I've been told I have *too many* gay characters!

And pander to their sensitivity? Fuck no. Unless that's a joke? I can never tell with you. Oh mischievious you.

 

No, no, no. I did not mention that is a advice or a must or a should. I mentioned it as what I do when I write and what I look for when I read. Telling anyone what they must or must not include in their writing as regards the topic at hand is the last thing I am saying. The writer of that article made a comment that "we live in a time when all characters are white until proven otherwise" as an accusation she was throwing at writers and my point was that no, if the character's race is not mentioned at all and the reader fills in a default white person, that's on the reader, not the writer.

 

And, again, the writer of that article hit a nerve with me for being so obtuse as to pick HP of all franchises. She's completely missed the glaring fact that every magical person in HP is "queer". I mean, Harry has to live in an ACTUAL closet when he's not amongst his own. Hello!

Her article is the kind of pamphlet dogma that helps no one.

 

I agree they shouldn't be assumed to be white, and not everyone will make that assumption. But I still don't understand the logic behind throwing away incidental traits to any degree. When it comes to my characters, the more the merrier, as long as it fits and makes sense and everything. I want to have rich stores of traits to draw upon sometimes even just for one comment they make or someone else does about them.

 

He will be joking. Assume this! His brain always knits strange garments out of forum threads.

 

You don't have to throw away incidental traits. I never said that. In no way was that the point of my response in that article.

 

Yep. Edited my comment to have less serious tone because I feel that's probable.

 

So why did you advocate to some degree the idea of not including sexuality unless there's a love interest? In fact,that's not even the only way it can be relevant.

 

But if authors are aware of the way readers are likely to interpret their writing, doesn't it make sense for authors to adjust their writing to be sure it's interpreted the way they want?

 

I think the question the OP should be asking him/herself is this: am I representing these folk as real people, or just as 'examples' of a particular gender orientation? No matter what gender they are, they will have personal characteristics that make them unique.

It can be dodgy giving negative characteristics to a character whom readers see as 'representing' any oppressed minority—especially if that character is the only member of that minority in your story. Make sure these characters are individuals, and make sure they do NOT 'represent' a group of people. The safest way to do this, I reckon, is to create several characters who belong to the same group, but who have radically different personalities, goals, skills and flaws.

 

Dude, where are you getting advocate? I said "Similarly, if there is no love story in my piece, thus no need to mention anyone's sexuality, are you saying that I have, by default, written straight characters?"

If there is no love interest, I may have no need to mention anyone's sexuality. Might it come up in a different context, different conversation within dialogue? Sure. Of course. You are missing the point of my comments completely in that article. My comment was about reader assumption.

 

Maybe I'm over-analyzing/over-emphasizing what you said @Wreybies? Edit; okay, apparently I was.
Though, I would still add, being gay is politically and socially relevant in a way being straight isn't. It matters. So even if sexual stuff doesn't come up, I think it would probably be mentioned or at least kind of hinted at or something.

 

And again, all I am saying is that if I write a character or a story and the reader fills in holes with content that he or she brings, this is not on me as a writer. I usually don't mention race of characters because what I want is for the reader to fill that in with whatever they choose.

 

Yes.

 

But I don't want to make your characters for you! Urgh, effort.

 

That's my strategy as well: have other people from within that group exist within the story and let them have their own agency to show that your character wasn't there for the sake of having someone from Group XYZ. Show that these are, in fact, people, not examples.

<sees his character and realizes she's the only one with a neurological disorder>
Hmmm...
<starts jotting down brainstorming notes> Better make sure she doesn't act as a 'representation' of everyone with neurological disorders...

 

At the risk of chucking a smoke bomb into the room, kind of thing...

...if you want a completed naval gaze type assessment, deconstruction of your piece [which I have not seen]...maybe the library group find the piece a little 'earnest' [no pun]

- as in story-telling where, they, as in every group of adventurers, they enter dragon's lair, include kick-ass girl warrior, an African American wizard, a man confined in woman's body - the thief, a robot, three-legged dog called Oscar, a woman president of the moon, a hairy worm called Mat, I dunno...a bit too squeaky..?

The old ladies throw your manuscript to the floor:

'This is political correctness gone to madness,' says Dorothy.

'Get these gays off my face,' says Arthur from his wheelchair, coughs, reaches for cigarettes...

 

But that's kind of the issue with that tactic. I agree with the idea of making them people, I agree as much as I could, human characters all the way!!! But sticking multiple representatives in for everything you feature doesn't work. What about red-haired representatives? Green eyed representatives? Libertarian representatives? Gold-miner representatives? Australian representatives? As long as the character isn't a big boring stereotype it doesn't matter. They can even have a few stereotypical characteristics, a lot of stereotypes have a grain of truth. Black people are very populous group among rappers. Japan, especially before and during World War II, has an important culture around honour.

 

I don't usually think of myself as a control-freak writer, but I guess in this way, I am. I want my readers to at least partly share my vision of characters.

 

No coming back from that @Oscar. 'Black people are rappers?' You are bloody, bloody, bloody, I dunno...skating on a warm river...

Japanese are though like really quiet, often don't speak English much, anime, pocahontas, nice sushi, Hari-Kiri can be observed everywhere in the streets, dead Japs, and the bloodied swords. We had to do it back to them, bomb, I mean, we won, at least we will when it is all finally over.

...finger stuck in ass syndrome, euch.

 

OK, look, let's say I had an Asian character who just so happened to like videogames and anime. This is a common stereotype of Asians (they all are geeks.) How do I avoid this? I strategically put in a few more Asian characters who have their own interests that have nothing to do with geek/nerd culture. Hell, maybe one of them even blames video games for the laziness of today's youth or whatever.

I'm not saying be as politically correct as humanly possible, I'm just saying that if you are afraid that you're creating a token character to serve as a representative of the whole group, or a stereotype, to include a few more individuals from within that group with their own interests, aspirations, flaws, etc. Hell, it's what I'm doing with two of my characters in my fantasy. They both have albinism, but their personalities are very different from each other.

 

Depends on the situation. I's not going to be too much of a stretch to imagine that a group of friends might have multiple gay characters in it, since they're likely to choose their own friends. For the same reason you might have multiple people who are really into arthouse cinema in a friendship circle, even though the odds of randomly bumping into several of them in a day are really quite tiny in most circumstances.

However, if your story features eight largely unconnected main characters, each entering the story independently, and it just-so-happens that all of them are LGBTQ despite there being no story or setting reason for them to be so, the coincidence just might knock the reader out of the story.

 

But is it really worth it? Surely if you create human, complex characters you don't need to worry about stereotypes. My point was you can't afford that tactic unless you narrow it down to specific groups and let others be "unfairly represented"
And that stereotypes can exist in reality. As I said, there a lot of black rappers, not all black people, not all rappers. But they show up together often. And Japan does have a thing with honour, especially before it's transformation into a technology hub.

 

There are old ladies called Arthur?
I'm a three-legged dog and you're a hairy worm. What fun we shall have together. :d.

 

I guess my next question would be 'why.' Why are you (if you are) creating characters who represent so many groups that you can't create multiple characters within any one group—because you would end up with too many characters to handle?

Maybe the best thing to do is reduce the number of different groups in any one story? The fact that there ARE different groups might be enough to get your point against prejudice across, without risking the label of tokenism.

You did say in your original post, @dracodomitor , that "I've been so proud of the diversity and representation in this story, as it's something I've been told I need to work on in the past." I'm wondering if maybe you're going too far in the other direction now, overcompensating for previous omissions? What do you think?