There’s not necessarily a specific piece of writing advice here, but I think that people’s writing is actively improved by the ability to conceptualize of and engage with female characters as equivalent to male characters. This is true across both the media you consume and the writing you do. Women are just people!
Actually to give slightly more specific advice here:
I see this a lot when people write Characters and Female Characters, where woman is clearly An Extra Layer Of Person on top of the neutral concept of Character, or where people write women falling into a category (e.g., mother, sister, relationship cheerleader, rival for romantic affection, catalyst) while writing men as just being people, or where they want to punish female characters, or where they just include one token woman that is clearly just so they can say that they included a woman.
And so when you’re writing, ask yourself:
- Do my characters default to male/do I have to actively make myself write female characters? If so, why?
- Do I have major female characters? Are they written in comparable ways to male characters?
- Do I have background female characters? If so, do they only exist in service roles (e.g., all baristas are female but all coworkers/bosses are male)?
- Does this female character only exist to move the relationship between two male characters along, either by directly encouraging them to get together or by otherwise acting as a catalyst?
- Am I writing this female character doing bad things so I can write her getting her getting her due?
- Would I write a male doing the things that this female character is doing? If not, why not?
- Does this female character only exist to prove that I include female characters, too?
- Do I describe my female characters in gendered negative terms or negative terms most often associated with women (e.g., bitch, slut, gold digger)?
- Am I writing this woman as cartoonishly sexually aggressive or sexually naive? Would I write a male character acting this way?
- Do I write female characters in fulfilling romantic/sexual relationships?
- Do I write female characters as attracted as women or asexual solely to get them out of the way of a romantic relationship between male characters?
