Some Thoughts on Writing LGBTQIAP+ Characters [A very non-comprehensive guide]

hey guys it's shaylen and i'm here today with another writing video in the spirit of Pride and we're talking about how to write queer characters some of you might be saying why is this straight girl talk about how to write creepy wall fun fact me not not a hetero you've just picked up on the fact that I literally wear overalls every single day but I am ace asexual I'm also on the aromantic spectrum never said that on this channel before but i think i'm do peace signs who feel kind of uncomfortable right now hey it's a beautiful day to come out of 43,000 people for the sake of educational content um so today I wanted to talk about writing queer characters I do want to start with like a couple I guess disclaimers I know it's excellent video start with like 50 disclaimers now believe it or not shocking take but I am NOT the representative voice for the entire queer community there are infinite different queer experiences the queer community is so diverse in so many ways there are infinite experiences that I know nothing about just because I'm an ace doesn't mean I know anything about what it's like to be like trans cuz I don't I I know nothing I am Jon Snow here use a straight man so maybe not also that show was kind of bad in the end anyways another point queer community so diverse I am NOT trying to say that I have like any kind of general authority on like what it is to be queer like this is literally just my experience things I've talked about with friends things I've noticed but this isn't I don't want this video to be like rule Z I literally just wanted to share some thoughts I don't even want this to be like a do's and dont's kind of video I really just wanted to talk about some things that when I read them seem not even offensive to me but just like awkward to me and when I read it I'm kind of just like that's that just doesn't have like the ring of truth there are a few things that I wanted to touch on that I think maybe you just might not consider to think about when writing a queer character if that's not your experience my next disclaimer I like the word queer some people don't like it but I like it for several reasons one for the say this video because this isn't a video just on writing ace carick ters even though that's my experience if you do want a video of just our writing ace carick ters Julien Greystoke just did one I will leave a link to that video in the cards it's a great video but I just wanted to talk about like some general things that I don't think only apply to ace carick ters it's a bit more broad than that so I like the word queer it's easier than using a really long acronym that still doesn't even cover everyone also because ace people are sometimes excluded from queer spaces and that sucks and so sometimes it's just easier to be like I am where I was submitting to Allah neg they were like you know like we try to represent like diverse authors stuff like you're a person of color or and then the acronym they used like the LGBTQ except except Trackman and they used was a very long one it was one of like the most inclusive I have ever seen like there was a - for two-spirit it was so inclusive there was no a and because in my mind I was like I was going to say and my cover letter because they say if you're comfortable doing so like you can identify yourself I was gonna be like oh yeah me like but then I was like in the eyes of this magazine like am I not queer to them like do they not consider me part of this like they didn't choose there was no a so like that's one reason why I like the word queer for myself some people don't like the word queer just aware of that I guess but I'm gonna use it in this video and then my last disclaimer god I'm nine minutes into this video if you're here and you're planning on leaving a long or even a short comment going on some rant about why you don't want to write queer people and why you can't and why it doesn't make sense and why you feel so attacked that you're now expected to include queer people and your work just don't like if you really don't want to write about queer people or if you don't want to include any diversity in your work like and just don't do it I'm not gonna come after you I literally don't care if it's not your mission in life then it's not your mission in life there are a lot of people out there who do want to include representation in their work because they want to they're probably gonna do a much better job than you a person who doesn't want to this video is not me trying to convince you to write diversely if that's something that matters to you you will do it and you'll put the work into doing it well if it's something that you vehemently don't want to do the point that you're gonna leave an angry comment about why it's so annoying that you are expected to write diversity literally just don't I promise you there's still a market for your book about straight white people there's been a market for straight whites as people forever and there still is one you will be fine I personally would rather read representation from someone who actually cares and wants to okay and you don't have to justify why to me in the comments okay sorry this is very wonderful video for me and I'm just it's gonna have a very low tolerance in the comments on this video if you have no intention of learning how to write queer characters then don't watch this video this video is for the people who want to learn the first one I want to talk about is gonna seem very maybe inconsequential but actually the kind of important and I want to talk about humor I do not know a single queer person who does not use their identity as a bit it's just a thing I don't know if you were writing a queer character it is fully authentic for them to make jokes about their career Ness however there are some things I wanted to mention about this and I think that jokes can cross the line from authenticity to offensive actually really easily and I think that it's really good to talk about the concept of punching up and punching down in humor so basically punching up is when you make a joke about someone who has more power than you and punching down is when you make a joke but someone who has less power than you so for example we can all like pretty much except that it's fine to make jokes about lawyers it's not really gonna harm them however punching down is when you make a joke about someone who has less power or privilege than you and that is when a joke can become offensive how you end up reinforcing negative stereotypes that actually can have an effect on individual people's lives you could end up in a situation where let's say that you are trying read a queer character that's what this video is about ranked queer characters and you are straight for the sake of this example you might not be but you have a friend who's quick and they sometimes make fun of themselves as we all do you then take that joke and you implant it in your book because in your mind you're thinking this is fine because I literally heard it from my friend my friend literally roasts themselves if you are straight you might be punching down with that joke if it's like a joke that's offensive but it might not be offensive for a queer person make that joke does that make sense I'm not saying that if you're straight if your characters joke about being queer it that's automatically offensive but there are some jokes that are loaded it's pretty common for people to make fun of stereotypes about themselves in order certain kind of like reclaim that poke fun of it rise above it and it's fine because the stereotype is about them so like for example it's kind of annoying and offensive when ace people are referred to as plants cause like we're asexual and like plants like reproduce asexually anyways that's kind of annoying however if I an actual ace person we're to jokingly call myself a plant I think it's fine because I'm making the joke about my cell rise above the fact that that's kind of an annoying joke that people make so when you are writing your humor in your work especially in Y a like yaa first of all I think it's so important just side tangent queer rep it's like so important in why a I read why a prolifically from the age of like 12 to maybe 18 in those six years that I was reading like upwards of sixty eighty books a year I don't think I ever yeah don't think I ever read a canonically ace protagonist very likely that if I had actually read a book from that perspective and actually seeing what that perspective looked like I might have realized that I was a smudge younger than when I did humor is very common in like white contemporary especially so might be a very natural part of the tone of your book I guess this is very convoluted but my point is humor is great before you make a joke consider if it's appropriate for you to make as the author not just if it's appropriate for your character to make if you're writing a character who isn't of the same identity as you there's a really big difference between making fun of your own life experience in your own identity and making fun of other people's do you have to label your character's identity and there are a lot of conflicting opinions on this some people say that like if you're writing a queer character you kind of have like a responsibility to make it cam in I think like all things it's a matter of situation and nuance I think that if you can label your character's identity and actually like make it canon that they're queer that's great there are just situations where it's simply not realistic speaking as an ace person literally the majority of ace rep that I can say that I've read recently is me like head cannoning and being like reading into this pretty sure the character is ace so I recently read this book and this isn't Shane at the book I think it's it's a good book convenience-store woman by Sayaka Mirada this is a book about a woman who has worked at a convenience store for like eighteen years and she feels really content doing so and she likes her life she likes her routine she feels fulfilled working outs convenience store but as she gets older she starts to feel a lot of pressure from society and people around her to have a normal life get married have a family get a real job she's pretty clearly coded as a romantic asexual they even talk about asexuality there's like a scene where another character mentions asexuality the main character never self identifies as arrow ace I feel with 99% certainty that she's intentionally arrow ace that was like some of the clearest a strip I've read in a really long time and it was still not necessarily canon just saying it's like super rare that ace characters are actually legally will this ace I don't know who JK Rowling has revealed to be a slightly Dobby was ace all along I wanted to talk about another thing that this seems like a small thing but it's just another thing that stands out to me as being really awkward and unrealistic and it's specifically with side characters I don't really know how this would work with a main character but it's when we have side characters who kind of just like seem to need to announce that they're queer in like really unnatural ways I think that this comes from writers feeling like they need to get kind of like diversity points because there's so much emphasis on diversity sometimes even more so than like the actual characterization of the characters I think a lot of authors feel like they like okay I'm writing a character in this characters by the fact that they are bi is so important and I need to make it so clear that this character is by the minute they are introduced shocking hot take but it's okay to read about a character for a certain amount of time and find out that they are by later sometimes a character's gender identity or sexuality might be the first thing we learn about them but oftentimes it won't be and it's actually okay if we learn about it later this kind of comes up as in scenes where a character who's queer will be introduced and they will kind of like just find a way sometimes kind of an unnatural way to come out to the main character here's the thing where people don't all just go around looking for an excuse to come out to everyone that they need especially if your protagonist is like a straight sis man never in my life have I met a straight man and been like I need to come out to him like as soon as possible queer people are actually sometimes shockingly subject to discrimination and violence it's really just seems awkward a lot of the time when I see a character just kind of go out of their way to come out to someone they've just met - a person who is not coded as queer this is not universal maybe it's realistic for your character but oftentimes I think it's so unrealistic how does this character know that this is a space that's safe for them to come out in however this is kind of a double-edged sword because I think it's actually very natural for queer people to come out to people they've just met if they think those people are also queer or they know those people are also clear because then it's like there's like some solidarity that you want to like establish I find it easier to come out to queer people that I barely know than to straight people that I know really well the next thing I want to talk about and maybe like my biggest point maybe the one I should have started with but instead I started with the little points when you're writing a queer character is consider that this character has a relationship with their identity everyone has a relationship with their identity but you know what I mean like this specific part of their identity when you are not straight or not sis you have to go through a process of understanding that about yourself it be finding a label for yourself maybe accepting yourself figuring out how you're going to interact with the people around you whether you're gonna come out to them how you're gonna do so who you're gonna come out to this is something that is formed over many endless interactions that you have with you know yourself and other people and it's gonna be different for everyone for some queer people being queer is like a really small part of their identity and how they see themselves and for others it's a really important part of how they see themselves and their identity this also often has to do with the environment that the character grew up in everything from how they realized they were queer when they realized they were queer what kind of discrimination they may have faced how this has affected them as a person like what experiences have they had where they felt maybe outcast or isolated or different because they were clear like I can think of a lot of experiences in my life where I just felt weird or I just felt different like I could just tap I had no something weirdness just being I was just I wasn't being weird I was just bein ace um but before I knew I was ace you know I like just internalized it as like a personal thing when I was younger people would always ask like would you like and me not liking anyone cuz that's we been over-faced and a respek I would just never have an answer to that and no one would ever believe me you said that once fine you say that you don't like anyone for six years then people start to be like this is just lying no true facts so basically what I'm saying is as a queer person you have to spend some amount of time maybe a lot of time examining yourself and your experiences and just figuring out what's going on because society doesn't give it to you straight like society doesn't give it to you straight if you're straight and sis like that's what's assumed from you that's what's expected from you so society basically gives you that identity and you can just take that and run with it I'm not saying some straight people don't question their sexualities because I'm sure there are lots of straight people who need to have just like invalidate questioning people because you now have to find whether it's a word or just an understanding of your identity because other people just got it from society they were just like you are this is your gender this is your sexual orientation this is what it's expected but if you're queer you are outside of that what is expected so you gotta find that yourself you got to do all that yourself that combined with people's experiences and the environment they grow up in is going to shape the relationship they have with their own identity so that is probably from like a psychology standpoint in terms of actually understanding the consciousness of your character really the only thing I can say that you should consider and kind of going off of that point that I just made about like considering a character's environment that they grew up in there's one kind of negative stereotype often characters who are queer and are clearly coded as queer but don't know that they're queer are often thenis like not self-aware we've all seen that stereotype of like a gay character who's like really coded clearly as being gay and people make fun of him because he doesn't know that he's gay but it's so obvious and I think that it's kind of harmful that characters who maybe don't realize that they're queer until like later in their lives are portrayed as not being self-aware sure there might be cases where it has to do with your self-awareness but I think most of the time if a person takes longer to realize they're queer it has more to do with the environment that they grew up in and not their own self-awareness like I didn't realize that I was a scintilla I was 21 because I'm not self-aware I think it has to do with the fact of like just a drastic lack of representation phrase people and also kind of like the environment I grew up in I think the town it's not a town it's like a suburb that I grew up in that's kind of like an idyllic white picket fence kind of vibe that at least the time when I was growing up wasn't that accepting of any kind of difference even though like on the surface it's actually like a very liberal community I don't think under the surface necessarily was at all and I could definitely sense that honestly like now that I've been away from it for like five years and making up a high school kind of homophobic um that's the tea so that's kind of my little spiel for today thank you guys so much for watching happy pride and what's my usual up trow I will if you have any questions you can always send me an ask on tumblr so thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you guys in another video bye [Music]

Channel: ShaelinWrites

Views: 21,362

Rating: 4.7934003 out of 5

Keywords: writer, writing, author, novelist, creative writing, writetube, writetuber, writing advice, how to write a book, how to write a novel, writing vlog, creative writing degree, books, nanowrimo, authortube, writing tip, writing queer characters, writing LGBTQIA characters, writing asexual characters, diversity, we need diverse books, ownvoices books, writing ace characters

Id: 5puyH7gve0Q

Length: 18min 5sec (1085 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 28 2019