smol thread!
Do you ever do something as an author that's SO VERY CLEVER AND CHALLENGING and then
and then
nobody notices?
Y'all I wrote 1 of 5 POVs in a 3rd person book entirely without personal pronouns and I don't think anyone's mentioned it at all 🤣🤣🤣
I've started talking about it in like every interview now because I want more people to see it ah hahaha, and the reaction tends to be, "omg I didn't see it BUT NOW I DO"
I guess it's not as awkward to read English without pronouns as we tend to assume? 😉
me to my sister: NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT MY WU YONG PRONOUN CLEVERNESS
her: that just means you did it well, it's so smooth nobody notices
me: well I want them to notice a LITTLE 😂
(I think most people are assuming female, even though I tried to put in subtle "Wu Yong is not a woman" moments CLEARLY THEY WERE TOO SUBTLE. That's on me lol)
Why did I do it? Well when a book is "translation convention" from a language that doesn't gender pronouns --
and the group is genderdiverse-norm in the midst of a regressive society --
but there's no misgendering via pronoun or in-POV way to introduce neopronouns --
#TheWaterOutlaws
#language
#linguistics #fantasy #pronouns #AmWriting #WritingCommunity
well then, what do, how write?
I experimented a lot & no pronouns felt best for the character!
(they're in "fantasy Chinese", which doesn't gender pronouns just as real Chinese doesn't...which doesn't stop misogyny btw. Anglophones sometimes seem to assume that'd correlate but ungendering pronouns doesn't magically heal sexism/transphobia, sadly 😭)
The craft was actually easier than I expected, but I did put a lot of thought and effort in, and a lot of time double-checking the updated drafts...
...so I hope at least a small number of people notice and get joy out of it eventually 🤣
end of thread. here is the book btw!
my 150,000-word novel with one of the 5 third-person POVs written pronoun-less!
THE WATER OUTLAWS:
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250180421/thewateroutlaws
plus yanno lots of swordfights 😆⚔️
#TheWaterOutlaws #fantasy #sff #SpeculativeFiction #book #books #bookstodon #EpicFantasy #language #MartialArts #swords #lgbt #lgbtq #queer #nonbinary @bookstodon
@slhuang When I get to read this joy of a book I'll probably notice and celebrate the inclusiveness. I deliberately seek out #books that offer wider than binary M or F views of the world.
I remember the impact that reading the Ancillary trilogy by Ann Leckie had. 👀 😊 👏
#TheWaterOutlaw
SL Huang
Kay 
PedestrianError 
