Changing a character's sexuality.

Ok, I'm likely going to set off a nuke here, but it's a genuine question. I want to have a character who is either straight/gay and for a good reason wants to be gay/straight. There are several options like having them being religious or has someone who wants to be in a relationship with them. However, I'm not sure that those are good reasons to want the change. I can think of one, (Wanting to see life from all sides) but that is the main character's motivation and this is a side character who is helping him explore.

Honestly, it depends on how you execute the reason. Chances are though, if the person wants to explore all sides, they'll have more of a desire to be bi or pansexual, than just the opposite.

What are you looking for, specifically?

A good reason other then trying to figure out sexuality, for someone to want to change it. Doing it because of peer-pressure, to me does not sound like a good reason. (Although it is the most common reason IRL)

Could start with a If It's You, It's Okay?

Well, uh, how strong is this desire? Like, I wanted to change my orientation for a while cause I thought it would make me a better writer. So if it's a minor thing, it can be for any number of reasons, that don't have to be the most iron clad of reasons, because people.

From your posts I don't quite get why this necessitates a change in sexuality for this character unless you've already decided that the character conforms to a particular sexuality and then decides/wants to "go against type".

I gather that the MC is of one sexuality and is preparing to experiment to try all things in life, but is there any pressing reason why the other character isn't already bisexual or of an appropriate sexuality to enable this?

Why is it that the minor character is of an orientation that necessitates a "change" to make the scene work?

You mean you want your character to live like the opposite orientation, right? In a fictional world anything can go, but since in Real Life a person can't change who they're attracted to the idea can come off as quite offensive. Regardless of how people take it religion can be a good motivation. However it's done the character shouldn't hate those who identify as what he is/was.

Latent bisexual tendencies spurring a desire to experiment coupled with an openness to do so are more believable than an actual "switch" in orientation based purely on an interest in balance.

Speaking from personal experience, by the way. Thought I was straight for most of middle and high school. Then I figured out that I wasn't exactly. It happens.

Sexuality is rather set in stone, you can no more change it than you can your natural hair colour or your biological sex, short of being in a sci-fi or fantasy setting. So rather than changing their sexual orientation it would be, as others have stated, more akin to realising their actual orientation instead, or simply changing how they identify in terms of sexuality.

How this happens can be quite varied. Usually it just occurs as some latent curiosity or a willingness to try something different, sometimes they may develop a full-on crush on someone of the same or opposite sex. It really depends on the what sexuality they're changing from to and what sort of social attitude the character would have been brought up in; if it was really open and liberal, they may experience the former motive (curiosity and experimentation). In more socially conservative environments, they may have it suddenly spring up on them one day, or they may have been internally repressing it for a long while.

I'd make sure, however, that whatever it is in-character, you have an equally valid motive and method out-of-character for doing it as well. Myself, I generally find the Sudden Sexuality trope to be kinda cheap. There should at least be a suitable build up towards the whole event.

edited 4th Sep '13 12:25:53 AM by Tolgron

I think there's a sort of Newton's First Law of personality traits- people tend to be pretty much themselves unless something (society, other people) applies pressure on them to be something else.

Why would someone want to change their sexuality? You could always use the tried-and-true reason throughout much of history ("people finding out I'm X will cause Very Bad Things to happen to me, so I have to be not-X") or a more fantastic-but-still-grounded reason ("I'm in an arranged marriage with a person of the same sex, despite my orientation, so I'm going to try and change and make this work.") Or, since you said there's someone helping this character, you could always go the cynical route and say that the other person is manipulating them for whatever reason- either a crush that's unrequited due to Incompatible Orientation, or simply wanting the feather in their cap of having "converted" someone.

edited 4th Sep '13 2:32:26 PM by edgewalker22

Thank you all for your help, I think that having an arranged marriage with an incompatible gender might be a good one. I can figure out how to do a heterosexual arranged marriage, any thoughts on a homosexual one?

Alliances would be my guess. Two families want to pool their resources and A) simply don't have opposite-sex children of appropriate ages they can pair off or B) want the alliance, but don't want to muddy the waters by actually mixing bloodlines. Constantly splitting and re=splitting the estate could be a real problem among wealthy families that didn't practice primogeniture, so they could marry off lesser children to persons of the same sex, gaining temporary alliances (duration of the marriage, presumably) while also preventing those individuals from having any legitimate issue.