How I Get to Know My Characters

If you’ve been following me for a while, you’ve probably seen a couple fiction pieces of mine.

My favorite part of writing a new story is creating the characters. Every character I create has little pieces of me and everyone I’ve ever met in them.

I start with my characters first. Some people get an idea of a good plot line and they jot it down first, but the character usually snatches my attention before a plot line surfaces.

A new story idea popped into my head Sunday. I was watching a roundtable discussion that included amazing story tellers like Spike Lee and Ryan Coogler.

My goal is to write stories centered around LGBTQ characters. I want the young LGBTQ kids, teens, and adults coming behind me to have characters they can relate to in books.

I’m a young, black transman — so I create young, black trans characters as my main characters. When I started researching transgender and looking at transgender tags, I rarely ever saw a black trans man. I always saw skinny, white trans men. There’s nothing wrong with them, but I needed to see people like myself.

I want to have LGBTQ YA books on the shelves of every library. I don’t want any LGBTQ kids to have to grow up thinking something is wrong with them…