Yeah, I'd second that article. by
Neshomeh
on 2019-04-06 17:34:00 UTC
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As I am informed by LGBTQ+ people in my circles, the main take-away message about writing gay people (or people of any minority) is that they are people first. We all have the same basic psychological needs. Identity and life experience, and how they interact, in all their infinite variety, color how we go about fulfilling those needs. It's important to be aware of the stereotypes and the history that created them in order to avoid perpetuating harmful ideas, but basically, as long as you're treating all your characters as complex human beings, regardless of sexuality or whatever else, you're probably fine.
Like the article says, take the feedback on board and give it serious and respectful consideration, but you can't please everyone all the time. Don't let it scare you away from trying to do something good with your writing.
~Neshomeh, demi/straight woman who sometimes writes gay men and is still working hard to wrap her head around the idea of attraction to women.
Honestly, just... try? by
Thoth
on 2019-04-06 15:50:00 UTC
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We're not exactly heavy on the pitchforks around here. And seeing as I don't know what's up, I don't know how to help too much.
Speaking for myself, I think most of that advice is pretty sound, honestly. Although I have a bit of my own.
1) Accept that you cannot please everyone: there are a lot of different opinions about how to write LGBT characters. Especially from LGBT people. You won't make all of them happy and it frankly shouldn't be your goal to, because the inherently conflicting nature of all the different opinions means that you'll wind up with a character with no personality. Some LGBT people believe that straight people shouldn't write gay characters, or shouldn't write about certain aspects of their experience, like coming or what ever. Do your research, try and get the tricky stuff right, but don't listen to those people and subsequently avoid writing key scenes in the life of your characters because strangers on the internet said you shouldn't write them.
2) Personality: different people approach things differently. Personality, not sexuality, is the primary discriminator here. If you know that a character is gay or lesbian or bisexual or trans, look at who they are and how they got to where they are. That's going to inform a lot about how they act. It will also do a lot to tell you how they handle their own sexuality: not everyone is flamboyant and all out there. Some of us (*cough cough* me *cough cough*) would rather go sit imn a corner and read or whatever.
...Honestly, the article pretty much covered all that. Huh.