Creating Realistic Transgendered Characters with Terri Main

Creating Realistic Transgendered Characters with Terri Main

New this year at SavvyAuthors!
  1. New!!
Level
Mixed
Basic and Premium Members Prices
Premium Members $30 & Basic Members $35

**Register by October 9 and save $5, use code TRANSGENDERCHARACTERS at checkout!**
Category
  1. Characters
  2. Description/Setting
  3. Dialogue
  4. Structure
  5. Genre
  6. GMC
  7. Plotting
  8. POV
  9. Voice
  10. Worldbuilding
  11. Writer's Life
$5 off Early Registration Coupon-expires 1 week before class starts
TRANSGENDERCHARACTERS
In the past two years, many have been introduced to the word "Transgendered." Caitlin Jenner, Orange is the New Black, Bathroom Bans, Transgendered military personnel have all featured in the news, social media, and entertainment world. Yet, few understand the variety of experiences covered by the word. Transgender is an umbrella term covering everyone from the man who crossdresses as part of sex play with his wife to those who strive toward androgyny to the quiet postoperative transsexual who just lives an ordinary life with few people even knowing they began life in the "opposite" gender.

Writing transgendered characters is challenging because there is a great deal of misinformation out there, and even advocates for the transgendered don't always do a good job of educating the public about the range of transgendered experience. This three-week course will help you create realistic, compelling, and accurate transgendered characters of different types. It will dispel some myths and help you understand some of the less sexy aspects of the real life of transgendereds like dealing with name changes, family relations, and dealing with government records.

Please Note: While most of this course deals with the social and emotional side of the subject, some lessons will deal with sensitive subject matter and references will be made to human anatomy using clinical terminology. Profanity and vulgar terms will not be used, but some clinical reference to sexual matters may be part of some of those lessons. Those lessons will be clearly identified so you can decide whether or not you wish to read them.
Syllabus
Topics Covered include:
  • Transgendered: The varieties of transgendered experience
  • Sexual orientation vs. Gender Identity
  • Heterosexual Crossdressing
  • The Process of Transition for Transsexuals: From acceptance through post-surgical adjustment.
  • Going Stealth: Keeping the past hidden
  • Dating and the Single Transsexual
  • The Dark Path: Trangendereds in the Sex Industry
  • On the Job
  • Family Relationships
  • Transgendereds at Risk: The hate crimes nobody talks about
  • The legal side of transition
  • The Long, Long journey to normalcy
Author
terrimain
Start date
Oct 16, 2017 at 9:00 AM
End date
Nov 5, 2017 at 3:00 PM
Registration end date
Oct 18, 2017 at 4:00 PM
Rating
4.25 star(s) 24 ratings

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Latest reviews

When I signed up for this course, I had no experience in writing about transgendered characters and had not given any thought to that possibility. But when I saw the course title, I knew it would help me to give depth to my other characters, at the very least. I feared it might be a course taught by someone who decided to take up this genre and after a couple of books, etc., deemed themselves an expert. This course was the mother lode in that Terri Main's background experience was solid: she has transitioned, she's a teacher, and she's a counselor. Three in one! And she opened the course teaching about empathy. I knew I could try then. Her lessons were well crafted and easy to follow (good for the oldster in me). She got me to actually write from the mindset of one undergoing this process. This opened me to so much emotion. I am reading her book "Still Standing", and my heart is both weeping and rejoicing at the same time. Terri was patient with my questions and kind when delivering her critiques. I now have two characters in mind for future writing. What saddened me about the course was the lack of input from other classmates. I realize people are busy, etc., but this denied Terri the opportunity for offering extra tips. I'm glad she is here at Savvy. I'm in another class of hers. But this one will be the one by which I remember her. Thanks, Terri. And Savvy, too.
Very insightful and thought provoking, but would have enjoyed being able to ask questions. Still, I am way more sensitive to the issues of transgenders that I was before. Thank you for that.