There's a lot of cross-dressing styled role play around; meaning guys acting as female characters, and girls acting as male characters. Occationally you also find yourself, as an author, writing a story involving the opposing sex as a main character; this is all fine and dandy, but there are a lot of cases where one will act as a male or female, but never change their speech or word choice.
Word choice is to authors what drawing style is to artists. And to those of us who read manga, everyone can tell the female aritsts from the male artists. Male artists typically draw girls with very large or semi-large chests; female artists draw extrodinarilly effeminent men (men who look like chicks). Of course the boys look at these female visions of men and laugh, and girls do the same to the guy's version of women.
Van Hellsing, for
Example; I knew that one was drawn by a guy before I even knew the artist's name.
My point is, if you are going to take a male/female role, play the part; go into a the opposite gender's mindframe and use phrases they would use.
Women role-playing as men are extrodinarily guilty of this. If your character is a guy, then try to truely be a guy; word choice (diction) is what will help to create this illusion. There are phrases that women use, and there are phrases that men use; every word you choose has a certain shade to it, a connotation that can and will allude to gender.
If you saw a dress, how would you describe it? Gorgeous? Beautiful? Sparkly? Tell me, how many guys do you know will use the term "sparkly" around their other male friends; and I don't mean the anime/manga/drama club nerds we all hang around with. If you want to make an effeminate man with effeminate speech and effeminate tendancies, go right ahead. But people will be able to tell immediatly that you are a girl writing this, not a guy. And even the biggest male geeks, though female - ish, can still act like a
guy.
Yes, this is a bit more directed twords female authors, I suppose.
A good way to start thinking in the male persona is what you say, what words you choose. This goes especially for describing things. I'm not saying you have to liken everything on earth to war or bloodshed, but it's not very often you hear a man telling how the shades of light purple and pastle blue mix for a very spring-time effect.
Here's a piece of writing by a fellow rp'er:
Hair:
A sort of brownish color with a hint of red hue. The tresses are longish and fall into his eyes, and down to the nape of his neck, almost reaching his shoulders.
Eyes:
A brownish-red color, the orbs are the exact same tone as his hair.
General Appearance:
Well.. he's not really too tall or too short. He's basically an average-sized male, and slender for seventeen. He looks a bit younger than he really is, resembling about fifteen.
Can you tell it was written by a girl? General words of description gave it a away; orbs, slender, tone. I may be a bit over exaggerating, but these were the words I questioned when I came across this. I'm not saying they can't be used; in proper timing they can. And I can't exactly tell you what will create a feasible character; all I'm trying to say is that one needs to stay in gener-character, and should gain a feel of these extremeties of male writing and female writing before trying to create and act as a character they cannot relate to or predict the actions of.
Maybe more later, my mind is a bit fuzzled right now...
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