: Re: How do I present a future free of gender stereotypes without being jarring or overpowering the narrative? My story takes place in a relatively near future setting where gender stereotypes have

@Holmes449

While the answers thus far are good, and match my advice (just do it), they seem light on the mechanics. For the writing process it is important that you show and highlight unusual features of your society early in the story, specifically in the first 15% of the story.

At the beginning of a story, readers will accept basically anything: Magic, immortality, gods, other worlds, Faster than Light space travel, super hero powers, whatever you want. But you need to introduce those as a fact of your world very early: Reader tolerance for "wild new stuff" fades to zero by the end of Act I (25% of the way through).

So follow the advice of others, but invent whatever you need to, to introduce and highlight the most dramatic differences (just 2 or 3 would suffice) that are consequences of this lack of stereotypes. Other consequences can appear later, and won't be startling (or look like a deus ex machina) to the reader once they have seen the worst (or best) examples of the fundamental difference. Like "magic", once you prove it is real in your world, then many variations of it can be written about and introduced basically anywhere. But you have to establish unequivocally and early that it is real.

Same for your "free of gender stereotypes" thing, establish unequivocally and early that the world is free of these.

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