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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/27723
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I'm a newcomer to this community, and have recently started giving serious thought to my first novel. I'm basically working on an idea I had a few years back. It's fiction, has a lot to do with faeries, Celtic mythology, dark fantasy, nightmarish apocalyptic scenarios...you know, fun stuff.

Now, to cut the long story short, here's my predicament: I've decided that I'm going to purposely keep my main character's gender ambiguous. The reader will have no indications as to whether said character is male or female, and I've already decided that other characters won't be referring to him/her by any pronouns that might give it away.

My question is, how do I go about doing that? I've already been advised that I should write from first-person perspective to make things easier, but other than that, are there any pointers I should keep in mind so that the reader doesn't realize the gender? I also want the reader to keep on second-guessing, like at one point they think, "Yup, this is definitely a dude" only to go, "Wait, now I'm confused". I _want_ them to keep on questioning it, but not to the point that it distracts them from the plot of the story itself.

Please, any advice would be greatly appreciated.

**EDIT**

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions. I should've cleared some things up, such as the gender identity of my MC in question.

Since this is a fantasy world, I've taken a lot of liberties, and in doing so, I've created the MC so that the species they belong to are natural androgynes. In that, they are born androgynous. Neither male nor female. I've planned on doing this reveal at some point in my novel.

Thank you once again. Your insights have been helpful and much appreciated.

Original score: 37