Writing Female Voices as a Male Author: What I Learned by Listening

When I first began writing Ocean Child (over a decade ago!), the story centered around a male character loosely inspired by fragments of my own life. He was meant to anchor the narrative — a familiar, safe perspective to write from.

But somewhere along the way, the women’s voices, Julia, Miriam, and Catrina, grew louder, stronger, and more complicated. They started carrying the story with a weight and urgency that made it impossible to return to the version I thought I was writing.

So I stopped and listened.

Writing female voices as a male author is not about crafting a character checklist. It is not about guessing what women think or smoothing them into some easy, palatable version of strength. It is about recognizing that every woman carries her own history, her own contradictions, her own battles. It is about humility and about knowing that no matter how much empathy you bring to the page, you are still seeing only part of the full picture.

When I realized Ocean Child was no longer mine to narrate from the inside out, I made a choice.
I started over. I stripped the story down to its core and rebuilt it through the lens of the women who demanded to be heard.

I had conversations with women who trusted me enough to share pieces of their stories. I listened to what hurt. I listened to what healed. I listened without interrupting or trying to explain. I worked with female editors and beta readers who were not afraid to challenge me — who pointed out when something rang false, when a detail felt off, when a voice needed more space to breathe. I read memoirs and novels written by women, allowing myself to be a student of lived experience instead of a narrator trying to fit life into neat lines.

Most importantly, I rewrote. And rewrote. And kept rewriting until the women of Ocean Child felt like themselves, not reflections bent to fit my original idea of the story.

Was it uncomfortable at times? Absolutely.
Was it worth it? Without question.

Because stories like Julia’s, Miriam’s, and Catrina’s deserve to exist on the page with the full messiness, strength, and vulnerability that real women live every day.

I will never claim to have captured everything perfectly.
But what I can say is this: when I let go of needing to "get it right" and focused instead on letting them lead, the story became something bigger, sharper, and more true than anything I could have forced into being.

It is still their story.
I am just the one who held the pen steady enough to let it through.