Rainbow Writing

Welcome to Rainbow Writing! This is a blog centered on helping writers create better lgbtqa+ diversity in their writing. We post about harmful tropes and stereotypes, read and give feedback on submitted writing, post book recs, and more.

[rainbowwriting]

faq

i thought it might be helpful to post a little faq. this blog is still very inactive and its unlikely that i will ever revitalize it in any meaningful way, but this may help the casual asker

q - my character is trans, but theyre also a fantasy race/creature/etc. how should i write their transition?

let the audience fill in the blanks. you dont have to show every little detail. a vampire taking t intramuscular isnt a stretch, and you dont have to go into specifics of how blood moves, or if magic is part of it, you dont have to come up with a grand original idea for how hrt/transitioning works. let the audience draw conclusions themselves. the same goes for any other magic or fantasy based hrt

q - my character is nonbinary, but also not human. is this bad?

ask why this character is nonbinary, and why the nonbinary character is nonhuman. if theyre nonbinary because "x race doesnt believe in gender" or "x race has multiple genders by nature" then try again, and also look at your human characters (if any) and why they ARE binary or why there are or are not human nonbinary characters as well. this can be a little subjective, but if your character were to explain their gender, and the words "i am [insert nonhuman] and because of that i am nonbinary" fit, then think again about making that character nonbinary.

q - my story is about a cis and/or straight character, but trans and/or gay people are also present. how do i not tokenize them? how do i let my audience know theyre trans?

with these questions, i feel as though people dont understand what a "token" character is. generally, a token character is the only minority/only one of a small amount of a minority and theyre a one-dimensional stereotype.

for instance, a cast of four straight characters and a gay character, and the gay character is known for sassy quips and being fashionable. that is a token gay.

a cast of cis characters and one trans character who's known for having an abusive father and has a small one-dimensional arc about accepting oneself? token trans.

letting the audience know that a character is trans or gay isnt necessary per se, but just a casual mention of "i need to refill my [hrt] perscription" or "i had this boyfriend once" or even a straight up "bro im gay" is enough if you would prefer it to be explicit.

q - how do i describe a trans character?

as you would any other of their same gender

q - my bisexual character ends up with someone of the binary opposite gender of them, is this bad?

no, no, a thousand times no! unless you are stating that the only way a bisexual person can be happy/fulfilled is by being in a """straight""" relationship, there is no fault! bisexuals are not only bisexual when they are single

q - is it okay for a cis character to dress in "opposite gender" clothing and still be cis?

yes

q - is this bury your gays?

probably not, but it could be. the bury your gays trope is not cut-and-dry "a character who is gay dies." its a queerbaiting tactic where a character(s) is/are gay, and right when things start to look up for them, one/both of them die(s). its used to either drum up queer consumption of media or to demoralize us by saying we dont deserve a happy ending

q - i have a story with queer characters. is it okay to put them through x situation regarding their race/age/location?

generally, these questions are not within the purpose of this blog

q - i am making something just for me/a small group. is xyz bad rep? i also belong to said xyz group

you can speak for your own experiences, you dont have to get approval for a character to be queer the same way you are. be loud, be queer, make art that represents you!

[oatmealaddiction]

I feel like some of you guys think "bad art" is like someone gluing rhinestones to a water melon, or a guy who made his own armchair out of Ohio license plates, or a trashy romance novel where someone says "the blue-eyed one kissed the brown-eyed one," when in reality bad art is a 1000000 Billion Dollar movie where none of the workers got paid and every single creative decision was market tested to see how lucrative of a profit it could foreseeably make to wow shareholders.

[rainbowwriting]

So I don’t know how much experience with dungeons and dragons the mod team has, but you seem to be a bunch of nerds who run a queer writing blog so probably a bit?

Anyway, there’s this item I’ve heard of some people coming up with that’s like an extra-dimensional binder that hides your breasts entirely with no compression. And I thought it sounded neat! But I’m also a little worried this fantasy style accommodation may have transphobic elements I haven’t considered. Do you see any problems with this?

as of right now its just one nerd that posts once in a blue super worm moon LOL (maybe one day i'll tear apart the theme and update everything)

but i am transmasc and i play dnd!

when it comes to fantasy/magical gender affirmation, it should be viewed not thru a "is this too easy" lens and more through a "is this erasure" lens

for the magic binder, its just a normal binder that accomodates all chest sizes equally. this i wouldnt say is erasure. if it was, say, a magic shirt that molded your body to a cisgender perisex expectation of a "man's" body, it would be erasure

the problem with most well-meaning magical trans care is that it views the transgenderism as a "problem" that is "cured" by a single state of "transitioned" (read: become cisgender/perisex)

a binder that is exceptional at its job is still only a binder, so imo theres nothing transphobic abt this. hell it makes perfect sense for a setting with bags of holding that hold everything you can fit thru its opening

[catgirl-catboy]

Okay, discussing the kill your gays trope has set media literacy back so fucking far.

The trope isn't bad because queer people die.

The trope is bad because the hays code forces you to punish characters just for being queer. As a result, queer characters met disproportionately bad fates, or became massively OOC in the third act to justify it.

You're allowed to kill of a gay character so long as it isn't a punishment (by the narrative) for them being gay.

If it's in a zombie movie, it could be a punishment for never carrying a weapon. It could be the end of a character arc.

the moment you frame any queer character dying like its homophobic, all queer narratives become bland af.

[creativepromptsforwriting]

Hi! This is my first time asking, but your prompts are amazing! It’s almost like you’ve experienced these scenarios with how detailed you are! Any who, I was curious about tips on starting off a story. What are the best ways to hook a reader in the beginning?

Aww that is actually one of the best compliments I had so far!

How to start a story

don't start with descriptions

the reader can get bored if the descriptions are too long

they won't remember details until they actually formed a connection to the situation and the characters

start with a prologue or flashforward or flashback

this way you can show what's going to come or what happened so far to get the reader hooked

a lot of writers advice against using dream sequences and the character waking up as the beginning of the story, because it can seem lazy

start with action

hook the reader by throwing them right into action

they get invested sooner in the plot and the characters

they want to find out more about the context that brought them to this point

build an emotional connection

start by showing an emotional scene or present the character's goals and intentions and motivation to make people relate to them and their struggle

surprise the reader

start in an unusual situation, something that may even confuse the reader at first (but not too much, you should resolve it quickly to get them to keep reading)

leave them with questions they want to find the answers for

I hope this helps you and good luck writing!

- Jana

[jezifster2]

You know. Reading is important. Because I'm like always trying to make every line I write this groundbreaking mindfucking art but like. A book is 90% just saying what happened. "I hugged him around the waist." "The chair was brown and overstuffed." "I woke up alone." Etc etc. Like normal ass lines. I just keep comparing my boring, necessary to set a scene lines, with famous authors' absolute best lines and like.... every line doesn't have to shatter the earth. Sometimes someone just sits in a chair and the lines that wreck you come later, one at a time, here and there. It's alright.

[foxys-fantasy-tales]

This is super common and I wish we were taught when we begin to write that those quoted lines are also in a sea of the same sort of setup we obsess over not being 'good enough'. I saw multiple people drop out of writing courses over this in college. Sure, sometimes you need a better way to describe something prevalent or to pinpoint an emotion, but if EVERYTHING was written in that sort of tone for a whole book it would prove utterly exhausting to read.

[pens-swords-stuff]

Also, if every single line in the book was hard-hitting and mindblowing, then it wouldn't be memorable because it would be drowned out.

The best lines are famous because they stand out.

[tlbodine]

There's a book I had to DNF recently specifically because it was so over-written. Every line was like being punched in the face and there was no room to breathe. You gotta space out your beautiful lines with some simple structural prose and let the reader float along sometimes, you know?

[renthony]

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

When talking about harmful tropes about nonbinary people, we've got to stop targeting nonbinary artists. It's not transphobic for trans artists to create inhuman trans characters, and it makes me really sad as a nonbinary person that nonbinary artists keep getting penalized by shitty things that CIS PEOPLE do.

It wasn't shitty of Rebecca Sugar to make the gems nonbinary aliens, it wasn't shitty of Nate Stevenson to make Double Trouble a shapeshifter, and it wasn't shitty for Hamish Steele to make Courtney a nonbinary demon. What's shitty is everyone who looked at these trans artists and went, "we should tell them they're doing something wrong."

If you're nonbinary and don't vibe with inhuman nonbinary characters, that's fine! There's nothing wrong with that! But telling other nonbinary people how they can and can't make art is really goddamn shitty.

Sigh.

[renthony]

#ok this is a good post BUT im not sure all these creators were out as nonbinary before the characters were criticized#idk how to put this but im gonna try anyway: you cant say doing a thing would be wrong if they were cis#bc sometimes people are closeted! sometimes theyre figuring shit out!!#i've seen several creators have to come out wrt gender or sexuality just to defend their right to create smth people didnt vibe with#there has got to be a better way than this shit.

Mmm, you're SO right, though, so thank you for these tags! It happens all the time that queer creators get forcibly outed by people trying to "prove" their art is "genuine" and it's all-around a shitty time.

There is a way to talk about "media representation trends that can be harmful to queer people" without taking it all the way to "so we should aggressively pick apart every single instance of it and harass the creator until they either submit to public lashing or come out of the closet (regardless of whether they are safe to do so)."

[focsle]

Some people have had their brains so rotted by the idea of ‘good representation’ in fiction.

Whenever I see someone saying shit like, ‘this complicated and not particularly likable character of a marginalized identity, written by an author of that same marginalized identity who is also informed by their very specific personal experience, is giving people of that marginalized identity a bad name’ I lose it. You don’t have to like it, you can be made uncomfortable by it, you can understand that that particular story was perhaps not written for you, and that’s all well and good. But that’s very different from putting the onus of how dominant society views a group of people on…a writer from that same group who is trying to say something.

Stop flattening the kind of stories marginalized creators are ‘allowed’ to tell with the burden of ‘representation’ and of being some kind of spokesperson for the societal acceptance of an entire group of people. Stop looking at someone’s work through the lens of ‘but is this character ‘good rep’ (which can also sometimes be read as ‘are they a good pure person who could have nothing said against them’,) instead of ‘what is the author trying to do with this character; what is the story they’re trying to tell with them?’

The people who hate someone for who they are won’t suddenly start liking them because they’re writing ‘Wholesome’ Slice of Life Novellas instead of ‘Harmful’ Queer Horror, or whatever.  Let people tell the stories inside them, MY GOD!

[annabylers]

Because some people seem to have forgotten.

[explorerrowan]

And just a reminder, things that are not queerbaiting:

Queer creators trying to make their project queer and being stopped or censored by their employers

Creators trying to make a deep and meaningful friendship between two characters and it unintentionally comes across as queer

Unrequited love stories where one character is canonically queer and the target of their affection is not (it's a disappointing and annoying trope, yes, but it's not queerbaiting)

Characters who are canonically queer but closeted and never get the chance to come out during the story (again, disappointing, but not technically queerbaiting)

Stories that are incredibly slow burns before you get to the queer representation, but that creators fully intend to include

Queerbaiting requires the intentional, contrived, and insincere teasing of possible queer representation in order to bait an LGBTQ+ audience into sticking around in the hope of it becoming canon, but the creators have no intention of ever making it canon. It's nothing more than a skeptical marketing ploy.

[grendelsmilf]

perpetually annoyed by character criticism that is just “is this character sympathetic? is this character relatable? does this character get an ending they ‘deserve’ (as it correlates with their own moral goodness)?” so what if they’re unsympathetic. so what if they’re unrelatable. so what if they are made suffer. so what if they’re a symbol. they’re not real! fictional characters are tools in a story, like setting, or tropes, or tone, or style, or pacing, or medium. they are a figment, a fragment. they are not human beings, and they do not exist in a real life moral framework. this is not good analysis. ask better questions.

[rainbowwriting]

Hiya! My MC is non-binary, I'm not too concerned about the representation since I'm an enby myself, but I have encountered a problem... I need to find a way to make the synospsis without revealing the MC's pronouns because I want to keep it a secret until chapter 3 or 4 to humanize them to transphobes (And/or piss them off). Got any ideas?

oh man i LOVE this kind of stuff tbh!!

it can get a little confusing at first but with some rephrasing, you can get pronounless passages! i would recommend writing out the passage in a way that flows naturally including pronouns, then once thats done do a second draft, rephrasing to remove pronouns. don't be afraid of using passive voice, but use it strategically. ive also found that shifting the subject of the sentence can obscure pronouns as well (have had to do this irl)

[rainbowwriting]

Hi, I have a trans lesbian character in my fantasy story, and her cis partner is more important, but I don't want her to feel like a token, she is still an important character with her own arc. Also, I was thinking she rejected using an illusion spell to look like a cis woman because it would only remind her of her insecurities? Would that be insensitive?

actually, i think the insensitive part is that there exists an illusion spell that makes people look like their cis counterparts. being trans isnt about what you look like, its about who you are and how you see yourself

rid yourself of the idea that being trans is a performance. i am nonbinary all the time, not just when others are involved. transitioning is about what i see when i look at myself, not what others see. by having an illusion spell that makes one look like a cis version of a trans person, you communicate that you believe the end goal of transition is to fool others into believing that one is something else

[rainbowwriting]

hey. in my fantasy story, there is one nonbinary character in the main cast. this character is also inhuman (part dragon, basically). they are not nonbinary because they are inhuman but i know this might be assumed. does this play into the dehumanization of nonbinary people? there are other nonbinary side character and one transfemme character in the main cast. i myself am nonbinary/genderqueer.

you are nonbinary. regardless of ANYTHING else. that is a huge difference. this isnt to say that there arent nb people who could contribute to the stereotype, but the simple fact is that you wanted to see yourself in your writing. there is nothing wrong with that, and trying to police yourself about your own identity in your writing only leads to disaster

once again, for clarity: a nonbinary person making a nonhuman nonbinary character is very different from a binary person making a nonhuman nonbinary character. being nonbinary, it is implicit that youre not othering us. a binary person making their nonbinary characters nonhuman can be very othering

for any binary people reading: the problem comes from nonbinary people being treated as if theyre an abberation. it comes from a belief that human beings intrinsically have two genders or sexes. someone who is nonbinary may lean into the nonbinary nonhuman because they relate to the experience of being othered or treated as unnatural, unhuman. binary people lean into the nonbinary nonhuman because they dont relate.

[rainbowwriting]

I'm Writing A Villian with a 19 year old niece(adopted daughter) Centered Book.

How can I write dates for the Villian without feeling like I'm queerbaiting?

if theyre literally going on dates with people then its not queerbaiting. queerbait never comes to fruition, hence why its bait. yknow, like baiting a fish. drawing us in with the promise of queer characters only to either kill them all off or drop hints without actually committing to the character being queer

the only part i take issue with is that the villain is the one going on the queer dates but i also dont know anything about this villain. are they the protagonist? antagonist? are they dangerous to society for real or are they like doofenschmirtz evil? i need more to work with here before i could give you a real answer

[rainbowwriting]

Hi, i don't really know if you still answer questions but I thought I'd give it a shot. Fair warning this will probably be a little long lol. So I am currently writing an urban fantasy book series where the main character is non-binary. This character had a twin and they were separated when they were very young. He(the twin) since then has always believed the MC to be dead along with their parents. Years later, they meet again but they don't recognize each other. The MC was adopted by another important family. They also have a very unique power that they hide, that is genetic but has been dormant in their family (it was initially tied to them being their assigned gender at birth, but that obviously became problematic so I changed it).

The problem I'm running into is that the brother keeps referring to his twin, who he believes to be dead, by their birth name, essentially dead-naming the MC. He only does it in front of other characters, obviously unintentionally, primarily because he doesn't trust the MC because he believes their family is responsible for his entire family's death (which to be fair is true, because the MC's adoptive grandmother basically kidnapped them), but he doesn't know that. The reveal comes later on in the series and when the brother realizes that the MC is their twin he obviously respects their pronouns and doesn't call them by their dead name (He didn't know he was even doing it before), but now I run into the problem of the readers knowing the MC's dead name and I don't know if that's extremely bad...

Another thing I'm unsure about is that the MC is extremely morally gray. They have dangerous magic and have killed a lot of people(mainly because of their grandmother raising them to be the Witch Council’s Executioner). This has NOTHING to do with their gender, but I'm afraid some may see it as me saying non-binary people are dangerous. Again, that's NOT the intention and I'm trying my hardest to write this in a way to show there is no correlation. But I feel like i need a second opinion. I don't really want to change the MC to not being enby, primarily because the entire concept of this series started from the idea of a non-binary witch(which btw, also has nothing to do with gender but instead describes the type of magic they use).

Lastly, (and sorry again that this is so long), the series ends with the MC dying. Again, I don't want this to seem like I'm playing into the 'bury your queers' trope. In a nutshell, their best friend(who ends up marrying their twin) gets posessed and she becomes very dangerous so the MC uses the unique power that I mentioned above, at their best friend's request (basically their power is that they can forcefully take another person's magic, but this ends up killing that person). (This is also why they became the Witch Council’s Executioner). And because they basically kill their twin’s wife, he ends up using the same type of magic to kill them. It's very complicated and I don't know if my explanation makes ANY sense whatsoever, but yeah. Again I don't want to contribute to the 'bury your queers' trope.

I'm sorry this was so hectic, but I've been trying to figure out a way around these issues for literally almost 2 years lol. FYI, the MC is not the only character in the story to be part of the LGBTQ comunity. I am part of the community as well, but I don't identify with the MC's identity, so I wanted to maybe get some other opinions. Thank you for any help you can offer.

all i can really say tbh is that i think youre being a little too hard on yourself. let me go thru the points in order:

1- knowing the nonbinary character's deadname there is a reason that the name is known. it can be uncomfortable to think of this happening to a real person, but a character in a story is not a real person. reading through, it makes perfect sense that the brother would deadname his sibling simply because he *doesnt know*. and theres a *pretty good reason*, being that the sibling could be in danger for coming out. being nonbinary myself, i dont see an issue

2- morally grey nonbinary character i honestly think that sanitizing a nb character to be perfect pure and good is worse sometimes. it, to me, feels performative to have nb characters be perfect good people for the sake of ''good rep''. good rep is better when the character feels like a real person, good bad and all in between. it means theyre not demonized for being nonbinary. it means that theyre treated respectfully by the story and not forced into stereotypes or pushed aside. its like the ''strong female character'' archetype: a lot of people misinterpret that as meaning the character is physically strong, but it really means that the character has depth and the audience can emotionally connect with them & theyre not just for a performance of diversity or eye candy

3- nb mc dies, is it bury your gays? i've mentioned before (in the pinned post as well as elsewhere) that the trope ''bury your gays'' (and all its character-specific varieties) is a queerbaiting trope. its used to demoralize us by saying we dont deserve happiness and used as an out by queerphobic writers so they can draw in their gay audience without committing. generally, it is invoked when the queer character finds happiness or success and then is killed for shock value or simply because it is demoralizing

specifically, if youre afraid of accidentally invoking this trope, ask yourself a simple question:

"can this death be avoided and the story still make sense?"

if its sensible for the character to live, then let them live. if theres no way around the death, then let them die. does the brother know his wife is possessed? for all he knows, did the mc kill his wife for no reason? on the flip side, what does the death do for the narrative? is it a tragedy, meant to invoke sadness or hopelessness in the reader? does the death impact other characters meaningfully? the reader just as much?

basically, worry less about what a reader might think and focus more on the message youre trying to send. every part of art is meant to communicate an idea to your readers. your narrative, plot, characters, and tropes are all just tools to get your point across

[writing-plurals]

heyo, welcome to our blog!

this is inspired by @writingwithcolor and @rainbowwriting!

plural systems generally have very bad representation so we thought we’d make this blog to help writers finally give us some good representation!

so if you have any questions about a plural character you’re writing, whether you’re a singlet or a system, feel free to come into our inbox and ask!

please no anti-endos

mods:

Mod Mountain - traumagenic OSDD-1b system who’s pretty much always writing (they/them collectively)

Mod Tick Tock - quoigenic system whose host is a writer and digital artist (fae/faer collectively)

Mod Birdie - mixed-basis DID system who write, roleplay, program, and do pixel art, to varying degrees (they/she/aer/it colllectively, in order of preference)

could we please get a boost? @plurals-helping-plurals @dear-systems @plural-culture-is @funnier-as-a-system @systempositive @systemgooglesearches 

[rainbowwriting]

Hey so idk if you're already planning on doing this but for a blog like this you should probably have multiple mods/staff on this blog. What makes Writing With Color effective is that there's multiple mods from varying identities who give advice based on their experiences- sort of like sensitivity readers who give feedback coming from an authentic place.

yeah i get that. i'm not the original creator of this sideblog, so i dont think i can invite more people on, even though i'd like to if i plan on this blog becoming a long-standing thing