Hello there, complete newbie here, at your service.
I have recently started to write again for the first time since...well school.
I've had the inspiration, can picture most of the characters in my head, have a very rough plot and have got a few thousand words down.
Thing is I've been doing some reading around and it seems the old saying of 'Girls will read male protagonists but Boys won't read female ones' is still circling around.
I'm doing this for fun at the moment but I would like to dream that I could one day be published.
Do you think having a female protagonist is a turn off for publishers (from a marketing perspective) or would Henrietta Potter have sold just as well?
I'm don't intend to ditch my heroine but I wanted to know others opinions on this.
Thanks,
A.G.Haunton
(P.S. I've recently shared a little snippet of my work, a children's fantasy book, so any feedback on how to be less rusty would be really appreciated.)
Traditional and contemporary, powerful female protagonists.
Jo March, the protagonist in Little Women, Tess - Hardy, Emma - Austin, Jane Eyre - Bronte and Hester Prynne in The Scarlet Letter - Hawthorne,
Sal in Walk Two Moons - Sophie in The Wanderer and Dinnie in Bloomability, 3 brilliant books by Sharon Creech with strong female protagonists.
I can't say about marketing and male prejudices, but His Dark Materials beats the Harry Potter series into the ground as far as quality goes. My 3 favourite books of all time and all genres have females in the central role:
Alice's Adventures In Wonderland
Through The Looking Glass
Woman On The Edge Of Time
Boys (and men) who sneer at female leads are losing out - and losers!
I've no publishing experience either but I'd say if it's a well-written story, it shouldn't matter. Can your female character face and overcome the same obstacles that the male character could?