@BayView I feel like this is going to go back to your points in other threads about 'effective' stories vs 'good' stories, which if I remember correctly wasn't really a point people took to, unfortunately.
For about the - I don't know - 15th or something time MJ Arlidge - DI Helen Grace , about a quarter to a third of the book devoted to the fact that she enjoys submission during non sexual S&M when it has absolutely bugger all to do with the plot (except for in little boy blue where it is the plot) That aside you do it by showing lots of extraneous scenes about their home life or love life where nothing of note or interest happens... this isn't limited to gay characters, i can think of some books with straight characters that suffer similarly. Rough justice by Colin Faulkner is one that comes to mind - very well written on the police stuff, but far too much tiresome and irrelevant detail about DI Madeline Fox's love life in particular her unbelievably tedious relationship with Dr Simon whateverhis damn name was, and her bonding with his daughter
But like we keep saying, we're not talking about spending page upon page. You seem to be the only one with that idea.
And a dude liking another dude isn't some active kink / lifestyle - the two aren't comparable. And no one in the thread is talking about doing that.
So, this one author did something crappy. Fair enough. It kinda comes back to the "whatever you do, do it well" idea, right?
FYI, at the bottom right you can see a link for "Show ignored content". I was pleased to discover that a while ago.
I always feel kind of guilty when I press it, though! "No, Bayview, you KNOW it's only going to piss you off! You KNOW you ignored them for a reason, and, sure, you can't really understand the conversation without seeing what they're saying, but, really, do you NEED to understand the conversation? You're setting yourself up for frustration!"
It can be (not the kink - the lifestyle) if you think about the long (and relatively interesting) discussion we had with @Wreybies about the bear lifestyle and what it means and what its like and so on and so forth. Then imagine that I decided to take all that info and include it in the darkest storm as background to Aldo's love life ... that would be tiresome and excessive (and pretty much the only discernible reason would be to say 'hey look at all this cool info i've learnt about gay lifestyles) On the other hand mentioning that Aldo and Jose are a gay couple would not be , even if it were only incidental to the plot (rather than pretty much central)
I think that this is where you're having trouble due to the fact that you apparently prefer plot driven stories to character driven stories. If a quarter to a third of the book is devoted to something, then that something IS important to the author and to the book. The fact that that's a part of the book's theme or focus simply means that you don't like the book. So we're not talking about a book that has a lot of details irrelevant to the story. We're talking about a story, in fact an entire category of stories, that you simply don't like. Imagine that your preference for food is meat. When served a fairly standard meat-and-veg meal would you say, "A quarter to the third of the meal was devoted to irrelevant food!" No, because you realize that some people like vegetables. Similarly, some people like character details, even if they aren't easily tied to a non-character plot.
Well, bears are a subculture of being gay, like whatever other kinks might form subcultures in other orientations. Again, though - let's try not to be tiresome and excessive in our writing, in any way, and... yay! We win! For a non-sexuality example - I find myself learning more than I ever wanted to know about guns for some of my books. My characters are cops or warriors or whatever, I need to do research... and I need to make sure that I use my research to write compelling fiction. I'm not in any way able to write a gun manual, and I really, really don't want to, but I learn a bit about guns in order to make sure my characters do things that make sense for people who are used to guns. No reason I can't use the same judgement when I'm researching other areas of characterization.
Yes. True. I try to only press it when a post from someone that I am willing to interact with seems to come out of the blue with no context--I want to see if a post from someone I'm ignoring is the context. But then I get sucked in.
That would be true if the books weren't marketed as police thrillers - a category it would fit into well if the stuff about her 'being in the life was cut. As it stands its more like buying a vegetarian meal and discovering that about a quarter to a third of it is made up of bacon, because the person producing the meal likes bacon so they'll damn well include it whether their customer wants it or not
But these are all well-reviewed books being put out by a major publisher... I think we have to assume that SOMEBODY enjoys them...
Actually fireams are another area where the" lets write everything i know thing" can creep in - As I used to be a soldier I know a great deal about military weapons, but when i'm writing a story including them I give only enough detail to be credible, I don't knowledge dump every thing I know E.g I might write a few lines about a character field stripping his rifle and the reassembling it - but I don't give a line by line description of how to field strip an SA80 and everything you should look out for and do in the process, because not only does the reader not care about that stuff, but it also takes away from the pace of the book. Tom Clancy was dreadful for this kind of thing - there's a bit in without remorse when John Kelly is making a silencer to go on his 1911, and he goes into so much detail about how he sets up the milling machine, how much metal he takes off, the measurements involved etc, that i found myself skimming ahead to the bit nearly three pages later where he finally reassembles it and does some target practice
Can't really say anything Bay didn't - bears are all gay but not all gay guys are bears. The two aren't synonymous and all instances of queer inclusion aren't going to be dives into subcultures that overrun the plot, so it's still not comparable. You obviously know this but keep coming back to 'pages upon pages' of subplot. No one else is suggesting that we write that way. If we must use your example, the story started out with only mentions of the mc's kink, right? It was only later on that it devolved? I'm in the 'mentions' part and I'm not intending to get to the devolution. No one's talking about writing queer characters to 'show off their research'.
No, and i appreciate you can have a queer character without needing a reason , just as you can a straight character. However my point was that there is a difference between incidental mention of a characters sexuality whatever that sexuality is, and including lots of detail about it when it isn't relevant to the plot. If i buy an action thriller, I expect that most of the book will be about thrilling action - I don't expect a great deal of it to be about how xyz character is confused about his sexuality because his partner is non binary. By the same token if a reader buys a book which is marketed as being an exploration of xyz character being confused about his sexuality due to is partner being non binary, they'd probably be disapointed if a great deal of it was given over to xyz robbing banks and running from the police
As an actual vegetarian myself, I don't start from the assumption that something has meat in it. Compare and contrast "I'm getting a Hawaiian pineapple/bacon pizza for myself, do you want one too?" "I'm actually a vegetarian, could I get mine with just the pineapple?" "Oh, sure, no problem." "Thanks!" "I'm getting a Hawaiian pineapple/bacon pizza for myself, do you want one too?" "Are you ****ing me? Bacon is garbage!" "Whoa, chill man, what are you talking about?" "[doctoral thesis on vegetarianism]" "... So why didn't you just say that you're a vegetarian? I could get a Hawaiian with pineapple and bacon for myself and one with just pineapple for you." "Why didn't you just start with that?" "Because you didn't say that you're a vegetarian, you said that bacon itself was bad." "Yes, because a lot of pineapple pizzas have bacon on them!"
I really think that it would be better if you said and thought "...relevant to the story." What's irrelevant to the plot can absolutely be relevant to the story.
I think different definitions of "matters" is where people are getting hung up. Here's an example that I used in one of the other diversity threads a while back: let's say a female cop goes into a bar to get security camera footage from the night before that is relevant to an investigation (the investigation being the main plot of this imaginary work). She has a chat with the bartender, the bartender goes to get the recording. Our plot is moving along nicely. While she waits for the bartender to return, the cop takes an admiring glance at a women in the bar. Bartender returns with the recording, officer departs, the next scene starts. The main character's sexual orientation doesn't come up more than a handful of times throughout the work. It's not a huge factor in her character, and isn't part of the plot. Incidents like the one above simply serve to make her seem a little more like a real person. Does that "matter" enough? Because one thing I've noticed is that if sexual orientation isn't a huge part of the character or the plot, the "if it matters" people usually start objecting if the character in question isn't straight. Works with only straight characters seem to get a pass, and the same tends to be true with race and gender (with regard to racial minorities or women getting held to higher standards by the "if it matters" people).
Fair enough - but again if i buy an action thriller i expect the lions share of the story to be about thriling action - if I buy a police procedural then the majority should be about polce investigation.. If i wanted to read a sappy romance i'd buy a sappy romance book
I can't find action to be thrilling unless I care about the characters involved. I can't care about a police procedural unless I care about both the victims and the cops. And "care" comes from character detail. Character detail is not inherently sappy.
I think you're right, and it ties into @ChickenFreak's point about Chekhov's Gun and how sexual orientation is NOT a gun. It's just a little detail. If a male character in a detective novel is a bit of a womanizer and flirts with the female coroner and the waitress and the female witness, it's characterization. Rather than telling that the male character is a womanizer (or that the male character is kinda sexist and only sees women as sexual targets, or whatever) the author shows it, and we're all happy. But if the male character flirts with the male coroner and waiter and witness, it's more likely to be an issue for some people. I say that's "some people"'s problem, not mine.
