Writing Queer Magic
How and why do I write queer stories? What brought me to wanting to appeal to queer audiences?
QUEER WRITERSWRITINGLGBTQAI+
The Magic
I'm a queer person, and throughout my life I've been innundated with straight and cisgender media. I never saw any queer people growing up, but I saw a lot of straight people and straight romances. From kissing, to nearly on screen sex, it was and still is a basic in media. And I read romance in high school, but something always felt off about it when I read it. Like, it didn't draw me in. So, I focused instead on fantasy, science fiction, and horror where there usually weren't those heavy romance themes. I said, "I hate romance."
Then I found out it wasn't romance I hated; it was straight cisgender romance. Queer romance was different when I found it. It made me think about roles in relationships and sex. It made me reconsider how love was perceived by everyone. And it made me take people's identities into account much more.
From gay men with strict roles in the bedroom, to those who are versitile, all the way to people just living life as aseuxal, I felt like these people needed to be seen. I needed to be seen.
Feeling Seen
One of the reason to write queer stories is so I can feel seen in books. It's for others to feel like they're being seen as well. Whether they're looking for a good old smutty book with lots of sex, or it they're looking for something milder with only subplots of romance without the smut, I feel like the characters and their queerness should be front and center. Because you can't seperate me from my queerness and still have me. It permeates every aspect of my life because it is my identity. Sure, a book doesn't have to have romance in it. But why can't there just be someone with a queer identity and NOT be in a sexual or romantic situation?
We Just Exist
The biggest thing is the queer people exist in the real world, so they should exist in the fictional world as well. Writing a horror novel, and one of the characters turns out to be bisexual. Yay, representation. Even if they never engage in it, maybe it comes up in conversation or they're talking about someone being cute. There are many ways someone's sexuality can be a part of a story that doesn't involve sex or romance.
My Version of Queer Magic
So, I bring in my identities and other people's as well. I vary my cast, and not a bit of it is "pandering" or "shoving it in there." It isn't a product of "wokeness" and I have no agenda other than to write entertaining books with a variety of queer characters. I write them firstly for myself. And secondly for those looking to see themselves as the hero.
Queer people have spent our lives being a side character, or worse, the character who dies or is the villain. Queerness is seen as abnormal, and in most places, completely non-existant. And that's okay, but let a queer person write a book with a large cast of queer characters, and that's unrealistic all of a sudden. Which, if you know anything about us, queer people group together and many times support each other in their lives. So, yeah, it is realistic for queer people to congregate in large groups. We need each other in a world that tries to squash us out of existence.
Make it Yourself
So, if you find yourself not in a book, write the story you want to read. Write what you want the world to see and feel. You know, when queer people asked for representation in media, we got told we should go make it ourselves. Now we are doing that. And people are surprised and offended that we've done that. These people told us to make stuff for ourselves, and now they're angry that it doesn't feature people like them. Welcome to our world where we rarely see ourselves in media.
But It Isn't Inclusive!!
I hate the idea that if you write something for another group, the cishet people scream about it not being inclusive for them. They want to know why they aren't the main character. They want to know why we're excluding them and why it has to be queer. It has to be queer because that's what I wrote it as. And no, I didn't write it for these people. I write for queer people and real allies of queer people who consume our media (not those that fetishize us). I don't write for the average cishet individual (and almost always they're white, too. Hmm).
But people who make up the majority can't stand when the focus isn't on their group. They've been catered to their whole life, so when something doesn't cater to them, they see it as discrimination. That's not how it works. Cishet people have the world handing them everything, and then when queer people step up to create in our own world, we get accused of being discriminatory. But we can't use that agains them, oh no. Because that's wrong, too.
Here's the thing: I write queer stories. And I will continue to write queer stories. It doesn't matter how many cishets I piss off. They're not the audience if they don't like what I write. And that's just fine by me.
© 2024-2026 to Beverly L. Anderson. All rights reserved.
website@beverlylanderson.com
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