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

:chill:

Please try to keep things civil and close to the topic of this thread, thank you.

 

What some writers do is force characters to be different on grounds unrelated to the story, simply in order to "check a box", which is very bad practice.
Instead, let your cast of characters be different in ways that actually matter, as in philosophies of morality, faith, family and so on. This will naturally create conflict between them, which might or might not bring into question the weaker kind of diversity: sexuality, gender, race and what have you.

Of course if they're related to the story these things might have to be explicitly written, but seeing as your novel isn't centered around romance I can't see why you would ever bring it up enough to make someone tire of it.

 

Do you have an example of someone doing this? It's really not something I think I've seen...

 

Sexuality, gender and race are equally as important to designing a character as philosophies. There are circumstances where either could be irrelevant, and thus incidental. They just make less of an impact. So what? Still do them. If I'm creating a character, I decided traits about them. Because real people have these traits. I don't give them everything, there's not enough room, but I can fit plenty of traits on a main character including ones that don't "actually matter". Pah.

 

I'm not saying that you shouldn't determine these things for yourself, I'm saying that you shouldn't write inconsequential information just because you're on a personal quest to show everyone how accepting you are.
A million shades of gray will serve you better than the seven colors of the rainbow.

 

But who has said that they do that? This feel a little like, "You shouldn't make your dialogue rhyme," when no one is doing that, so why say it?

 

I didn't say that did I? A lot of people are talking about that,but no-one is saying you should do that. I'm saying diversity is interesting and real. That character traits are sometimes incidental. And that I like to do a diversity of incidental character traits.

 

How old are you and what is your target age? It sounds to me like having an old person be a beta reader can often be a bad idea.

 

Passively mentioning it is a world of difference from forcing it.

Now, if you were to go on about a character's red hair for an entire paragraph, then yes, that'd be equally ridiculous.

Still, even passively mentioning someone's sexuality can pose more of an issue than passively mentioning hair colour. Hair colour implies a lot of things, and - since you used this example - red hair implies quite a bit. First, it tells you that said character is white, as only whites have red hair. Second, you can draw from it that perhaps the character is, to some degree, of Irish descent. One could assume this character probably has light complexion, possibly freckles, relatively fair skin, perhaps short to average stature, light eye colour (green, blue hazel) etc. - you say "red hair" and the reader instantly begins to draw a picture in their mind. You say "gay", however, and the imagination basically stops there - the character is gay, that's all. Without venturing into stereotypes, that's basically all you can infer from that.

Thus, mentioning someone's sexuality does not have the same degree of literary usefulness as mentioning their hair colour does. I don't think that's a fair comparison.

 

If they're only as background characters, then Tolkien never described them. There is no problem there.

 

It seems to me that first we're told to avoid it because it provides information that the reader doesn't need. Now we're told to avoid it because it doesn't provide enough information.

I can't help but see this as a deliberate shying away from the idea of non-straight people.

 

Justify why all those action-heroes have a straight love interest instead of a gay one. Why did they include that literary uselessness? Then we can talk.

 

I knew a guy back in high school who was biracial and had red hair (though not stereotypical red) so while it might imply white, it doesn't exclusively mean it. There's also the possibility of dye. And he had brown eyes. So drawing those assumptions from a simple mention of red hair could be hasty.

I fail to see why the story making note of who is waiting for the character at home would be a bad thing. No matter what, it tells us a little more about the character.

 

That's equally useless as well. Romance, if it has no plot relevance, belongs in the romance genre. Regardless of gender of sexuality of the characters. Yes, I'm saying Spiderman would be better off without Mary Jane, or whatever other example you want to use.

 

Ugh. Your books must be boring then. Did you read my earlier post in response to you? Event types and lifestyles are not in a bubble, and furthermore it interesting to break it up with different paces, tones, themes and moods. It creates a more real and engaging story rather than a monotonous one-trick-pony.

 

So no romantic subplots if a work is not in the romance genre? That sounds rather extreme.

 

Then your objection isn't to non-straight characters, it's to the vast majority of fiction. If, in non-romance-genre, you object to any and all reference to the fact that people sometimes pair up, then you are going far beyond the discussion in this thread.

 

If your story is "not romance-based by any means" yet you have enough homosexual characters for people to find it an overabundance it's not a long-shot to suppose that you oft mention it without needing to. Perhaps it's just the definitions that have been blurred when traveling across nations.
As for examples I have seen this unnecessary diversification in several video games, especially Bioware's last installments (DA: I), and a couple of newer movies, like Star Wars VII (whatever the name of the shiny stormtrooper they paraded through trailers with a cape was).

 

What?!? Neither Inquisition nor The Force Awakens go overboard with diversity. What sort of line do you have for "unnecessary" diversification?

 

What's your definition of "needing" to? Why do you "need" to? What if you want to? Your earlier posts suggested that people add those characters not because they want to, not because those characters filled out their creative vision in a way that they liked, but because they felt obligated to. I assume that those characters fill out the author's creative vision in a way that they liked.

I've always enjoyed Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar mysteries. In those mysteries, it seems that hardly anyone is just plain straight. And it seems clear to me that that is Sarah Caudwell's creative vision.

 

How many times do I have to say this? Diversity is interesting and it is real. Just because someone has diversity, does not mean they are just pandering to oversensitive SJW tumblr ranters. Maybe the change in social attitude promotes increased diversity? You know; gays are okay so we're going to do them more now. We can do good gays more, we can do gay love stories more, we can put them anywhere now. Did you ever think of that? Or you just prefer to imagine social change as always being the result of the most annoying side of civil right activism.

 

They barely do any diversity in Star Wars with real life groups, mostly aliens. They haven't done an LGBT movie character yet, only in games, although they've promised it's coming. http://www.advocate.com/film/2016/3/12/watch-jj-abrams-whether-star-wars-includes-gay-characters. And they don't have any middle-eastern people in it as major characters as far I can remember.

 

One point about statistical likelihoods, etc, etc--when has fiction writing ever been about statistical likelihoods? If a person is average in every way, with nothing unlikely about them and nothing unlikely happening to them, why would anyone ever write a story about them?

 

I never said I was opposed to "the fact that people sometimes pair up". I said I'm opposed to it being done unnecessarily. If it does actually serve some purpose, then go for it. Nothing wrong with that, as long as it adds to the story instead of distracting from it.

For example, in my most recent work, my MC has a crush on a girl at his school. That's not what the story is about, but I did it for a reason: Because later on, she is on the phone with her father when he is killed in a nuclear attack. By having my MC paying extra attention to her, not only could he partially hear the conversation, but I was also able to make the scene more dramatic and shocking, and have a direct effect on the feelings of my MC, which makes it more impactful for the reader. Bringing her into the story served a purpose in that case.

Had it not been for that scene, would I have ever mentioned my MC's crush on this girl? Not likely.

 

Well, there's a lot of things that are common that are interesting. But I agree.

 

OK. So you'd be fine if he had a crush on a guy instead, right?