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🏳️‍🌈 - When To Reveal That Your Character Is Queer

I'm going to try to tackle a cluster of interrelated topics here, so bear with me. As with many facets of queer representation in fiction, it's complicated.

Three of the most common questions I hear from writers new to casual queer rep are as follows:

"How soon in my book should I show that my character is queer?"

"How clear should I make it, so readers know?"

"If it's not important to the plot, then why is it important to mention at all?"

These questions have something in common. On a fundamental level, they're all part of the same dilemma: When (or even whether) to "out" queer characters as queer. This is a particularly relevant topic when it comes to casual representation, where a queer character's identity is not supposed to be the focus of the story. To start with the third question on the list, then, "If it's not important to the plot, then why is it important to mention at all?"

I'll start by unpacking what some of those words mean in this context. "The plot" is, obviously, the driving narrative of the story. In a casual-rep scenario, plot possibilities are as endless as fiction in general: your queer character could be the captain of a crew of planet raiders, a football star trying to balance her studies with her commitment to the game, an undercover spy in a foreign country, or a thousand other things completely unrelated to being queer.

This brings us to "casual rep"—this unrelatedness is the whole point. The football star doesn't struggle because she's discriminated against for being a trans woman in the league. She struggles because she has a rivalry with the team captain of another school, who has threatened to end her team's championship streak after a prank gone wrong humiliated this rival school on television the year before. She struggles because this competition is eating all of her spare time and attention, and her friendships and school grades are suffering as a result. She struggles because she definitely doesn't have a crush on this rival captain, but if she admitted that, her school's pride would never recover.

Is her identity as a trans woman and a lesbian "important" to this plot? Well, strictly speaking... no. But it's relevant to who she is as a person, and it matters to every trans or otherwise queer person who will ever see themselves reflected in a high-school sports story where a character like them has better problems to deal with than being queer. Representation is always important, and casual rep is just as important as coming-out or queer-struggle stories.

This, then, leads to our next question:

"How soon in my book should I show that my character is queer?"

This is a perfectly reasonable struggle! Writing is an exercise in balance between what the reader needs to know, and how much information is too much, and therefore irrelevant. The identity facets of a character are no exception to this. So where in the book should you plant that flag?

The short answer is, it depends!

Where these queer flags pop up should reflect your character's relationship to them... and this will vary. Some people are "out and proud," and hold their queer identity as a core part of who they are. They want people to know they're queer. If you ask them to describe themselves in five words, they'll probably mention queer identity. That's perfectly valid. It's also not the norm. For most queer folks (as discussed in my previous blog post), queer identity is just one facet of their whole existence, and should be treated as such. If a character ranks his identity as an older brother, as a person who helps others, and as a skilled flutist above the fact that he's bisexual, don't mention them all in the same breath on the first page. There's an order of operations here: a hierarchy of importance to the character and who they are. 

There will also be a situational aspect to any reveal, as some situations are more relevant to a particular identity than others. A character's banter with their closest friends is far more likely to house a queer-reveal than a formal work presentation, just as one example. Most humans show or hide different parts of themselves depending on relevance to the situation they're in, and most humans are socially competent enough to discern what situations are a bad fit for any given detail. For queer identity, this goes beyond just wondering whether any space is safe enough to be "out" in. Coming out is a lifelong process, and your character will likely weigh the relevance of coming out and the effort it will take against the value of being known in each situation, and respond accordingly. 

Now, there is a caveat here, or at least another thing to be aware of. Some queer identities are harder for readers to grasp than others, thanks to the societal messaging we have all received throughout our lives. A perfect example of this is nonbinary genders. Like it or not, we're all conditioned to code most people as "he" or "she," and we do the same in books—even subconsciously. When a character's gender is not disclosed, most readers' brains will formulate an assumption in one direction or another. These assumptions tend to be binary, and can become locked in as our mental image of the character solidifies. Establishing such an identity early on in a book, then, can be important for heading off this phenomenon.

(Note: If you are a queer writer wanting to mess around with hiding a character's identity on purpose, or a non-queer writer with enough research under your belt to do the same, this will not apply to you)

This brings us to the final question:

"How clear should I make it, so readers know?"

Phrased differently, you've set out to plant this queer flag for your character. How deep should you drive it into the ground? Especially if their queer identity doesn't make the top five words they use to describe themself?

This depends who you're writing for. There are three broad categories, and they're all equally valid. All hinge on your goal in writing casual rep, a question you should always ask yourself before you start. Chances are, it will be one of the following:

1. To educate readers. This will involve naming a character as their specific identity and describing traits of that identity in even a casual-rep story.

2. To make the rep unmissable without educating about it: To make sure no reader can mistake your character as cis, straight, or allosexual, even if they fly under the radar.

3. To show queer readers themselves that they're represented, while being okay if non-queer readers miss the memo.

Each of these requires a different approach. Why? Because readers who share your character's identity will pick up on much more subtle cues than readers who don't. Rep that's obvious to queer readers might fly completely over non-queer readers' heads. This is okay—if your goal is #3 above. Likewise, extensive detail on how, say, biological sex is different from gender is great for goal #1 but not the other two. If you missed the boat and started (or fully wrote) a book with casual queer rep without pinning down your goal, that's fine! Just make sure you figure it out before you finish editing. It's a key part of identifying who your target audience is, and therefore helping your book reach those readers.

Now, there's a final question in this sequence that flows from this last one directly: "How subtle is too subtle? How do I show queer identity in a casual but identifiable way?"

This question is complex enough that it merits its own blog post, which I'm writing as we speak. Stay tuned for that next week—Showing Queer Identity Without Labels, and all the situations in which queer-ID "show, don't tell" applies! ✨