HEY? So you want to make an awesome female character that will be loved for all glorious ages to come? Well look no further! In several easy steps, you'll be well on your way to gracing fiction with what will eventually become one of the greatest female characters of all time!

1. Real Girls Don't Wear Pants. A major rule in physical design is never ever have your female character wearing pants. Or, GOD FORBID, jeans. She must always wear either a skirt, shorts, or some freaky variation between the two. But never pants. (unless they're really tight pants that let you see everything. Black leather is also highly suitable for this purpose.) Also, the more of her legs people can see, the better. Legs, breasts, and ass are a major part of female design today, after all. Also, skirts that allow you to easily see her nether regions are also a big plus.

2. She Needs Physical Strength A girl can be all damsel in distress though! It's 2009. She needs to be kickass in some way. Physically is the best kind. Have her kicking and hitting her way through tanks is a surefire way to establishing a girl who can "fight for herself" and "be one of the guys." HOWEVER. We can't her being too kickass. No. We don't want her to become a sue so we need to make her well balanced. If you're going for a physically kickass chick, you gotta make her emotionally or mentally weak.
See? More realistic already! Sure, she's punching through hordes of the undead with her fists but she goes weak at the knees every time her love interest walks onscreen and loses her focus. Because we all know a physically kick ass girl needs a man to bring her down to earth, right? Right. She also needs to dedicate her life to him and be willing to die for him NO MATTER WHAT. ESPECIALLY if they've only known each other for a short time.
Because a female can never be emotionally -and- physically strong. Nevar EVAR.

3. BREASTS. It's where all her power comes from. The bigger they are, the more strength and energy she has to keep fighting zombies. No further description needed.

4. She Needs Emotional Strength. Okay, so maybe you don't want a tank-puncher as your lead girl? That's cool. You just gotta fill her up with lots of inner strength to make up for that. Seriously.
"Hey, if she didn't want to get killed by zombies, why didn't she run?"
Inner strength.

"Hey, when her boyfriend was being horribly mutilated by ass pirates in the middle of a Subway deli, why didn't she move?"
Inner strength.

"Hey, how come instead of trying to figure out ways to escape for herself while the kidnapper was out shopping, she just stood there waiting for her friends to save her? Wouldn't it have saved more time and effort for both her AND them?"
Inner FUCKING strength.

See, with inner strength you don't NEED weapons, resourcefulness, or a brain. Inner strength does it all for you.

Audience still not -convinced- your homegirl isn't a -strong female character?- No problem! Just throw in a quick, horribly placed, out of nowhere fight scene with her actually doing something for the last two minutes. It's a guaranteed way to milk, I mean, warrant positive reactions from the audience! If anyone objects, why, you can point out the facts with non-generic totally thought-out responses such as,

"What? Of course she's a strong female character! She picked up a weapon and fought!"

"What? Of course she's a strong female character! She got involved!"

"What? She actually did something! A lot of girls don't do that!"

Never mind the fact that it was at the last two minutes. THAT DOESN'T COUNT.
The fact is, she got involved. Or, hey, if you didn't decide to throw in that fight scene, just say she had "inner strength" and nevar gave up on her friends. How could anyone be so heartless and to hate a female who genuinely CARES FOR HER FRIENDS enough to actually wait until the last to minutes to DO SOMETHING or her "inner strength" makes up for it! Seriously! To hate someone like her, they must be queer! Or have girl issues! HOW DARE THEY! They probably don't "understand" finer, clearly developed characters!
You'll show them! Some proper reasons you can give are:

"You're gay."

"You're sexist."

"You just hate her because she's a girl."

"You have parent issues."

"You just hate because because she stops you from slashing your gay OTP."

ALSO, "you're gay."

Fag is also a nice touch.

Or the standard, "SHE'S NOT A SUE GAIZ."

Works every time. No one will dare challenger your superiority as a character creator after this.

After reading these steps, you'll now hopefully have a better idea of what it truly takes to make a better female character and the defining traits of what really makes a strong woman. And if ANYONE, and I mean ANYONE says otherwise, they're just jealous, sexist, gay, rabid, fangirl, witch-hunting faggots with parent issues.