Audrey Barnes asked Meredith Russo:

I'm currently writing a book and trying to pull in more LQBT+ Characters. How do I do this without it seeming to in-your-face?

Meredith Russo This is a tricky question, I could write thousands of words about it, others already have, so all I'll say is this: it is not wrong, necessarily, to make a character's queerness prominent or central to a story, but you have to think clearly about two things. The first consideration is your story's themes--if the story is about identity, romance, bullying, oppression, etc, yeah you should probably foreground these aspects of a character's identity, but if a story's about accounting or punching dragons or solving mysteries, it's probably best to have a character go, "Oh here's a photo of me from before I transitioned please ignore that" and otherwise not dwell on it. The second consideration is your own experience with the identity you're depicting. I am a trans woman and a lesbian, and while I'm not the authority on how to be trans or a lesbian, when I'm writing characters who share my identities I feel a lot safer cutting loose and really digging into the experience. But if I were to write an ace character, or a nonbinary character, I would make sure to step back and maybe not assume I'm equipped to really speak to what it's like to be them, or at least not centering that in the story.

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