A friend of mine recently posted a meme about how few times women interact in Lord of the Rings movies.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen this sentiment and I gave my stock reply. All the main characters in the movie are male and because it’s rare to have two side characters driving a scene, the lack of two women interacting was not a great surprise.

After that I began to think about the situation a bit and, while I think my sentiment is correct, I decided to examine some of my own novels for comparable situations. Here is what I found.

Male Centric Novels

I have several novels where all the main characters are male and, while I didn’t go over them exhaustively, I did my best to remember how many times I wrote two women interacting. Not many. Women characters played prominent roles in these novels but largely they merely interacted with the male characters and not with one another.

To be honest, there were very few scenes in which two women even appeared together, let alone interacted.

Female Centric Novels

I’ve also written novels where all the lead characters are women. Now, obviously, they spend most of the novel interacting with one another but I started thinking about how often two men interacted in those novels. After all, it’s the same situation, just in reverse. All the main characters are women, so what about the men?

I came up with a few circumstances when two men interacted with one another in these novels but it was quite rare and the interaction was brief. But it does occur.

Mixed Gender Leads

This one was pretty obvious. When there is a mix of male and female leads in my novels, there is a great deal of interaction between two men or two women. All lead characters of course. Still, how often in those novels did a pair of side characters interact? It’s sort of the same argument. How often do side characters interact over the course of a novel.

There are a few moments of interaction but for the most part, lead characters drive all the scenes.

Is it a Problem?

Now we get to the heart of the inquiry. Is the fact that side characters don’t interact with each in a meaningful way a problem? No, my original reply stands. The underlying question is if there aren’t enough female lead characters.

This is a more complex question to be sure. We do see a plethora of female leads in movies and television shows nowadays but often they behave essentially as a male character but in a female body. Often, they display Mary Sue traits which only creates derision.

There are plenty of compelling female lead characters in literature, we need look no further than Jane Austen to see the blueprint and to Star Trek’s Uhura as excellent examples.

Why don’t we have more representative characters of this nature? Don’t look at me, I’m doing my best. Read a few of my novels then come complaining to me.

Tom Liberman