Abstract

The author of this paper, a female novelist who writes from the male perspective, has found that writing from the point of view of the opposite gender allows for a more complete imagining of the other, rendering the whole enterprise of creating a fictional character more possible. In this paper, she argues that the success of creating a thoroughly constructed fictional human being often resides in that character's otherness. By separating one's own biography and history from one's character's – and especially by creating a character whose gender differs from her own – an author frees herself to write a separate self.