"I think gays do this" "I think gays would feel this way" "I think gays are so" Forget what you think. When you write a character, you know that character. If you can't fucking get into the mind of someone you are writing about and creating from scratch, you need to change the character. So he's gay, big deal. In your story, you decide what upbringing he has. You don't go and research the biological makeup and the identical genetic code of all homosexually oriented males. You let your story dictate how he grows up, how he reacts to the world. If he gets bullied for it, he grows up hiding this fact. He grows resentful, ashamed, or scared. If nobody gives him hassle, he's open, he flaunts it, he's fabulous, and he doesn't care. You're telling a story, god damn, why do you need to research a sexual orientation. This isn't like a culture you study. There is no religion. Nobody obeys a set of rules or abides a code that should be learned and respected. Everybody who is gay has a different experience of it, and you can't catalogue that. You could study gay people all day long. What would you learn? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nothing other than you've been watching human beings all day, and you know a little more about people. Things you can apply to anyone. Quit wasting your time on this forum, and write. Make your character gay. If you carry prejudices, it'll show, then nobody will like your story, and it'll be a wake up call. N.b. judging by some of the posts in this thread, a number of you ought to rethink your attitude to same sex coupling... Or at least try not to be so blunt with the ignôrance. Oh, and I offer my pardons for being a little aggressive in this post.
It's alright. The alcoholism only aggravates your wolf-like tendencies further. We understand and we love you.
You can honestly just write them as two characters who have romantic interests with each other. It's all the same so long as the characters themselves are believable.
While I'm personally a very firm believer that above all each and every one of us is first and foremost a human being, we also have our own individual identies as men, women, gay, straight, christian, jewish, muslim, buddhist, transgender, etc. etc. etc. For a lot of people our personal identities can play a central role in our everyday lives. Without having read all of the posts in this thread, I think that what most people are stumbling over here is what comes across as being the apparent ease with which your character's sexual identity changes. I wouldn't go so far as to say that somebody who is gay can suddenly 'turn bisexual', it can and probably has happened. I doubt, though, that it would be solely the reaction to a single painful experience, although who knows, perhaps it could. Perhaps the character decides to sleep with a woman to get some kind of strange revenge? Or he finds himself getting seduced by (or seducing) a woman whose shoulder he's been crying on. There are probably plenty more scenarios. Maybe he really does enjoy it, and concludes (after a little inner turmoil) that, hey, sleeping with women ain't that bad after all. Readers will want to see the journey he goes through to get from being gay to becoming bisexual. Is he a man who happens to prefer men, and always has, and hence identifies with being gay? Has he felt attracted to women in the past but decided not to act on it? Why? When? How often? Never? How big a role has his identity as a gay man played in his everyday life? It doesn't hurt to forget that sexuality can sometimes be fluid or ambiguous. There are gay men who have on occasion slept with women, but wouldn't for a minute consider themselves to be bisexual, let alone straight. The same can be said of some gay women, etc. etc. etc. Straight, gay, male, female, transgender, heros, serial killers, dictators; all are human first and foremost. But they all have their own unique identities and developments.
My best friend and I are growing up in the SE USA as well, and you hit it on the jack pot. Also my MC's best friend is in a lesbian relationship. I never thought about writing it differently - I figured I'd just write them how I might a heterosexual relationship [I just realized I wrote "how I might a normal couple" I'm glad I caught it. I don't mean to be offensive like that. I grew up in a very anti-homosexual community, so it's semi ingrained in my head. I'm working on it.] The Mc's best friend is very playful sexually (i.e. 'inappropriate' dancing in the middle of the kitchen just to tease the MC's fiancee - who can't help but find them hot/sexually attractive). Hmmm. Maybe I ought to put more thought into it.
IMO you just need to treat the couple like any other. Focus on the characters themselves and that will help you understand what things will make the other angry or what they might joke about. For me the main things you need to think differently about are the following:- 1) Are they out? Are they comfortable with their own identity? 2) Do you need to even mention they are gay/lesbian? Because you are unlikely to mention they are straight. 3) How do others feel about it? Are there family cool with it and what effect does this have? Pretty much everything else is going to be like writing any other male or female character. I might have missed stuff it's getting late here.
