The fine line between issues and stereotypes

 Warning: rambling post ahead.

Anyone who pays attention to the rumblings of the YA-verse on twitter (as in YA writers, agents who represent them, editors and publishing houses who pub them etc) will have seen today the kerfuffle over this article on the Publishers Weekly blog.  Briefly, it is the story of a writing team who say that a specific (but unnamed) agent would only agree to represent them if they "straightened out" a gay character in their book.

I have Views on this.  Herewith:

For starters, the title of the article is misleading.  It isn't agents (plural) to which the article is referring, it is one agent.  And yes, I believe making that distinction is important.  To generalize in that way is simply another form of exactly the same problem that's being railed against.  You can't generalize a whole profession, a whole industry, by one member of it, in the same way that you can't - and shouldn't - generalize people regarding their sexuality.  To claim that "agents" - without giving specifics - do this kind of thing is sensationalist and misleading. 

I queried a novel with an openly bisexual main character, two other openly gay characters, and an atmosphere indicating that none of this was frowned upon.  I didn't do it because of any Issue, the main character is bi because he told me he was and I couldn't think of a good reason to take it out.  The others are gay because that's how the plot worked.  No part of the book is about sexuality, it's just about people.  Did I get rejections?  Yes.  Did any of those rejections cite the sexuality of the characters as a reason?  Not a single one.  I received two offers of representation, and had phone calls with each of those agents.  In one, it was mentioned only in an "I love that you did that" passing kind of way.  In the other, there was no need to mention it at all.  Off the top of my head I can name half a dozen YA books that contain LGBQT characters that I've read this summer alone.  Agents will take on these books.  Editors will love them.  Houses will publish them.  To claim otherwise is a tactic that leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Why?  Oh, I don't even know where to start on the reasons, but it's mostly these: because it will scare people off writing books with a full representation of the spectrum of humanity, and authors will self-censor before those nameless, faceless agents get a chance.  Because authors will get more militant about "standing up for the cause" and the books will wind up being "issue books" about nothing other than sexuality, and that's a huge, undesirable problem.  Being defined by one's sexuality is exactly what most LGBQT people I know don't want.  They're people, not walking lists of who they sleep with.  In fact, I don't know any straight person who'd want to be defined by that list - rarely would it paint an entirely flattering picture of the person in question.

It's easy to get upset when reading an article such as the one linked above, and it's easy to take up arms for the cause, especially when everyone else is.  (Look up the #YesGayYA hashtag on twitter to see a good example.)  And I have nothing but respect and admiration for anyone who does look at something like this happening and thinks, this is wrong.  This shouldn't happen.  I agree.  It is and it shouldn't and I have absolutely no doubts whatsoever that it does happen, daily and behind closed doors and in closed minds.  The thing is, though, that you don't get to pick which generalizations and stereotypes are okay to perpetuate and which ones are Issues.  You can't, on one hand, say, "Agents do this and it is WRONG, everyone fight back!" but, at the same time, complain that YA novels (or any other subset of fiction) contain stereotypical, white-bread characters and that needs to be changed.

In short, you can't rail against the generalization of sexuality but lump an entire profession into the category of all having one single, unified opinion on said sexuality.

Even if you read the article, don't generalize, and accept that it was one agent who did this...well, so what?  Sure, it's possible that they were being guided by personal beliefs, but equally possible they were being guided by what they thought might sell.  Agents misjudge what might sell all the time, and you only have to read about [insert NYT-bestselling author here] getting 50 rejections before landing an agent to know that.  There are hundreds of agents who don't represent what I write, and hundreds of agents who represent what I don't write.  There are agents who request edits from their authors that turn out not to be the right editorial choices.  I personally know at least three people to whom that's happened.

That doesn't make the gap between author and agent an Issue.  It makes that agent not the right match for that author.  Nothing else.

And to add to what I'm sure is a list as long as my arm of unpopular opinions I hold, I'm not at all sure that the battle-cry of "we need more X" (where X equals any kind of minority or difference from the "norm") isn't part of the problem.  Do we need more gay characters in YA?  Yeah, we probably do.  We also need more kickass girls and fewer assholes and more non-catty relationships between BFFs and a whole host of other things.  We need more realistic people in our books, however those people manifest.  Defining anyone, be it an actual human or an imaginary creation, by one particular aspect of who they are is a slippery slope that, I think, subtly but surely teaches us to view them as one-dimensional.  Not good for a person, not good for a character.  Open-mindedness is about more than accepting one whole facet of a person.  It's about accepting that they have four thousand whole facets and each of them deserve attention.

A blog post that blew me away

Or "In which I get on a soapbox and, knowing me, manage to fall off again."

After spotting a link on twitter (thanks, Ang!), I took a break from editing to read a fabulous blog post and am continuing that break to write this.  Please, take a break from whatever you're doing to read here.

In as much as this blog has a topic, that post, and this commentary, may seem like a deviation from it, but I don't think it is.  First of all, the writing is compelling, which is really all that matters to me regardless of subject, and also I think there's relationship between that post and fiction writing.  (Please note, I'm not for a second claiming to be the first to make a connection between those real-world concepts and character creation, it's just something I want to write about here.)

Hanne Blank is absolutely right, in my opinion, and as I am knee-deep in edits and watching my characters on the page again, it got me thinking.

It is, I believe, a universal hope amongst writers that someone, anyone out there will connect with the people we create in our books and identify with them.  We may be telling the stories of completely invented characters, but we want readers to invest in them and think, "Hey, that's me!" to some degree.  Not everyone will, and that's fine, maybe even good, since as Ms. Blank says, women aren't just one thing.  People aren't just one thing.  Still, it means that we want to make our characters as "real" as we possibly can, and with that there is an inherent responsibility to make them diverse.  That is to say, make them an accurate representation of the world not only that we've invented, but the one we're sitting in while we write them down.  For one thing, if we succeed (and learning how to is a process I'm sure I'll be going through for the rest of my life) it makes for a more interesting book, but there's another issue, too.  I'm a YA writer, at least some of you who will read this post are YA or middle-grade writers, and I'd argue that it's especially important for these age groups to read about as many different kinds of people as possible.  Not in a hey-let-me-sit-you-down-and-teach-you-a-lesson kind of way, because every kid and young adult I know can spot that faster than I can spot a twix bar, but in a way that reminds us people aren't just one thing.  It is, after all, depiction in various forms of media that has led to the necessity for posts exactly like the one linked above, and books absolutely have their place there.  I'm sure actual people have said things like this, often, but for the simple fact that I can remember it off the top of my head, I'm going to quote an episode of The West Wing, in which Toby says this:

There is a connection between progress of a society and progress in the Arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo Da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth was the age of Shakespeare.

The next line is another character saying "these people aren't Da Vinci or Shakespeare" and I'm not saying we are.  Not at all.  I have theories as to why I think we'll never see giants like that again, though that's another post.  We're writers, trying to get by and maybe see our books on shelves along the way, but I don't think that nullifies the point.  Pretty much everything is "normal" and if it takes depictions in books and TV shows and magazines and everything else to subtly guide us towards having that view of the world, then hey, at least we get there in the end. 

As a personal example, there is something about the protagonist of my current MS that could be considered a little "different" - or not, depending on who you are, but it could be.  I didn't choose to put it in there, or set out with a plan to create him with that particular aspect, but he was one of those characters that popped into my head fully formed, including this one thing, and there is a reason I didn't take it out.  I was recently asked whether I would if that would make the difference between being published or not, and my honest answer is I don't know, but if I ever did it would be a wrench.  It makes him more real to me, and if my book does make it to shelves and someone out there identifies with that aspect of him, then that's a bonus.  It's not why I wrote him that way, and at no step of the journey was it ever intended to be some kind of lesson or an attempt to force my own beliefs on anyone, but if it resonates with someone, just once, I'll be glad I didn't listen to the naysaying voice inside my head at the beginning.  (I just think he's a cool character, it's an interesting story, and I had an amazing time writing it.)

As of this morning, the twitterverse was re-alight with the debate over darkness in YA fiction, thanks to another article in the WSJ by the author of the original, who argued that darkness in YA is unhealthy.  Millions of opinions proliferate, and here's mine: the exploding YA market and its corresponding wealth of all kinds of subjects, tones, and genres brings with it an incredible number of rich, diverse, layered characters just waiting for people to read about them, put the book down, and (hopefully) think.  What could be healthier than that?