Life & Wisdom Quote by Ken Follett

Follett’s line is a tidy piece of craft advice that also doubles as a cultural positioning statement: he’s rejecting the idea that gender is a script you consult, like a handbook for “female behavior.” The intent is pragmatic - write individuals, not demographics - but the subtext is defensive in a way that’s hard to miss. In an era when male novelists are routinely asked to justify how they render women on the page, “I just think, ‘What would this character do?’” is both an aesthetic principle and a preemptive rebuttal.

It works because it frames characterization as specificity rather than category. Follett is claiming the moral high ground of human complexity: a woman character shouldn’t be a bundle of “womanly” tells, she should be a person with a history, motives, blind spots, and agency. That’s the good news, and it’s why the quote resonates with working writers who’ve seen how quickly “representation” can collapse into checklist writing.

The context, though, complicates the neatness. Gender isn’t just personality; it’s a social force that shapes what a character can risk, how they’re read, what rooms they’re allowed into, what violence they anticipate, what they’ve been trained to swallow. So the quote’s quiet provocation is this: can you write “this character” honestly without also writing the gendered world pressing on her? Follett’s best defense is also his biggest challenge - specificity has to include the pressures of being seen as a woman, not pretend those pressures don’t exist.