Beyond Coming Out: Queer Rep in Genre Fiction
Queer people deserve to be seen in all their complexity, living lives beyond just their identity.
I’ve been thinking a lot about queer fiction lately. I have a complicated relationship with it. I’ve found that I don’t gravitate towards them as much as I once did, because I started reading them in a time when most had tragic endings, and I think I’m subconciously unwilling to go through it again - even though I know logically it’s less likely in books I pick up now. I don’t want another tragic ending. But I do want to read more queer lit in the coming year. So, I’ve been thinking of (and reassuring myself about) how far we’ve come.
Most queer books I read when I was young were about coming out. And queer suffering, which usually went hand-in-hand with coming out. There’s a lot more diversity in books now, but if we are looking at all-time numbers, these types of stories still account for a vast number of mainstream queer stories. This includes “realisation” stories - characters realising they’re gay. Coming out to themselves.
But what about after we come out? In my experience as a young queer person, as my journey of self-discovery steered more toward self-acceptance, the stories that represented my current way of being seemed to dwindle.
I love when queer characters exist in stories where their queerness isn’t the crux of the story. I love books in which the character just happens to be queer, but the story doesn’t revolve around their queerness. This is what I try to bring to my fiction.
I spent September madly writing the first draft of a queer horror novel called The Maydown Girls. My main character, Rhiannon, has returned to her hometown. She’s now living with her sister, with whom she has a fraught relationship. They’re living in their childhood home, and growing up there was tough – soon, the metaphorical ghosts that haunt them aren’t so metaphorical.
One thing I reflected on after finishing the first draft was Rhiannon’s queer identity. She’s a lesbian. There’s a romantic subplot with a cute florist who lives in town. But Rhiannon is “out of the closet”. The dismissive comments from her mother mostly roll off her back, but otherwise, her queerness isn’t a big deal. Her queerness in itself isn’t given the spotlight so much as her relationship with Cute Florist is. Rhiannon is contending with ghosts both real and symbolic. Her queerness just is – a part of her, like her name, her age, the colour of her hair.
Though I do want to see more stories like this, it wasn’t something I set out to write. And I wrote The Maydown Girls so quickly, I didn’t have time to think, and it just came out (heh) that way. Because I was simply reflecting my own experience. I’m queer. Everyone’s known it for over a decade. I have the privilege of living in peace and safety with it. My life doesn’t revolve around my sexuality. Every protagonist I write is queer because I want to see more of it. My queerness is tied into everything, because it’s part of who I am.
When I started looking for queer books in my teens, the pickings were slim. Most ended in the Bury Your Gays Trope. I read one with an ending so bad that I had to hide the book away, because the sight of it made me feel sick. I experimented in writing with creating my own queer characters, “knowing” (I was wrong) full well that no one would want to read it, and it could never be published. My character was queer, she was out, and she fell in love with a woman. But the book was a fantasy novel about hunting witches. I couldn’t imagine anything like it on mainstream shelves. Later, as queer characters started popping up in books where their identity wasn’t the main focus, a common review was some iteration of this:
What was the point of making the character gay???
The point is that this is a book that reflects reality, and queer people exist in reality. Period. This extends to all marginalised groups.
By majorly focussing on the coming out experience, queer characters are reduced to a single part of their identity.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a coming out story, and I’m not saying I don’t enjoy them. My favourite book I’ve ever written is something of a coming out story. I’m not criticising any single author in any way, shape, or form. But when it’s a vast majority of books exploring this theme (and this is much more influenced by industry, not individual authors), then queer characters in literature feel reduced to one aspect of their experience.
Authentic representation matters. We deserve authentic and diverse representations of queer lives! Queer love, queer joy. Reflecting the true diversity of queer experience. We navigate careers, friendships, romance, personal struggles – and the supernatural – like anyone else.
Coming out isn’t the be-all-end-all of the queer experience. It’s often the beginning.
What’s your favourite queer story? A story where a queer character exists but the story doesn’t revolve around coming out or queer struggle? In 2025 I’m committing to reading as widely as I can in the queer lit genre. Please share your recommendations!
