Entries tagged with writing: write thoughtfully

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Answer time: trans characters and medieval times.

Anonymous said: Hi, I'm working on a medieval/middle ages story, and according to my research, a very important thing in those days were heirs and such. I wanted to have the king legalize homosexual relationships, but I keep running into the heir problem. Do you have any tips? Also, do you have any sources on writing trans characters in medieval times? Thanks in advance :)))

Okay, I’m going to tackle the heir thing and the trans characters things separately because they don’t necessarily overlap that much.

Full disclaimer: the following are my opinions only and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of others/historians. Also, whatever you’re thinking of changing or breaking, your first motto should always be research, research, research, and then ask questions to relevant people about that research.

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Answer time: Racism in France

Sent by Anonymous :

Hello! I saw on WWC that you had responded to a post about black people and racism in France. I was wondering if you could point me towards any resources/knew anything about at home culture amongst black French people? Obviously it wouldn't be exactly the same for everyone, but I was hoping for some insight. (It's for a story I'm hopefully going to be writing soon.)

Heya Nonners :)

I‘m not sure I can really answer your question because it seems to me that you’re trying to find out about a French equivalent to the African-American culture present in the USA (where they have specific speech pattern such as AAVE etc.) but we don’t have that concept in France, where the most generic groups of black people we talk about as different cultures are

People from the ‘Antilles’ (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint Barthélémy & Saint Martin)
African communities

Which is without mentioning black people who don’t particularly have connections to either of those groups and “only” have the French culture(s) used where they live.

I don’t want to overwhelm you with too many details here because it sounds like ou’re kind of in the beginning of things and also because my knowledge is limited (one of my great grandad was a black Guadeloupean man, but my family isn’t very connected to the culture) but on the whole what you need to do first is determine what your character(s)’ background(s) is/are and then go from there.

Because things are going to be very different between a woman who comes from Guadeloupe to study in Paris (for ex) than they’ll be for a black man who was born and raised in the depth of the French countryside. So if I were you I’d start by picking:

Where they live/lived in France (throw a dart if you want to) whether it’s in the mainland or in one of the DOM-TOMs
Roughly their levels of income (not necessarily super specific but having a general idea of the level of comfort you want them to have)
Where their family came from and roughly when
(Keep in mind: France is an acceptable answer to that question. There have been black people on our bit of land since well before the middle ages and not every black French person will be able to trace their ancestors back to a specific African country)

This will provide a basis for you to do more refined research where needed and try to figure out how much you need to know about your character’s background. You can try to ask @useless-francefacts if they or their followers know of bloggers who specifically discuss being black in Metropolitan France and/or life in overseas part of France like Guadeloupe, and if you have more specific questions later on I’ll be happy to try and help you find resources/sum up some of the resources I can find in French :)

Et si il y a des frenchies qui peuvent/veulent parler de leur expérience en tant que noir(e) en France (métropolitaine ou autre), n’hésitez pas à rebloguer :D

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Answer time: Queerbaiting

Sent by Anonymous :

Um, I don't mean to bother you or anything, but do you have any advice on how to avoid queerbaiting in writing? I'm working on a story and I'm afraid I might wind up inadvertently queerbaiting the audience and I really want to avoid that.

You’re not a bother at all, promise :)

Honestly, the very fact that you’re worried about this is a good sign because it means you’ll be paying attention to it and that’s the first step of representation, imo.

Queerbaiting is a difficult thing to deal with because it can take very subtle forms, and the reader/viewer’s experiences plays a lot into whether they’ll feel baited or not.
That being said when you get down to it, queerbaiting is when you set up queer subtext between characters that won’t get together by the end of your story. In other words, queer baiting is a promise you don’t intend to uphold.

In view of that, my biggest advice is to avoid ship teasing and related tropes, unless you’re planning on making the ship you’re teasing canon. There are a number of tropes to avoid with regard to queer relationships, but where queerbaiting is concerned, this is the main one. Just… don’t hint at something that’s not going to happen and you’ll be good.

This means, for example, making sure same-sex friendships stay explicitely platonic unless you’re planning on changing the game later on–steering clear of things like lingering glances, excessive cuddling or very intimate gestures, etc.–and avoid going introducing sexual tension between your characters if they’re not destined to have a romantic (sub)plot, etc.

As a last bit of advice though: people will ship, and yes, they will ship queer ships that you didn’t intend to make. That’s completely okay, and nothing you can prevent from happening. do your best, keep an eye out for potentially harmful trope, and have your work beta read and edited.

And if it turns out you failed anyway–because that happens–learn from experience, and strive to progress in your next story. That, in my opinion, is the most important part.

I hope this helped a little :)

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Answer time: Bisexual MC

Sent by Anonymous :

Hi! I'm currently writing a story with a MC who is bisexual, I was wondering if you knew any posts/could redirect to me a site that lists tropes to avoid, stuff like that, etc., because I want to do a good job of representation. I'm already talking to a bi classmate, but I was thinking the more intel I had, the better the representation would be.

Hi Nonners :)

Well, there’s the TVtropes page on bisexuality, for starters :)

I don’t really know of any other site that specializes in bisexual (or even queer in general) representation but looking through legit-writing-tips, clevergirlhelps, and/or writeworld‘s tags for representation could get you some results.

Also, if your MC is a person of color, I recommend checking writingwithcolor, because tropes that are empowering for white characters can turn out to be damaging to audiences of other origins/ethnicities.

And of course, if your MC isn’t USian, do keep a critical eye for anything you find on tumblr. People here tend to write from an USian perspective, which works well enough for some topics, but which can be vastly off if you place your story in a different country.

That’s about all I have off the top of my head, unfortunately, aside from the usual recommendations: don’t equate bisexuality with sexual proactivity or dishonesty, do not danse around the word ‘bisexual’ and don’t imply bisexuality is a one off thing.

I hope this helps!

PS: If any of my bi friends & followers want to chime-in, feel free to reblog the post so Nonners can look through the notes and see your commentary :)