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the_sea_hag posted:Hello! I have a project that's in its very early stages (it's been an RP line since last October and I'm working with my cowriter to get it in shape as a romance novel) and I'd like to see if I can get any feedback on how I should talk about the character before I start seeking out a sensitivity reader. I am a queer cis woman. I'm nonbinary trans so I don't have this exact experience (and everyone has a different experience anyway, like sparksbloom said) but I'll give my 2 cents. a) As a trans person, if I picked up the book because, say, I saw it tagged somewhere as having a trans character, I'd probably be pretty disappointed if that character wasn't even out to themself until the end or the epilogue. I'd probably just be thinking "where is the trans character?" the whole time. (I've definitely read books that get touted as having gay/bi main characters when it ends up just being nothing but a vague line of dialog near the end of the story where the character says/implies they aren't straight and it's almost always pretty disappointing.) If you're foreshadowing her coming out through the whole book that might work better and you wouldn't leave people wondering, but you do run the risk of writing a trans coming out story as a cis person, and that's tricky ground to tread at best. WRT to your question of how to refer to the character to others, I think for the purpose of talking about the character with sensitivity readers and people who are helping with editing and the like (basically, people who are reading this not as a casual reader) I'd definitely use she/her since they would know the character's identity anyway. As far as with casual readers, I don't have a solid answer but I will say I am wary of the odds that some people might treat it like it's a spoiler if it isn't established until the end. In general, I'm personally not a fan of things where a person's gender identity and/or sexuality could be treated like a spoiler - it just doesn't sit right with me. b) A pronoun/name shift after a few chapters really wouldn't bother me at all, but I also read a good amount of stuff with trans/nonbinary/genderfluid characters where that kind of thing is relatively common. I'll also second what sparksbloom said that an option C where the character is already out at the beginning and her trans-ness is addressed in flashbacks or memories seems like something worth considering. You skip over a lot of the trickiness of writing a coming out story and it simplifies how you refer to your character immensely. Plus, if I was a reader and I'd picked this up in part because I heard one of the characters was trans, I wouldn't be left hanging.
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Feb 27, 2021 17:20
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:41 |
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It depends on the context, really. If you've got a narrator or a character speaking who would naturally use "there's," then go with that. If you're writing from a more formal POV (something like a distant third person narrator, or a character who would just speak more 'correctly' for whatever reason) use "there are."
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Mar 24, 2021 04:12
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PiCroft posted:I guess I’m asking if these sound contrived, sensible or if I’m overthinking it? I’ve been trying to avoid the trap of constantly editing as I write but these questions are tormenting me and I finally decided I’d like some outside perspectives. Yeah, I think an outline or maybe pulling back and really focusing on the characters (since it sounds like the murderous hallucinatory psychodrama is the real focus/what you need to establish things around) might help out since who they are informs how they got there more than anything else. Maybe even start a draft where the group is already on the spooky ship and see what character dynamics feel like they work the best or makes the most sense (or even 2 drafts -- one for each of your starting scenarios). I also think getting to the spooky stuff quickly will probably be 1) more fun to write and 2) more fun to read (unless you're going for a super slow-burn, atmospheric sort of thing, but 'violent supernatural murder mystery' makes me think that maybe cutting to the action faster might be better? Depends on the mood you're going for, of course!).
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Jun 17, 2021 16:59
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Yeah back when I did improv theater (  ) the Yes, and/No, but (etc.) approach was a huge part of keeping any given scene going and evolving. And writing is sort of like doing improv by yourself since it's all just dealing with loops of action/reaction/consequence. (And knowing that she has a theater/puppetry/performance background, I'm not surprised at all to see she's given that advice for writing.)
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Jul 22, 2021 15:22
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I've written some longer stuff in Google Docs before and after a certain point (once I'd get around 50k words) it started to chug on some platforms. Mobile wasn't too bad, but on my desktop or laptop it would take a while to load in and stutter if I tried to scroll too fast. My 4ish year old chromebook would barely be able to load or scroll through it at all. I just use Scrivener now, especially since the new version finally came out for Windows (and it finally has a dark mode).
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Jul 24, 2021 18:45
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| # ¿ Apr 26, 2024 19:41 |
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Fluffy Bunnies posted:two things: what hand exercises are you guys doing these days to relieve pain? I'll second that strengthening exercises are a great thing in the long run! But you do want to be careful depending on what kind of pain issue you have. I get tendonitis in my wrists if I overwork them, and for a while I tried using carpal tunnel braces (didn't know tendonitis existed at the time and assumed it was carpal) and stretches they actually just made it worse at least in my case. Only thing to do with tendonitis flare ups is to rest, ice, and take some ibuprofen. I try to do nerve glide exercises and strength exercises somewhat regularly when they're not flaring up though and it's helped reduce the flare ups a lot.
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Jan 31, 2024 05:42
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