Film Courage: Why do you have a love for writing female protagonists?
Jay Fingers, Screenwriter/Author/Youtuber: I really just have to attribute that to
growing up with strong women in my life, it's my mother, my stepmother, my sisters, cousins
and in friends. I've always been surrounded by strong women and women who I don't think I
don't think that their stories have been told and it's it's really interesting because I sometimes
I sometimes struggle with this that should I be the one to tell these stories because I'm a man
but I think back to a conversation I had with a friend and she really wowed me when she said this
and what she said was she was just like you like women and I'm just like well yeah I'm a straight
guy I like women she's just like no I don't mean like in a romantic sense or in a sexual sense I
mean you like women you pay attention you're like empathetic like you really truly care about women
and when she said that like I said like it really stuck with me and I thought back to like the books
that I've written the scripts that I've written and how I've treated my female characters and I've
tried my best to yeah tell the stories of these women and try to uplift these characters so that
should anything ever be made whoever sees this perhaps they'll see themselves in that character
and they'll feel they'll get that message they'll feel empowered they'll feel uplifted so it's it's
really just due to the women in my life I mean I've just had amazing women in my life and they
inspire me they they truly do inspire me let's see some of you have brought some of your books
with you here yeah yeah I'm just because I read a little bit about them on Amazon and each one had
an interesting story I was just wondering if you could hold it up and just quickly tell us sure
so this is guest list this is my first book and it tells the story of a young woman
young woman named Juliet who moves from Miami to New York when she gets to New York she
gets caught up in the whole nightlife scene meets a popular party promoter and sparks fly
okay yeah the reception to this book was really good I was honestly I was worried because of what
we were talking about I was worried about how people would respond to the depiction of Juliet
I wondered if this was the story that I should tell because I was telling it from a young woman's
point of view but apparently I people responded the voice was authentic and so I'm really happy
with it I'm really happy with it it's a really cool cover too I like that thank you thank you
it was actually designed by very talented friend of mine Sheena Michelle Reese Civilized Media
she designed this is actually the second cover for guest list the initial cover was in
a nightclub and had the disco ball and everything but I wanted Juliet to be on the cover and so
what were you afraid of with that character that the audience May
either think you weren't the right person to write it or whatever it was well again just
I'm a man writing about a young woman in writing through her point of view and
it's a romance and the book goes certain places especially like sexually and I just
I was worried that it would come off as inauthentic I was worried that that maybe uh
I know I've seen gripes of like male writers writing their fantasy writing and oh gosh there
was a hilarious example I saw on Twitter where it was I don't know something like a woman's
lips were as big as I don't know biggest balloons or it's just something so odd that
clearly the author thought was alluring and that everyone else is just like this is terrible this
is horrible men stop writing women like this and so that's what I was one of the
things I was afraid of I was afraid that people would think that I'm just writing my fantasy
that I may be objectifying women in some way and that clearly wasn't my intent I just this
is a story that I felt needed to be told sure sure and let's see some of the other ones you got there
this is Manhattan sweetheart nice I forgive me I forget the illustrator's name but she's like a
fashion illustrator a Russian fashion illustrator and she gave me so many different options for the
cover but it's great but Manhattan sweetheart is about it's actually about a young man who
pursues a young woman and he's trying his best she's essentially revealed to be a call girl
and he just comes to realize he can't compete with the world that she's in and the things that
she wants and what she's after again this was another book that I was worried about
how people would respond what people would think but I wasn't trying to in any way like
objectify or or disrespect or anything like that it was just a story that I wanted to tell
and it's also inspired by Breakfast at Tiffany's I love Breakfast at Tiffany's both the book and
the film and this is just kind of like my spin on Breakfast at Tiffany's it was just something that
I felt I needed to to write at the time do you do you almost hear the critics in your head and then
you counteract them no no okay I don't think about I don't think about criticism until after the work
is done and not even after the work is done but after the work is done and it's out there
I didn't have any any kind of like thoughts in writing Manhattan sweetheart or guest
list until they were published and they were out in the world and then it was just like
wait a minute should I have done that was was that the right story was that
should I have included maybe like that plot point or whatever but
but yeah apparently I'm I'm okay that's good yeah and we have one more there I do
I mentioned earlier I grew up in the neighborhood called orange mound in Memphis Tennessee
this is orangebound the novel oh wow okay very cool thank you this was
young Earl Gray did the cover she's an Australian artist and I just loved her style and she was able
to to create this it's supposed to kinda evoke black exploitation I don't know that it does but
but it's also got a comic bookie quality that I love and the story is it's it's a thriller it's
it's got action elements and everything but it's also very much like exaggerated
like a comic book would be so I think that the cover really works for for the for the story
and it tells the tale of this is actually another male protagonist it tells the tale of a ant who's
trying to leave the drug dealing game behind
and he gets wrapped up in a romantic entanglement with a hair stylist named Tuffy
but then he suspects that when Tuffy disappears he suspects that Tuffy has stolen his money
and a lot of other elements come together the real bad guys come coming to play and
I do have Gigi Garcia she's like very prominent on the cover she's like the main enforcer for
the bad guys and she's she's a she's a strong female character but she's also very lethal
I've had people who've read this book I've had a lot of them comment on Gigi like they
love her because of her character she's very much chaotic evil [Laughter] what advice do
you have for writing female protagonists once again it's it's it's it's paying attention
I think that a large reason why I'm able to write female protagonists I guess as well as I do is
because I really have paid attention to the women in my life I pay attention to the women around me
I pay attention to the situations that they may find themselves in and how they respond or how
they would have liked to have responded it's it's really just all about paying attention and and
figuring out how to how to take what you've seen and give give that to your characters
sure and maybe when you talked about so many male writers possibly or perceived as writing
like this fantasy but if you're writing where the women have like these fears and doubts and
insecurities and things I don't know where that plays into a fantasy that sounds like
a real person I mean yeah yeah yeah I I'm I'm not yeah that's the thing I'm not coming at my female
characters from from that fantasy standpoint like I'm not like I am creating a person and
telling that person's story and you've got to you've got to really know that person inside now
their hopes their fears how they would react in a certain situation like who they are you really
have to know who your character is and I think that if you're able to do that you can avoid
making making those types of mistakes sure and the reverse could be said for women writing men
that if you're just writing this one-dimensional stud hero that's just there's they never not they
never have any doubt I mean that that doesn't seem real either right so the same could be said
because there's a lot of of course criticism well how can we write someone that we don't really that
we aren't really in that situation well I mean we we've we've met people and we can pick up on
things and yeah I don't feel like we should be barred from writing or things that aren't
in our gender or neighborhood or whatever right exactly what challenges do you face when writing
female protagonists it's it would really be just like the Small Things [Laughter] just for example
gosh I feel like I'm gonna say something horrible here but oh that's okay we can take it out
you know while I'm all about paying attention and and looking
at the details I mean there are some things I just don't know for example
um Tuffy who's a hair stylist I grew up around women who were in that world who were hair
stylists my stepmother owned a beauty salon but I am not a hair stylist and so it's just like
small small details about say like women's hair I want to know am I getting this right
like it sounds crazy silly but those are those are the challenges just kind of like
the minutia of of of of women's life I'm not a woman so I wouldn't know that so that's what's
difficult and that's what those are the questions I would ask in writing it's just like okay I have
this female character doing this saying this pondering this am I getting it right is this is
this accurate I will ask for feedback on that and based on that apply that make whatever changes are
necessary just to go back to your point we we're all people we all have similar experiences uh and
feelings regardless of where we may have grown up or or or or where we work or who we interact with
I don't think it's it's difficult to write female characters difficult to write women
because women are human it's and it's really just kind of applying like that same Humanity
that I would to a male character it's like it's not difficult what's there's a quote
from Jack Nicholson and As Good As It Gets where someone asks how do you write females hey what
does he say he says I take away accountability I think of a man or something yeah and I take away
accountability account I don't know I always think about that quote I'm it's just like so horrible
so horrible but but it works for his character it works for his character definitely but yeah
when it comes to crafting female characters it's really it's not like it's thinking about
them as a human as a person we all go through it we all have similar stuff going on so it's
the depth that's not difficult it's like I said it's just like the kind of maybe superficial stuff
I swear and one thing that I love Margaret Atwood says about female characters is that she doesn't
make them all sweetness and light because all human beings have a range of emotions in them
even even the best ones so she gives them good qualities as well as the bad so I think that's
another thing that she said was she saw that sometimes women didn't have these depths to
them they weren't dark enough in terms of certain thoughts that weren't always good I think she said
some woman stood up in the audience said we're tired of being painted as good all the time and
I'm sure in this beauty shop people can fight in hair stylists and there's all sorts of interesting
stuff in there oh yeah yeah to be continued what do you hate seeing in female characters
I hate seeing like the kind of one-dimensional damsel in distress are it's kind of like dainty
women have women have range women have dark as well as light as you mentioned in my book orange
Mound the character of Gigi Garcia I don't think that I ever I've ever seen a female character
like this like in film or literature I could I take that back I take that back there's a book
called I think heartsick and the antagonist is essentially like a female Hannibal Lecter
Gretchen Gretchen something I can't remember but reading a character like that singing character
like that in that book you wouldn't expect we've we've never seen anything like that and I tried
to do something like that with my character Gigi Garcia I think that's probably why a lot of people
responded to this character because she is strong she's physically strong she takes on the guys
but she's super intelligent I wanted to create a formidable villain and I
don't think that that had really been seen and so and so that's the thing I
as you mentioned like women have range and I hate seeing female characters that
don't take full advantage of that that's my roundabout way of of getting there
saying that is that I don't like when these female characters are certainly capable of
showing and expressing so much more than the writer has allowed them to
and they get stuck in in a role that honestly serves a plot instead of the other way around.