Best way to write a gender neutral charcter?

by Dessy

Question: I know this may be an odd question but, do you think you can give tips on the best way to write a character who keeps their gender hidden? As they don't give out whether or not they are male or female.


I am fourteen years old however I do write stories and post them on websites for the fun. Right now I'm making story with at least four main characters. And I want to try new things by writing one of the characters that doesn't give out their gender. What I'm aiming for is sort of make the readers unsure whether or not the character in question is male or female, without having the character be the center of attention.

I understand that this character could be a hit or miss, for some people but for me writers express themselves through writing. And I think taking risk is one of the many things that come with being a writer whether they do it for a hobby, work etc.

Answer: Well, the obvious challenge is that you cannot refer to this character by the pronouns "he" or "she." Some people try to use "they," but that's more than a little awkward for many readers, plus it gives away the fact that you're trying to conceal the person's gender. "It" only works for non-human characters who the reader doesn't have feelings for, like robots.

So that means you will need to give your character a gender-neutral name and use it consistently in place of pronouns.

I've come across children's books written this way with the intention of giving all children an equal opportunity to imagine themselves as the main character.

In longer fiction, it is probably a little easier if the character is the main or point-of-view character, since this person will refer to themselves as "I," while other characters will address them as "you." This makes it easier to conceal the person's gender.

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Syntax manipulation...
by: William. A. Whittaker

I came across your question as I am translating a story from another language into English and the gender of the story's main character is deliberately not made clear (3rd person perspective).

The most obvious solution is to use the character's name (gender neutral of course) more often than would otherwise be natural. This being because pronouns and such are problematic ("X's noun" not "his/her noun") [side note: "they/their" is to be used deliberately when that is someone's identity or if the gender is unknown but not a solution when the character's gender is not made clear or is left ambiguous.

Consider, however, constantly playing with syntax, perspectives and utilising the passive.
By switching things around it's possible to reduce how often it is necessary to use the character's name to plug the pronoun holes. Rather than "X heard a sound from next door", how about "A sound came from next door"?
Making things more general rather than specific to the character removes the need to mention the character at all.

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