MG Minded Talks - Main Charaters and Gender

Welcome to a new blog segment MG Minded Talks! We will ask each of the bloggers a series of questions and they will share their responses. This month we are talking genders. Here's the questions:

1) What gender are you writing right now?
2) What gender do you usually write?
3) Do you prefer to write in one gender over another why or why not?

Tom T.

1) Male
 
2) Male
 
3) Actually, no preference...but it's fun writing in the opposite gender because I get to put on my "new perspective" shoes. Always have to reach out for other-gender advice though lol





Jamie K.
1) I'm currently working on three things, all with female protagonists 

2) I tend to write more female point of view then male.

3) Female point of view tends to come more naturally to me, esp in YA, but I've written in male point of view before too. I don't have a preference one way or the other because I tend to let the characters dictate their gender and personalities. It just seems like most of my main characters are female because I enjoy writing strong women. That said if I have a female MC the main secondary character tends to be male or vice versa if the MC is male the main secondary character tends to be female. That way I get a good balance.

Stacey T.
1) My current MG WIP has TWO boy main character's! Simply because that's what those characters were in my head.

2) this is my first time writing through the point of view of a boy. I usually write girl protagonists. But admittedly my girl characters tend to be more on the "Tom boy" side of things.

3) I don't think I have a real preference other than it feels more natural to write from a girl's perspective. Though I do like being able to show that girls can be just as cool as boys.



Jason R. 
 
1) Female
 
2) Both
 
3) No. A lot depends on what I think fits best with the story I want to tell at the time, but I do admittedly make a conscious effort to write strong females whenever possible (knowing that my daughter, 9, will read it).



Dan K.

1) boy 

2) boy 

3) I've gravitated towards writing boys as my main characters but I have the most fun writing girls as my MC 





Tom M. 

1) Current main character is a girl. 

2) I'd say the gender I choose to write is mostly determined by what best serves the story. 

3) I find writing female characters forces me to push deeper into creating more fully-realized characters since there is so much about them I won't personally relate to.




Brooks B.

1) Transgender female 
 
2) Both
 
3) TIGHTS has a boy MC and the one I just finished has a girl MC and I've loved writing both. After I finish this YA I'm going to start on another MG that'll have a girl MC. I ALWAYS begin by creating a character and then a story to fit him or her. Most of my MCs are inspired by people I know or meet so a lot of times that'll dictate the gender. But not always.




How about all of you?
1) What gender are you writing right now?
2) What gender do you usually write?
3) Do you prefer to write in one gender over another why or why not?