How do I keep the gender of my main character purposely ambiguous?

One of the things that seems like a good idea to many beginning writers is trying to deceive the reader in some way or another. There is one problem with this idea: readers don't like it.

And why should they? The reader's enjoyment of a story depends on their ability to enter into the world of the story, to enter into what Tolkien called the sub-created world of the author. Disappointment comes when that illusion is shattered. But entry into the world, and the maintenance of belief in that world, become much more difficult if part of the picture is permanently greyed out or pixelated. It is as if the writer is refusing to let the reader in, and, of course, if the reader can't get in, they will stop reading.

Yes, there is such a thing as an unreliable narrator. But the unreliable narrator is a construct of the writer and the reader meets them as they meet an untruthful person in real life. Their unreliability is presented wholly and honestly so that the reader can enter into the world in which the unreliable narrator exists and form judgements about them.

Story is something very fundamental to the human psyche. We love stories. We need stories. We live by stories. And for this very reason, story has a very specific form. The body recognizes story, and if a narrative comes along that the body does not recognize as story, our mental antibodies attack and reject it.

Story allows for infinite variety within its basic structure and rules. But its most basic rule is to be honest with the reader.

EDIT (in response to the OPs edit):

Gender is one of the first things we notice about people when we meet them. It is how our recognition system works. We categorize things, and gender is one of the most fundamental categories, perhaps the most fundamental category, that we use to categorize the people we meet. This is why androgyny is so striking when we see it: it disrupts our recognition system.

So, concealing the androgyny of your MC is an affront to the reader's most basic recognition of individuals. Whether or not the reader is open to varieties of gender, gender itself, whether binary or not, is a fundamental category of recognition. The reader cannot form a picture of the character without it, and so they will either give up on the character or make a decision for themselves.

If your characters are androgynous, say they are androgynous right up front. The first thing that the reader would notice about your character in real life is the first thing you should tell them about them in a story. You are creating an experience for the reader, and that experience is going to be incomplete and frustrating if you do not tell them the basic things they need to form a picture.

posted over 7 years ago

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Mark Baker‭

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1) Where's the best place to hide a red fish? In a pond full of other red fish.

Since you're writing in a fantasy genre, you have liberty to create an entire society. You're doing all your own worldbuilding. So create a society/race/culture where nobody's gender is ever established. A gender-neutral third-person-singular pronoun will be required, but there are many (or you can coin your own).

Your characters who aren't of Red Fish's people can be binarily gendered and use standard pronouns. It's up to you if you want them to express confusion or struggle with how to address Red Fish.

2) Whether your reader will be distracted by Red Fish's gender ambiguity depends on what else you define about the character.

We establish a concept of the characters, settings, and actions in our heads as we read (some people visualize, some only get the radio drama, but there's some mental thing going on). If you say elf or dwarf, we have a vague outline of what the species is, and certain expectations. Elves and dwarves are sexually dimorphous, so an ambiguously gendered elf or dwarf is going to irritate the reader after a while.

But if you say breezleklorp, we don't know what one of those looks like, or what characteristics it has. Humanoid? Bipedial? Symmetrical? How many heads, eyes, arms, genders? You could get away with an ambiguously gendered breezleklorp for quite some time if you're only slowly revealing the characteristics of breezleklorpim as the story proceeds.

posted over 7 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

2098 reputation 13 1143 397 1

This is not uncommon these days, particularly in fantasy and science-fiction (no doubt driven by the popularity of role-playing games in these genres, which can't assume the main character's gender and can't afford to record essentially two entire scripts with one set of pronouns swapped). Several best-selling fantasy and science-fiction novels have deliberately kept the genders and races of some of their characters vague - Lock In, by John Scalzi, even went so far as to sell two different versions of the audiobook with a male and female voice, and the Imperial Radch series by Ann Leckie uses 'she' as a non-gendered pronoun, to reflect the protagonist's inability to distinguish gender. It won a Hugo, so it's clearly doing something right.

Here's how those novels and games avoid needing to refer to the gender of the protagonist:

1. Use names that aren't clearly gendered. In fantasy and sci-fi, this is easy, but you run the risk of making an unpronounceable or alien name. Avoid vowel endings for made-up names, as these are usually coded 'feminine'. There are lots of names that aren't gender specific, so you can give your character an evocative name like 'Morgan' or 'Robin' while keeping the gender of your character ambiguous.

2. Let your audience draw their own conclusions. If you deliberately write around a character's gender, it'll be distracting as readers will be reading closely to build up a mental picture of the protagonist for longer than you want. Throw them a bone, by describing enough for readers to fill in a good enough picture - build, clothing, some charming specifics - and your readers will assume the rest. To help things along, have your character perform some task that readers who invest heavily into gender roles will read as gendered. It's like that riddle about the father and son who get into a near-fatal accident, and the doctor refuses to operate on the child because it's the doctor's child. Many people will assume gender, and be satisfied, if you have your character do something like practice swordplay, or do household chores.

3. Think about how other characters will refer to them. This is why people often suggest to write androgynous characters in first-person, to avoid the narrator having to give the game away. Games with ambiguously gendered protagonists like Sunless Sea do so by asking players to choose their own term of address; 'sir', 'madam', 'Captain', 'whelp', among others. You can borrow this technique: if most of your characters address each other referring to position, you can easily disguise the gender of your protagonist by using a non-gendered title. Similarly, other characters might look down on your character and refer to them by insulting phrases, and these can be very easily non-gendered. (You could even invent an insult - for example, call them "blanks", and later reveal that they call your androgynous characters "blanks" not just because they're devoid of personality, but because they don't have a gender.) Terms of address amongst equals tend to be gendered, so you'll have to avoid them.

4. Lean into it. There's always the option of having one character misgender the protagonist. If it's normal for androgynous characters to exist in this universe, disguise the insult from misgendering by having this character both insult them and misgender them. This way, when you do the reveal, you can have a sympathetic but naive character make the same mistake, and have the reader and this sympathetic character find out at the same time. This softens the sense that you've been holding back a mystery and helps the reader bond with the character who made a careless assumption, and with your protagonist, who's treating the mistake with tact.

5. Get a sensitivity reader. These are people who have a better awareness of social issues and can pick up unintentional racism or sexism. Finding a sensitivity reader who can check you're not gendering your character unnecessarily will be a big help, and with their help you'll also be able to stretch your work in other ways, like identifying stereotypes in other parts of your writing that can help you make people and cultures that feel fresh and unique. You don't have to be perfect at this, especially on your own!

It's a challenge, definitely, but it's a great way to stretch your writing and make sure you think about what you're doing, which is valuable to do even when not specifically writing in this way.

posted over 7 years ago

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Merus‭

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Given your clarification and that the fact that androgynes exist in your novel's world, I'll concur with the rest of the answers here -- purposefully concealing it will dissatisfy your readers because it is pertinent to the plot.

The only time I've seen this work is in Sarah Caudwell's Hilary Tamar mysteries, in which the detective is written in such a way that either gender is a possible one. The character's gender is never part of the story, as opposed to your case.

posted over 7 years ago

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Joe McMahon‭

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You could make the narrator fascinated with the main character and write your story in the second person. Perhaps the narrator is a friend or mentor of some kind, to whom the main character shares most of what happens, but not their gender.

In Peter Pohls book Janne, min vän, translated into English as Johnny, My Friend, the main character is either Janne or Krille, but the narrator is clearly teenager Krille. The narrator is unambiguously male, as are all his friends he hangs out with in 1950s Stockholm. One day, they are joined by the mysterious Janne. As the book progresses, the nature of Janne only becomes more and more mysterious as Krille finds out more.

Only at the very end, after the climax of the book, is there a hint of Jannes gender. But even then it remains unclear. And certainly, initially, Krille and his friends assume that Janne is male.

The mystery is shared between narrator Krille and the reader. The reader can identify with Krille. From the perspective of Janne, it would be a completely different book, and mystery would be out of the question.

Another book by Peter Pohl, without such mystery, does employ a grammatical technique that could aid in keeping it a mystery. Vi kallar honom Anna (no English translation; the title means We (will) call him Anna) is entirely written in the second person, in the form of a letter, if you will, that the narrator writes to the main character.

posted over 7 years ago

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gerrit‭

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You didn't say why you want to keep the gender ambiguous. That might help in giving a good answer.

One possibility that doesn't deceive the reader would be to write 1st person and make your main character himself confused about his gender. Maybe he grew up outside his society where androgynity was normal. Or maybe for him it was normal all his life, now he met other species and wonders which gender he is - he never wondered about it before, doesn't understand his species is different, etc.

(*) using the male pronoun for readability. If you seriously write this story, you absolutely need to invent an androgynous pronoun.

posted over 7 years ago

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Tom‭

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