Protagonist changed from male to female

This is what happened. Once, I was writing a wonderful story. It had a wonderful main character. A main character who was a male. But something happened along the way and not only did the key opening chapter completely change, but so did the main character, who is now female. Not through a sex change operation. But through the knowledge that I’d best write what I know, even though I loved my former main character, as a male.

Many female authors have had their main characters be male. Who can forget S. H. Hinton for one, author of The Outsiders.

So why did this happen? One day, my beautiful wonderful male character- who had all the attributes I’d want in a male star character, suddenly became a lie to me. One day I no longer really knew my main character. I was trying to guess what he was thinking and what he would do in new scenes and dilemmas. It became so difficult, what was once so easy, that I realized there was a problem. My ‘knowledge’ was spent. I had to write what I felt I knew, and was comfortable with. From the moment I began writing from the point of view of a female, the personality blossomed.

In fact this main character is an astronaut. At least as of today, yesterday and the beginning of this whole venture, she is not very feminine in the traditional sense of the word. She is very much a tomboy type.

Could my main character ever go back to being David? I don’t know. I loved the character who I’d created, but there was a certain point past which I wasn’t really sure what he’d do. Not being male myself, I was on shaky ground.

I like the new character. She grows on me every day, and she certainly has what it takes to do all the things that David was going to do. Just shows we live in different times. I wonder if there is anyone out there who has gone through this major change of person like this, maybe I’ll google that… “Main Character changed from male to female” Nah. To many modern day interpretations on that.