First 550 words of a novel, A Distant Blue Light

[Wayne Mack]

I'm working out how to deal with Naz's gender fluidity and partial sex-transitioned state in another way. Her sexuality is an important element in the story.
My rewrite is ready with normal pronouns.

I appreciate you being inclusive in your story and would urge you not to abandon the approach. I feel some of the confusion in the intro was not do to gender issues, but more lack of clarity. Brainstorming some ideas for pronouns:

• They - This is currently a common choice. It is still new enough in usage that it probably requires addressing Naz's sexuality earlier, rather than later.
• Don't use any pronoun for Naz - Introduce Naz with a full multi-syllabic name and then use Naz where a pronoun would normally be used. He and She could still be used for other characters.
• Invent a new pronoun - This would need to be introduced very early in the story. The pronoun could apply to non-conforming types or could apply to all instead of he / she / they.

If Naz's gender identity is important, you may want to reconsider reverting to standard he, she pronouns. This also preserves the ability to show bias in other characters by having them use he or she rather that Naz's preferred form of address. I think it might be most effective to simply reveal Naz as transgender at the start and not try to do a big reveal. Representing a transgender individual as accepted by default would actually be a pretty powerful statement in the story.

 

[Michael Bickford]

It hasn't crashed it just needs a rewrite. That's not a disaster - most early drafts of new works need work. There's nothing wrong with ungendered pronouns or the more conventional they (seriously I have a household with a trans woman and a trans man who went through various phases). The biggest issue was it wasn't clear which character was saying what and they weren't grounded in their space and time.

Thank you, AnyaKimlin, for the supportive response. The crash has been in my unwillingness to continue writing this with exclusively ungendered pronouns for Naz. I know there are several solutions and I’ve written many scenes several ways, but reader responses here have guided me to a solution and I’m grateful for that.
Naz’s trans-sexuality will still be central to her character and her relationship with Del, but the English grammar was getting in the way of the more important stuff, so...switch it up! My trans friend whose personality informs my conception of Naz, has been a man for a decade now and has been “he, him” for that long as well, so I know that’s one way to go. Naz’s particular transition and backstory tell me that she is fine with “she/her” while pressing her femachismo into people’s faces whenever she/he wants to.
I think I was under-attributing in dialog as a kind of a “fear of pronouns” I was experiencing.
Please read my new version and maybe tell me how you think the change has gone.
Thanks again for your nice response. I know this is a sensitive topic for many people.

 

[Michael Bickford]

I appreciate you being inclusive in your story and would urge you not to abandon the approach. I feel some of the confusion in the intro was not do to gender issues, but more lack of clarity. Brainstorming some ideas for pronouns:

• They - This is currently a common choice. It is still new enough in usage that it probably requires addressing Naz's sexuality earlier, rather than later.
• Don't use any pronoun for Naz - Introduce Naz with a full multi-syllabic name and then use Naz where a pronoun would normally be used. He and She could still be used for other characters.
• Invent a new pronoun - This would need to be introduced very early in the story. The pronoun could apply to non-conforming types or could apply to all instead of he / she / they.

If Naz's gender identity is important, you may want to reconsider reverting to standard he, she pronouns. This also preserves the ability to show bias in other characters by having them use he or she rather that Naz's preferred form of address. I think it might be most effective to simply reveal Naz as transgender at the start and not try to do a big reveal. Representing a transgender individual as accepted by default would actually be a pretty powerful statement in the story.

Thank you, Wayne, for your thoughtful response.
All along I have been writing versions of this with different approaches to the pronouns. I think I’m going with “she/her” for Naz in the narrative voice with some gender neutral prnouns used in other settings in the back story. My transgendered friend uses “he/him” but you’ll see that Naz’s transition is not so pronounced as to allow her to “pass” as male. She still fells female but is quite fem-macho. Del sees her as a woman with strong Yang elements to her personality. She sees herself differently in different situations. Fluid, not neutral.
I really felt like the “they/them/their” pronouns were getting in the way and are not the main point. Pronouns will raise their ungendered heads but I don’t want them to be a grammar and sense stumbling block.
thanks again for reading and responding.

 

[Saiyali]

I really like it.

There are plenty of sage thoughts already so I have a simple contribution, that if you're going to withhold any significant details about the characters (personally I like that and I do it a lot), we as reader should possibly only learn their names as they say them to each other.

I should add that having read this, I've decided I do like an omniscient narrator to be 3rd person. At first I thought this narrator was actually a news broadcast talking about some historic launch and the brave pair on the ship etc, then I realised it wasn't that and I was disappointed, sorry!