Hello to everyone, it's me again.
Quite a while ago I wrote about my first ever WIP and how I struggled writing it because of ideas I've already had for a sequel (in case a summary of the story would help: I have more/better ideas for the sequel than the main story. How to go about it? ). Thanks to your replies and some thinking over, I was able to continue with my first WIP. Now that I've made some progress, I'm taking another look at characters and want to change/adjust some things about them, such as Chlare and Rachel's names (the MC's love interest, at least later on).
One thing has been bothering me right from the beginning of writing this story; Bella's (the MC) gender.
Before I even started writing the first lines for this story, Bella was initially meant to be an intersex character. I can't say exactly why, it just felt right for this character. A little later, right before I actively started writing, I made Bella be a cis female, because I guess I didn't trust myself enough to write an intersex character properly. But the more I've been writing, the more I felt like I should go back to the idea of Bella being an intersex person.
In my life, I only ever talked to two intersex people, but never about them being intersex, let alone about me wanting to write a story with an intersex protagonist. I think my hesitation to write such a character comes from the fact that I've heard of authors getting negative responses for writing a character of a different gender than their own (mainly male/female authors writing female/male characters), more precisely for doing it poorly. In addition to that, there is a slight fear of falling into any cliches that there might be about intersex people. I don't want anyone who would read my story to feel uncomfortable for the wrong reasons.
Story-wise, it probably wouldn't have too much impact overall, since preeminently there is no stigmatization of gender and sexual orientation in Fjungard (my WIP's world - the name's a subject to change). Bella would still indetify mainly as female and would use she/her as pronouns. It might become more evident that Bella is an intersex person when it would come to intimate moments between Bella and Chlare, the love interest. And even then, I wouldn't write these scenes too explicitly, I just think I wouldn't be good at writing sex scenes. Also, I assume oversexualization is one of the easiest ways of misrepresentation. But not later than when the characters think retrospectively of their shared intimacy would it become more apparent that Bella is an intersex character.
Do you have any tips for writing such characters? Are there any cliches that come to your mind which should be avoided? Am I overthinking it? Have you ever changed your character's gender and if so, what were the reasons?
Also, I would like to apologize for my sometimes exhausting style of writing and if I used terms or expressions which seem offensive or are used incorrectly, but since English is not my first language, I'm trying my best to use respectful language and still make my point clear.
Quite a while ago I wrote about my first ever WIP and how I struggled writing it because of ideas I've already had for a sequel (in case a summary of the story would help: I have more/better ideas for the sequel than the main story. How to go about it? ). Thanks to your replies and some thinking over, I was able to continue with my first WIP. Now that I've made some progress, I'm taking another look at characters and want to change/adjust some things about them, such as Chlare and Rachel's names (the MC's love interest, at least later on).
One thing has been bothering me right from the beginning of writing this story; Bella's (the MC) gender.
Before I even started writing the first lines for this story, Bella was initially meant to be an intersex character. I can't say exactly why, it just felt right for this character. A little later, right before I actively started writing, I made Bella be a cis female, because I guess I didn't trust myself enough to write an intersex character properly. But the more I've been writing, the more I felt like I should go back to the idea of Bella being an intersex person.
In my life, I only ever talked to two intersex people, but never about them being intersex, let alone about me wanting to write a story with an intersex protagonist. I think my hesitation to write such a character comes from the fact that I've heard of authors getting negative responses for writing a character of a different gender than their own (mainly male/female authors writing female/male characters), more precisely for doing it poorly. In addition to that, there is a slight fear of falling into any cliches that there might be about intersex people. I don't want anyone who would read my story to feel uncomfortable for the wrong reasons.
Story-wise, it probably wouldn't have too much impact overall, since preeminently there is no stigmatization of gender and sexual orientation in Fjungard (my WIP's world - the name's a subject to change). Bella would still indetify mainly as female and would use she/her as pronouns. It might become more evident that Bella is an intersex person when it would come to intimate moments between Bella and Chlare, the love interest. And even then, I wouldn't write these scenes too explicitly, I just think I wouldn't be good at writing sex scenes. Also, I assume oversexualization is one of the easiest ways of misrepresentation. But not later than when the characters think retrospectively of their shared intimacy would it become more apparent that Bella is an intersex character.
Do you have any tips for writing such characters? Are there any cliches that come to your mind which should be avoided? Am I overthinking it? Have you ever changed your character's gender and if so, what were the reasons?
Also, I would like to apologize for my sometimes exhausting style of writing and if I used terms or expressions which seem offensive or are used incorrectly, but since English is not my first language, I'm trying my best to use respectful language and still make my point clear.