Protagonist/narrator of ambiguous gender

RemaCaracappa

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Protagonist/narrator of ambiguous gender

What do you all think of this? I was writing a story and got a couple of pages in when it occurred to me that I had not given any indication of the narrator being of a specific gender. I think I envision them as female but the more I go, the more I like the idea of not specifying. It's not going to be a terribly long story and is in the first person, and I'm sorta interested in how well this could turn out.

Has anyone else done this? (For what it's worth, the story is being written for a call for submissions for a themed anthology by a glbtq-focused publisher.)
 

Rechan

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In my opinion it will frustrate a lot of readers. The less detail characters get, the fuzzier characters appear in the mind of the readers, and if you don't give something big like gender, they're going to end up with a person-shaped hole in their mind's eye. It may even impact their ability to relate.

This can get mitigated if for instance the narrator is just an observer. If they are on the sidelines, and the story is really about what they witness or about the other characters, it's less of an issue. But if the story is about this character, and this character is getting involved in erotic things, I think it'll be problematic.
 

Maryn

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I think you're probably cheating the reader by withholding such basic information, or at least frustrating them. Our minds form visual images of the narrating character. Without this basic information available to all the characters who see him/her, it feels manipulative to make it unavailable to the reader.

I'd go with it if and only if it becomes a plot element early on.

Maryn, who stops reading if she doesn't know name and gender
 

Filigree

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I'm doing this with a narrator in a first-person POV high fantasy novel. The character doesn't start out with a gender, because (as I have to explain in the first two pages) children are born without gender. Their bodies change at puberty, and there's no predicting what will happen.

That feature of the species is why I kept to first-person; otherwise I'd have use jarring pronouns for the first part of the book, before my protagonist becomes female.
 

thedark

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I just wanted to say that one of the best books I've ever read (and had the pleasure to beta for) was first person narrated, and the narrator's name was Detective K...

It wasn't until I finished the book, referring to K as "he" all along in my comments, that the author chortled and mentioned that he'd never actually said whether K was a male or female.

And by god, he hadn't.

K had both a male and a female lover, and in retrospect, really could have gone either way.

And it didn't matter. And it was an astonishing surprise to realize I didn't catch that early on, and that I'd simply assumed K's gender.

Got a kick out of it.

Perhaps that is also part of what made it such a great read -- the realization, afterwards, that it truly didn't matter. It was very well written.

If that's the path calling you, try it.

ETA: This delightful novel, Fletcher by David Horscroft, will be out in October 2014, from Fox & Raven Publishing. There's no pre-ordering link available just yet. Thanks to everyone who has asked about it -- awesome read, truly, and it was a delight to beta.
 
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RemaCaracappa

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Maryn- I'm not trying to make it manipulative...wasn't even intending to do it, it just sorta happened that way so far, but now it has the feeling, at least so far, that anyone could easily imagine themselves the narrator if they wanted.
 

LJD

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Sometimes in omitting certain information, you draw even more attention to it. Depends on the reader, I suppose. But if I was several pages into the book I was reading and realized I still didn't know the gender of the MC, I would start to focus on that. Wondering when that information would finally appear, why the author was doing this, etc.

You might find this interesting: http://dearauthor.com/features/first-page-features/first-page-untitled-manuscript-2/
It is a short excerpt of the beginning of a romance, posted for critique, and the gender of the narrator is not 100% clear. A lot of the comments are about this...also interesting how some of the commenters' opinions of the MC changed when they realized the gender was the opposite of what they'd assumed.
 
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ScarletWhisper

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I'd find it intriguing, if it were done -well-. I am very comfortable with gender neutral and trans people, so I don't need that identifier. However, in its absence, I'd want a sense of the person. Hefty, strong frame or lithe, small-waisted one? Short, brusque movements or elegant, graceful ones? As long as I have a sense of self, I don't give a fig what's in someone's pants unless it somehow becomes necessarily relevant.

And potentially reframing things two different ways in my head might keep me very intrigued. But as I said, it would have to be done really, really well, and I am super picky. ;)
 

DiloKeith

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I consider myself extremely flexible on matters of gender, but I generally want to know when reading erotica because of the sort of sex I want to read rather than because I need to identify the character. In other fiction, I don't think I'd mind not knowing. I'd still assume a gender, but not care if I'm wrong.

Readers who don't have gender in mind are probably a very small minority.

I wrote a M/M erotic story without identifying the narrator and several people guessed female. I went back to the first page and had the other MC refer to the narrator by a name that was overwhelmingly (in a statistical sense) male since I didn't intend to be vague.
 

DancingMaenid

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I consider myself extremely flexible on matters of gender, but I generally want to know when reading erotica because of the sort of sex I want to read rather than because I need to identify the character. In other fiction, I don't think I'd mind not knowing. I'd still assume a gender, but not care if I'm wrong.

Same here. I'm usually not into M/F erotica, and I've been frustrated a few times because I started reading a story where the gender of the MC was initially ambiguous only to discover, halfway through, that it was clearly M/F.

Though, for me, I think it really depends on why the author is being vague about the character's gender, and how intentional it is. In the stories that frustrated me, the POV was first-person and the ambiguity didn't seem intentional. If the ambiguity was intentional, I wouldn't have as much of a problem with it, especially if I could imagine the character the way I want. Also, I'm all for erotica with trans and genderqueer/genderfluid protagonists.

But since I'm used to encountering M/F erotica that isn't clearly labeled, my first instinct upon encountering a story with an ambiguous MC is to try to figure it out quickly so I know what I'm getting into.
 

Kayiin

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If it's in first person, there is generally no need to specify gender of the narrator. Of course, Erotica is a special case. One may encounter problems when it comes to the sex and perhaps some dialogue. However, there are ways to have sex which males and females have in common, if you'd like to try keeping the narrator's sex ambiguous--it would only take a little care, and may be a fun experiment to see what people interpret the narrator's sex to be based on its thoughts and behaviours.

If the publisher likes the story, but objects to the ambiguity, I'm sure they'll let you know.

(I know I'm late.)