In a series of short articles, Helen Jacey offers advice and writing tips to help you craft or refine a script to submit to the WOFFF Short Script Competition 2025.
Helen is an author and founder of Sheddunnit, sponsors of our Short Script Competition.
The Short Script Competition is open for entries until 22 June 2025, all entries must be submitted through our FilmFreeway page, where you’ll also find detailed guidelines.
Writing the Older Woman – Stereotypes and Tropes.
To celebrate the launch of the WOFFF Best Short Script Competition and to inspire your writing, I shared an exercise to help you create a unique character – the first in a series of blogs.
This second blog focuses on developing that character further, and thinking about stereotypes and tropes.
As it is still the window for submitting to the WOFFF script competition, this blog focuses on stereotypes and tropes when writing the older woman character. We’re talking anyone over fifty!
You might be thinking that the bad old days of stereotypes of all kinds of characters are now over, banished to the narrative trashcan. If audiences meet the monstrous hag, the witch, the sorceress, the evil step mother of myths and fairy tales, she is now more likely to be flipped by a female gaze.
Even with the rise of diverse older female protagonists on screen, a film festival like WOFFF needs to exist to continue to celebrate older women in original and numerous ways. Why?
Well, a cursory glance at any broadcast or streaming app’s shows and films will demonstrate that older women are still outnumbered by male leads (any age) and younger female characters.
So, every older woman character counts – to blaze a positive trail for audiences!
Whether you are thinking about entering the best short script prize or not, I’m going to share some ideas about creating older women characters which hopefully will spur you to think about stereotypes and tropes when creating a dynamic and original character.
Just having an older woman protagonist can flip a genre, or bring new life to a familiar story. For instance, in my Elvira Slate Investigations book series, I created an older woman character private eye sleuth called Beatty Falaise (pictured left) because older women were invisible as main characters in the 1940s noir genre.
Interested in my approach? You can listen to this episode of Shedunnit: Crime Writing with Helen Jacey podcast which is all about sixty-plus Beatty.
So, back to you. It’s your turn to consider your character in terms of stereotypes and tropes. Ready? Read the whole blog on my website here.
The Woman in the Story: Writing Memorable Female Characters, Helen Jacey
(2nd ed 2017, Michael Wiese Productions)
For a decade, The Woman in the Story has been the go-to resource for writers due to its inspirational and illuminating insights on female character development in storytelling. With a foreword by Hollywood producer Susan Cartsonis (What Women Want, Carrie Pilby), this new edition provides new case studies, a focus on the heroine’s journey, and is packed with even more creative exercises to expand your mind.
Venturing where other screenwriting guides fear to tread, The Woman in the Story provides screenwriters and storytellers with a ground-breaking creative paradigm for the creation of memorable female characters.
