Writing Question

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adarkfox

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Okay, my WIP revolves around male MC's growing relationship with another male. This isn't a coming-out story, their sexual preferences are another dynamic to their situation.

However, I'm not a gay male so I'm hiccuping on some parts of the writing, and wanted to ask a couple questions:

1- What is cliche in writing for gay couples?
2- What is complete turn-off/boring/unrealistic?

Any input is appreciated :)
 

Gale Haut

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Okay, my WIP revolves around male MC's growing relationship with another male. This isn't a coming-out story, their sexual preferences are another dynamic to their situation.

However, I'm not a gay male so I'm hiccuping on some parts of the writing, and wanted to ask a couple questions:

1- What is cliche in writing for gay couples?
2- What is complete turn-off/boring/unrealistic?

Any input is appreciated :)

The questions are general enough that I wouldn't know where to begin answering them. Also, I don't really think anyone agrees on what would be cliche and what would be boring.

Maybe think of your relationships and what has surprised you about your personal gay male friends. You could start from there.
 
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fadeaccompli

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I have to agree that the questions are too broad to really be answered in a useful way on a forum like this. Consider if you'd asked what stereotypes and cliches to avoid for writing romantic relationships between men and women. It's just...a really big topic.

If you're not familiar enough with what's already written in this area to be aware of the general cliches, I'd actually recommend you check out various sexuality tropes on TV Tropes, for an idea of what comes up so often it's got its own page dedicated to it. But I'd recommend even more strongly than you read a lot in the field. Read romances, and read books where the romance isn't the focus. When you've got a few dozen books read covering roughly the same area, you'll start to notice the patterns.

And for your second question, it's worrying to me that you've paired those three things together. What's a "turn-off" isn't necessarily the same as what's "boring", and neither is necessarily going to be more or less realistic than anything else. Are you talking about writing sex, or writing relationships? Because if you're not writing erotica, or even romance, I really wouldn't worry much about what's a turn-off or not in sex scenes, unless you mean to ask about what's offensive.
 

michael_b

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The biggest cliches I see are:

A) Making one of the gay couple 'the woman' and having him act very female, effeminate and crying at the drop of a hat or having 'mood swings' as if he's a hormonal female. (Sorry, couldn't think of a more PC way to phrase that.)

B) Making one always submissive and the other always dominant. In real gay relationships one is not always submissive--the bottom--or the macho man--the top--they will be equals.
 

Gale Haut

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In real gay relationships one is not always submissive--the bottom--or the macho man--the top--they will be equals.

I agree that the dominant/submissive dynamic has fallen into a trope. But I think we should avoid narrowly defining real world relationship dynamics with generalizations. There are certainly real couples in this world who do have that dynamic. :)
 

adarkfox

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I guess I should have been more specific... by "turn-off" I meant a turn-off to reading, not in a sexual way... Like when I'm reading a book and the clumsy girl is swept off her feet by the high school jock I'm turned off reading it and put the book down.

I'll definitely look into the tropes, sounds like a good place to start :)
 

Gale Haut

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I smiled when I looked at your website Gale, you have a love of Birch font like I do!

I do like Birch font and Garamond. Oddly enough I had a logo job recently where tweaking that clunky old Blackoak font was truly the best choice for the design because of the combo of rounded and flat ends. I hadn't anticipated using that one for anything really.
 
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