lesbian undertones in a "straight" novel

[mirrorkisses]

Have any of you done this in your romance or chick lit novels? I ask because I do this, because it seems very natural for women to act this way around each other (not in a sexual way, but women aren't as ashamed about things that would be deemed "gay" for men). I remember when I let a class read an earlier draft of my first chapter, only the lesbians in the room seemed to catch those hints (or maybe the straight girls weren't speaking up).

My protagonist is what would be considered straight; she is dating a man and her romantic interest is a man and all the sexual scenes are with her romantic interest. I wonder how a reader would take this, or even an editor. I know it's been done before, but because of the genre, I've been a bit curious how it will be taken.

[Marlys]

It's not clear to me what you mean. I'm guessing from the fact that her love interest in the story is a man that she's not actually a lesbian, but beyond that I'm foggy. She's attracted to both men and women, but the love of her life is a man? Or she and her friends just are comfortable enough to joke around about sex, even if they don't much mean it? As in, "Wow, you look hot in that dress--give me a call if the date with Walter doesn't work out." But you say "undertones," so probably don't mean something that obvious.

I guess the question is: what do you mean? Can you give examples?

[jodiodi]

I've got bisexual female undertones in one of my current WiPs (as do a lot of stories, come to think of it). However, I've only written one where there's a f/f explicit relationship and it wasn't meant for the romance genre.

I know I've seen quite a few publishers in romance and erotica who specifically say no f/f though I've also seen many who say it's ok to hint at f/f as long as the current heroine/hero relationship is the focus of the novel and has the HEA ending.

Can't say about chick-lit since I don't read it.

[mirrorkisses]

I've also seen many who say it's ok to hint at f/f as long as the current heroine/hero relationship is the focus of the novel and has the HEA ending.


interesting...

[scarletpeaches]

My WIP is Ya urban fantasy but there's an 'undercurrent' running through it.

One female MC hopes another hasn't mentioned to anyone else 'what happened between them' and during a joke about disrobing, a young man says something along the lines of, "Oh come on - it's not like you haven't seen another woman naked before."

There's no overt sex scenes of any sort, though - hetero, homo or lesbiano. ;)

[Elodie-Caroline]

Hi,
I don't know if you meant for the underlying lesbian traits etc. to be there; but I think that sometimes us writers write subtext, that we don't realise is there, until after we've written it. For instance, my female MC was abused as a child by her adoptive father and from what I had written at first, it seemed that my male MC fancied her because she is still like a child in some ways. She's very tiny and acts childish sometimes and he is sexually attracted to her along with romantically attracted.
I had to change parts of my story because of this; he isn't interested in children and she would be mortified if he was, so it had to have the subtext written out for my own piece of mind.

Other than that, yes, us women are a lot more intimate with our own kind than men are. We don't see or read anything into being intimate with the same sex, it's just the way we are, we don't feel as if we have to prove that we're straight like men seem to do.


Elodie