It’s not hard to write strong women characters, but for some reason, poorly written women characters seem to be the default for many screenwriters.
I suspect that it’s because most writers have probably absorbed and accepted much more culturally reinforced sexism than they realize. Believe me, we see a lot, lot, lot of this sexism in our day-to-day reading scripts here at Screenplay Readers, and we try to point it out to the writer as much as we can.
The good news is there are ways to consciously counteract any gender bias you may not be aware of in your screenwriting.
Here are a few quick basic things you can do to write strong women characters, despite those culturally-induced biases, and at same time write a better story and a better script overall.
Write strong women characters by not objectifying them
You’d be surprised how often otherwise-professional screenwriters (and amateurs as well) dish up women character descriptions like this:
JANE (20) — is incredibly hot but doesn’t know it.
What does this mean? If you ask me, it’s the equivalent of:
JANE (20) — hot, but might still sleep with the writer writing this horseshit.
Another variant of the same scenario might be something like this:
JANE (20) — pretty but with intelligent eyes.
Which is basically the writer telling us that the most important thing to know about this character is that this character is pretty. But more telling is that the writer is also warning us not think that just because this character may be pretty doesn’t mean she’s stupid. Yet when you think about that for a moment, the question becomes: why would there be any reason in the world for a reader to assume that just because a character is pretty that they also must be stupid?
So this is essentially making you, the writer, look real hard dumb.
Let’s take it a step further so you can see how stupid it looks. When was the last time you read a character description like this:
JOHN (20) — incredibly hot but doesn’t know it.
or
JOHN (20) — handsome, but with intelligent eyes.
My best guess is you’ve never read a line like that for a male character. But hey, even if you have, it’s still bad screenwriting. Here’s more on the subject.
Write strong women characters by showing them making choices
This is his wife JANE, 35, a fading beauty who’s still attractive for her age.
Did you just cringe? Because I just cringed. In fact, I think I threw out my back cringing so hard.
The movie industry caters to a mass audience. As such, it often reflects and reinforces some of society’s most repugnant, backward views on women. And one such view is that women over the age of 30 (and definitely women over the age of 45) are, by default, considered unattractive. I’m no expert on gender demographics but I’d hazard a guess that a mathematical majority of women would vehemently disagree with such a viewpoint.
So instead writing about her beauty, how about we find out something else about Jane, such as how she feels, or who she is?
What could Jane be? What are her likes? What makes her tick? What motivates her? What has she conquered? What does she want? The answer may surprise you:
JANE (35) — practically-dressed but with her mind always off dreaming of elsewhere.
Or
JANE (49) — perfectly turned out, watchful as she enters the room.
Hair, make-up, and wardrobe can also tell us a lot about character, but often the best way to convey a character is by what they say or how they behave or move the first time we see them.
The point is, descriptions can be physical but should rarely be a value judgment. And they shouldn’t be what’s the most interesting thing about your woman character.
Write strong women characters by writing them as leads, not just supporting roles
Why bother writing a male main character’s wife if she does nothing interesting and says nothing interesting?
Try writing your next lead as a woman, instead of defaulting to man. See what happens. See what new avenues open up and what new synapses form.
For example, if you’ve come up with a story about a cynical, damaged police detective who finds a way to care about their work again when they have to solve a crime that resonates with them in a painful and personal way, consider making that classic noir archetype a woman, rather than a man.
The same applies to every character in your story. Choose. Don’t immediately go to the default. The result could well be a more interesting screenplay.
Actually write, you know, dialogue for your strong women characters (and make it meaningful!)
It not only matters how much women characters get to speak, it matters whether or not what they say is meaningful.
In 2016, women spoke only 27% of the dialogue in the top-grossing films of the year. About 7% were directed by women and only 11% written by women.
According to the LAIST, in the ten films nominated for Best Picture at the 2026 Oscars—all released in 2025—women spoke approximately one-quarter of the words.
Writing meaningful dialogue for women characters hinges on making them meaningful characters to begin with, not just props.
While writing is largely about instincts and imagination, I encourage you to challenge yourself at every turn. Original and attention-grabbing storytelling isn’t an accident. It’s partly about making a different and sometimes less obvious choice in terms of how your characters convey universal and eternal life truths.
Don’t be afraid to make those choices.
How hacks write women characters (don’t do these things!)
In the universe of the hack screenwriter, girls don’t get to save the world. Women don’t get to run companies, or incite revolutions, or find secret magic treasure, or think for themselves.
Page after page, borderline-misogyny after borderline-misogyny, they keep coming: Men writing women as flat, predictable trope-beasts; Women writing women in a way they think will sell better to the Hollywood suits, who can’t get enough of them trope-beasts. Oh, and I don’t use the term “misogyny” lightly, because I see it running the gamut, from the blatantly sexist to the quietly exclusionary in all its rapacious consistency.
How is it that, despite a 50%-51% women society, and despite a century of cinema, screenwriters, en masse, still haven’t figured out how to accurately depict and/or represent women humans on screen?
Why women are still written like Barbie™ dolls is beyond my ken (pun intended) but I intend to at least do something to make a difference.
Sexist screenwriting isn’t always easy to spot, but unless you’d like to be sorted into the “sexist hack screenwriter” bin, you’d best learn what it looks like.
To that end, I’ve put together what NOT to do when writing women characters so you can writerly check yourself before you writerly wreck yourself:
Hack writers write women characters as objects, rather than human beings
First of all, if your protagonist is a tired retread of some nerdy, nervous, quiet guy who pursues, in order to obtain, some hot gal, or sweet gal, or geek gal, or, (dare I say it?) MPDG (THE MANIC PIXIE DREAMGIRL OMG), but can’t get his nerve up to ask her out, or can’t (or even worse, won’t) overcome whatever obstacle preventing him from doing so, I implore you: please choke on your screenwriter binky and die a slow death by saliva.
Why? Because if you’re thinking on those terms – of pursuit, of obtainment – you’ve got your head screwed on wrong. Maybe mama never taught you right, but the results are officially in: women aren’t objects, dudebro. And they’re doubly not sex objects.
Let me back up. Pursuit, per se, isn’t really the problem. Of course your characters are allowed to pursue the attention and/or affections of a woman character.
But if that woman character doesn’t have dimension, or a mind, or a belief system, or a slate of traits, strengths, quirks, wants, needs, shortcomings, or doesn’t do something in, around, for, or because of those things, and/or doesn’t pursue something for herself or for others or a cause…
…or if there is little or no parity between the seriousness, comedic wit, humanism, and/or dimensionality of the protagonist and that of the woman character being pursued…
… then, frankly my dear, you’ve written a woman as an object. And I don’t give a damn.
If that’s indeed the case with your particular screenplay, I’ll give go ahead and give you 4 minutes while you rethink your entire screenplay, and perhaps your entire raison d’être. (P.S. Apply said binky.)
Hack writers make sure their scripts completely fail the Bechdel Test
A woman named Alison Bechdel says was inspired to create the Bechdel Test based on a conversation with her friend, also a woman. The test asks us to pose three questions of every film:
A) Does the film have at least two named women characters?
B) Do any of the named women characters talk to each other?
C) And do they talk to each other about something other than a man?
Sounds pretty easy, right? But you’d be surprised at how many fail. In fact, it’s fair to point out that many films that would be considered to have strong woman characters do fail.
But the keywords here are anecdotal. Illustrative. The purpose of the test is to get you to think, to get you to observe, to remind you of the disparity Hollywood seems to have been stuck in since the invention of motion pictures.
Here’s a site that lists movies by their Bechdel test results. Prepare to be surprised!
Hack writers portray “strength” within a male context only
Giving your woman hero a gun and having her kick ass is strong, yes. Making your woman villain borderline omnipotent and having her threaten to blow up the Earth is also strong, sure.
But those aspects of “strength” are just riffs on the same old tired male version of what it means to be strong. Physical power. Dominance.
Ah, but women’s strength is an often marginalized kind of strength. While it often has very little to do with chest beating and ass kicking, I remind you, without exaggeration, that the strength inherent in women no less than births, nurtures, and protects the entire human species.
(That is, when they’re not flying jet planes, running Yahoo, blasting off into space, or moving and shaking the halls of Congress.)
Just a few strengths of women are renewal, nurture, nature, collaboration, and harmony. It’s the strength of wisdom, of patience. Of survival. (And yes, of violence and brute strength and power, and fully capable of matching man toe-to-toe, categorically, it must be emphasized.)
But why are the strengths that allowed our mothers, our sisters, our grandmothers, our aunts to care for us shape us into decent human beings – why are those strengths so rarely touched upon in popular cinema?
Perhaps because it’s easier and more profitable to show Scarlett Johansson blowing things up. Or, perhaps its the conspiracy between deadlines and laziness, or because producers lean towards spec scripts and script coverage with explosions.
Or, perhaps it’s a reflection of the culture we live in which is still struggling to resolve the problem of centuries-old gender inequality. I suggest it’s probably all of the above.
Betcha didn’t know this: the muscles of women are generally biologically better at endurance, and can generally last much longer over the long haul, than the muscles of the man, which are generally better at burst strength, but which tend to fatigue more quickly.
So what? What do muscles mean to a screenwriter?
That, my friend – that one, little tidbit is screenwriting gold.
Think about it: how many movies, from any era, ever depict women ever physically outlasting males? In most cinema, it’s the males that outlast / out-power / out-strength the women.
So just knowing that one little biological factoid, we as writers are suddenly open to new story possibilities. Imagine how many other differences in strength and mind and body you could discover if you open yourself up to writing women characters beyond the flat, tired stereotype?
Okay, enough of the what not to do’s and now let’s hit you with the big WHY all this matters, even if you’re a meathead who doesn’t care about this stuff. All this matters because:
Writing women well will set you apart from other screenwriters
If you’re like me, you want to see cinema improve; you want to read screenplays with smart, capable, women owning the pages. You want to see women characters through an accurate lens, no matter how alluring the temptation may be to fall back into rehashing the old cozy manboy tropes and stereotypes.
But I get it: not everybody’s in it for the revolution. And that’s fine.
But here’s what I say to those folks: writing women characters well, and not just as cliches, makes you a more marketable screenwriter. Shout it at the back so you can hear me: WRITING WOMEN WELL MAKES YOU STAND OUT BECAUSE SO FEW WRITERS KNOW HOW TO DO IT.
Some links that can help you on your way to being less of a knob
Alas, my little blurb here but scratches the surface of how and where cinema goes wrong with the woman movie character. Check out Bang2Write’s list of things not to do here. Reactor has a good article here too. Oh, and here’s Reese Witherspoon’s production company, Hello Sunshine, so you can take a quick gander at what empowered women characters look like.
Trust me on this: getting educated on writing women can only help your screenwriting. There’s a vast market out there craving a new, more truthful portrayal of sisters, aunts, daughters, mothers —you name it. Go forth and write for it, dudebro!
