I knew I'd just end up with the peanut gallery if I posted the title as just that one word, but I can't think of anything else to really nail what I'm feeling these days.

The bottom line: I'm sick of writing male leads. I can relate to a degree, I can fake more, but at the end of the day, some deep-seated part of me just wants to work on a primary character I can fully explore, without needing to ask my roommate for input. No pun intended.

I don't want to sound like I'm trying to justify a Sue, or SI type character. I've yet to come close to one of those, because frankly I would be a lousy fit in the HP universe. I just want to be able to go 100%. Currently, I don't think I can, mentally, or as a writer. It's a failing on my part.

This really becomes a problem, when the primary basis of a lot your work happens to be HP-centric. I cheat a bit here and there, and luckily get away with it. I love it when I can, but it's not the same.

I feel like I'm coming out of the damn closet again. "Hey, mom... I... write male leads! I'm sorry, but it's just how I am!" Ugh. Not really. But it has that kind of awkwardness sometimes. It's even worse, as I don't really relate to men well. 85% of my relationships have been with other women. There isn't a large well of experience there to draw on. Then I try to write not only a male lead, but one who's a preteen /early teenager, another subgroup I can't relate to well. Just wasn't a childish child, I suppose.

So yeah. Maybe I'll just break some Potter Law and so some OC-centric fics sometime soon. Or Fem!Harry... or not. Hell, I just don't know anymore.

 

Ok.

You can try this idea: Harry Potter and Fem!Harry Potter story, where you use the third person perspective for Harry's point of view and first person perspective for Fem!Harry Potter.

This way you get to write a female protagonist as one of the lead characters, also, keep the story Harry Potter and not create a complete OC.

The other option would be to write Twilight fanfics.

 

Don't even go there. Twilight, I mean.

I've considered (translated, written about 30k words) a story or two exploring the Fem!Harry thing, or another lead, with Harry playing second string as focus. A first person, with Harry not being the narrator. Just... haven't gotten to the point where I want them out yet.

But seriously, haven't we read all the Harry Potters out there by now? Nearly half a million fics on FFN alone. It's getting thin, finding something new, or at least something that hasn't been beaten to death, much less trying to write it yourself. How many times have you gotten an reasonable idea for a fic, then searched, and found 30 pages of that premise, already there?

And I'm really grateful for the few good female lead stories I find. It's just hard to work on a story that focuses on a fem!Harry, where that on its own isn't the "hook". You start putting too many things in the pot. Or you get the same soup you had all week. Who cares if girl!Harry plays out the seven years of books? I know how that plot goes - already read it. I'm even less interested in writing it.

*mutter* Should start a WH40K/Ranma/HP crackfic where he ends up in the Adepta Sororitas and has to deal with the Geneseed drive of like Marcus from the Thousand Sons in the hopes of overthrowing the Emperor of Man. Or something... just to vent, of course.

 

Here's a crazy, crazy idea...

If you're sick of writing male leads, give Harry Potter fanfiction a break.

 

Well you don't have to abide by the Potter Law or the writers around here - if you want to write a HP universe story with a different, female, centricity, go nuts. Beyond that, I can't really advise you on anything, being a guy who writes male leads and all.

That or, you know, do what Tehan suggested above me.

EDIT: Fuck it - just read what Sesc and Pers said.

 

I sympathize, belleradh. For me, it's not gender issues so much as the whole "back to school" manchild thing, writing social awkwardness, "get an erection from wallpaper" hormones, and lack of life experience for pretty much anything of substance. In my own life, I vaguely remember the embarrassing certitude of thinking myself the smartest thing around, having never encountered a counterexample in the backwater boonies that I haunted, and ideating sex in "cock meets cunt," skin-mag virginal crudity. I was graduated from an American high school in bumfuck Iowa far enough in ancient history that saying "was graduated" didn't sound flippin' anal retentive.

My little sister has a kid about to enter college. He's older than the target demographic for the Harry Potter series.

Any more, my favorite HP fanfiction genre seems to be post-Hogwarts fiction about adults, their relationships, and their issues. I can read pretty much any type of story in this setting (slash included) with any main characters, provided the story is written by an adult about adults who act like them. Among my favorite characters in this genre is the cameo of Harry at the end of respitechristopher's "Albus Potter and the Misspent Youth," just a dad trying to connect with his son, not a tired, mythic superhero.

It seems to me that once you put the whole Voldemort thing into the history books, you're free to make most anyone your central character in the HP 'verse. Why can't there be a story centering on Pansy Parkinson and her on-again-off-again dalliances with a bisexual Dennis Creevey? For the rest of us, High School is a memory, if even that; why should divisions drawn before any of us had a clue matter in life? Fanfiction is capable of so much more in the hands of a decent author.

Make your story post-Voldemort and you can explore almost any theme with anyone and still remain semi-canon. Any female character, even an OC, is fair game as subject of the piece and I, for one, would read it.

 

@ Tehan: Very good advice, and don't think I've not thought of it. I just have so many projects up in the air. I do realize my writing frequency is a bit higher than some: Grimm took a month to finish for chrissake, and I had 40+K down on Snakecharmer in a week. Anyway. Good point, it just grates on me that I've been considering it.

@Sesc: It's not really about the challenge, or the difference in perspective of a male lead, so much as me wanting to more personally relate and identify with my lead. Here's a little secret - I don't like Harry. I personally found people like him (one-dimensional, unmotivated, reactionary) so far outside my desire to deal with, I never learned their name, at his age.

I also don't mind the challenge, and the research... hehe. I love that part. There are days I just spend hours researching the setting, learning the intricacies of this or that aspect of things.

Since you like like Snakecharmer, have you actually looked up some of the references in it? Most are real. The castle is, all the Baronies should be, discounting the metro area. That one's fudged of course - historically it existed however, in a different form in that location. Even the inheritance tax I tried to make as exact as I could, rather than just magic up numbers. Waterstones? Real. And right down the street from Apollo West, and across from Nero. You could completely relive that day. So... yeah. I like the research.

I guess it's more my method that's grating on me? I write like some actors get into their roles. I think about all the things that made them, all the little nitpicky parts of their development and then see how it shaped them, and try to put myself in that place. At the moment, I guess I just need to launder my Harry-suit. God that sounds strange.

And... yeah, I know. That point about 'running out of stories' was just me being bitchy and flailing around for something else to throw at the proverbial wall.

@Pers: Yes. I was never a 'child'. Relating to this entry-level mentality strains me to no end. I have to practically kidnap one of my Roommate's little spawn from the east coast just to see how they act. Maybe it's sad I don't recall being like that, but I just don't. Too much family pressure, then having to go from 14-21 ASAP, to the point I just skipped years of it, in favor of accelerated placement tests etc. ad nauseum.

I'd be more comfortable in a more adult setting, if not for my addiction to logic and reason. Half my stories are background for a point in a future they allow. It's just hard for me to say to a reader "Here is your NOW. The past is irrelevant. Deal with it." Maybe I should. Penance wasn't all that badly received, after all.

I think I'll release this semi-OC fic I'm toying with. It would be like a HP side story. Kind of a Jungle Book meets Anita Blake (even though I despise that woman) thing. Amusingly, it has a 'strange' Astoria again. I think I like picking on that little girl. I guess it would be a "How another facet of the war went" kind of angle. Haven't seen many of those.

Or maybe just some original fiction. I have this Supermassive research pool on a book I want to toy with. Caste separated city, where every human who can do anything remotely magical lives, but with the possibility they'll be stolen away from their families to be part of an Upper or Lower caste, depending on ability. How one is used as a scapegoat, cast 'down', and decides to have her revenge, so to speak. Builds an uprising, which is what she was trying to fight when in an upper caste. Realizes she's just playing inside roles that have been set up, just to to isolate and remove insurgent elements, and leaves the city, which people Do Not Do. Travels abroad, builds a different army, and returns to the city at the head of an invasion. Only for it all to turn around, and be one big ruse. She just delivered the best and brightest of the rebel elements that threatened the city to a trap. Then, I send her into space. Anyway.

Maybe I should work on something that doesn't mention Harry, school, and kids for a bit, rather than get stagnant and bitchy at my own scope of work.

 

Or you could out all your worries aside and update Snakecharmer, the only fic I'm excited about atm.

:|

 

Don't worry - this isn't a longwinded version of an "I'm abandoning everything" notice. Just me venting. Now that I actually have time to work on things, I am again. Despise holidays.

 

Let's not be hasty. Grimm II remains to be written...

 

As far as your problem relating to children, you could always just write Harry as a very adult like child who has the same problem. He never really got to be a child, himself.

And, aside from writing an OC-pov, I don't really have a solution for your gender problem. Unless, of course you stop writing HP. In a perfect world, I don't think that men and women would be quite as different as everyone makes them out to be, but socially accepted gender-roles are, well, socially accepted.

Also, Pers, makes a good point.^

 

Well, if you feel the need to stay in the Harry Potter fandom, then why not write one-shot POV fics? Molly Weasley, Narcissa, Bellatrix, McCongall, are all decent characters to use for such a fic.

Or you know, use a different fandom. Avatar: Last Airbender could use always use more good fics.... :awesome

 

If you were to do a fem!Harry or a OC-centered fic, I'd read it. I really enjoy those types of stories.

You are a good writer. I'm sure whatever you write we will read it.

 

Who..?

 

That Transfiguration Professor and Gryffindor Head of House? Sorry, I was pretty tired when I wrote that.

 

You meant McGonagall then >_>. She's a pretty major character, at least try to remember her name.

 

Fucking FFN won't let me update, stupid doc-manager spewing its rotting, pus-ridden entrails all over my interface like a putrescent pinata.

Grar. Ok I feel a little better now.

 

I guess you broke it yesterday. It's still recovering from the massive blitz.