Dolly Stanford is such a cool name it may actually have to be a character in one of my stories sometime
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Proof reading aside, having someone from the opposite gender sanity checking your characters is a very good thing. I know I cannot write from a woman's viewpoint, so when I need to include it, I will usually write from the viewpoint of a man who is observing the woman. I can do that. I've read some women who try to write a chapter or two from a man's viewpoint and ... wel ... it's almost always obvious that a man didn't write that, the character, while having a man's name, isn't really a man
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In the 3 month old book I was talking about, I couldn't avoid writing some parts from a woman's viewpoint because she is telling part of her history. Even though I am writing from the viewpoint of a man, when the woman is telling her story, it has to come from the viewpoint of a woman. I've had both of my daughters be my sanity checker on that, and, although they're not writers, they did a great job of helping me develop a real female character.
