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How many LGBT+ characters is too many?



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Sat Dec 29, 2018 4:05 am
AlexaBWill says...



So this is something I've always found interesting, as someone who wants to be published someday. As a member of the LGBT+ community, I tend to write LGBT characters because of A.) representation, but mostly because of B.) it's my personal experience.

The thing is, I don't want to just cater to LGBT folks, because I want everyone to read my stories (and also be receptive), and I don't know when it gets too heavyhanded with the gay stuff, you know?

Any advice would be helpful.
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Sat Dec 29, 2018 10:07 am
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Omni says...



With all things, there's a balance here to achieve! You can have a looot of gay stuff in your novel and still attract most mainstream audiences. I wouldn't recommend everyone be a member of the LGBTQ+, because there's a lot of potential in straight characters or cis characters as well! Swinging too far in the spectrum isn't a good thing, either way.

Representation is a spectrum, and good representation is a by-product of genuine storytelling that just happens, not because of an agenda or a pre-set notion. However, as an author, we both know that isn't the case, because we want something in characters always. There's no way we can't! But, I think it's an important thing that you're asking this question, but maybe it's the wrong question to ask? Like I said, representation is important, but representation for representation's sake is, well, tokenism.

Let your characters love who they want, be who they want, and act how they would naturally, even if it's something that you, as a writer -- or as a LGBTQ+ person -- don't want. If a character starts to have natural feelings for someone of the opposite gender, then write it that way.

Hope this helps!
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Sat Dec 29, 2018 9:40 pm
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Tenyo says...



Personally, a character being LGBT doesn't seem a big deal to me anymore, I'm quite used to seeing gay characters in media and writing. It's kind of become the norm not to assume a person's sexuality so I don't really do it in fiction either. Token gays or revelations of sexuality that aren't plot related kind of irk me for that reason too.

For my culture and general expectation, I could comfortably read a story where 70% of the characters are some kind of sexuality/gender queer and I would assume it was just part of the culture the book was set in. Less than 30% hetero would start to feel political for me.
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Sun Dec 30, 2018 12:26 am
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Vervain says...



Honestly, I think you can't go wrong. Not everything you write will please everyone who reads it, and it's not an awful thing to write for a smaller audience than "everyone". Your writing can be accessible to most people even if it's written for a smaller audience, such as gay people, asexual people, disabled people, etc. etc.

Lots of published "mainstream" authors have casts that are primarily LGBTQ+, and lots of their works have "crossed over" so to speak into the cishet sphere of the audience (especially in the contemporary YA fiction audience, with books such as Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda/Love, Simon). And even if these books had never crossed over, there's a huge audience of queer/LGBTQ+ people who are eager to read more and more books with characters like them.

Most of the characters in any of my given WIPs are some kind of queer. Where necessary, it's implied or stated outright, and some of these characters are attracted to each other and are in LGBTQ+ relationships with each other. That doesn't mean every character is same-sex hooked up by the end of every story, but it does mean that I try to include realistic orientation and gender diversity in my casts, especially when writing science fiction and fantasy (where our ideas of attraction and gender may not even exist!).

So write as many as you want to write. Make your stories what you want them to be, not what the world at large wants them to be. Things can be changed and edited in later drafts. For right now, write the story you want to read—and if the story you want to read is populated by a bunch of queer/LGBTQ+ people, then go for it!

And besides, if other authors can have 100% cisgender, heterosexual casts, you can have 100% queer/LGBTQ+ casts.
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Sun Dec 30, 2018 12:34 am
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TheSilverFox says...



Short answer: there is no limit

Long answer: Write as many queer characters as you want. It's your personal experience, so there's nothing wrong with letting it shine. Heck, I think that's what literature needs - more personal perspectives from women and minorities to crowd out the very big bloc that revolves around cishet white dues. And that's the important thing, actually; it really doesn't matter how many queer characters there are, or how gay things get, there's going to be a lot of people who will straight up (this was not intentional I swear) not read it. And maybe those people just kinda sucked anyways?? At least they have plenty of cishet white dude stuff to read instead.

You might be worried about 'politics' or 'tokenism' or 'forcing an agenda', but the people who don't want to read LGBT+ stories are going to say that about you no matter what you do or what the reality is. I wouldn't stress it, personally. Politics is, at its most basic, who gets what, when, and how. Everything is politics. Pick the politics that you want and run with it. Throw in queer characters because you want queer characters. Throw in representation because you want representation. As long as you stray away from stereotypes (which often means writing multiple queer characters if you're concerned about one) and do the research, you'll have a good story. And again, it doesn't matter what you do, homophobes and biphobes and transphobes will still trash you. Better to ignore them and do your own thing.

Best of luck!
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Sun Dec 30, 2018 5:22 am
Starve says...



I cannot give any comments as a writer but as a reader, I would say that most readers of fiction are usually more open minded than a random group of people, because they've grown acclimatised to non-straight characters and other reasons as well. Usually.
(Look at the backlash Orson Scott Card has faced for his homophobia)

To answer your question, If the story, the worldbuilding and the plot allow and need for the entire cast of characters to not be straight, that too is cool, literally zero issues. You will alienate only a small section of readers who would have nitpicked anyway and will probably never change. I would say that there's no need to kowtow to such readers.

However if it feels to a politically moderate reader at some point that some character's sexuality is added just to make a statement, then another segment of readers might pull back a bit. They are the kind of people who will find some other reasons to criticize the work, and then thread their 'discomfort' into their critique of the work. Whether to worry about these people is a decision you have to make. If you have enough support from the people around you, and believe that there is no redundancy, then I would suggest not caring about this group of readers either.

The rest of readers keep an open mind and don't let their ideologies get in the way of enjoying and celebrating good story-telling. Also remember that art is a great way to push boundaries, and artists can definitely afford to be more unconventional or progressive in their work .( which is actually another reason that people approach art with a more open mind)
Also your writing will feel more genuine if it comes from experience.

I would suggest you keep the plot and worldbuilding in mind while deciding the sexuality of characters.
For example of the world is entirely fictional then the entire cast could easily be non-straight if that's how you envision it.
If the story is set in the real world, even then the majority of the cast may be non-straight, for example if the story revolves around the life of rights activists. But it might be a tad more realistic to include straight people, in support or in conflict etc. if it's set in any era from dawn of history to the current day.
What I want to say is that there could be any ratio of non-straight people and if it fits the plot, then no one can give a valid rational criticism as to why they dislike the story just because of the sexuality of the characters.
Some people might still dislike it, but most readers try to keep an open mind.

Best of luck in your writing!
  








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