I'm reading Timekeeper by Tara Sim, about a clock mechanic in a world kind of like Victorian London, but where the fabric of time itself is controlled by the clock towers; they don't just measure time, they keep time itself running.
One thing that is interesting about the main character, Danny, is that at the start of the story, he had already told everyone in his life, months ago, that he preferred boys over girls. He is only seventeen, in 1875, and he told everyone. And the text even says that "most people treated him the same as before."
There's a problem with this story, though--I want to see those conversations! What is it like in a Victorian society in which homosexuality, at least in London, is no big deal? How does coming out go, in this world?
One little thing that just amazed me was an exchange between Danny and his mentor at work, Matthias. Matthias teased Danny, saying that with the way he looked, he must be smitten with someone. Danny, a little embarrassed, confirmed that yes, that was the case.
"You'll have to tell me all about her. Rather, him," Matthias amended with an apologetic smile. "Sorry. Sometimes I forget."
He forgot that Danny was gay! In what world does that happen? In ours, no one would forget, no matter how little it upset them, unless they had dementia or some other problems.
Even my 86-year-old grandfather (without dementia) now says "someone" instead of "husband" when talking about my future spouse, though I only used the phrase, "husband or wife" just once! He forgets a lot of things about my life, but I use a phrase one time that indirectly indicates that I'm bisexual, and it seems that he remembers that! And I have never even had a girlfriend, much less both a girlfriend and a boyfriend in succession.
It sounds like this society is a lot more advanced than ours, in a way. There is no gay marriage, as far as I can tell (though a wedding was described briefly in gender-neutral terms: "I have wanted those two to get together since they were children.")
In this world, the death penalty for homosexual acts was just repealed one decade before, and people in smaller towns tend to be more conservative (just like our world, or how people say our world is, though my mom and I have held hands in small towns and not been harassed as a "gay couple," unlike in "liberal" Eugene, Oregon, the biggest city around me).
And yet "in London, people regarded it with barely a 'good heavens!'" The people who think it "unnatural" (the word "immoral" is not used in this book) are referenced only indirectly and briefly. Danny's mother wants grandchildren and wants him to marry her friend's daughter, but does not say much overall about it. I wish I knew more about what she had initially said, but the story starts months after he came out.
This is why a lot of people say "Show, don't tell" when talking about writing stories. The author does not even do flashbacks, and I really wish she had. Or better yet, incorporate his coming out into the story, because it would really work well with what I mentioned about his new boyfriend in the last post (spoilers).
The author has a brief guide for the story world in the back of the book, where she says, "With the number of secrets he keeps close to his chest, I didn't want this important, fundamental part of him to be a secret as well."
But it doesn't have to be a secret for long in this story! If she wanted to, Sim could have put his coming out towards the beginning, or even opened with it. She could even do flashbacks. Just please, give us something!
I guess the moral here is, if your story world differs from our world in a significant way, then show it. Let your readers see what an ideal world looks like, what a dystopian world looks like, how a supportive, or bad, or even a comical character reacts to your situations and people. How is your world different from the one we all know? Show the difference--don't tell it. Your readers will want to see it, anyway.
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