How much do I risk alienating female readers?

Yes, anyone has a right to anything, and I am not preventing him from doing whatever he wants.

But you seem to consistently miss my point, which is that I don't believe the OP was making a conscious choice. I didn't see him being literary, I saw him being a guy frightened of being less manly because he didn't want to describe other guys.

And quite frankly, I find that annoying. So I commented. He's free to ignore every post I've made here.

However, you seem to truly think the OP is making an educated choice in his decision, and that's lovely. Maybe you are right, and if you are, then all your points are valid. But I think the conversation you and I are having on the nature of fear, is not the same conversation the OP started.

Also, yup, if it was his choice to write a hot lesbian stereotype character, then that's awesome, but he didn't own up to that. Instead he rationalised in a pseudo-intellectual fashion why he had chosen to make her a lesbian. And his rationalisations were incredibly illogical, and skewed, and just sounded like male bravado to be frank.

To be perfectly honest, I really don't think his issues with writing male sexuality are that deep.

Incidently, how is this going to be any different to Mirror's Edge? I saw a trailer on TV and it had an athletic female protagonist, parkour combat and a fight against an evil government. Which is pretty much exactly what you described.

@sunandshadow
I'm all for appreciation and understanding kinks (I love a woman in uniform) but the idea of writing a gay relationship in a story as irredeemable wank material... it gets back to the except from Tracy Hickman I posted (although he was talking about women in chainmail bikinis). How do these fetish versions (gay women for men to read, gay men for women to read) you're talking about do any service to anybody? To paraphrase some more from the piece I quoted, practice like that perpetuates myths and lends no understanding whatsoever to the other person or group's experience.

Lesbians can still be hot, and their difference from the reader's own experiences can make them more alluring and intriguing — but I see no service to anyone in putting no research or truth in the story and reducing any group of people to some fetish archetype of (as in this debate) how men think lesbians are (again, men with breasts).

Toothpaste said:

But I don't think fear is a good enough reason to not write something, nor a good enough reason to give yourself the massive challenge of writing a character from whom he is very different (as others have pointed out, being a Lesbian doesn't suddenly make you a guy dressed in women's clothes). The leap from, "Since I don't want to describe guys in a sexual way, I'll make her a lesbian" is simply not good enough a reason for me. It lacks a real understanding of . . . well a great many things.

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QFT

James D. Macdonald said:

The only way to find out if something works is to do it. Write your book.

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QFT.

My answer: you aren't going to alienate straight girls, you just aren't going to turn them on either. Imagine reading a story about two boys in love. Sure, you may get into the story, but you're not likely to get steamed up about the love scenes so much. It's the same situation, only reversed.

I never understood why guys are expected to be grossed out by gay guys, and girls are expected to be turned on by lesbians. I like men -- lesbians, therefore, don't turn me on. I'm not disgusted by them, just indifferent. So your lesbian romance is going to have to be interesting beyond the sexual tension for me to get invested in it. It's a challenge! I say do it.

I enjoy those kinds of futuristic fantasy stories where sexuality is a non-issue, where everyone has sex with everyone, and it's all cool and groovy. You can definitely take that route. Of course if you just make your character a lesbian so that you can describe her feelings for a woman rather than a man, you run the risk of sounding fake and obnoxious.

But if it's a futuristic fantasy story, you aren't really expected to delve deeply into the characters emotional development, her sexual development, and her internal struggles. It sounds like it's an action heavy adventure, with not much room for introspection, so you'll probably be able to get away with it.

mscelina said:

Sounds to me like you're going to make your character a lesbian so that you can relate to her experience sexually, right?

Then you're not making her into a lesbian. You're making her into a man pretending to be a lesbian. That's not the same thing at all. If describing a character's sexual attraction to a male makes you uncomfortable and that's the only reason you're going to make her into a lesbian, then you might be better off just making the MC a nimble, agile male. There are nuances and emotional levels of lesbianism that would be ill-served by a character that's basically just a dude in disguise.

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That was my gut reaction.
Or, you might want to keep your MC the way she is and do some research by talking to women.

I don't include any sex scenes in my works because I simply do not want to write them. I'd rather write about sexual tension between characters, and I have fun with that when intertwined with a fast-paced plot, spectacle, action and humor.

The OP's problem was that he didn't think he could write a female character's attraction to a male because HE is male and just doesn't think that way. So what we're discussing here is his personal comfort level--nothing else. The decision to make the female MC a lesbian was being made for no other purpose than to enable the OP to write a sexual relationship that wouldn't make him, personally, uncomfortable. When you get right down to it, the OP has very little to do with alienating potential readers. This isn't an educated choice.

I want to make room for some romance. But I don't think I would be good at (or would want to) sexually describing male characters. So my solution is quite simply making the MC a lesbian.

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Bolding mine. That statement tells you all you need to know. This isn't a deliberate choice to make the MC a lesbian in order to explore the beauties of a gay romance. This is a deliberate choice made by a young man who flat doesn't want to describe another young man in a sexual manner. It makes him feel icky. *shrug* He thinks this will solve his problem and it won't.

Ervin said:

Because I will probably make sequels, thus making the overall story quite lengthy, I want to make room for some romance. But I don't think I would be good at (or would want to) sexually describing male characters. So my solution is quite simply making the MC a lesbian.

Any thoughts?

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What if, over the course of your writing, one of your characters is attracted/interested in a male? What will you do?
Will you allow this character to develop over the course of the story, or will you seek to prevent this, blocking the characters development?

Toothpaste said:

Yes, anyone has a right to anything, and I am not preventing him from doing whatever he wants.

But you seem to consistently miss my point, which is that I don't believe the OP was making a conscious choice. I didn't see him being literary, I saw him being a guy frightened of being less manly because he didn't want to describe other guys.

And quite frankly, I find that annoying. So I commented. He's free to ignore every post I've made here.

However, you seem to truly think the OP is making an educated choice in his decision, and that's lovely. Maybe you are right, and if you are, then all your points are valid. But I think the conversation you and I are having on the nature of fear, is not the same conversation the OP started.

Also, yup, if it was his choice to write a hot lesbian stereotype character, then that's awesome, but he didn't own up to that. Instead he rationalised in a pseudo-intellectual fashion why he had chosen to make her a lesbian. And his rationalisations were incredibly illogical, and skewed, and just sounded like male bravado to be frank.

To be perfectly honest, I really don't think his issues with writing male sexuality are that deep.

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I didn't actually think it was important why the OP was making his choice, I just wanted to illustrate the case that someone might want to do what the OP wants to do for solid reasons. I figured seeing the 'good' reasons for those choices would be at least as educational to the OP as others' explaining why other reasons for those choices were bad.

I once had someone criticize me violently when I made the seemingly innocuous statement that I pretty much only write romance (they thought that all writers should make themselves write various genres because otherwise they would never become good writers), I've had people be offended that I don't write female main characters and rarely female minor characters, and I've many times had people be baffled as to why I would want to write gay romance when I could have a bigger audience, make more money, and work more from my own personal experience if I wrote straight romance. So to me the discussion includes my personal experiences and thoughts, not just the OP's.

But yeah, I do see your point that the OP might be rationalizing and making his choices for bad reasons that haven't been thought out.

White-Tean said:

@sunandshadow
I'm all for appreciation and understanding kinks (I love a woman in uniform) but the idea of writing a gay relationship in a story as irredeemable wank material... it gets back to the except from Tracy Hickman I posted (although he was talking about women in chainmail bikinis). How do these fetish versions (gay women for men to read, gay men for women to read) you're talking about do any service to anybody? To paraphrase some more from the piece I quoted, practice like that perpetuates myths and lends no understanding whatsoever to the other person or group's experience.

Lesbians can still be hot, and their difference from the reader's own experiences can make them more alluring and intriguing — but I see no service to anyone in putting no research or truth in the story and reducing any group of people to some fetish archetype of (as in this debate) how men think lesbians are (again, men with breasts).

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You don't think myths are valuable in their own right? And I was trying to say that 'lending understanding' isn't the goal, wish fulfillment is. One of the primary purposes of fiction is to provide people with things they want but can't find in real life. Let's consider why this idea of a male mind in a woman's body might be a very appealing fantasy to a male audience. (Please pardon the following sweeping generalizations, I'm well aware not all men and women are the same, but it takes twice as long if I have to qualify every statement.)

Men typically do not understand the way women think. I have many times seen men express frustration that their girlfriend hates sports, hates low humor like fart jokes, hates violence or is wimpy about spiders or similar minor threats, is easy to accidentally anger because he doesn't understand what makes her angry, is more concerned with looking/acting proper than looking/acting sexy, is clingy or dependent or wanting commitment from him, etc. All these way in which women think differently from men could be regarded as appealing and part of the feminine mystique, but they could also be regarded as repulsive or just frustrating.

A female fantasy object who is basically male on the inside could represent the best of both worlds: a body the man thinks is hot combined with a personality he could enjoy being buddies with when they're not having sex because they would have the same interests (in the case of a lesbian, including attraction to the female form) and no one would be criticizing the man for being his unrefined self. Men also tend to feel burdened by the requirement to be the aggressive one, the protective one, the provider, so a female who is an aggressive fighter might be a relief because her nature would free the man of the burden of needing to play these roles with her.

Ervin: Which character are we talking about here?


Any of your characters, main or minor, male or female.
If one, or more, of your characters shows a sexual interest in a male as you write your story, what will you do about?
Will you let things develop as you write, or will you seek to control the characters interests and prevent them from having likes and dislikes counter to your comfort level?

Ervin said:

I don't know if you're aware of this, but there are countless books and movies out there that involve parkour and fighting against oppressive governments. One measly video game does not define anything. The only thing Mirror's Edge really achieved was the introduction of an original game play style. Other than that, the game had a very poor and cliche story, it was repetitive, and generally has no future in terms of sequels or anything like that. It's a fun game no doubt, but I'm in no way going to plagarize it because honestly there's little to plagarise from it. The only thing mirror's edge inspired for me was how some of the parkour was used there.

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whatever bro still sounds cliche as hell

Ervin said:

I don't know if you're aware of this, but there are countless books and movies out there that involve parkour and fighting against oppressive governments.

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That's not much of a defence of the idea for your story. If there are 'countless' already, you're going to have to do some form of innovation to make it your own.

Re-read this defence of yours though, it sounds more like it would come from a displeased critic than from the writer.

We bisexuals have a big advantage, it seems. We can happily imagine and describe any kind of relationship! Actually, I'm with Kinsey about the flexible nature of sexuality. Culture applies a lot of limits not naturally there. Writers with inhibitions can probably stretch successfully, if they want to try.

Another funky thing to me. If you're heterosexual, why wouldn't you enjoy describing het relationships? Seems to me manly male writers have never had a problem with this. I guess it's not the sex that's the problem in this case, but the female POV. And given that, I don't see how writing from a lesbian POV would be easier than writing from a straight woman's POV.

Why straight men should be drawn to fantasies of gay women and straight women to fantasies of gay men is simple: Wow! I'm getting TWO (or more) of my preferred gender for the price of one encounter! Plus it's safe. No one can accuse a male who likes lesbian porn of being a lesbian.

I have a great male friend who insists he can't tell if another male is good-looking. I love it, it makes me laugh every time I mention a guy and then helpfully inform my friend, "Oh, and yeah, this guy is handsome, just so you know."

Rambling aside. To the OT: Don't make your MC female just because females are hot in futuristic garb. Save that for when you write a video game scenario (and know then that nowadays many vid games are more sophisticated than that.) If male POV makes you more comfortable, write from a male POV. Males can be nimble. Look at ballet dancers.

Oops. Or not.

Speaking of which, where's that old poster of Baryschnikov in the string T-shirt? I need to show it to my friend and say, now here is a god of pulchritude among men...

I'm an educator at heart, don't you know.

I think you should go with what feels best for you, your characters, and your story. No matter what you write, you'll never make everyone happy nor will everyone read your story. You worry that you'll alienate readers by making the MC a lesbian. You'll also be opening your story up to another set of readers. Almost all of the stories that I write feature lesbians. ^^ That's my advice. If writing a lesbian is what you really want to do, then go for it. Make sure to get some good BETAs for it so that the MC won't seem forced or awkward. Get some lesbians to read it and see what they say.

You need to make decisions the for your characters that they would. Not all sexual scenes have to be graphic. A lot can be done by hinting and pulling back from the scene.

So, if the character tells you she's a lesbian, great - run with it. If not, then the story will be hurt if you force a sexuality on her.

As writers, we try not to break faith with the reader. Will a lesbian character alienate some potential readers? Sure. But then so will a heterosexual female main character. Unfortunately, no one's potential readership is everyone. If the character rings false, more people will put the book down than will finish it.


Hope this helps.

Phaeal said:

We bisexuals have a big advantage, it seems.

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Oh yes, we totally do. I don't think it's as much that we've dated both genders and understand them better, so much as it is the fact that we've already rid ourselves of the societal hang-ups, (and as you say "culture applies a lot of limits not naturally there") so we're not thrown into a minor gay-panic at describing the attractive qualities of our own gender.

There's no reason other than societal hang-ups that a heterosexual should be bothered by confronting the attractive nature of their own gender. Of course, I think a lot of male writers in the past have extolled on the virtue of the male gender out of the belief that their gender is inherently superior, and there was a bit of that and a bit of Gay-in-the-Congo (as we called it in Lit class) going on in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, a book in which no female character has a name and there’s sexual objectification of men going on.

Forgive me please for my tangents though, I wander widely off-topic.

White-Tean said:

Oh yes, we totally do. I don't think it's as much that we've dated both genders and understand them better, so much as it is the fact that we've already rid ourselves of the societal hang-ups, (and as you say "culture applies a lot of limits not naturally there") so we're not thrown into a minor gay-panic at describing the attractive qualities of our own gender.

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I'm not sure about this.


The arguments could just as easily be made that as a bisexual, you don't have experience of being either gay or straight, and might therefore struggle to fully understand either of those groups.

You're not straight on the days you date someone of the opposite sex, and gay on the days you date people of the same sex. You're something else all the time.

I'm not saying this is a valid argument. I don't think it is, but I just don't see how being bisexual is much of an advantage for your writing either.

Good writers need to be able empathise with other walks of live, they don't need to have lived them.

john barnes on toast said:

I'm not sure about this.


The arguments could just as easily be made that as a bisexual, you don't have experience of being either gay or straight, and might therefore struggle to fully understand either of those groups.

You're not straight on the days you date someone of the opposite sex, and gay on the days you date people of the same sex. You're something else all the time.

I'm not saying this is a valid argument. I don't think it is, but I just don't see how being bisexual is much of an advantage for your writing either.

Good writers need to be able empathise with other walks of live, they don't need to have lived them.

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Another thing: simply being gay doesn't mean you can convincingly portray all homosexual relationships, just as being straight isn't enough to show all heterosexual relationships.

Look at the Greeks homosexuality, that was about as far divorced from modern day homosexuality as its possible to be. I mean considering the fact that this would be set in the future we have to assume culture and personal dynamics would have changed, which changes the way people act with each other.

Write a couple of scenes with your MC in sexual situations with either gender and then both. Mix it up a lot. You don't have to use the scenes but it'll give you practice writing them and you never know, you may find it easier than you think to describe a man as being sexually attractive. And you may find writing lesbians scenes just isn't your cuppa tea.

I would make the MC a man if you feel uncomfortable with the sex part. The first two replies hit it right on the head. It will feel contrived.