Many writers nowadays are choosing to create stories centered around a female protagonist, and while some do a great job, others miss the mark in a number of ways. Many times, they create stereotypes rather than strong, compelling female protagonists, which is very disconnecting for readers. Today, I’ll be teaching you how to create a strong, effective, engaging, and interesting female protagonist for your novel that your readers will definitely remember!
What is “Strength” in a Character?
Before we really get into the idea of developing our character, let’s actually talk about what makes a character genuinely strong.
Strength can come in a number of ways, but we most often hear about physical strength. This is a generalization; sure, physical strength is one way a person can be strong, but there’s other forms of strength.
Firstly, emotional strength is the ability to handle and grow from emotional challenges. Rather than breaking, a character who has emotional strength may be able to rise above the difficulties of their current situation.
Intellectual strength relates to the character’s ability to solve problems and they are more often than not highly intelligent. They have a lot of knowledge on them and can figure out ways to outsmart others.
A morally strong character is one that takes a stand on certain principles and ethical dilemmas and doesn’t budge from these things when faced with the temptation to. This can include morally gray characters as well.
A strong female protagonist can have one of these or can have many of these things, it just depends on your goals and objectives with your story. Combining different strengths or making the character stronger in some things than others can deliver an interesting story with a good amount of complexity.
How to Create a Strong Female Protagonist
Relatable Backstories are Great
As with any other protagonist, having a relatable backstory for your readers is a big deal. By “relatable” I don’t mean that your character’s backstory must be realistic, but it has to–in a way–resonate with readers.
A backstory includes things like a childhood and personal history. Significant events in the character’s life likely shaped the way they may react to things in the now. Maybe your female protagonist had a mentor or a parent growing up that influenced their personality. Maybe they faced a traumatic childhood and aren’t sure how to overcome the trauma past that stage of their life.
Furthermore, relationships are a great way to define the backstory of your character. Parents, friends, lovers, mentors, etc… are all people that exist in life, and realistically speaking, your main character will have had at least one sort of relationship in her backstory. Even if she doesn’t know her parents, she likely had a friend, a companion, or something similar exist in her past.
Challenges, strengths and weaknesses, as well as internal and external conflicts are all things that also exist in a character’s backstory. You don’t need to go super in-depth with these things if it doesn’t serve your story well, but there was likely some sort of challenge in your character’s backstory that allowed her to become strong in some things in her current state.
Steer Away from Stereotypes
Stereotypes are essentially labels that we fit people under in a generalizing way, and can often be quite rude or shallow in nature. Nobody likes to be labeled in a stereotypical way, and unfortunately, many stories with strong female characters lean too heavily on stereotypes that take away from any proper characterization of the character.
For example, the overly masculine female hero: This is basically just a stereotypical strong man written to look like a woman. It’s honestly a very tired stereotype and I always hate seeing it because the female character isn’t really her own person nor is there really any nuance to her character. She’s basically just there to tick a box off, and that’s not good either.
Some female protagonists are written in a very one-dimensional way and aren’t really given the proper amount of characterization, or are written like damsels in distress where they need saving the entire time and can’t do anything right. Don’t write a female character to write a female character, write a character. Don’t think about the gender when you’re creating the character, just think about the character as a person and build that person a story, a personality, a pattern of behavior, character traits, etc…
You also want to make sure that you’re not being a little too overboard with your descriptions of how the character looks. By that… I think you know what I mean. There are subreddits that show some really distasteful ways authors have written women in their stories and it’s really uncanny to read, so don’t do that.
Skills, Depth, and Emotion
Building strength in a character is something that you’ll notice should come naturally to your character. You want to work on things like emotional depth, skills, character traits, strengths and weaknesses, and more.
Even if your character is a psychopath, there is still some level of emotional depth to that character. Blide from Malware isn’t a female protagonist, but I’ll use him as an example because psychopathy tends to be similar for men and women. Blide is a psychopath, but he still deals with things like friendship, loss, fear, and more. He isn’t totally devoid of any emotional response, but what he feels is different. This is still emotional depth! If you want to learn how to write your own psychopath character, check out this post.
Skills, strengths, and abilities are also things that are great additions to work on for your female protagonist. You want to give your character something unique that helps define her as a person and showcase her strengths in a proper way. If she’s a scholar, you’ll want to show how she demonstrates mastery in her scholarship. If she’s a huntress, you’ll want to show how she’s good at archery, for example.
Furthermore, weaknesses and flaws are great ways to add depth to your character. Neither you nor I are perfect, and your characters can’t be perfect either. You’ll need to give your character flaws as well as things that pull her back and drag her down. Maybe she has fears and anxiety around certain situations or topics or maybe she is impulsive or quick to respond with anger. At the end of the day, a strong female protagonist cannot be strong in everything, so remember to keep that in mind.
You should create a character profile so that you can list these things out and see them in the context of your story. If you want to learn how to create a character profile, check out this post.
Independence and Self-Starter Behavior
A strong protagonist should have some level of independence and should be a bit of self-starter, meaning that she has some level of agency. Your character should be capable of making critical decisions that can change the plot. Your character should also have defined goals and motivations as to why she would be engaged in this particular plot or conflict.
A well-rounded character has a reason for being heavily invested in something, and your female protagonist should follow this as well. Furthemore, one sign of strength is the idea of leadership and, of course, self-starter behavior. Basically, your strong female protagonist should take charge, inspire others, and work towards things because it impacts her and things she has a stake in.
There are oftentimes stories where a protagonist is written as being strong, but pretty much lacks real strength, especially in leadership qualities. Not every person is a leader, but a strong personality tends to take charge and get things done.
Strength and Vulnerability
I personally think that when it comes to a strong character, you should be striking a balance with the concept of vulnerability. A truly strong person still has points that make them vulnerable, such as fears, doubts, and weaknesses. It makes the person feel more human, even if they’re not even supposed to be a human.
Additionally, having these vulnerabilities and weaknesses drive the character’s growth forward allows for readers to see how the character changes over the course of the story. That’s why strength and vulnerability go well together, because having a person who is simply strong no matter what is unrealistic and almost caricature-like.
This also leads to the next point, which is the idea of a character arc.
Character Arcs are Important Too!
A strong character should have some sort of arc. By this, what I mean is that from the first page to the last page, I as the reader should be able to identify how your character changed, either for the better or not. Your character can descend into villainy if you want, but you still need to show a sort of arc that differentiates from the beginning to the end.
Your strong character should essentially undergo a transformation and the major events in your plot should be able to justify this transformation. I would give examples from my series, The Fallen Age Saga, but I’m pretty sure I’d be spoiling everything, LOL! I guess I’ll say that Joel from Soldat changes quite a lot from the beginning to the end because before he is drafted into the military, he’s a very different type of person. He’s quite damaged from his traumas, but the situations he’s placed in throughout Book 2 force him to adapt, change, and overcome his fears so that he can actually survive. This is what I mean by a character arc.
Your Reader Needs to Feel Immersed!
A good character, female or male, is basically one that makes your readers actually feel engaged and immersed in the story. Even if the character is a completely different personality, the reader should still find ways to relate, understand, or resonate with the protagonist.
Placing the character in moments of conflict, showcasing her struggles and triumphs, her strengths and weaknesses, and elements about her like thoughts and emotions, allows for the reader to feel like they are engaging with a person rather than just words on a piece of paper.
It’s important to remember that your readers are interacting with these characters in some way, so you need to write as if your character is a real person that could exist (from a mental/emotional standpoint), even if the story is fantasy or sci-fi or something of the like.
Writing a strong female protagonist should not be considered a chore, and it’s not really any different than writing a strong male protagonist. At the end of the day, putting the gender of the character aside, there are important elements you need to include when you’re creating a memorable character. You want to work on what makes your character interesting, rather than the fact that your character is a man/woman. Your story needs to explore the actual plot through the eyes of the character and you want to make sure that you’re avoiding unnecessary stereotypes.
I want to clarify that your main character, female or male, can have any personality you want so long as it makes sense in the context of the story, but you want to make sure that no matter how the character is portrayed, your readers will actually find enjoyment in reading from their perspective.
Before you head on out, you should check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga, and sign up for my newsletter so you never miss out on a single post, update, and can get all the latest news about my WIPs and books.