gwen C. Katz noticed this happening again and again until one day, when faced with yet another ridiculous passage in a book she had begun reading, she tweeted a snippet from the book.

The discussion that followed prompted her fellow women readers and writers on Twitter to join in a game… Describe yourself as a male writer would.

A male author is insisting that he is living proof that it's possible for a male author to write an authentic female protagonist.

Here's a quote from his first page. pic.twitter.com/f6d5bN2EHq
— Gwen C. Katz (@gwenckatz) 30 March 2018

The passage reads

“I sauntered over, certain he noticed me. I’m hard to miss, I’d like to think—a little tall (but not too tall), a nice set of curves if I do say so myself, pants so impossibly tight that if I had had a credit card in my back pocket you could read the expiration date. The rest of my outfit wasn’t that remarkable, just a few old things I had lying around. You know how it is.”

How anyone can think that that’s how women would narrate their lives is beyond me. Has this author even met a woman before?

Personally I think the phrase ‘if I do say so myself’ should be banned. Permanently. If you can’t write without cliched nonsense then perhaps you shouldn’t bother?

new twitter challenge: describe yourself like a male author would
— Whitney Reynolds (@whitneyarner) 1 April 2018

She was forty but could have passed for a year younger with soft lipstick and some gentle mascara. Her dress clung to the curves of her bosom which was cupped by her bra that was under it, but over the breasts that were naked inside her clothes. She had a personality and eyes. https://t.co/o9UJ5QcrQM
— Jane Casey (@JaneCaseyAuthor) 1 April 2018

No male author has ever written an attractive fat woman in her twenties who loves life so I wouldn’t even know where to start tbh. https://t.co/sCgNL6pCG1
— Bert (@bethanyrutter) 2 April 2018

Her body was an hourglass meant for taking his time, but her mohawk concerned him. She had a lesbian look, & too many tattoos, in languages he couldn't pronounce. Still, she'd written a stack of books. It was time for him to weigh in with his high school knowledge of Beowulf. https://t.co/26HNfX7n6Q
— Maria DahvanaHeadley (@MARIADAHVANA) 2 April 2018

As she moved her strong cocoa body gleamed as if calling to the country of Africa. Her chocolate waist moved like an alluring siren calling me to crash on the rocks of her brown buttocks. https://t.co/eY08cAprM1
— Kelechi Okafor (@kelechnekoff) 2 April 2018

Some men on Twitter were just scared to write a fellow human for some reason

This concerns me deeply; I want to get into writing--had this story rattling in my head for years--but this makes me feel like I don't dare try writing female characters.
— Chuck L. Finley (@TARDIS_Junkie) 2 April 2018

Every dude who has responded to this thread with “this makes me scared to write women” — stop it, cut it out, nobody cares, just treat us like people. https://t.co/zJyp8I7Lss
— Kate Leth 🦇✨🌈 (@kateleth) 2 April 2018