: Re: How do I keep the gender of my main character purposely ambiguous? I'm a newcomer to this community, and have recently started giving serious thought to my first novel. I'm basically working

@Ravi5107385

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Just don't mention it! Consider giving your character a short name, so that it's less jarring when you inevitably use their name more often than usual, and find ways to phrase your sentences without pronouns referring to the character. When there is dialogue, have other characters address your character directly so they can use 'you' a lot.

Gene Kemp's novel The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tiler is a lovely tale of children getting up to mischief at school, and while most people regard the reveal at the end that Tyke

is a girl

as a twist, I wouldn't say the reader feels deceived and it doesn't interfere with the readability of the rest of the novel. Unfortunately I can't find any suitable extracts online to quote (and don't have a copy to hand), but this is certainly possible.

When/if you do reveal that your character's species is androgynous, the reader can reconsider the assumptions they made (consciously or unconsciously). You don't need to add anything specific to force them to consider the character's gender along the way.

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