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For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

I need some answers about my new story.

1) Would you men read it to the end if the only protagonist was a woman?

2) Would you finish the story if the character was way older than you, like an adult with a boring job?

This is just for the first few pages, but will it bother you if the character was a woman/ older than you?

How much: a bit, some, a lot?

 

Thanks for solving my questions.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

1. it wouldn't really make a difference to me unless it was like a romance game than I wouldn't play it.

2. Well i wouldn't care if the job was boring but whether or not the story itself was boring.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Do not worry, I'm doing what I can to make it interesting. I'm writing the first pages and would not want people giving up because the character is not what they wanted.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

1.) If the story was good then I would.  Having a female protagonist isn't neccesarily a turn-off for a storygame, but the problem is making it relatable to a majority-male audience.

2.) I always give it a few pages to see if it picks up (every good story needs a backstory, after all) so if it got better it wouldn't be a turn-off. However if the entire story was about said character's boring day job then probly not. Other than that, just make it relatable, like in 1. he doesn't have to act like a teenager, per se, but hopefully you know what I mean :P

 

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

As long as the game is good, I will enjoy it. One of my Favriote games has a female protagonist. 

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

1. I generally have the same criteria of liking a story even if the protagonist is a woman which is: 1) Good character. Nothing one dimensional or boring. 2) Doesn't make me upset/angry. What I mean is, someone who's sole purpose is to be as mean as possible with no regard for others. 3) A good plot centered around them. I appreciate if they actually do something worthwhile in the story and not, for example, just be a character who only wants one thing(In sports shows/movies it's a title or whatever, in romance it's a girlfriend/boyfriend, etc).

2. Depends. How old are we talking about? You don't want someone so much older than you that you can't connect in some way but you also don't always want to be writing about young people all the time.

 

Overall, guys(and girls) don't usually mind a story where the opposite gender is the protagonist. If it's a good story or good plot overall as a whole people don't care. For example, growing up I used to watch the Teen Titans a lot. There were five main characters, 3 boys and 2 girls. One of the boys I didn't really care for but the rest of the team I did. It didn't matter if they were older than me or girls, I just liked them because they were funny and had nice action scenes.

Now in some circumstances, yeah, gender is a problem. Some romance stories on this site have girls as their main protagonist and when they get to romance scenes and such I'm just like, "........really? The point of all this is......?"

I was bored. Really bored and not interested in the story or character, even if it was good.

In most cases though, if it's not heavily on romance, gender really isn't a problem I feel. Hope this helped.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Well, I do not want to reveal much of the story, but it is a horror one. And there will not be romance at all, if anything.

This was the best answer until now, thanks.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Yeah, I really don't think it matters - depending on the story of course  :)

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Depends.

Will there be a shower/bath scene?

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Uh oh... Better not read my Conan The Barbarian game then haha!...

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

You don't have a conan the barbarian game

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

That you know of!

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

He's writing it. (and I may or may not have full access to the game)

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

I am 26, 3 kids and a boring job lol

So ya i'd read it :)

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

My mind has been blown.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

lol why??

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

26 with three kids!!!!!

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

ya my oldest was born when i was 19

...? why is that mind blowing

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

How old were you when you married?

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

just got marrie din April of this year

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

I dunno, it's not that unusual and he's got a job to help support said kids. I've known some girls and guys with two kids before the age of eighteen. Obviously in those cases it's not the best life choice making decision, but there you go.

Aeon would probably be the average peasant in medieval times with three kids and a boring job. (Need those kids for extra help on the farm, put em to work as soon as they walk)

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

except in this case my boring job involved 6 years of school and 2 degrees :)

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

I also have full custody of my oldest child. Not many "Men" can claim that I fought my ass off for my kid. 

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

my dad had two kids by age 16 so I didn't think what he said was so unusual.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Ya my mom had me when she was 17 soo...  I know it sounds kinda crazy to a younger crowd, but it happens all over the world everyday. Way back when the prime age for having kids was 12-13... course lifespan then was like 35 tops and thats if you ate all your veggies....

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Actually, life spans were pretty high, some people lived up to 70 years old, the only reason  the lifespan average is so low is because most children died at childbirth, brought the average down quite a bit.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

well ya thats what i was saying the average lifespan was projected to 35ish around that time, Influenza all the "Pox" diseases, hell even the common chest cold killed in the thousands a year. The healthy and wealthy lived considerably longer lives. But that majority was like .5% of the world's population back then. now everyone has access to flu shots, and mandated vaccinations. 

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

and  by everyone I mean 1st world countries, 

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Because everyone knows 3º world countries are a myth.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Make ya wonder what a second world country is though....

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Under the old definitions, second world countries were communist countries like the Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea, China, etc. This designation isn't really used anymore due to the cold war being over of course.
 

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

That's actually quite an interesting bit of trivia there  :)

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

If video game forums are anything to go by, most guys are bragging about playing as female characters whenever they are available.

Usually with the tiresome excuse of "If I'm gunna play a character, I wanna stare at a gurl's ass instead of a guy's ass all day lololol."

Anyway you should be fine with a female protagonist as long as the story is good. Probably should be more non-romance stories with female protagonists on here anyway.

For the male or teen readers

11 years ago

Along with that ass thing they do it for the turn-ons of having their character have romances with the same characters they would have romanced had they played through as a male... 

To be honest, when I was a kid, the age thing really used to bother me. When I reached around 12-13, I didn't care about it anymore, but the gender thing was annoying me at that time. I would play video games where I couldn't find a woman to play, it was always men, or the story was about a man. Reading books from the viewpoint of a guy used to annoy me, especially if there was some romance in it, but once I reached 14 none of that bothered me so much. 

Sometimes a story demands a certain gender as a main character. For example, if you want your story to be historically correct and about the Civil War and one soldier in it... its not going to be a woman, is it? Or if you were going to write about a nurse in that same time period, it most likely would not be a man. When given a reason for why the protagonist is male or female, often the opposite gender won't think twice about it - especially if they're in that stage I was in where reading from the opposite gender's viewpoint would annoy me. 

And like someone else here said, so long as the older character with a boring job has an interesting story that catches a reader's attention from the get go, I don't think there's a problem. But many people do find it a problem... I mean, how many stories in a traditional fantasy/science fiction setting can you think of where the main protagonist is an old woman? (Without her being 'enhanced' or 'using magic to look younger', that is.) Then again, maybe that's because so many people just want to stick to the 'safe zones' when they are writing... write for their target audiences, so go for their target audiences' age. It would probably be considered ambitious to write about an old woman and expect a fifteen year old to enjoy reading about her adventures through time and space, or whatever... but hey, I bet it could be done.