ysabetwordsmith | Intersectionality in Storytelling

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Intersectionality in Storytelling

Here's a great post about intersectionality in storytelling. The author is gay and black, enjoys writing genre stories, and keeps running into people who want to take some or all of that out. Intersectional writers get treated like shit. And this is why we have cookie-cutter entertainment that is not, after you've read the same thing 50+ times, very entertaining after all.

Thank gods for crowdfunding where we can have intersectional characters if we want them.

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this uh bodes a little ill for my sekrit project. somehow Megan ended up queer, black, and possibly autistic. (not sure, because didn't set out to make her autistic, but she's displaying some of the behaviors.) which, not about to change that, but.

Do not try to compete directly with the mainstream. That rarely works. Instead, find things you like that the mainstream is NOT doing and then look for an audience of people who want to read that.

Intersectionality? Great place to start. Neurovariant character? Very little competition. I recommend researching the autistic spectrum because the patterns for individual conditions are different. Read things written by autistic people -- I cannot overstress this, their stuff is very divergent from the official descriptions. Also the good stuff is scattered all over to hell and gone; so I gathered some links.

Sekrit project is going to go on Amazon Kindle. I'm not sure how that's not competing with the mainstream, even if my content is not mainstream.

Ooh research! Thanks!

Well, everything in the world is competing for people's attention and money. But there are subdivisions. The mainstream has a particular, rather narrow flavor to it. Trying to self-publish stuff like that is unlikely to work. Alternative publishing works better for things the mainstream editors don't want and won't buy; you might as well peddle them on your own. You are somewhat competing for readers, in that an overlap exists, but there are a lot of people who read alternative stuff and little or no mainstream stuff.

Nod, okay.

I just wanted to say that I would definitely read that. It sounds like a brilliant project.

woot

The LGBTQ publication is dying?

Is that true? What's that all about? I figured the LGBTQ market was doing better than ever...

When I was in college, women's bookstores and queer bookstores were pretty popular. There were some small publishers thriving in those genres. Now there are fewer publishers, fewer distributors, fewer bookstores, and less audience interest in books. That's not good for any genre, but it's hitting the small ones harder.

On the bright side, the bottleneck is broken. You don't NEED a publisher, a distributor, and a bookstore anymore. You just need internet access. I'm seeing a lot of fabulous genderfic and queerlit online that would probably never have seen the light of print 20 years ago. So I don't think it's dying, just moving.

That was my take on the scene too. A lot of specialized bookstores can't make it any more. Occult bookstores, leftist bookstores, etc. On the other hand those books, when in e-form, are easier to get to and can find a wider audience. I've never lived anywhere that had a women's or queer bookstore, for instance, or anywhere that sold queer fiction in hard copy form.

Now, because of the web, I can read almost anything queer I want to; whether it's fantasy, romances, or non-fiction. And people don't have to worry so much about the marketability so much (like with the author concerned about marketing to straight audiences) because you have more freedom and more specific/niche interests thrive on the internet.

I just wondered if there was something I was missing :P

The drawback is that we've lost the opportunity to browse in bookstores, because you can't do that very well online. And ebooks are only useful to people who enjoy them; many folks can't or don't, and they are increasingly underserved.

Well, like I said, that was an option that only a select few privileged people ever had. People in rural and conservative areas, who needed them as much as anyone, rarely got bookstores like that near them. Even in urban areas they weren't prolific enough that poor people could necessarily afford to travel to them.

And in countries where it's illegal it's easier/less risky to get hold of pirated gay literature than actual contrabrand hardcopies.

And ebooks are only useful to people who enjoy them; many folks can't or don't, and they are increasingly underserved.

But they've made niche things like most gay literature more readily available to those with visual disabilities; the Kindle's ability to increase displayed text size and read aloud any book on it means that even if a book isn't popular enough to garner an audiobook, it becomes available to those people. I know some people can't use it because they can't work the controls, but I've found it to be loads easier on my hands than a physical book. I don't know that the amount of people that can't use e-readers outnumbers those who have had books become accessible because of them.

The same was true when I was in college and then came the big box bookstores that ran the women's and queer bookstores as well as almost all the independent shops out of town. It was sad.

Now you've given me homework. :-) I need to hunt some good queerlit. I've not had much luck with finding it on Amazon, but I'm looking at actual books and not digital copies. I still haven't entered the modern world and gotten an e-reader. I should do something about that. Are there any good websites that you can suggest to find good queerlit?

>> The same was true when I was in college and then came the big box bookstores that ran the women's and queer bookstores as well as almost all the independent shops out of town. It was sad. <<

Furthermore I will NEVER forgive them for assimilating all the mall bookstores and then going down in flames, so that now we have no mall bookstores left and many towns are without a bookstore period. This is why monopoly and near-monopoly are bad: if one business fails, it can wipe out a huge chunk of functionality that causes problems for many people.

>> Are there any good websites that you can suggest to find good queerlit? <<

http://flavorwire.com/409723/50-essential-works-of-lgbt-fiction
https://www.goodreads.com/list/tag/queer
http://www.glbtrt.ala.org/overtherainbow/archives/457
http://www.glbtrt.ala.org/overtherainbow/

I'm fortunate. I at least have access to a bookstore connected to the local mall. I don't know how long that will continue to be the case since the mall has been dying a slow death for years. I still often end up having to take the risk of ordering online without having the ability to browse first, because the local bookstore pretty much only caters to the mainstream. I'm usually surprised if I find something that doesn't cater to that taste. I miss independent bookstores as well as the lovely old used ones that I used to spend hours in.

Thank you so much for the links. I shall put them to good use.

I'm glad I could help.

Amen! Why do you think I have such an appetite for Victor's and the Heroes' stories? :)

Not to mention Wonder City Stories!

Yes, that's a worthwhile superhero series.

Yay! I'm glad you enjoy those series. I love writing intersectionality and redemption.

Didn't that bloke write his own amazon reviews and get into a whole lot of doo-doo for it?

Doesn't mean his point is wrong, mind you.

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Intersectionality in Storytelling

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