When do you decide on your character's sexuality?

For some, it happens the way you've described. For me, it's right out of the gate. I'm always writing about gay men since...well...being a gay man and "write what you know" and all that.

I remember one WIP, during the first draft, the characters seemed...not flat, but...as if there was something about them I didn't know, didn't like, wasn't sure of...

Anyway, on the rewrites they decided (both guys) to tell me they were bi. And everything about the damn story fell into place. I mean - everything. It explained so much.

Who says sex isn't important, eh? Because their sexuality certainly moved the story along and helped explain a hell of a lot I didn't know about.

And I'm only the author, right?

I assume all my characters are bisexual unless I find out otherwise.

Parametric said:

I assume all my characters are bisexual unless I find out otherwise.

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.

If a charater's sexuality is relevant to the plot, then I mention it. I usually have an inkling of what it is, but I've been proved wrong before.

NicoleMD said:

Just wondering at what point in the writing process do you decide on (or discover) a character's sexuality? Do you decide before you write a single word? Or somewhere during the first draft when the character first encounters a potentially sexual situation?

I've done both, probably a mix of 50-50. My first gay character, I didn't even know he was gay until someone told me halfway through the second draft. Oddly, my character's parents and best friend knew. It explained why I was having a hell of a time getting him to fall in love with the female lead.

Nicole

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Hmm, probably neither. I don't usually know beforehand. I think I discover at some point during the first draft, but it happens before there's a sexual situation. It's sort of, I dunno, seeing the world differently, not just lusting after a same-sex character. I think the character reveals it to me the same way the characters reveal other information about their personalities.

I was writing a kids fantasy, in which obviously no romance is going on, and a minor character came onstage, and I was pretty surprised to find that he was gay. He's not being attracted to anyone or anything, but knowing that about him informs who he is and what he's like.

Pretty much the same here. Sometimes a character's sexuality arrives with a story's premise so he/she is LGBT or straight, from the outset. Sometimes he or she simply "reveals" this aspect as the story develops.

Partings and Greetings is a story of a bisexual love triangle, and it involved two characters I'd used before in previous (unpublished) novels. One was always gay, the other was probably always bi without fully realising it - her love life up to that point had been exclusively straight. The third character, new to this novel, had to be a straight guy due to the premise...so that is what he is.

On the other hand, the two main characters in The Plague Years are both straight.

If one writes romance, sexuality is pretty key to the plot, and the other way around too. So I usually find out the character's sexuality (and sometimes their physical sex or their species' number and structure of sexes and genders) when I decide the general plot outline. Sometimes I have an interesting character in my mind, and I think, this character has weakness X and strength Y, what love interest and/or fetish would feed his strength and force him to confront his weakness? Also the relationship in the opposite direction is important - what kind of love interest character would find their own 'missing piece' in the main character?

sometimes I know already, sometimes it's revealed as the story and or character progresses.

it also depends on the universe I'm writing in. My favourite one has some pretty fluid ideas on sexuality (although not on gender, sadly) and in that world not an eyelid is batted at the thought of bisexuality (except in a specific case, but yeah anyway)

When you're writing YA, there's usually going to be some sort of romance going on. Fact of life. (Of course there are exceptions and in many cases the romance is a minor subplot). One of my WIPs had a few very intriguing (okay, plain sexy) male characters in it, and Paige just wasn't biting. I found myself writing far more dramatically about the intriguing female character, who was a big part of the plot, but never a love interest in my mind. In fairness, I'm a straight female and I'd gotten used to writing from a straight female perspective, and so my previous writing has probably totally lacked feminine sexiness.
Aaanyway, I eventually figured it out, but it's still not really a big part of the book. It makes the scenes with hot guys a lot easier to write, though, now that I'm not trying to push Paige into feeling something she most definitely doesn't feel. Sometimes it's a relief to do away with obligatory sexual tension, y'know?
All is now well with my characters.

When the characters deign to inform me about it. Sometimes they don't bother.

Since I pretty much stick to writing the stories that I want to read but that nobody else is writing for me, my protagonists automatically default to lesbian as the unmarked case. I'll occasionally write something with a non-lesbian protagonist, but it would be for specific literary purposes.

Hmm, I guess the system automatically adds that "New kid, be gentle!" tag. This may be my first time posting at Absolute Write, but I'm hardly a "new kid" and there's no need to be any gentler than usual.

They reveal themselves at different paces to me, personally, because I insist on knowing everything I possibly can about my characters, regardless of whether it makes it into the story as a relevant plot point or not. But there have been a couple of cases where it was tricky to figure out. One character I knew was bi from the get-go, and I haven't decided yet whether I'm going to bring that up in the story. Another I knew was a lesbian, but her role is asexual in the story--she's a computer hacker, no romantic interests, always talking techno-babble, so it doesn't really come up. I keep those things in mind when using their POVs, but otherwise I leave it alone. Whether their sexuality is a big deal to them dictates how I use it in the story.

However, there was one instance where I rather suddenly realized a character was gay, and it influenced a lot of things about his past and gave me a huge arc to work with for the rest of the story. He had a female best friend that he hung out with a lot, and while I was workshopping it some of my readers got confused as to why these two never worked out a romance. In my mind, they were just never attracted to each other, and that was all I needed to know. But since it wasn't enough for them, I digged deeper, and out he came. Made the story much more interesting, too.

Parametric said:

I assume all my characters are bisexual unless I find out otherwise.

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Heh, I am actually the opposite. I assume my characters have no sexual life unless it is either revealed to me through their developing or is a plot point.

I assume all my MCs are going to be gay because that's just the way my brain works. Plus the last time I tried to get one of them in bed with a woman, he ran for the hills and hasn't been seen or heard from since

Maxinquaye said:

When the characters deign to inform me about it. Sometimes they don't bother.

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This.

I tend to assume all characters I start writing are bisexual unless they inform me otherwise. I guess it's the whole "write what you know" thing talking, there.

A lot of the time, though, it doesn't come up in the story. No time for romance when the lizard pirates of Pluto are on your tail, you know.

hrj said:

Hmm, I guess the system automatically adds that "New kid, be gentle!" tag. This may be my first time posting at Absolute Write, but I'm hardly a "new kid" and there's no need to be any gentler than usual.

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LOL. Post more, then that new kid tag will be gone in no time

Interesting, I'd never really thought about this before. I guess when I write romance I have that idea planned out ahead of time, but in other works when sexuality is tangential, it depends.

I had two characters, one who was completely obsessed with the other one and I couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Obsessed to the point of insanity and stalking. I kept on writing scenes with the two of them trying to figure out their relationship and then one day in one scene it hit me: He was in love with the other guy. Everything fell into place.

Hi, Kippur! I think I might know you from somewhere else...Anti-Shurtugal, perhaps?
(*Checks Kippur's blog* Oh, yes. I'd recognize Kippurbird's sporkings anywhere ^_^).

Usually I know my character's orientation right off, often becuase there's a romantic subplot as part of the story I envision in my mind. It's a little odd, because romance isn't really that big a deal in many of my stories. Males are far more likely to be gay than females, which might be my heritage as a straight female. I'm trying to combat that, since I do enjoy writing lesbian pairings--I understand the female mind far better than the male one, especially when it comes to love. So every so often I ask myself, "Are you _sure_ she's straight?" If nothing else, reexamining the character's sexuality makes the story that much deeper, even if I decide in the end not to change it.