Introduction
When I was working on my thesis novel for my master's degree, I was about fifty pages in when I realized I needed to include some scenes from the protagonist's wife's point of view.

I was terrified.

I've written stories with demons, aliens, elves--creatures so foreign that we can barely comprehend how they might think or act. But now, faced with the perspective of writing from the POV of a woman, apprehension filled me.

Judging from some of the critique groups I've been in, and by the fact that I'm facilitating this workshop, this fear of writing from the perspective of the opposite gender is not uncommon.

Those supernatural or otherworldly characters are in some ways easier to write, because the chances that a vampire is going to pick up your masterpiece and say "That's not how a vampire would act" are slim. On the other hand, I've often heard (sometimes when my own work is under discussion) "but no man/woman would actually do/say/think that."

That's not to say there's no room for embellishment, or that everything has to be exactly true-to-life. This is fiction, after all, and our readers keep reading because we offer them an escape from the mundane. Still, it's important to keep enough realism in our writing so that people walk away saying, "Gee, she really nailed that character--I can't believe a woman wrote that." (As an aside, if you read any of Tabitha King's novels--The Book of Reuben specifically comes to mind--you can see some great examples of a woman who really nails how guys think and act.)

In our fiction, we want the characters to take over so that the reader is sucked into this other world. The last thing we want is for the reader to be yanked out of the story because our macho detective suddenly starts singing and dancing down the rain-slicked streets of the city.

So how do we achieve this balance, and put that realism in our writing? Over the next few weeks, we'll work on some writing exercises to help you "not think" the way a man does.

But really, it's all writing. For my dilemma with my master's thesis, I sat down and thought about the women I know--how they act, how they talk, what they do in stressful situations. Moreover, I thought about this specific character--a wife trying to support her husband through a lengthy recovery process--and I let the character tell me what she would do.

You don't have to be a murderer to write a good villain, and you don't have to be a man to write like one. To add to what I said earlier, don't be afraid to add some twists. Your hard boiled detective can write sonnets, or like kittens, or volunteer with Big Brothers/Big Sisters--as long as it fits that character.

I hope that when we're done, that male lead in your novel will be so lifelike that you can smell the coffee/beer/Scotch--or maybe all three--on his breath.

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