GAME: Can you tell the difference between boy/girl POVs?

My latest project, Matryoshka, features two out of four male POVs. I'm starting to regret that, because as a girl, I'm much more confident about writing in a girl's mind.

To write boys properly, I embarked upon a mission of research, and a lot of guides seemed strange to me. Such as, "boys don't notice detail." "Boys are more emotional." So are you saying there aren't meticulous, logical boys? (This actually is part of my MC's characterisation, so eeek.)

I decided more first-hand experience was needed, so I started re-reading books with boy POVs. I also compared whenever possible with a girl POV in the same book to eliminate issues with the author's personal style. (My science skills are showing through!)

So today, I've compiled 4 pairs of POVs from multi-POV novels, selecting excerpts with as little indicator to plot as possible, for you to guess which is which! You can click "Answer" to see the answer, and let me know how you did in the comments :)

Which of these POVs are boys and which are girls?

Note: for sake of simplicity, all pronouns will be female. All characters are called Alice Jones.

1. Unwind

Excerpt 1: Alice's always kept her eyes the color they came in. Brown. She never even got tattoos, like so many kids get these days when they're little. The only color on her skin is the tan it takes during the summer, but now, in November, that tan has long faded. She tries not to think about the fact that she'll never see the summer again. At least not as Alice Jones. She still can't believe her life is being stolen from her at sixteen.

Excerpt 2: Kids around her all check themselves. Like her, no one is badly hurt, although some are making more of a fuss than others. The chaperone tries to calm down one girl who's hysterical.

And in this chaos, Alice has a sudden realization.

This is not part of the plan.

The system might have a million contingencies for state wards trying to screw with things, but they don't have a plan of action for dealing with an accident. For the next few seconds, all bets are off.

Keep scrolling for the answer!

Excerpt 1 is narrated by Connor, i.e. the guy, and is in fact from the very first page. Excerpt 2 is narrated by Risa, and I had to dig a little to find something not too specific to her plotline and ended up with an action scene. Risa's excerpt has shorter paragraphs because of this, so I'm hesitant to draw that conclusion. But when I test the passages on Hemingway App, a tool for writers to evaluate how difficult their writing is to get through, Connor's passage is still Grade 4 and lower than Risa's Grade 6.
2. The Winner's Curse

Excerpt 1: Weary, she shut her eyes. She wondered if those two days of idyll would turn out to have been a stroke of bad fortune. That time had let her forget who she was. It played tricks with her mind.

Sometimes, at the edge of sleep, she thought she heard music.

Excerpt 2: She shouldn't have been tempted.

This is what Alice thought as she swept up the sailors' silver off the impromptu gaming table set up in a corner of the market.

"Don't go," said one sailor.

"Stay," said another, but Alice cinched her wrist-strap velvet purse shut. The sun had lowered, and caramelized the color of things, which meant that she had played cards long enough to be noticed by someone who mattered.

Keep scrolling for the answer!

This one shouldn't be too hard to guess. Excerpt 1 is Arin, the boy, and Excerpt 2 is Kestrel, a girl. Problem is, it's still hard to draw a real conclusion. It seems that Kestrel's sentences are longer, uses more complex words like impromptu and cinched and caramelized, but then again Kestrel belongs to the upper class, while Arin's spent some time as a slave. So it isn't that strange Kestrel uses more complex language than Arin.

Let's see what our next sample says:

3. A Darker Shade of Magic

Excerpt 1: Her feet carried her through St. James Park, down an ambling dirt path that ran beside the river. The sun was setting, and the air was crisp if not clean, a fall breeze fluttering the edges of her black coat. She came upon a wooden footbridge that spanned the stream, and her boots sounded softly as she crossed it. Alice paused at the arc of the bridge, Buckingham House lantern-lit behind her and the Thames ahead. Water sloshed gently under the wooden slats, and she rested her elbows on the rail and stared down at it.

Excerpt 2: Alice hesitated. She knew she could win against one street rat, and thought she might even be able to win against two, but three? Maybe, if they'd stand still, but they kept shifting so she couldn't see them all at once. She heard the snick of a switchblade, the tap of the metal bar against the street stones. [snip]

Alice didn't wait. She slammed her body into his foot, hard, and he gasped and let go. Only an instant, but it was enough for Alice to do the thing she knew she had to do.

Keep scrolling for the answer!

Excerpt 1 again belongs to the boy, Kell, while Excerpt 2 belongs to Lila. Kell was raised with the prince while Lila is a street thief, and these two scenes are inherently different anyhow, but the first excerpt does have more adjectives and adverbs. Minor differences, so I decided to use HemingwayApp to test these two.

HemingwayApp disagrees with my "minor differences" statement, and rated Kell's excerpt as Grade 9 and Lila's as Grade 4. Makes sense considering their education levels — a quick test on The Winner's Curse shows that the more privileged Kestrel also has a higher Hemingway Grade.

UPDATE: I've recently discovered that Lila is actually genderfluid (see this tweet from the author!) Had no clue about this when initially doing this analysis, but I'm glad we managed to include examples outside the gender binary. See conclusion for more thoughts!

4. A Song of Ice and Fire

Excerpt 1: Her father had been fighting with the council again. Alice could see it on his face when he came to table, late again, as he had been so often. The first course, a thick sweet soup made with pumpkins, had already been taken away with Ned Stark strode into the Small Hall. They called it that to set it apart from the Great Hall, where the king could feast a thousand, but it was a long room with a high vaulted ceiling and bench space for two hundred at its trestle tables.

Excerpt 2: Her favorite haunt was the broken tower. Once it had been a watchtower, the tallest in Winterfell. A long time ago, a hundred years before even her father had been born, a lightning strike had set it afire. The top third of the structure had collapsed inward, and the tower had never been rebuilt. Sometimes her father sent ratters into the base of the tower, to clean out the nests they always found among the jumble of fallen stones and charred and rotten beams. But no one ever got up to the jagged top of the structure now except for Alice and the crows.

Keep scrolling for the answer!

The first excerpt is Arya, the girl, while the second is Bran. This is a great comparison because both passages are exposition passages. Plus, Arya and Bran have similar upbringings as Ned Stark's children and are both interested in swordfighting but are restrained from their dreams. According to HemingwayApp, Arya's excerpt is at Grade 10 while Bran's is at Grade 8. So the boy does speak more simply here, despite most factors being balanced.

Conclusion & Evaluation ('cos that's scientific)

Our data shows that boy POVs tend to be simpler than girl POVs in terms of writing style. The sole exception is A Darker Shade of Magic, which really isn't a fair comparison since I didn't know Lila as genderfluid when setting up this test. *shrugs*

Popular hypothesis supported, I will try my best to adhere to this trend as I write Matryoshka. However, I don't plan on sacrificing backstory or characterisation to social roles, so there's that.

In the spirit of science, it should be worth noting that according to the chi-squared test, the results are not statistically significant. Write away, friends, and never fear.

(Interested in more analysis of popular books? Check out my villains death post here, and download the accompanying breakdown:

Find out how villains die in bestselling series!

How many did you get right? What's the main difference between boy/girl POVs?

Twitter-sized takeout:

• Play a game, tell apart male and female PoVs! (Click to Tweet)

Want more insights into my writing process? Let me write monthly letters to you!