Can I Get Some Advice Please?

[timidcat]

So I've gotten a lot of ideas for a book and I'll begin writing it as soon as I finish with plot and character notes. The main theme of this book is going to be recovery from childhood trauma through friendship. Only now I'm considering upgrading it.

 

At this point I should probably mention my two main characters are both male. I'm basically torn between making them best friends for life, in a qpr, or have them be romantic partners. 

 

I feel that even strong friendship isn't going to be enough for the things I want to be expressed between these characters. However I don't think I can pull off a romance successfully. I myself don't like kissing, touching or anything of a sexual nature so I don't want to write them in. On the other hand if I decide to make it a qpr I fear that I may be accused of queerbaiting and feel like I'm letting the lgbt+ community down. I'm tempted to make it a romance without any kissing involved but again; I feel that many people won't see it as a romance or they might see it as queerbaiting.

 

I don't know, what are your thoughts? What would you like me to do?

 

 

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[Cassiopeia]

The difference between representation and queer baiting is communication. If your characters have a talk about the kind of thing they are having together, maybe one of them being aro ace and have him question his attractions, perhaps trying to conform to the norms of a relationship only to realise that he wants something else... That is not queer baiting. That is an lgtbt+ character dealing with his identity and society. An ace character is a theme lgtbt+ people want to see. What people hate is when the character acts ace, but then /a turns out to be straight or /b confirmed queer character is killed off because the writer doesn't have the faintest idea of writing characters who aren't straight. So go for it

[RedNeko]

It's fine to be bad at things you've not tried before, it's part of learning. So you should go for it! As Cass says, you should make sure you're communicating well with your audience (even if you were trying to create mystery, it's still important to communicate with your audience that you are creating mystery and that there are things they don't know and might want to figure out. But orientation wouldn't be a suitable topic for mystery most of the time anyway).

 

I would say the key things for improving a creative skill are research, evaluation and practice. So, if you're not sure how to write the sort of relationship you plan to portray you should research it. That can be by reading other people's work, evaluating it and figuring out what is good about what they've done; you could search the internet for people talking about their relationships and how they view them, how they act in them, then consider how your characters would view those people's relationships.

 

Then, put what you've found out/figured out into practice. You could do this by diving head first into the writing project and then read it back and re-draft over time until it works out how you want it, or maybe by writing a short scene to test applying what you've learnt so you don't have to re-draft so much later.