Writing Queer Characters, Pt. 2

Part One: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/writing-queer-characters-pt-1

In yesterday's blog post, I talked about how I accidentally queercoded a lot of characters in my early writing. Today, I'm going to talk about intentionally writing queer characters, in the beginning, through The Secret Portal Draft Four.

In eighth grade, I was planning a book called Perspectives. It was made to be diary entires of five different characters going over the same events in their own view. I started it on a whim without any idea for a plot. I started to plan a plot around my freshman year of high school, and things started to click together. Eventually, I realized it would be really interesting it my characters Laurel and Meadow were lesbians. The story I had in mind was that the two of them had fallen in love, but when Laurel was outed to the whole school, Meadow went as far back in the closet as she could. Of course, I'd have them end up together in the end, but because I didn't get far in planning Perspectives, there's not a lot more I had in mind.

But Laurel and Meadow were my first queer characters, and I'd recognized how much more interesting I could make the story with opening the doors to this.

When I wrote The Secret Portal Draft Four in my freshman and sophomore years of high school, I wanted an LGBTQ+ character, so I decided to make the side character Wade Attwood gay, and soon gave him a boyfriend named Craig Worthington. I had my characters Rose and Alex interact, I eventually realized that Alex was flirting with Rose. I decided to make them start dating as I developed their relationship, but what's really funny is that my sister thought that I'd intentionally written Alex to be flirting with Rose, so I suppose that it was very fitting. Soon, I did make my shapeshifting character then called Seamus trans, but as I went over in my introduction of him, I felt like making the shapeshifting character trans was... I honestly don't know the word. However, I ended up changing his shapeshifting powers anyway to make it more fun for the plot, so his being trans ended up being nothing to do with his shapeshifting powers. (You can see all character introductions linked at the bottom--though they're listed by the names they currently are.)

At first, these were my only queer characters in The Secret Portal, but I will admit something that I'm not proud of. I completely danced around the words "gay" and "lesbian," and it led to some pretty awkward moments of dialogue. (I didn't get to a point where I'd confirmed Seamus as trans yet.) I don't know why I was afraid of saying the terms when I was clearly portraying these relationships, and I am ashamed that I did. I'm glad to admit that this has since changed.

Tomorrow, I will go over more of my progress as I planned Draft Five.

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Wade's introduction: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/character-introduction-wade-attwood

Teo's (Craig) introduction: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/character-introduction-teo-nguyen

Liam's (Seamus) introduction: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/character-introduction-liam-beaumont

Rose's introduction: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/character-introduction-rose-hernandez

Alex's introduction: https://kaylinrosealexande.wixsite.com/kaylinalexanderbooks/post/character-introduction-alex-vaughn