Enby/Trans Education Hour

Enby/Trans Education Hour

A safe place for questioning people and curious writers alike to find resources on anything trans and enby.

  • 12 forum topics
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  • Created Thu Jan 31, 2019 8:09 pm

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Pitfalls?

2 posts in this topic.

  1. What are some common pitfalls that you know of about writing trans and non binary characters? I want to portray non-cis characters in my book correctly and, as a cisgender person who doesn't live in a very diverse section of the world, I worry I'll mess things up. I'm mainly concerned with the process of revealing characters' gender identities to the reader without it being a big deal, but any other suggestions are appreciated as well.
  2. @Feltrix

    I was a bit thrown by your use of the word pitfall, which gave me the idea of you asking about the trouble of an enby character. In the way of how their identity might wreck the plot line or cause troubles for the dynamic.

    Upon re-reading, I’m pretty sure you’re just (overall) asking about a few possible scenarios that might happen in a plot. The one that comes first to my mind is misgendering of the character by other characters in the plot. And then you have to deal with the scene of correction, which can go a lot of different ways.

    That scenario is a very good way to reveal the character’s gender. If you’re trying to make this plot so that there’s not too much of a focus on their identity, there’s no real reason to bring it up to the reader. So the way to involve this part of their life is to use the accidental discovery by another character, after a period of misgendering and/or deadnaming.

    I’m leaving this as a more general answer because I believe I saw a resources ask from you before on intergrating character details. To really deal with your concerns and worries, I think that I’ll need more details to the situation of your story.

    Are there any specific questions that you have?


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