[ SECRET POST #2088 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2088 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 01 pages, 021 secrets from Secret Submission Post #298.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

As a writer, I kind of have to side-eye you a little. Sometimes characters have to change. Sometimes stories have to change. Sometimes they have to change drastically. Sometimes you need to consider a change, let it simmer for awhile and then come back a say "Yeah, you know what, that works". And in the end, the story is better for it.

[saku]

you're right! sometimes characters do change. but for me, it's their choice.

when i brainstorm stories or plots, characters just kind of come out of hiding in my head, like oh hey. they reveal themselves when they're good and ready, so i accept them as is.

my characters change all the time. i've had one of my girls change her name like 6 times now! i've had other characters change names too, and hair styles/colours and appearances as a whole. but this is only good if it works for them. i don't force things on my characters because if it's not just right, they become lackluster.

my point is that for some of us, changing something very important about a character, like their gender, doesn't always come easy. when you care about your characters and you give them ample consideration, it's not as simple as just going, hey, this person is a guy now. or sup you're female now. it's all about the quality of the writing and the character rather than, like i said, some quota you feel obligated to fulfill because some people judge you for not having 50% of your characters be female.

heck, i've had to change entire plots and premises before. i'm rewriting my first completed novel and there are only a few things that are the same (one of them being a mere name). i understand change and how good it is. i edit my works like crazy; most of my written pages have no margin space because they're so full of edits. so yeah, i get changing for the better. but changing things is something that should come naturally and wanted, by you and your characters (or, perhaps in your case, just you, since i'm probably the only weirdo who leaves it up to her characters).

all in all, my characters may be mine, but i let them decide who they are. if i think long and hard about a change and it's not right, then i'm not going to implement it.

i'm not quite sure what part of my first comment made you side-eye me since i made it really clear that changes are important. but characters are who they are. if you think you need more females so you genderswap a few but it just doesn't work, then i'm not going to judge. in my experience, of all the things my characters will change, gender is one of the least flexible attributes. and that's fine with me! i really don't think anybody else should get angry at me over my characters' identities. like i said, when you care about your characters, changes like that aren't always easy.

[(Anonymous)]

You're not the only one: it's exactly the same for me. I don't think I've ever changed a character's gender (or sexual orientation, since I had an argument about it on F!S some time ago): they were just born that way, they evolved in a certain way but they didn't change.

[(Anonymous)]

"I don't really create the characters, they just happen and they want things, and have a whole separate life" is pretentious as fuck. Probably why AYRT side-eyed you, just as I'm doing right now.

[saku]

how is that pretentious?

eta: let me be more clear - i'm not saying my style of writing is superior, because it's not. that's the thing with creative works, there really aren't any rules. it's all subjective. if seeing your characters as literally nothing but tools is what helps you write, then you're more than welcome to do that. however, i have a different method of handling my characters, and it works for me, and in the end i still crank out what i would consider good, well-rounded characters, just as you would with your own method. and that's kind of my point - there's no universal way to create and edit, and just because someone may not have an easy time changing something that they know is not good for their character doesn't mean they're lacking as a writer or missing out on a good opportunity.

the argument started over whether or not a writer can change a character's gender at will and have that 1) work for the character, 2) work for the story as a whole and 3) work for the writer. i have absolutely no doubts that some writers can do this. heck, i can make drastic changes like that to certain characters, but those are the ones i do view as only tools. for characters to whom i've become attached regarding their appearance or personality, these abrupt changes don't come as easily. that's why some writers - who are focused on quality main characters - don't always have 100% equally diversified characters. the characters they make are from a specific and set vision, and this in no way makes those characters or the writer inherently better. it's just how some people - and their characters - work, and why some writers can't just change random things about their character happily like others can. there are a few anons here who are simply not understanding why this is so difficult for those of us who write differently, and i'm only trying to explain my case here.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a writer as well, and I would never change any of my characters into something they are not.

[(Anonymous)]

da

Your characters are still just figments of your imagination, your creations who exist only at your whim. They have no will of their own, no actual character of their own beyond what you attribute to them. Even if they ~feel so real~ and you love to "listen" to them to decided where the story goes next, ultimately every ounce of that decision process and rationale is coming from you.

Otherwise you end up like Laurel K Hamilton, whose characters tell her that it sucks doing bad-scary-shitty things and losing people...and thus, she has "promised" her characters to never make them lose anyone ever again. And the scary-bad situations get progressively weaker, and the MCs always pull out some new power at the last minute to save them from experiencing any undue trauma.

Deferring to your characters can be just bad (and make for a bad story) as shoving them around like pawns willy-nilly with no intuitive, logical development.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes but I'd never change a characters race, or gender, just to fill a quota.

They are who they are in my minds eye, and not at the mercy of anyone else's expectations.

[(Anonymous)]

Your characters are still just figments of your imagination, your creations who exist only at your whim. They have no will of their own, no actual character of their own beyond what you attribute to them.

Thank you.

It seriously annoys me when people act like their characters are independent entities with their own thoughts and feelings. NO. They are the creation of the author, and they are tools to advance a story/plot.

People get offended when I tell them this. They act like their characters are their children. I think this is an unhealthy attitude to have, and it can negatively affect a story.

One time this girl asked me to critique her story, and I recommended she tweak one of her characters. She blew up in my face. She told me she couldn't change her "precious baby." Characters should be malleable. They should be something you should be able to change in your story just like you can change a sentence or scene or plot point.

[saku]

my characters aren't my children, but i can judge what is "good" for them based on how the change feels. if it doesn't seem natural, then that change is naturally not a part of my character. discovering your characters and learning more about them is really important, but it's different than "creating" a character. in the former experience, you find them; in the latter, you build them from scratch.

that's not to say the former kinds of characters can't change, because they almost always do, at least in my experience. but it has to be at their own whim; again, you'll know if it's a good change if it seems to fit the character. if it doesn't, it wasn't meant to be. i think every character evolves over time eventually, but it's not something you can just wave a wand and expect to happen overnight unless it's a good change for that character. if you force changes on characters who are not suitable for those changes, you end up with a bad character, just as you would if you denied them changes over time.

i know it seems weird to describe characters as "speaking" to me, and i don't mean it literally, but it's much different than viewing them as, say, machine parts that you can put together however you like. sometimes they come already constructed in some ways, and those can change, but not as easily.

[(Anonymous)]

"Characters should be malleable. They should be something you should be able to change in your story just like you can change a sentence or scene or plot point."

That isn't always possible,it really isn't, and especially if it's used to push some kind of agenda. or it goes against the grain of who that character 'is', in the minds eye, of the creator.

It's like if I was told to make one my main characters female, despite the fact that my story is centered around two male lovers. It's just not going to happen.

[(Anonymous)]

That isn't always possible,it really isn't, and especially if it's used to push some kind of agenda. or it goes against the grain of who that character 'is', in the minds eye, of the creator.

Nope. It's always possible. You can always change a character. A character is just words on paper. If you want to change a physical feature or how they react to something, all you need to do is write new words.

It's like if I was told to make one my main characters female, despite the fact that my story is centered around two male lovers. It's just not going to happen.

Well, of course not. The dynamic is going to be completely different. And you're making a very conscious decision about the genders of these characters in the situation. But what if you wrote a story about people solving a murder in New York. Is it necessary for all these characters to be white? Would changing the race of a character completely change the dynamics? Probably not. All the cops in your story are men. Is there are reason for this? Would having a woman cop completely throw the story into a funk? Sometimes it's good to ask yourself questions like that.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm sorry but my characters are not just lifeless husks that I can skin, gut, and shove into a new shape, just to suit the needs of others.

I write characters that come from all different backgrounds and races, however that is they way they appear to me from the get-go, I don't have to change any of them, and if some of them are white i don't agonize over them, or worry that I need to change their race, they are who they are.

If you feel the need to see more representation, or you feel that authors aren't giving enough representation, then begin writing your own story.

I mean it.

It would be far easier to do that, then try and change (or guilt) someones whole creative process.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree about background characters! If you need a doctor for one scene in a modern fic there's no reason that doctor can't be female or POC or both. Little changes like that, where we accept that women are cops in the background of the chase scene or politicians who happen to be talking in the background on television, are great.

[(Anonymous)]

What you're saying here only works if you're writing plot-driven stories and only using characters as tools in a plot. It's fine to have some minor characters who only exist to move the plot forward, but if you make your major characters like this, they usually read as cardboard cutouts.

When you write character-driven stories, you can't just change the reaction of characters to fit the plot's needs - it reads as not true to the characters and destroys the quality of the story. There's a certain amount of organic reaction from each character that is necessay for them to seem alive.

I enjoy character-driven stories much, much more than plot-driven ones, and I prefer to write the former. Frankly what you've said in your comments makes you seem pretty inexperienced as a writer, as you don't even seem to grasp the concept of organic character development people are trying to explain to you.

[saku]

some characters just don't work as certain genders, or body types, or personalities. these things will come to you, and eventually you'll find something that fits. for me, i find it generally immediately. they do change over time, even when i was once satisfied, so it's definitely not unheard of, but changing a character's gender - or any other part of their identity - because you've been made to feel you don't have "enough" of one kind of person, or that your story is lacking unless you fix this, isn't always a good course of action, because not every character can change like that so easily and still feel "right" to the creator. that's how i am. i would never change any of my girls into boys, or vice versa, or anything in between or outside of these identities unless it fit. that's what it boils down to: is the change good for the character, and is it something you want to do? if one or both of these answers is no, that is okay! there's nothing wrong with being satisfied with your characters, even if, in the long run, it turns out that you have a few more boys than girls. i have hundreds of characters so even with the majority being male, i still have tons of females, and i love them all.

again, it's not always easy for an author to change their characters, and they shouldn't feel obligated to do so at times that are not natural for them or their own "editing" schedule, as i refer to it, simply because some people think that every author should have at least 50% of their characters be females, all the time, no exceptions.

[elialshadowpine]

Yeah, I mean... with learning more about social issues, I have stopped more and asked myself "Does this character need to be [x]?" By doing that, I realized that one book really did not work all that well with the lead hero but when that character became a butch lesbian, the story changed immensely and for the better. There's a lot more nuance and complication and depth to the characters. It just never occurred to me when I started writing it in 2002 that I could write about a lesbian couple (because the writer's community I was in, headed by a published author who did a lot of workshops and the like, talked at length about how gay characters were not viable in SFF and how she had been made to turn a lesbian character straight in order to sell a novel).

But sometimes, the characters are what they are. I have another story, a BDSM fantasy story, that I've had trouble writing because male dom is somewhat triggery to me. I thought, well, what if I switched the character to a woman? But, nope, he's male. The storyline doesn't have the same impact, either, with the character as a woman, because one of the things that is heavily focused on as something the heroine has great difficulty with is how women are expected to be subservient to men in society. You do not deal with the same issues in a lesbian relationship.

Which is why I am boggling at some of the comments that say that you can change characters and not have it matter. Because if you're doing it right, no, it does matter. My above-mentioned lesbian heroine has gone through totally different things as a Latina lesbian than as a Latino male. And I'm not saying that the story has to be About Life As A Minority, because I fucking hate that. I fucking hate how such a large amount of queer fiction is coming out stories and how Life Is So Difficult As A Queer Person. There is some great stuff out there that treats it as "just another thing about the character" -- but it is still going to inform the character, their experiences, and outlook on life, even if it's not the focus of the story. It's possible to address those things in a subtle manner.

[saku]

yes, thank you! i think it does matter, and any changes are often important. i have no trouble changing things like character names (i do that more than anything else tbh) even when their previous name seemed fitting. it's a matter of finding something better. and by better, i don't mean something mary stu-ish. i mean something better for that character. if you give your character a flaw because it's better for them as a dynamic part of a story, then cool.

changes come naturally to me! they really really do. but they have to be changes i'm willing to make. i'm not going to make a character male or female unless they're supposed to be.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, sometimes characters have to change. But fuck changing them according to somebody else's agenda.

[(Anonymous)]

This!

If they want a story with more female representation, then they can write it themselves. Authors should not be at the mercy of any social agenda.

[saku]

hehe i probably should have just left my original comment at that, tbh.

[(Anonymous)]

Authors should not be at the mercy of any social agenda.

I disagree with you there. I think authors should be held accountable. Many writers actually have a social agenda when they're writing, and I think writers should definitely be called out when their writing is problematic.

If an author writes a sci-fi novel where men and women are fighting against some alien species, and the author says that women are fighting just as much as men, then I'm going to be miffed if not a single female fighter has a line of dialogue. I'm not the OP. I don't think you need an equal gender proportion, but I do think writers need to be called out on for erasure or how they deal with a subject matter.

[(Anonymous)]

I think sometimes people need to just enjoy a story, and if they don't, they can put it down and read something that is more suited to what they like.

Yes some things that are written can be a problem, but we can choose not to read it, or to stop reading it.

Everything can been seen as being 'problematic', depending on who is viewing it.

If I'm writing a love story with two men, I should not be forced to change one of those men, into a woman.

[(Anonymous)]

If I'm writing a love story with two men, I should not be forced to change one of those men, into a woman.

You're using that example again. I NEVER said you should.

If people want to read stories just for enjoyment, then good for them. That's their prerogative. As for myself, I read with a critical eye. I think about what works and what doesn't work. I think the written word is meant to be critiqued.

It's an easy example to use, but think about Twilight. It's a problematic book, and Edward's relationship with Bella is very abusive. Did I enjoy it when I read it? Sure. But I also liked reading essays pointing out the issues with the story.

If something offends me, I don't just stop reading. I ask why it offends me. I ask why it's problematic. You act like I'm attacking you for writing an m/m story. I'm not. I just disagree with your opinion that we shouldn't delve into the social implications of what we read.

[elialshadowpine]

I don't think that's what people are asking though. Gay romance still deals with an underrepresented population in fiction. But most gay fiction still has an external plot and side characters, and there is plenty of room to have some awesome women as important characters in the story.