Okay, so here's the deal -- I've got a male character in the current book I'm working on who is primarily attracted to dudes. I'm 40k words in and I've never mentioned this before because it just hasn't been relevant in the story so far.
Only now I'm laying the groundwork for a relationship with another guy that will be central to the story, and now that I'm getting there, it's starting to seem a bit weird and carpet-pulling that I've never alluded to the principal's homosexuality before.
In this day and age, is this something I can get away with, just not bringing up the character's sexual orientation until it's really relevant? Or have I still got to hint or allude to it early on so that my readers don't go, "What?! Gay?! Interrobangs?!" and then throw my book across the room, possibly shattering their e-readers?
Is gay like science fiction or fantasy, that you have to warn your readers early on that it's going to be one of Those Kinds of Stories?
I'm thinking that you should ease the readers into it.
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite writers, who has a history of writing quite a bit of sex into his novels wrote one where the protagonist was gay. He still gets letters from people who wanted to let him know that they were burning his book.
http://www.richardkmorgan.com/news/670/i-got-another-one/
I'd say you should just mention a few things in passing, again, to ease the readers into it.
ReplyDeleteThe previous administration of Star Trek: Lost Frontier, before I took over the show, did that with Captain Trask. They tossed in a line at the end of an episode out of nowhere. "Remind me to tell you about my ex-husband sometime." And it really jarred a lot of our listeners at first. None of them were against it, they just weren't prepared.
I think the problem here is that people are still assumed to be Heterosexual Until Proven Otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI think giving a bit (but just a bit) of establishment of his being Not-Straight will help ease the readers into a mindset of "Oh, right, I forgot he likes dudes" instead of "Whoa wait what he likes dudes?"
It depends on the reaction you want.
Depends. On the one paw, it should be the kind of thing that doesn't feel like an asspull, unless you want the discovery of being gay to be a surprise to the main character as well. It's probably something that should at least be suggested earlier in the book if it's not.
ReplyDeleteOn the other, if it really hasn't been relevant to this point, it's probably not something you want to go heavily out of your way to set up, simply because that would imply that you have to do so. This is 2011, for crying out loud. People shouldn't have these hangups.
That said, I also understand why people do. People put themselves into a good story. Finding out that a character is something you're not, long after you've emotionally invested yourself in the character, can be a very jarring emotional experience that most people probably won't understand. I think that's one of the reasons GLBT fiction just won't sell that well in the mainstream for a long time; people don't think they can empathize with the characters, so they don't.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI think it depends on a bunch of things, including who your audience is and the medium. If you're writing for the fandom, I'm not sure you need to worry. (Especially if a fox is involved.) On the other hand, the wider world has different assumptions. Likewise, if this is going to be a published novel then between the blurb and the cover there will probably be room for external clues that the story may contain gay.
Within the story itself? Well, whatever suits the narrative best. I wouldn't stress too much for now. You'll have more perspective in the editing pass -- maybe there's a natural place to bring up some backstory that you didn't see the first time through. (Assuming this is the protagonist, it'd be a bit unusual if relationships and sexuality never came up at all in character interactions or internal monologue. But maybe stuff is moving very fast in your story and it just doesn't figure...)