{"id":9946,"date":"2022-08-16T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9946"},"modified":"2022-08-15T20:55:01","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T00:55:01","slug":"the-male-point-of-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=9946","title":{"rendered":"The Male Point of View"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Kevin Tipple, on his wonderful Kevin\u2019s Corner<\/a> website, which includes mystery and crime fiction-related news, a blog, and book reviews, included the following guest post from me last Sunday. It covers an issue people often ask me about. Check him out!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you, Kevin, for your willingness to host a blog essay related to my new mystery\/thriller Architect of Courage<\/em>. In it, protagonist Archer Landis is a successful Manhattan architect whose orderly life falls into disarray when the woman he loves is murdered. That\u2019s just the beginning of a summer of disastrous events that befall him, which put him and everyone around him in danger. Events that, ultimately, he has to try to sort out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m pleased with the reader response, and one question people often ask is, what was it like to write a book from the male point-of-view? First, I never considered having a woman protagonist for this story, so I had a male firmly in mind from the get-go. I took into account that he is a successful businessman and a lot of the story\u2019s action takes place in his office, not at home. His role as the leader of a prominent architectural firm is essential to who he is, and fits his \u201clet\u2019s get on with it\u201d personality. You see this in his interactions with his staff, helping them move forward through a variety of difficulties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In thinking about this post for you, Kevin, I realized that, in fact, most of the principal characters in this novel are men: Landis\u2019s two principal associates, his lawyer, the police detectives, his right-hand when situations become dangerous. Many conversations occur among these characters, and in them, especially, I worked on the gender issue. Women (at least women of my generation) were socialized to express themselves tentatively, \u201cIt\u2019s just a suggestion, but would you like a roast beef sandwich? Or, maybe . . . something else?\u201d whereas a man would say, \u201cLet\u2019s have a roast beef sandwich\u201d and be done with it. Of course I\u2019m exaggerating. (See how I did that? Tried to get you to go along with my example by using the \u201cof course.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I reviewed all the dialog numerous times to make sure the \u201cweasel-words\u201d\u2014the things you say to minimize importance or weaken a statement\u2014were removed, except in instances where the speaker was genuinely unsure. I don\u2019t know, what do you think? (See?) A document search found every instance of the word \u201cneed,\u201d which I usually replaced with \u201cwant.\u201d There\u2019s a subtle difference between \u201cI need you to finish that floor plan\u201d and \u201cI want you to finish.\u201d Once you go on the hunt for weasel-words, they\u2019re everywhere!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By excising that fluff from the men\u2019s conversation, the women\u2019s voices became more distinctive. Yes, there are <\/em>women in Architect of Courage<\/em>! One character readers single out is Landis\u2019s receptionist\/assistant Deshondra. She\u2019s young and a practitioner of upspeak? You know what I mean? It makes sense that her conversation would be kind of (there I go again) a counterpoint for the men\u2019s because of her youth, inexperience, and gender.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All this focus on how Landis expresses himself provides a window into the more fundamental issues of how he thinks, analyzes problems, and reacts to situations. Even though he doesn\u2019t talk about feelings a lot, his behavior reveals what\u2019s going on inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a second novel that includes chapters in alternating points of view, female (my protagonist) and male (a police detective). Compared to Archer Landis, I find the female protagonist harder to write. There\u2019s too much \u201cme\u201d in there. She\u2019s not me; I need her to bring her own self to the project. What I want to avoid is a book in which the main character seems to be the author projecting, what I call wish fulfillment literature. Action heroes are prone to this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you again, Kevin, and I hope your audience members who read Architect of Courage<\/em> will enjoy it!

Have you read Architect of Courage yet? Order a copy here<\/a> and check out that male point of view!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Tipple, on his wonderful Kevin\u2019s Corner website, which includes mystery and crime fiction-related news, a blog, and book reviews, included the following guest post from me last Sunday. It covers an issue people often ask me about. Check him … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"What it's like to write from the point of view of a different gender. How people communicate is a key.\n","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[174,3,32,29],"tags":[1963],"class_list":["post-9946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-draft-blog","category-mystery","category-thriller","category-writing","tag-architect-of-courage"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2Aq","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9946"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9946\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9947,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9946\/revisions\/9947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}