How to Get Inside Someone Else's Head
Happily, I have been told more than once that I am good at writing characters who are women.
Even more happily, I’ve been told that by women.
(Note: My first draft of that first sentence was, “I have been told more than once that I write characters who are women well.” I reworded it because it could have been interpreted to mean that I wrote characters who were abnormally good at being women.)
Here’s how I write characters who are women.
Step 1: I think of what a reasonable person would do in their situation.
Step 2: That’s it. There is no step two. I just write a reasonable person in the situation they are dealing with.
Some of you are probably thinking that there is at least one time, one regularly occurring time, when a woman’s physiology makes them “irritable.” True, but that irritability is, again, perfectly reasonable. They are being inconvenienced, often in quite severe pain, are powering through these issues to continue to do the things they need to do, and on top of that, they have to deal with a bunch of men acting as if they are crazy. Some irritability is to be expected.
Just saying.