The way to move beyond just slapping labels on characters and towards creating depth is to make sure that every trait a character is tagged with is meaningful to the story.
As long as you're defining "story" in a way that includes characterization and setting, I agree with you. I think the confusion may be coming because a lot of the time "story" is taken to mean just plot. And I don't think any aspect of characterization has to be important to the plot in order to be important to the writing as a whole.
Examples: I would not write: Sam, who was gay, ran down the hallway toward his friends. [ETA - this is the strawman I think Justin was trying to beat up.] but I might write: Sam ran down the hallway toward his friends and slid to a stop next to Noah. Well, kind of next to him, kind of into him. Sam was getting pretty good at finding excuses for physical contact with Noah.
As I mentioned earlier, I believe plot and character are the same thing seen from different perspectives. Something that is meaningful to characterization will be meaningful to the plot. Something that isn't meaningful to the plot isn't meaningful to characterization.
So we're all on the same page - if being gay is meaningful to characterization, it should be included.
I don't think I am on the same page, unless I'm misunderstanding. I don't think every character trait has to be meaningful - sometimes people just are. I see no problem with having a gay character who you could substitute for a straight character without it affecting the story in any way.
I think there are very few situations where a character's sexuality wouldn't be meaningful to characterization. I guess a very minor character who only appears for a line or two - and, no, I probably wouldn't make any mention of that character's sexuality, unless the scene took place in a sexual environment. But most main or even secondary characters are, at some point, going to have interactions with others in which sexual orientation would be at least a subtext. If I were writing an action-packed short story in which a group of characters escaped from a dragon, I probably wouldn't have a reason to mention anyone's orientation. But a full-length novel, and especially for the POV characters? I think it would be pretty rare for a character to not have even a moment's thought about romantic or sexual things.
Characters behave in ways which are very different from real-world people (for example, everyday speech in the real world is very different from dramatic dialogue - real world speech has a lot of excess words). Whatever "people just are" is only very loosely relevant to what characters are.
I agree, but I don't think it's an issue if you could change all of the "Sam thought about Noah..." to "Sam thought about Anna..." and not affect the story. We're clearly not going to agree. I'm never going to think a character needs a reason to be gay.
And I'm never going to think that slapping a label on a character, rather than build depth, is ever going to be worthwhile.
If an author can, with very little effort, peel off the "gay" label and replace it with a "straight" label on any of his characters, then he is just slapping labels on.
Give up the "slap a label on it" line - no one's talking about that. But things can be meaningful without being gone into in depth. Like, having a character be sarcastic is appropriate just because that's what the character is like - having a sarcastic character adds variety and depth and realism to the book as a whole, spices up the dialogue, etc. Characterization can be about details without having those details spring up in later plot developments - it's okay to include a sarcastic character even if the sarcasm never plays a larger role in the development of the story. Same thing with gay characters, or any other aspects of characterization.
Here's your hetero-normative attitude again. This also counts the other way round, but I'm sure you never ask yourself if it's meaningful for your characters to be straight.
I'm sure he'll be along in a second to claim it's wrong to allude to any character's sexuality unless it affects his odd definition of "plot".
Yes The way plot and character are created is by scene-by-scene decisions. To use a metaphor, when you look back at a field of snow and see your tracks, that's plot. When you look forward to see where you'll step next, that's character. Its the same thing, but with different perspectives (where you've been vs. where you're going).
In an action story, I might write: He was going to die. It had taken a while for the realization to sink in, but now that it had, Sam found it almost comforting. The end was inevitable, so what point was there in struggling against it? He was going to die on this godforsaken wasteland, roasted by the dragon's fire or spitted on a goblin's spear or gnawed to death by a pack of those fucking awful pixies. This was the end. He wouldn't be home for Wintermas, would never sit in front of his mother's huge stone fireplace and tell stories with his family. He'd never wake up next to Noah again, never see his warm smile or feel his strong arms. He'd never get to do any of the things he'd planned, because some asshole general had thought it was a good idea to send a troop of untrained men into hell on Earth. He struggled to his feet. If he was going to die anyway, he was going to die well. "Get off your asses, you lazy cowards! We're here to kill a dragon--so let's do it!" And then never mention his sexuality again (since he gets eaten by a dragon in the very next scene!) ETA: And I might just as well have written "Nora" as "Noah" in that passage - doesn't affect the overall flow of anything.
In that situation, I wouldn't mention his sexual orientation at all, unless.. The other traits he gets tagged with seem to be put there to tag him as a "commoner." His being tagged as a commoner might be meaningful to characters who come later or meaningful to the theme. In the same way, his being tagged as gay might be meaningful to characters who come later or meaningful to the theme
I didn't mention his sexual orientation. I just mentioned one of the things he was really going to miss about being at home. If I'd made it Nora he was missing, would I have been mentioning his sexual orientation, or just mentioning one of the things he was really going to miss about being at home?
And what is this obsession with "tagging" people? He's not being tagged, I'm just trying to describe his thoughts, his motivation for rising up against the dragon. If you were going to try to create a scene like this, something designed to show why a character behaves in a certain way, how would you write it?
You'd be mentioning his orientation by mentioning something he'd miss (waking up next to Noah, seeing Noah's warm smile, feeling Noah's strong arms.). I really don't get why you keep trying to catch me in a double standard by asking questions which are some version of "would I feel the same way if the trait were heterosexuality?" YES, I would feel the same way.
