LogFAQs > #976275825

PMarth2002 posted...

The prose has some weird grammar/phrasing choices and sounds a bit awkward. You're also kind of just informing us about her situation for the first couple of paragraphs. Show, don't tell is a cliche writer's advice for a reason. It gets the reader more invested in the character.

This is my first impression. I get wanting to break away from cishet white male protagonists for the sake of mixing things up, and that's fine, but explicitly listing which minority groups the character falls into is just an awkwardly hamfisted way to do it. Instead of rattling off a laundry list of character traits to fully-establish the character before she does anything, describe what she's doing and use that context as a means to convey more information indirectly.

As an exercise, you might want to try rewriting it with a cishet white male protagonist. If, after doing so, you read a passage and it comes across as an awkward way to communicate how cishet, white, and male the protagonist is, it's also an awkward way to communicate how trans, Jewish, and female the protagonist is and you should change it. Remember that while it's good to have a more diverse protagonist, if you go out of your way to point out her diversity, it just comes across as tokenism.