Who's a better writer, men or women?

[Lust_for_Literature]

Men are better at writing thrillers and horror, as their logical and technical minds transfer better over print. Women are great at all that romance and touchy feely stuff. Alice Sebold would be a much better author were it not for the limitations of her gender- in practically all her books, she tangentialises at key stages of the book to explore the inner thoughts and feelings of her main character which is very intrusive and not at all appropriate to the situation at hand, whereas male writers tend to concentrate on the action first.

Oh my goodness a neanderthal in our midst & there was I thinking you were a 21st century guy! How very sexist of you ... no wonder you like fantasy!

No, not sexist just giving my own opinion. Im not living in the 1940s with regard to my views on women and equality, im just saying that of all the books that i have read from crime to horror (i HATE fantasy!!) to thrillers etc, i have personally found that men make the superior author in these genres. They tend to just stick to logical facts and develop the character in such a way that they dont pause to describe their inner emotional turmoil every 5 seconds which a lot of female authors do. That way you can relate to and care about the character when his motivations and feelings are doled out in small quantities rather than wearing you down with constant mumbo jumbo about "This feels wrong, i love my wife (X200) etc etc. Its quality of character development not quantity.

Women authors tend to excel in romantic novels because they are more attuned to their feelings than men are and this helps them with their descriptive talent to writing novels. Not at all am i saying that they are inferior authors i am just saying that personally i find men can write better thrillers and horror.

You just keep digging yourself deeper and deeper buddy. Gender is a false binary that determines unnecessarily strict guidelines and expectations. I suppose you are entitled to your preferences, but I think you would have a lot to gain from loosening up. Try reading The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks. Or anything by Agatha Christie, a WOMAN who is, incidentally, the top-selling crime author of all time. Just saying, do your research first.

[marina3035]

I don't think gender matters much when it comes to writing. I feel like one should respect all writers, regardless of the gender. Male and female writers are proven to be equally talented, and show that it depends more on the individual then the gender. I've read amazing and beautiful novels from both genders and therefore I do not have a preference towards a certain gender when reading a book. Writers have different personality so one cannot narrow that personality down to them being male or female.

[chytach18-]

I`ve found quite alarming resemblance of this discussion to what we had about 'The Basic Instructions Before Lovin Eve'.

[dickens 100]

Hard to compare. Modern books, I seem to like women, seem much more interesting .Older books, I prefer man, like Thomas Hardy,who was very descriptive

[Threadend]

I believe both are equal in writing talents. This is a very open ended question, as it eliminates the successes and failures of both genders rather than seeing each person as 'writers' first. Eliminating the genders, however, also eliminates how each person changed literature. Without Mary Shelley, for example, we would have no SciFi or dystopian works. Without Ray Bradbury (or George Orwell) we wouldn't have extended modern literature that questions society and it's practices. Those are just two examples in a very big soup pot. Saying "which is better" creates such a large variable that is not tangible in thought or practice.

I am a man and for a while I was illusioned to believe that I was a part of the "better" gender when it comes to writing and other academic pursuits (good ol' patriarchy). I slowly learned that it is simply impossible to measure either or and that I need to respect each and every person who writes no matter their gender or expression. Deciding that some traits are masculine and some feminine diminishes talent and ability. Pigeonholing anyone into types of writing they 'may' be good at based on gender is not effective. Both genders can be good at writing, great at writing, amazing at writing, poor at writing. The gender binary is not a reference but rather a useless old "science". I'm much more interested in content no matter the gender.

[sdurica]

Everyone has had different life experiences and views on the world/life. I don't believe that gender is a deciding factor on if someone is a better writer. It's the individual's mind, and the individual's talent. When reading a book I focus on the book and the words and the story not on if the author is male or female.

[mdielm01]

I think it depends on the type of book. My daughter loves the suspense of Stephen King novels while I love the romance and real life stories from Karen Kingsbury. I think it just depends on the author and the genre.

[Tanaya]

It depends! I'm going to go along with most people here and say it's not a matter of gender but talent. Do women write better romance fiction? It would make sense for that to be "true," but an unexpected (in this case, male) perspective is often more enlightening than the norm. There's no way to answer this question universally. It really depends.

[kennyhop]

I don't believe that one sex is inferior to the other, especially with writing. If the author is good, it is because he/she has taken the reader far from reality and into another reality that is now at the fingertips or in hand. ( I prefer having a book in my hand) If I am at the airport in 'real life' and I am reading a book but I know and feel like I am in outer space, the author has done his/her job.

[Ursula_Minor]

Missing from this discussion (at least as far as I've read back, which is not as far, maybe, as I could) is a good sense of the ways that circulating ideas about gender, genre, and writerly talent are self-reinforcing. I know someone who wrote a book for the boy's line of a series of historical-fiction texts written for boys and girls. His text was rejected based on it being too "feminine" in style. He was asked to write a text for the girl's line (which: good for him- getting published is hard!), at which point his publisher suggested he publish under a woman's name. He didn't, but how many people would have, and do, and how does that cycle further entrench ideas about mens/womens texts and feminine/masculine writing? I'd be willing to bet that at least some portion of romance novelists, for example, are men writing under pen names that make them sound like women.

[bleed to read]

I like both and in all genres too. I think that a man or a woman can get lost in their heads and come up with something awesome. I am so glad that men and women both are able to write what they want to now. It wasn't so long ago that women couldn't write anything but love blah blah blah. case in point S.E. Hinton. She had to use her initials because her publisher loved the stories just didn't think she could make it in a "man's world".

[Jolyon Trevelyan]

Oh please not one of these idiotic who is better men or women,


There are great male authors and there are great female authors.

[Cee-Jay Aurinko]

No speaky English

[Morgan_Malone]

I don't particularly think that either gender is the better writer. Although in the genre that I read I tend to see a lot more female authors than male authors.

[Dphaber]

I usually prefer women as authors- but that's a personal preference with little basing in logic or fact. In reality, I think it's a bunch of socially-programmed nonsense to argue that men or women are intrinsically better at any kind of writing than the other.