writinglgbtq

[writinglgbtq]

I have no idea how to phrase this, so apologies if this comes off as disrespectful in any way-

I'm writing a fantasy story with a 16 year old Trans man protagonist. The story isn't about his transition, but it's going to be mentioned. I want it to be realistic for this time in his life, so I would like to know how expensive treatments (top surgery, hormones, etc) can get.

Again, I hope this isn't disrespectful in any way.

Hello! Unfortunately, I don't think this falls under the purview of writing advice. The cost of transition is different depending on where one lives.

However, if this is fantasy, there's nothing stopping you from coming up with deals and trades for specialty medical treatments. This is a trope older than time, especially in folktales. Many folk tales feature someone going to a witch to help a sick relative and being sent on some adventure. At least one telling of Rapunzel features her father raiding a witch's garden for herbs to help his wife's pregnancy.

[writinglgbtq]

i keep seeing arguments about various types of LGBT media that boil down to "there's too much of [one type of LGBT media], we need more of [other type of LGBT media]" and it's like.... there isn't 'too much' of any kind of lgbt stuff actually

[writinglgbtq]

The first official step towards banning any and all LGBTQ+ art and literature has been taken.

This is what hypersexualizing queer topics was always leading towards. Expect this to be the signal flare that gets some state legislature barreling forward to enact this exact measure, solely so the bill can be struck down, challenged legally, then taken all the way to SCOTUS.

...

Repeating what I said on Twitter: This is a good time to remind people that just being LGBTQ in this moment in time can be considered an outright radical act, so anything less than going all-in on the life you want to lead is fucking pointless.

Put another way, if you're putting actual time and energy into respectability shit right now, do everyone *and* yourself a huge favor, and stop wasting your time.

You can't fucking negotiate with Christian Terrorists.

[writinglgbtq]

microdoses on answering asks by opening my inbox, going "yep there's asks in there," thinking about how i'd respond to them, and then going about my day

[writinglgbtq]

Reasons to keep writing:

it brings you joy

somebody has to take care of the characters

you have a lesson to teach

it gets you through everyday life

there's people excited for the next chapter

to provide hope for yourself and others

if you don't tell the story, no one else will

it's a way of expressing yourself / what you go through

to make yourself and others feel less alone

people adore your writing

your characters would miss you if you left

nobody can take your place / write your stories for you

to leave something behind to be remembered by

to release your emotions

to inspire other people

[writinglgbtq]

"Don't write for others, keep writing when no one is reading" advice but for queer authors

Please please keep writing your queer romance novels and queer sci-fi comics and queer horror. Please keep putting evidence of yourself and others and all of us in the world.

One day someone will read your project and feel seen, and they may not tell you so for so many reasons, but it'll be a special, silent bond between you. A queer writer and a queer reader have a beautiful relationship.

[writinglgbtq]

Non-writing activities that actually help your writing

To get better at writing, you have to write. Yes… But what about the times when you genuinely don’t feel like it?

First of all, it’s alright! It’s not the end of the world! You’re not a failed writer if you have a down day. But if you really feel like doing something that pushes your writing along, but isn’t actually writing, here are some things you can do! →

📚 Planning out your next chapter When in doubt, plot it out. Sometimes you might simply be stuck because you don’t have a clear path forward. A simple outline of all the major beats in your next chapter can really put things into perspective.

📚 Writing an impromptu scene Every writer goes off and fantasizes about a scene in their novel that isn’t actually part of the plan. Treat it as if it was a fanfic of your own novel and give it a shot! Writing it as fanfiction takes the pressure off, and might just get your creative juices flowing again.

📚Reading a similar book for research This is a  super helpful and fun way of doing research for your book. Dig out similar books in the genre and get reading. A great way to get book recommendations is to speak to some bookish people and tell them a little bit about the story you’re writing. Often, they can have great recommendations of a similar book vibe that could help you along.

📚 Actually research For whatever type of book you’re writing, you’re going to have to do some research. Whether it’s describing architecture in a fantasy world, or making sure your facts are correct in a historical setting, research is a crucial part of writing. Perhaps if your creative side of the brain isn’t feeling up to it right now, your logical one might be of us and help you gather some facts to make your writing more authentic.

📚 Edit or rewrite previous chapters If you have the need to work on your project, but can't bring yourself to write some more, work with what’s already there. It’s inevitable that some of the chapters you wrote, you aren’t entirely happy with. This might be the time to try something new - open that chapter side by side with a fresh document and rewrite it by changing one integral part of it.

📚 Think on it Yes, we all fantasize about our projects and our characters. But how often do you actually stop and truly think about your story as a whole? How often do you try to figure out that plothole before saying you’ll leave it for later? It might help to meditate for a bit, clear your head of distracting thoughts and focus on the problem in your writing that you need to solve.

[writinglgbtq]

US folks, go take the US Trans Survey!

Click here: https://www.ustranssurvey.org

Deadline: November 21st, 2022

Who: The USTS is for all trans people ages 16 years and older, including binary and nonbinary trans identities, living in the United States, a U.S. territory, or on a U.S. military base. The survey is open to trans people at any stage of their lives, journey, or transition.

~

The last one was in 2015 and there were nearly 28,000 participants, and the results were very helpful! It’s available in English and Spanish.

[writinglgbtq]

I’ve seen five different authors take down, or prepare to take down, their posted works on Ao3 this week.  At the same time, I’ve seen several people wishing there was more new content to read.  I’ve also seen countless posts by authors begging for people to leave comments and kudos. 

People tell me I am a big name fan in my chosen fandom.  I don’t quite get that but for the purposes of this post, let’s roll with it.  On my latest one shot, less than 18% of the people who read it bothered to hit the kudos button.  Sure, okay, maybe that one sort of sucked.  Let’s look at the one shot posted before that - less than 16% left kudos.  Before that - 10%, and then 16%.  I’m not even going to get into the comments.  Let’s just say the numbers drop a lot.  I’m just looking at one shots here so we don’t have to worry about multiple hits from multiple chapters, people reading previous chapters over, etc.  And if I am a BNF, that means other people are getting significantly less kudos and comments.

Fandom is withering away because it feels like people don’t care about the works that are posted.  Why should I go to the trouble of posting my stories if no one reads them, and of the people who do read them, less than a fifth like them?  Even if you are not a huge fan of the story, if it kept your attention long enough for you to get to the bottom, go ahead and mash that kudos button.  It’s a drop of encouragement in a big desert. 

TL;DR: Passively devouring content is killing fandom.

[writinglgbtq]

This is not an exhaustive list of ways to get jump started but these are a few of my favorites! Enjoy c:

[writinglgbtq]

Not to drag up old shit, but I'm never going to stop pointing to Dream Daddy as a perfect example of queer media getting held to ridiculously high standards that straight media never is.

Dream Daddy is a good game with awesome characters and I'm never going to forgive the Internet for how many queer men it shamed out of enjoying it, or how many people pulled some, "ugh, men are gross, make it about lesbians instead" horseshit.

People treat queer men like garbage, and media for queer men is never given the opportunity to shine, ever.

[writinglgbtq]

75k words into my magnum opus (the fic I asked for advice about many months ago); got it changed to first person and have not regretted it for a second (she's an unreliable narrator haunted by an extra-dimensional entity only she can see: first person is the only way that makes sense). Anyway, hoping to pick your brain about the second half of the fic. (Full disclosure: i know i need to just think on it more but i'm so impatient! I think about that meme all the time: "turns out to read my fic I have to write it first. Shocked and upset!" Lol.) I want to do a 'mystery', in that the main character has a terrible secret she's holding on to at all costs, she doesn't even *think* about it, but the pieces of the truth are revealed slowly through the second half until the secret comes out in the emotional climax. I want that reveal to be a huge emotional punch, quietly devastating. Like a twist, in that it recontextualizes the prior pieces of information.

But I'm really struggling. This feels like a Big Challenge and I'm daunted (full disclosure: I very much suffer from 'my first draft has to be perfect!' syndrome. It's getting better, but slowly). Any advice on writing mysteries, emotional gut-punches, or anything that occurred to you as I was trying to describe the challenge? Thanks for your time! Also, good luck with the residency! Please keep telling us about it! I'm very intrigued :)

first of all, congrats on 75k and making the change to first person! i really love how complex first person can get from a narratological perspective. a lot of people overlook the fact that first person is a facsimile of consciousness and in its flawed rendition of cognition there's a lot of formal/structural risks you can take with it. in your case, the big risk is implying unfettered access to your character's mind but the reveal isn't just the secret itself, it's that the secret has been denied to the audience, which renders the reliability of the rest of the story suspect (and which will add to the fun of rereading! figuring out what's true and what's not).

[for anyone interested, i wrote a bit about the limitations of the portrayal of reality in fiction. a lot of what i'm going to say relies on what i've already said there.]

what you're talking about, what this all comes down to, is the concept of narratorial access. in every story ever written, the writer has had to, consciously or not, decide how much or how little access we have both to the mind of the narrator and the true events of the story. no access at all would be omniscience; the story is being told from a narrator who cannot see at all into the perspective of the characters and therefore we can imply that the proposed events of the story are entirely true. (example: kent haruf's plainsong)

the opposite, however, is impossible. we can't ever recreate the absolutely true experience of consciousness in writing, because in the mind our thoughts aren't necessarily bound in any specific way. but in writing, we're bound to the necessity of letters presented on a page in sequence. we're bound by language itself. you can think two thoughts at once, but you can never write two thoughts at once. they must go one after the other, and they must be read one after the other. honestly it's one of the great tragedies of reality, that we have this beautiful tool of language that allows us to understand the minds of others, but it's still so profoundly limited.

which is to say, in that impossibility of the portrayal of consciousness, there's still a decision to be made of how close can you get. the more narratorial access we have, the less certainty we have in the true events of the story outside their perspective (this is where the concept of an unreliable narrator comes from. an unreliable narrator is simply a narrator whose perspectives we have a lot of access to).

this example of extreme access is actually very relevant to you: pale fire by vladimir nabokov, in which we have absolutely no fucking clue about the true events of the story and the narrator is keeping a big, big secret from us. he's even keeping the chronology of the story from us. he denies us the very thing nearly all stories offer us: a sequence of events. but that's what nabokov does, right? his portrayal of cognition is so detailed that the work of the reader is figuring out what the story even is.

so, speaking of the work of the reader...

re: emotional climaxes: on a sentence level, a general rule of thumb is that anything you deny the reader, the reader must supply themselves. if you don't describe a setting, the reader must create the setting on their own. if you don't describe a character, the reader must create that character.

this is not to say you should describe everything so your reader doesn't have to do any work. what i'm saying is, pick the work you want your reader to do.

i once had a professor whose feedback was often "i had to put a lot of this information on the page myself, and i don't think that's something you want me to be doing because i've probably gotten it wrong." this is the crux of "show don't tell" and why it's often misunderstood. "show don't tell" is a shitty way of saying the reader likes doing certain work. the reader enjoys drawing conclusions from a character's thoughts or behaviors. the reader doesn't want everything explained to them. but! there are many, many instances where the reader does need things explained to them, which is why "show don't tell" sucks. one of the greatest challenges in writing is figuring out where that balance lies. what do you put on the page? what do you keep off the page? what do you explain outright? what do you leave to interpretation? there's no right or wrong, better or worse. there's only what's appropriate for the story you're trying to tell.

debra gwartney explains it a lot better than me in "when the action is hot, write cool." personally i think this craft essay is a little too prescriptive (there are many genres where this advice just isn't true), but it's an interesting craft technique to keep in mind when approaching your own culminating moments.

the best example i can think of "cool" writing in an emotional climax is jo ann beard's "the fourth state of matter." (major content warning for a school shooting.) you may notice the style right away offers us a LOT of narratorial access. we can assume by reading that the narrator isn't really holding anything back from us, emotionally speaking. we can also assume, since this is nonfiction, the events of the story are true but simply colored by the perspective of a woman going through a messy divorce who has a squirrel trapped in her bedroom. but even though this is a nonfiction essay, we're denied access to reflection; the events of the piece are unfolding to our narrator as they did, presumably, in reality.

(when you have a narrator reflecting from a specific present of the narrative [that's called the point of telling, which is like point of view, but for time instead of character], there's always a decision you have to make in terms of what information to unveil when, considering your narrator already knows the whole story. this is different than if you have an implied ongoing present of the story where the narrator themselves has no access to future events until they happen.)

as you go along reading "the fourth state of matter" a moment happens near the end where the style abruptly changes. the narrator abruptly changes. we shift into a space of impossibility, of pure speculation. we go from highly textured complex sentences to fragmented sentences. we pull far, far back from any emotional connection to the story.

and in doing so, it hurts the reader way, way worse.

beard has denied the acknowledgement of emotion in the sentences themselves, and so the reader must supply it. and in supplying it, they feel it.

i hope this made sense. best of luck in the second half of your story! and if you have any questions about what i said here i can do my best to expand on it.

[writinglgbtq]

I am respectfully asking goyim to stop saying “well what about this innocent explanation?” when they ask me to explain an antisemitic dogwhistle.

Yes, that person COULD have been born in 1988.

Yes, that person COULD be saying that it was specifically corrupt “religious people” who crucified Jesus.

Yes, that person COULD be honestly confused about how dual citizenship works.

Yes, that person COULD think that (((these brackets))) are just another silly internet joke.

You aren’t the first to bring it up, and you won’t be the last. But “I can’t hear anything” doesn’t mean the dogwhistle isn’t making any sound. It just means you’re not a dog.

[writinglgbtq]

Hey!!!

So in my WIP there are characters that are part of the LGBTQ+ community, and I was just curious how to write pronouns correctly. I don't want to write them the wrong way and end up disrespecting anyone when they read it.

Any help you can give is 100% appreciated :)

Hi! I don't actually fully understand what you're asking? You just need to know what pronouns a character uses and stick to them.

[writinglgbtq]

On This Day In History

June 26th, 2003: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Lawrence v. Texas that gender-based anti-sodomy laws are unconstitutional, based on the same "right to privacy" that Roe v. Wade helped to establish. It is a 6-3 ruling.

June 26th, 2013: The Supreme Court of the Unites States rules in United States v. Windsor that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that denied federal recognition of same-sex marriages was unconstitutional, based on the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. It is a 5-4 ruling.

June 26th, 2015: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Obergefell v. Hodges that the fundamental right to legally recognized marriages must be extended to same-sex couples, based on the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It is a 5-4 ruling.

[writinglgbtq]

Hi! I'm a trans (but dyadic) author with a teen superhero team story. One member is an intersex guy and I've considered giving him top surgery scars in his design. I know that intersex people have a history of having their bodies pathologized and objectified, so would this be inappropriate? (To be clear- they appear visually and if they ever come up in dialogue, it's him clarifying that he's not trans but IS intersex + his body isn't described or focused on any more than anyone else's). Thanks!!

Both of our mods are perisex, so obviously take anything I say with a salt shaker alongside, but I've seen some intersex ask blogs say they're uncomfortable with perisex people writing intersex people at all, much less bringing up intersex medicalization. I'd give your design a hard look as well as asking an intersex person who is open to that sort of question.

At minimum, here is a post written by an intersex person regarding writing intersex characters: link.