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November 14, 2023 will be the 10 year anniversary of the November 14, 2013 murder of my 8 month old infant son, at BugLight Lighthouse Art Studio of Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, Maine. If you have any information about who his killer is, please call FBI Agent Andy Drewer at 207-774-9322

NEVER FORGET:

My Son Was Murdered, The Killer Walks Free, Your Child Could Be Next!

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FAQ: What are the most visited pages on this website and how many visits do they get?

Several years ago, I wrote an article on how to write different types of magic uses, or rather how I personally write various types of magic users within the context of my Quaraun books. Today that page is one of my top ten most visited articles. It gets 50 to 500 views/reads/hits/visits per day depending on the time of the years and has had over 200k visits total since it was published.

Amphibious Aliens: Debunking The Atwater Family's Alien Abduction Hoax with more then 30MILLION reads since 2007 and The GoldenEagle: Debunking Stephen King's World's Most Haunted Car Hoax with over tenMILLION reads since 2007 still rank as the two most visited articles on my website, but, neither of those are writing related.

Writing Medieval Servants is my most visited writing related article with over 7MILLION reads.

This website was started in 1996 and has 1 to 3 new articles (all written by me, I am the only writer on this site) published almost daily. In 2017 we crossed ten thousand articles published. As of 2023, EACH article gets MINIMUM 10 to 70 reads PER DAY, with the high traffic articles getting 500+ reads per day.

And since December 2019, my website now gets three hundred thousand to 7 million reads per month - well over ONE HUNDRED MILLION PAGE READS PER YEAR, making it not only the single most trafficked site in the State of Maine, but also one of the most visited websites in ALL OF NEW ENGLAND!

{{{HUGS}}} Thank you to all my readers for making this possible!

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 TRIGGERED! I'm a Straight Cis Woman, but I am deemed Too Gay For Old Orchard Beach, Are you too gay for the bigoted, minority harassing, white power, gay hating psychos of The Old Orchard Beach Town Hall Too? 

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How To Write A Believable Male Character

How To Write A Believable Male Character

How To Write A Believable Male Character

I hate cliché characters and would rather write my people as people instead.

#TL;DR: Every man is unique; every man is different; there is no such thing as one size fits all "male character". Write each of your characters as distinctively unique individuals with distinctively unique likes, dislikes, hobbies, careers, and personalities. Male characters are just people. Just treat your men like people. And treat people the way you want people to treat you. So pretend you are writing about someone who is writing about you and write your characters with the same respect you would want to be written about if you were a character.

LOOONG and explicit post incoming... you've been warned.

Okay... so, I'm going to start out with saying: I'm a Yaoi writer, so I do not write female characters, I ONLY write male characters, I write a lot of male characters; I write a Gay Harem series, so it's one male MC and his 2 primary male MC lovers, but he has 37 lovers in his harem total, it's just that him and his 2 primary lovers are the main trio of the series, so they get focused on the most... BUUUUT... that said...

...you didn't give us a single shred of context as to what kind of male character you want to write, young, old, straight, gay, bi, homeless, wealthy businessman, scholar, town drunk, criminal, drug dealer, drug addict, nerd, geek, dweeb, incel, smartass, shy, outgoing, know-it-all, introvert, extrovert, alpha, beta, omega, arrogant, workaholic, nervous, big brain scientific, moody, grim, emo, goth, grudge, punk, gangster, hippie, tree hugger, big shot, jock, hipster, beatnik, prepper, preacher, Jesus Freak, Holy Roller, Mormon, Muslim, Evangelical, Pagan, Wiccan, Bocca, Houngan, Hoodoo Rootworker, Vodunist, bear, twink, seme, sub, dom, deme, effeminate, burly, athlete, girly, farmer, fam hand, lumberjack, tailor, tavern keeper, silk weaver, wizard, warrior, emperor, king, warlord, lich, serial killer, mobster, gang leader, kleptomaniac, soldier with posttraumatic stress disorder, war prison survivor, business owner, scam artist, gambling addict, animal lover, chef, candy maker, hunter, mountain man, cultist, cult leader, conspiracy theorist, village idiot... any one of a million and one other things or personality types?

I have written male characters for EACH of the things/types I just listed above, and yes, all for the one Yaoi series I mentioned...each/all of them being various friends, relatives, lovers, enemies, and acquaintances of the MC.

It is VERY difficult to give you a specifically useful answer to your question, when there are literally millions of types of men in the world, each with very different personalities.

so, because you've given me nothing to go on and your OP implies that you just want to know how to write the dime-a-dozen faceless Gary Stue ... I'm going to draw from my three main characters as examples to show you how to write men like real men with real personalities, aka: write individual people who think as individuals...

...BUT... like I said, I write Yaoi... soo, be warned, from here on in, consider this post NSFW...

Yaoi being a sub-genre of Erotica, that means a lot of the focus on the series is on sex and sexuality and just plain old fucking each other as many times a day as possible.

And because men are individuals with unique personalities, each man looks at sex different, talks about sex differently, and does the act of sex differently, uniquely from every other man out there. Oh, yes, there will be similarities, sure. Like you can usually divide sex talk into three types:

• * bold, dominate, alpha men who talk vulgar and dirty, say fuck and cock
• * shy, quiet beta men who get embarrassed easily, and use round about euphemisms to talk of sex, say make love and banana
• * the seemingly shy, but actually mega dominate logical, scientifically minded omega males, who like facts and Latin, and say copulate and glansehead

Now, yes, these are three basic stereotypes, but, without knowing exactly, specifically what kind of male character you want to write, I'm left guessing at what you might want to know, so focusing on the three prominent omega verse stereotypes, is a good way to show you how to write your male characters as distinctively different one from another, so that you don't end up writing, carbon copy, cookie cutter, every man the same.

My main trio, (Quaraun, BoomFuzzy, and GhoulSpawn) are very different from each other. And each of them falls into omegaverse stereotypes. (Keeping in mind that I write Yaoi, where sticking to established tropes and stereotypes is a GOOD thing, because it gives readers what readers want... not all genres are going to fall into this category, and not knowing what genre you are looking to put your male characters in, all I can do is draw from what I know, and I know Yaoi, having published 422 books on Amazon, one of those four hundred and twenty two books having sold 300k copies and another having sold a million copies, I'm kind of the biggest, of the big names in Yaoi, so, I know how to write Yaoi.)

My MC, Quaraun, is a beta male. He is an effeminate little twink. A silk weaver and a travelling merchant. And he always wears pink. He is also a transvestite, due to it being a gender swap series, and he used to be a female (note: gender swap transvestite should never be confused with transgender, they are two very different things; transgender WANTS to be a male, gender swap was forcibly put in a male body against her will). He acts, talks, thinks, and behaves like a female, because he is literally a female who was turned into a male, by a crackpot mage.

His primary lover, BoomFuzzy, is an alpha male. A serial killing, mass murdering warlord turned Lich, who is also a drug chemist/dealer, and the leader of a band of war criminals who go from village to village razing and raping everything that moves.

His secondary lover, GhoulSpawn, is an omega male, usually seems beta, but goes psycho possessive alpha when pushed into a corner. A mad scientist time traveller from the 1970s, addicted to LSD, inventor of both time travel/time machines, and portals/portal travel. Plays Dungeons and Dragons and accidentally got sucked into the game he was playing, thus why he lives with MC and the Lich now, as they started out as characters in the game he was playing.

The MC, Quaraun, is a quiet, laid back guy. He tends to keep to himself, is not a big fan of social anything, and likes to putter around the house fixing things. He's not someone who talks a lot, and when he does, he's often uncomfortable with a lot of things. And when it comes to sex, he's shy and reserved. So if the sex scene is his point of view or it's his dialogue, the words are going to be far more in the lines of him comparing to something else, and not outright specifying the actual word he means. He says "fruit salad" when he means cock and balls. He won't say "sex" either, he always says "make love". His words for sex related things come off as almost child-like and old fashioned.

His primary lover, BoomFuzzy, is an extreme opposite of him. The lover is bold and brash, a very hyper personality, a social butterfly, and a trickster whose jokes and pranks are prone to be mean bordering on bullying. He is loud and talks constantly. He drinks excessively, is a drug dealer/chemist who makes and sells drugs. And he says "fuck" in place of other words. *(For example: If one person would say: "It's a very lovely day." He would say "It's a fucking lovely day.")* And he doesn't give two shits what people think of him, he doesn't care if he's hurting your feelings, he's going to speak his mind, and tell you exactly what he thinks. So if the sex scene is his point of view, it's going to go deep end explicit. He doesn't say "sex", he says "let's fuck". And his dialogue is full of vivid descriptions of "thick veiny cocks". This guy's dialogue about sex can make a pirate's whore blush.

The MCs other lover, GhulSpawn, is somewhere in between the two. He's a scientist, with a no-nonsense, factual, logical look at everyone and everything. And he monologues-A LOT-in textbook scientific detail. He analyzes, studies, thinks and over thinks everything. A sort of mad-scientist inventor type personality, he also doesn't mash up words. If the sex scene is from his point of view or is his dialogue, words are going to be college biology textbook accurate. He uses words like "copulate" instead of sex, he's going to say "penis" not "dick" or "cock". This guys dialogue about sex, sounds like a college professor reading a Biology textbook.

And because its a trio who live together and fuck together, you end up seeing all three types of words used within the same story. They are three very different men, with starkly different personalities, very different backgrounds and upbringings, who love each other and take care of each other, and even though they live together, they remain, three distinct personalities, and so the level of explicit language changes with who is speaking/thinking/narrating. And they are each so starkly different from the other two, that the reader can tell immediately which point of view the narration is, and which dialogue is who, even without the use of dialogue tags.

So, in the end, I as a writer am comfortable going both extremes, full ripe eggplant on erupting mountains or full thick, veiny cock spirting cum. The direction I go is dictated by the personality of the character in question, which character is talking, which character is thinking, which character is narrating, and I write whatever he would say.

And as you can see, this is an example of three male characters, who are vastly different from each other, written as individuals. Yes, written with stereotypes because it is Omegaverse Yaoi LitRPG Gay Harem Slash Portal Fantasy Dark Romance so it's a major stereotype ridden trope feast, that is NOT trying to make these men be "real world" males.

Due to the genre in question, these male characters have personalities that are "bigger" and "bolder" then real world men, their personalities push limits and skirt extremes, with them wearing their tropey ass stereotypes proudly on their sleeves, but, you should from this, get the idea of how to write male characters, right?

The basic TL;DR of it is this: **I treat my characters as though they were real people, and treat them the way I would want other people to treat me.**

Think of it this way:

• * A man is a person.
• * Women are people too.
• * People all have the same emotions, psychology, and physical health.
• * Men and women both feel happy or sad.
• * Men and women both get sick and require treatment to get healthy again.
• * Men and women both have hopes, goals, dreams, jobs, careers, likes, dislikes, and hobbies.
• * Every man has food he likes and food he hates, same as women do.
• * Every man has someone he cares about, just like women do.
• * Every man laughs at things he personally finds funny and is horrified by things he finds offensive, just like women do.
• * Every man gets angry, just like every woman does.
• * A gay man, is still a man.
• * A gay man has the same feelings and emotions a straight man has.
• * A straight man has the same feelings and emotions a straight woman has.
• * A straight woman has the same feelings and emotions a lesbian woman has.
• * A black man has the same feelings and emotions as a white man, and so on and so forth for women.
• * A religious man has the same emotions as an atheist man.
• * A wealthy man and a poor man, both feel fear, love, hate, joy.
• * It doesn't matter if you are male, female, cis, trans, gay, lesbian, bi, asexual, black, white, Asian, Christian, Muslim, Pagan, young, old, wealthy, homeless, healthy, blind, mute, crippled, or anything else: We are all Humans and we all feel the same emotions: love, lust, joy, fear, anger, sadness, happiness, rage, terror, comfort, etc.
• * No matter who you are, what you are, where you are from, or how you live your life, you can always identify with emotions, because those emotions are going to be the same across the board, no matter who or what you are vs who or what your character is.
• * So write your characters on an emotional level. Think in terms of "Why do I as a Human feel this emotion?" Then take that answer and write it in application to your character.

Now, all that said...

I write a gay trio. Perhaps I could tell you how it is I go about it and maybe that'll help you out with designing your character?

I am a woman who writes gay romance, so I'm constantly trying to be vigil on writing my characters in respectful, non-offensive ways, because I've read enough bad Yaoi to know that when a gay couple is written badly, they are often written horrendously offensively badly.

Being a straight woman means I'm dealing with not only the hurdle of writing a male character, but also the hurdle of just writing a gay character... and yet, I am neither male nor gay.

Some things to note about what I write, which makes it markedly different from most Yaoi, and has resulted in my winning The Best Gay Romance of the Year Award, two years in a row (2016 and again in 2017), despite it being yaoi:

• * even though the series spans 138 novels and 2,000+ short stories published in the 44 years since I started it in 1978, I've never once in my life written a sex scene; yep, it is Yaoi that is 100% devoid of sex; the sex scenes fade to black; but that doesn't mean a lack of erotic scenes, as there is a LOT of BDSM fetish "play time" scenes which do not involve inserting tab A into slot B, but do still feature graphic nudity and lots of pulsing cocks
• 
  
• * the MC and his 1st husband are both elderly, described as probably in their 80s or 90s, but their ages not specified; the youngest one is late middle age, described as looking in his 50s to 60s, but his age never given; so they are not "hot young pretty boys" as one normally expects to find in the Yaoi genre
• 
  
• * the story focuses on their everyday lives and how they interact with each other and the world around them; in other words, you see one of them working his food truck job, you see another one working his candy shop job, and you see the MC weaving silk and selling it (he is a silk merchant); you see them decorating their lighthouse for Christmas (they live in a lighthouse); you see them chatting over the fence with their neighbours; you see them going on vacation; you see them arguing over paying bills... in short, they are just regular guys doing regular everyday things. Being gay does not make them any different from other men living their daily lives.

Did I mention there is no sex in the entire series and I've won awards for the best portrayal of realistic gay couples portrayed realistically without sexual objectification of their lifestyle? That's not easy to do in the Yaoi genre, a genre built of fetishing pretty young men in bed with pretty young men.

• * you see that they love each other and care for each other, you see them living together, you see the one who is in poor health often being cared for by the other two... you see them asleep, cuddled up in bed together, you see them hug, you see them kiss, and readers are left to assume, yeah, they are probably having sex, but, sex is never shown, in fact, you are never outright told if they've ever had sex or not... to the point I've had dozens of readers write to me to specifically ask "Do they have sex?"

The thing is, I'm asexual. I hate sex. I find the thought of sex to be repulsive. But I'm not aromantic. I love romance. I just hate sex. I have PTSD, a side effect of a lot of child sex abuse at the hands of my uncles, and sex is very triggering for me, to the point I can neither read or write sex scenes in books. This is why there are no sex scenes in any of my books.

Because I am mentally/emotional/physically incapable of looking at anyone male or female and thinking sexual thoughts about them, I am also mentally incapable of looking at my fiction characters and seeing them as sex object to be sexually objectified. And this is why the stories focus so heavily on their relationship, their emotions, and their very slice of life every day life events.

Well, me writing yaoi, this puts me leaps and bounds ahead of other writers, and is the very reason the series won the awards it has. In Yaoi, sexual objectification of gay men, fetishing gay men, is one of the biggest complaints actual real world gay men have about the Yaoi genre. And yet, I have many gay readers who reach out to me and tell me they love my characters and how I've dealt with their gay relationship, how I've NOT sexually objectified them, how I've NOT turned them into "the gay friend bafoon" stereotype.

"The gay friend bafoon" stereotype is a big bad red flag. The gay buddy whose only purpose is to be the comedy relief, is HUGELY HATED by real world gay men. I know this because it's one of the most common things my gay readers bring up. And not once or twice. One volume in this series has sold over a million copies, and I've had several THOUSAND gay readers reach out to me to say it is such a relief to see gay men NOT regulated to being the "gay friend" who is nothing but comedy relief.

My gay trio of males, are the main characters. One is the main character and the other two are the secondary characters. The whole series focuses only on them, so there are almost no other characters at all (though the MC, Quaraun's, harem includes 37 other lovers besides the main two, but the others don't get much page time.)

All three of them are vastly different.

• * One, the effeminate beta main character previously mentioned, is a creative type who loves to make things, but he also has Kanner's Syndrome (actual Autism) and can be childish at times, stoic at other times, and hyper focused on his task to the point of needing to be reminded to eat or sleep. He often comes off as emotionless and rude, though he doesn't mean to be. He's very shy and suffers massive social anxiety. He's suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's, and arthritis has made it difficult for him to use his hands. He has a lame leg and limps on a cane. His health is failing badly and every day is becoming a struggle just to do simple things like bathing or eating.

• * One, the bold and vulgar mouthed alpha previously mentioned, is a former drug dealer. He's been in prison, went to prison for murder. He grew up in slums and was a violent gang leader in his youth. He's turned his life around, but still has anger management issues, addiction issues, suffers from depression and suicidal thoughts, and has relapse of going back to drinking and drugs. The oldest of the three, he is legally blind, which has increased his frustrations with life in general. In spite of his violent past, he is very kind and loving and compassionate towards his two lovers.

• * The youngest of the three, the previously mentioned omega, is a scientist. He works for a high end, top secret government job that he can't ever talk about. This causes him much mental distress. He struggles with feelings of self-doubt, due to his job taking him away for long periods to a time, making him feel jealous of the other two and how much more time they get to spend together.

• * Over the course of the series, one of them dies (the youngest one is killed in an accident; falling to his death from the balcony of the lighthouse they live in), and his death completely disrupts the emotional balance of their relationship as the remaining two, who both loved him very much, struggle -not well- to deal with his absence.

The series is very character driven and fuelled by the emotions and inner thought processes of these three men and how they deal with the everyday things life throws in their path.

You see them happy.

You see them sad.

You see them arguing and spitefully not talking to each other.

You see them laughing and joking over drinks.

You see their relationship from all angles, and you see both the good and the bad.

Quaraun, the shy effeminate MC, is quiet in public and around strangers, but alone at home with his lovers, the reader sees a bold outspoken side of him, that the public never gets to see, because his shyness melts away in the privacy of his home and in the company of the two men he trusts and loves dearly. He too is the primary provider of the family, his income from being a silk weaver and merchant, making up the primary income that pays the bills and buys the food and makes sure that his family has a roof over their heads. He is very family oriented, very driven by his love for his family, and very protective of the family unit, even though, in public, he is shy and nervous and avoids confrontation.

You see him as multi-faceted, with a full range of emotions and a full spectrum of personalities that change with every situation, with him behaving and speaking differently in public than alone at home with his family.

BoomFuzzy, the bold, outspoken vulgar one, with the criminal past and a prison record, comes off at first as an evil super villain, and indeed, the public cringes at his presence. But this is not the one trick pony, who is ONLY a bad guy. At home, the reader sees him doting on his lovers, kind, gentle, loving, caring, always worried for their health and safety. And when the other lover dies, this is the one you see take it the hardest, with him sinking into massive suicidal depression, resorting to self harm, cutting, drinking, and deliberate drug overdoses to punish himself for not taking care of his family (in his mind) as he should have. A black man who was street gang leader in his youth, a former drug dealer who went to prison for murder.

That is his backstory. The reader knows he is a black man with a sorrid, criminal, street thug past, and he's been in prison for decades, now out of prison and living with his two, not black, gay lovers. In the stories he's elderly, been out of prison for a couple of decades, but his past -being a gay black man with a prison record, a formor street gang drug dealer who went to prison for murder- prevents him from getting a job, getting housing, or even making friends. He's homeless and jobless when he meets the MC, because no one gives him a chance to even try to prove he's reformed. And so, with this character, you see his backstory mentioned a lot, because characters around him bring it up. He tries to get a job and the interviewer points out they don't want to risk hiring someone with a felony, let alone a gay black man with a drug and murder felony. He tries to get an apartment and young white mothers in the building protest a black gay ex-con living in their flat where their children play. In the case of this character his past is ACTUALLY important to his present plot points, so it gets brought up throughout the story.

And so again, you see a very multi-faceted character. You see that he was a horrible person in his past, he did a lot of really bad things, he openly admits to the things he did, and but you also see him look back on this with regret, you see him trying to take advantage of his post-prison freedom, his second chance at life, and you see him shot down by almost every one for even trying, you see him struggle with depression over this, and you see him over compensating when it comes to caring for his lovers/family. Unable to get a job due to his criminal record, you also see him start his own business, a bakery/restaurant/candy shop, with him taking his life-long passion/hobby of baking, and turning it into a profession.

GhoulSpawn, the seemingly quiet, but boldly possessive and outspoken when he wants to be omega, is probably the most multi-faceted of all. An LSD addicted hippie from the 1970s, who works on a food truck as a rollerblade waiter bringing orders to the customers waiting in their cars, he's also an astrophysics college student, working on the food truck to pay for his education, and his LSD addiction. Chronically poor and coming from an abusive home where his father ran off with another woman and his mother died young, leaving him to fend for himself since he was 15, this guy, has lived homeless most of his teen and young adult years, did what he had to to survive, which included becoming a notorious pick-pocket and kleptomaniac Fagan would be proud of, and while very religious and very honest, he lives a lot of double standards. He knows his lifestyle is wrong, and he wants to do better, but poverty and high costs of education leave him constantly falling back on petty thievery in order to stay afloat. Being an inventor/scientist building a time machine, he has exorbitant expenses as well. But also being a gamer addicted to Resident Evil and Dungeons and Dragons and Magic the Gathering, you also see a playful side of him that loves chilling out. Far younger than the other two, -them both elderly 80s+ and his around 30 or 40 (ages never specified)-he is also more reckless, more headstrong, and more careless, which leads to his early death, from falling off the ridgepole of a lighthouse.

Again, you see a wide range of emotions, hobbies, and personalities, in this multifaceted character.

Each character is far more than "just a male character" and each is far more than a list of traits/flaws/personalities.

All of this means that when I look at these 3 men, I don't see three sets of genitals to be lusted after. Nor do I see them as 3 sex objects to be flung into constant sex scenes. Instead, I see three persons who have hopes and dreams and fears and emotions and feelings and frustrations. I see them and write them as though they were real people, with millions of emotions going through each of them at any given point.

In short what you see is 3 normal, average, every day men, dealing with normal average every day struggles of living life. They just happen to be 3 men who live together, love each other, and sleep together.

• * Being gay doesn't make them "the other".
• * Being gay doesn't define "who they are".
• * They aren't parading their "gayness" around for everyone to see.
• * Separately on their own, most people would not know they were gay, if those people were unaware the three were living together.
• * They don't wear rainbows or fly stripe flags or attend pride events.
• * Them being gay is not the plot.

They are just three people living their lives to the best of their abilities.

They just happen to also be three gay men who live together.

In creating and writing these characters there has never been a point where I stopped to think: "What would a man do?" or "What would a gay man do?", but rather: "What would Q- do?"-"What would B- do?"-"What would G- do?"

I've never had periods of thinking: "This guy is gay because he wears dresses" or "this guy is gay because of how he prances instead of walks normal" or "this guy is gay because he's the MC's best friend and best friends are always gay in media" or anything like that. And that's why I don't write them "acting gay" or "walking gay" or "talking gay" or "dressing gay", because I don't think: "What would a gay guy do?" I think: "What would this person do?"

In fact, MOST of those sort of gay stereotypes didn't even exist yet when the first novel of the series was published in 1978. A lot of the "that's so gay" stereotypes found in media today showed up in the 1990s. And because I wrote and published huge portions of the series in the 1980s, today's common gay stereotypes were not yet stereotypes, so had no bearing on my character creation process at all. Heck, the word gay meant "happy" in the 1970s when I first started the series, it was not yet being used to describe homosexual men, and guess what else: rainbow flags did not yet exist, nor did pride parades, nor did the gay comic relief best friend. All that stuff is an invention of the 1990s.

My characters were heavily influenced by a real world gay couple who were our neighbors when I was a child and so, I knew a real gay couple and had interacted with them quite a lot growing up. So, I never grew up with the mind set of "gay = the other".

I never looked at gay couples and thought of them as different or alien. They were just normal men in my mind, and so, I just treated them the same as any one else. And this in turn has affected how I write gay characters.

In my mind a gay character is just another man, no different than any other male character. He has the same hopes and dreams and fears and anxieties as any other man. Who he is in love with, who he sleeps with, that doesn't change his humanity, it doesn't make his emotions different.

And while some gay men may be girly, and wear dresses, sure, most gay men don't. Most gay men like sports and watch the super bowl and wrestling just like straight men do. Sure there are gay men who like to embroider and fuss over fashion, but most gay men are into "manly things" just like straight men are.

Gay men are still, just men. And men are just people. Who they are in love with does not change the fact that they are still men and do man-type things just like every other man.

Painting EVERY gay character as a rainbow wearing, girly fashionista, who wears women's cloths and prances around being the class clown, is the problem. Because not EVERY gay man is like that, and in fact, most gay men in the real world are so identical to straight men, that, they can blend in and straight men have no clue the guy they work with is gay.

Treat your gay characters, like people, and suddenly you will see how incredibly easy it is to write them. Why? Because they really are not any different than your not gay characters.

In my genre, Yaoi, the biggest issue is usually horny teen girls writing gay characters just so they can write lots of penises without any "nasty vaginas" getting in the way. This results in the sexual objectification stereotype that causes most yaoi to be hated by most real world gay men.

The problem here is the same as the class clown gay best friend comedy relief stereotype: the writer is NOT looking at the character as a person. The writer is looking at the character as an inhuman object. In this case, a sex toy. The previous troupe saw them as the plot's comedy relief, this one sees them as the plot's fetish fan service. Neither sees them as HUMAN.

Even though I am female and they are three males, I don't find I have any trouble writing them, because I'm not tripped up by thinking of them as sex toys.

• * I see that one, BoomFuzzy, has an obsession with perfecting gingerbread. An OCD obsession that drives him to spend months on end perfecting and changing the recipe. I see that while the other two are supportive of his obsession, they also get frustrated by it and sometimes feel he neglects them.
• * I see that one, GhoulSpawn, is deeply stressed out by his job, and that he struggles to juggle his job with his university studies and often feels he's a third wheel in the relationship because he rarely has as much time as he'd like with the other two, because of his job and school.
• * I see that the other, Quaraun, is in frail health, and often needs caring for, causing him to feel helpless because he can no longer do the things he once could.

In other words, I see them as people, trying to live their best lives, and struggling against various inner turmoil, while each worrying about the welfare of the other two.

I see them as HUMAN.

And because I see them as human, I treat them like humans.

I don't treat them like a cardboard stand-in to titillate the reader or give the reader a laugh track.

Treat your characters the way YOU want people in your life to treat YOU, and you'll be amazed how fast you stop treating your characters like cardboard stand-ins.

Several things I found, that help me in writing the series:

• * is to look at my own relationship with my husband. We've been together for 37 years. We've had lots of ups and downs, had to deal with lots of struggles, including the murder of our children. Our relationship has suffered many bumps and a few separations, and life has been a roller coaster of struggles to get from one day to the next. Most every event I write for my trio of men, is based off real-world event that me and my husband have gone through.
• * to ask my 3 brothers, quite simply: "What would you do if ___ happened?"
• * talking to gay men I knew from my retail job at Macy's

So, in the end, writing steamy is not a thing I do, nor do I write hot boy-on-boy action. Nor do I regulate my gay characters to the role of token best friend or gay comedy relief. I just treat my characters like real people trying to get by living their best lives. And, in the end, they're being gay men, while I the author am a female, doesn't trip up my ability to write them at all.

I don't think of them as being gay, meaning, I don't even mention it. I'm too busy thinking of them as people to label them as gay. No "gay issues" get brought up. Nothing "political" ever happens. The word "gay" never once appears in the series. The word "homosexual" never appears, either. It's never even specified that they are gay. They are not treated as sex objects to be glorified, they are treated as every day normal men, living every day normal lives. They just happen to be three men who live together and are in love with each other.

Love is universal. Love is an emotion everyone feels. I write the feelings of love they have for each other, the same way I love my husband.

• * Gay = a man who is in love with another man.
• * Gay has nothing to do with how he dresses.
• * Gay has nothing to do with how he acts.
• * Gay does not influence his hobbies.
• * Gay is not a way of talking.
• * Gay is not a way of walking.
• * He's not gay because he drives a certain type of car.
• * He's not gay because of the job he has.

I think far too many writers forget what the word gay means.

**Gay = a man who loves another man. That's it. It has nothing to do with cars or cloths or actions or likes or dislikes. Nothing.**

I see far too many authors plaster gay characters with things like: "they are gay so they MUST talk like this, they are gay so they MUST walk like that, they are gay so they MUST want to be a woman and wear dresses, they are gay so they MUST.... No! No, no, no, no, no! None of those things makes a person gay and saying that ONLY gay men do this or that is not only harmful to gay men, it's also harmful to straight men who do those things then get bullied for being gay when they are not gay, they just like wearing pink or driving Volvos.

The instant you start slapping on "gay clothes" and "gay actions" to a gay character, you are immediately writing offensive stereotypes, because none of those things makes a man gay. Gay is simply about who he loves, only that and nothing else.

Caring about loved ones is universal, too. I write them caring for one another, looking out for each other, supporting each other, protecting each other, the same way I care for, look out for, and support my husband.

It doesn't matter that I am female and they are gay men, because love is love no matter who you are, and every person cares for those they love.

Every person has bills to pay and life issues to worry about, every person feels sadness and pain and love and joy.

Treat your characters as though they were real people. Have you main character treat their lover the same way you would treat your lover. Gay men treat their lovers the same way straight men treat their lovers. Lesbian women treat their lovers the same way straight women treat their lovers.

People care about other people. So, my advice is to just treat your characters like people and have them each treat each other like people.

By the way, the F2M trans man character was the MC, this one:

• * and you see the MC weaving silk and selling it (he is a silk merchant);
• * One is a creative type who loves to make things, but he also has Kanner's Syndrome (actual Autism) and can be childish at times, stoic at other times, and hyper focused on his task to the point of needing to be reminded to eat or sleep. He often comes off as emotionless and rude, though he doesn't mean to be. He's very shy and suffers massive social anxiety. He's suffering from early stages of Alzheimer's, and arthritis has made it difficult for him to use his hands. He has a lame leg and limps on a cane. His health is failing badly and every day is becoming a struggle just to do simple things like bathing or eating.
• * I see that the other is in frail health, and often needs caring for, causing him to feel helpless because he can no longer do the things he once could.

Now go back and re-read my post again. Every place where is says "gay" swap that word out for "trans" and see if that helps.

In fact, you can take the word "gay" and swap it out for "white", "black", Muslim", "woman", "man", or anything else, and the advice will work for them all.

Why?

Because, people are just people.

Write people first, and if you can swap out the word man" for "woman" or "black" for "white" or "gay" for "straight" then you know you have written strong people, who are going to still be fully fleshed out people, no matter what their race, gender, religion, or sexuality may be.

I hope something here helps you out. Good luck with your story!

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What did you do today to step closer to that goal?
Whatever you do, be your best at it!
And remember to have yourself a great and wonderfully glorious day!

~EK
EelKat.com
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By EelKat Wendy C Allen

If you ever made fun of or had any part in the destruction of my farm, and the illegal selling of half of my land to Colliard, you shall lose your land.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in my being homeless since 2006 - YES, I AM still homeless in 2023, you shall become homeless.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in the backhoe driving over my house, you shall lose your house.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in my car being cut in half, you shall lose your car.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in my becoming crippled, you shall lose your health.

If you ever made fun of or had any part in the murder of my son, your child shall die an equally horrible death.

Evil men go out of their way to try to drive a person to suicide.

Are you an evil man?

Are you sure you're not?

How many people have YOUR hate filled words killed?

Next time you go to do a mean thing to a fellow human, stop and really think about the consequences of your actions.

Did you ever notice how every one has a story to tell about me, yet not one of them ever speaks the truth?

What lies has YOUR gossiping tongue spread about me?

Did you know...

October 16, 2006, bomb blew up my house because of YOUR lies.

August 8, 2013, the house which replaced the one the bomb blew up, was driven over by a backhoe.

November 14, 2013, my 8 month old infant son was murdered because of your lies.

November 14, 2013, I was beaten up, paralized for 5 months, spent 18 weeks relearning to walk, I'm now crippled for the rest of my life, because of YOUR lies.

Are you proud of what you have done?

Enjoy your eternity in Hell. You earned it. You've certainly worked hard for it.

~EelKat

If you have any information about any of these events, please call FBI Agent Andy Drewer at 207-774-9322