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In How to write strong female characters, Standback says that the best way to write a strong female character is to make her uniquely female, the type of character that can not possibly be male and isn't a stereotype.

Lately I have found the opposite problem. In the first draft of my last fiction piece, 75% of the characters were female. Making characters female has become an easy trick for me to make them feel unique. Every variation of a male military commander seems to have been done. A female commander leading her own battalion seems more interesting.

How can I apply the lessons learned from writing strong female characters to male characters?

Of course one solution is to simply write stories with no male characters, but that's not always what I want to do.

(If it matters for the answer, I myself am male.)

I think what's tripping you up is the idea that your male characters need to be characters that could not possibly be female. This probably comes from traditions of valuing what men do and devaluing what women do. So many women aspire to do "male" things. Showing them succeed at that can be a way of showing their uniqueness. But very few men aspire to do "female" things, and those that do are either part of a queer subculture and/or are ridiculed for it.

You can't easily have male characters who can just be male because plenty of women have stepped up and done what the men do. But even those women can still also do things that only women do, because men don't step up and do them.

My advice is to forget about someone existing to represent his or her gender and just write unique characters. The way to do that is to fully flesh the character out. Every human on this planet is unique once you get to know them well enough.

Gender is part of someone's character for sure, and all the cultural norms and baggage and qualities will be part of someone's makeup. What s/he does with them is part of what makes him/her unique.

So your male character may or may not do things that are traditionally male. But every breath he takes is infused with his culture, the society he lives in, the expectations of the company he keeps. You don't have to spell this all out (it would get deathly dull), but know that he is aware of it (at least on some level) and it will influence how he acts, what he says, and the choices he makes.

Little things can make all the difference. For example, a man I know well is a feminist, does not fit into American standards of what a man should look like, and couldn't care less about how his sexual orientation is perceived. But give him a task that involves carrying things and he will overload himself to just below the point where he topples over. Especially if the other person(s) who can carry things has an injury (no matter how mild). No extra trips either, if at all possible. And honestly, at least in America, this is such a stereotypical male trait. There are jokes and memes about it. For some reason, this is the masculine hill he dies on.

Your character will never forget he's a man. Even if he chooses not to fit in as one. So ask yourself, does he feel comfortable in his own skin? How does he feel he compares to an ideal man? He may laugh at that, but he still knows. Or he may cringe. Either way, he knows everyone else judges him that way.

Don't look at uniqueness as what a character does, but, rather, who s/he is. A female battalion commander may have an unusual position, but it doesn't make her interesting.

With males, you have the action trope templates--and with females, a lot of writers just take those and make the character female. Basically, take it, and FLIP IT!

So maybe, take some female arch-types and plot-movers, and make her a him. Strong-willed princess in need of rescuing? Make that a prince instead. Maybe they aren't as capable and talented as the female lead. So they support...

Now, if you want an example of a completely different archetype that is actually the lead and is male--there's a "new", awesome guy on the horizon, in the form of Newt Scamander and the Doctor of Doctor Who. This hero doesn't slay monsters. They befriend them, they help save them so that they aren't really monsters any more. This is explored in this video, as an example of a different kind of masculinity.

For extra fun, I enjoy writing characters and switching the genders. Take this TV Tropes list: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AlwaysFemale Or this one: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/discussion.php?id=jiq33bjm68tjyaqkv3mshphi and build from there. For example: the Hot Librarian. Instead of making that a lady, make him an indispensable (but hot,especially when dressed to go out, and also outwardly buttoned up and conservative with a bit of a hidden kinky side) source of research for whoever your hero is, and who maybe has a bit of a crush on said hero.

The thing about "strong characters" is that different people mean different things when they say that. They can mean complex individuals. Or they can mean that strong characters actually matter to the story--that they are the main "mover and shaker" driving the plot. Just because your stereotypical battalion commander happens to be female might not make her a "strong character" for those who are looking for complex individuals with a rich inner life and so on. But for those who are just looking for a plot driver, she would be.

If you face the facts, not everyone can be the main character. Some are just going to be support or lightly sketched. The reason why there's been such a push for quote "strong female characters" or plot movers is that in the past the ladies have gotten relegated to being props or plot devices rather than fully realized people. That's because the archetypal hero, the blank relatable character is has been by default, male. If you see a gender neutral robot with no sexual characteristics, it's seen, by default, as male and white, and being female and/or anything other than white would be seen as an ADDITION or ATYPICAL--at least in America.

So there's really far more on the axis to play with beyond just gender. There's ethnicity, sexuality (asexual has been coming up more frequently, but there's always been asexual characters in lit), household structure (there's everything from extended family households to singletons living in what amounts to a closet in the big city or singles living with stable couples because renting a room is cheaper, and the family structure they originally came from) and beyond.

The issue is that actually, in real life as in literature, you have no idea what most people's situations are. And a lot of times it's not important until you become closer friends or in literature, until these details actually MATTER to the plot and protagonist.

I would say that if the most interesting thing about your characters is their gender--that's a problem. Characters are characters. They are there to be interesting AND/OR fulfill a function in your plot.

To me, uniqueness is not found in any one trait, but in the combinations of traits. You avoid writing a stereotype by acknowledging the stereotype exists, and then finding a natural way to subvert it. You can have a firm male commander that doesn't bark commands, but explains what he wants and why. It still isn't a debate and he isn't looking for suggestions (unless he says so), and he'll inform you of this quickly without leaving any wiggle room, but he thinks people work better if they understand what the next larger goal is.

Subvert the stereotype, and change the personality and background of the male to support this subversion and make it "natural". You have control of his history; perhaps he had to raise five younger sisters on his own and this is how he taught himself to manage them. How many stereotypes did that?

Every one of us lives a unique life, and has a unique brain, attitude and beliefs and preferences for other people. You don't have to deeply imagine him, you just need to give him some life trauma (e.g. a huge family responsibility when young due to losing his parents, in the above example, or some other psychic or physical trauma) that changes him, so he can't live the stereotypical life, and becomes something else.

Wow, what a loaded question! I'll try to answer without stepping on any toes.

Getting at what makes a person "male" or makes a person "female" is something philosophers and psychologists have been debating since before Plato. While I think the postmodern gender studies definition is both flawed and unhelpful, I agree with the underlying rejection of traditional association of various traits with specific genders and specific individuals.

Qualities like bravery, assertiveness, and directness are not innately male, nor are empathy, sociability, and sensitivity exclusively female. Individuals of both sexes have different mixes of these qualities and their expression of them can change over time. Whether this means a person's gender changes, or if it's only the qualities, not the femaleness or maleness that shift, it's really irrelevant. You can't simply use traits to depict an individual's gender.

As a writer, it's not necessary or even useful to impose such an interpretation on your reader. Instead, you need to describe the character's behavior and let the reader interpret that through their own philosophical framework.

Descriptions of body language, speech patterns, and even thoughts and intentions can give the reader all they need to visualize the sex or gender of your character.

If you want to make them uniquely male there are several sex-specific behaviors and characteristics you can note about the character: scratching in public, baritone voice, legs spread apart while sitting, physical dominance displays (rough-housing, handshake dominance, etc.) And then there are a number of social customs more typical of males--being loud, being chivalrous (or the opposite, engaging in harassment), etc.

Describe how the man acts and thinks. Let the reader decide what about that is male or manly.