Quote from: avmorgan on May 06, 2009, 12:35:29 AM
And before I go, a question: I've often heard the saying, write what you know, but I've wondered, do you think mainstream audiences would respond well to books featuring a transgendered main character?
They will if you do it right. Consider
Middlesex and
Now Is the Hour.
Middlesex is about an intersexed person and
Now Is the Hour is about a gay person. I think both of these books are accessible to anyone. Also,
Luna, a teen book about a transexual girl. Those three books are written in a way that anyone can identify with them. The best advice I can give you is to write the character, but don't shove their transexuality down the audience's throats. Being transexual is only a part of that character's life. There are a lot of other things that make the character human. It's all in how you treat the character.
For example, all my main characters are male, as far as names/pronouns go. But in reality, they are androgynous. They could be anyone. I don't focus on what they are. Instead I focus on who they are and how they relate to their world and the people around them. I don't really write prose...I do some flash fiction and some very prose like poetry. I don't really know what to call it. But I'm still telling a story about a person, not about their gender.
