Indie Author Weekly

166: Writing alternative relationships, Q&A Part 1

• Sagan Morrow • Episode 167

Share episode

This episode provides Q&A inspired by the Weeknight Writers "Writing Alternative Relationships" panel discussion I spoke at this past summer...

  • About the type of alternative relationships I write in my novels.
  • Q1: Do you believe it’s inherently radical to write alternative relationship models?
  • Q2: How does writing alternative relationships affect the way in which you construct your setting and/or frame the in-story relationship between the level of support (or difficulty) the alternatively romantic characters have with the society they live in?
  • Q3: How do you deal with the exploration & creation of boundaries in alternative relationship models? 

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this Q&A, coming next week!

Resources & links mentioned in this episode: 

Let’s chat about this episode:

Support the show

Hello and welcome to the indie author weekly podcast where I take you on the behind the scenes journey of my adventures as an indie author. I'm your host Sagan Morrow, and I'm an eighth time polyamorous romcom, author of plus I've also written several business books for solopreneurs. Let's dive into this episode. Today I want to answer a couple of questions from a panel that I spoke on this past summer. For the weeknight writers group. We can add writers is a social enterprise designed to create dedicated to creating accessible educational resources and events for fiction authors, and it's run by the business for authors team, and they have done a fantastic job of creating community. They do these really cool story crafting sessions, which are one day virtual conferences with different panels that explore a specific aspect of writing, such as world building or story structure. They've also been a weekly Twitter chat. I'm not sure if they're still doing that. I'm pretty sure that they're switching away from Twitter. Just because of you know, for obvious reasons, Twitter transforming over the past over recently, you know, but they are on other social media platforms. I believe I could be wrong, but I think that they're trying to grow their Instagram platform. And they might also be on a couple of the newer social media platforms that I personally just haven't gotten around to doing. I think like the different blue and things like that Twitter esque platforms Twitter adjacent sort of platforms, I think, as is what they're going to be focusing on. But they are truly, you know, dedicated to helping writers and building community. They're so good at it. It is such a wonderful initiative. You can learn more about weeknight writers at their website business for authors.com. And I'm sure that they also have their different social media platforms on there so that you can find where they are spending the majority of their time these days as well. Now, I've spoken on several of the weeknight writers story crafting sessions, panels, and it is always such a wonderful experience. They just do a really great job of bringing people together, providing a very inclusive space. I do also just want to acknowledge here that I'm not affiliated with them. I just really appreciate the work that they do. I think that they're just wonderful and lovely, lovely group of people, lovely community. It's just wonderful. So I really, really appreciate being integrators. And I want to do a shout out to Dianna again, for all of the amazing work that Diana does with, you know, create like really building this community for authors online. So at this past summer, when I spoke at one of their one day conferences, the topic for our panel was writing alternative relationships. We had a great discussion about what that looks like and the nuances of writing alternative relationships. I believe that the panel discussion might be added to the weeknight writers youtube channel at some point. So at that point, you'll be able to check out what some of the other panelists said about these topics. But in the meantime, I wanted to share the gist of my own answers to these questions. And I think this was back in June. I'm pretty sure it was June that we did this panel. So I'm providing for you here the answers to the questions that were you know, kind of given to us ahead of time. And I honestly can't remember at this point, if we ended up getting to all the questions, and I'm sure that the types of answers that I gave at the panel ended up, you know, changing slightly from what I had written down in my notes, but I thought it would be kind of fun to just share the notes that I'd written ahead of time, essentially and just kind of expand on some of my answers there. So I'm going to do this as a three part series here on the indie author weekly podcast. Definitely stay tuned for more q&a on this topic of writing alternative relationships. I will share those in the next couple of episodes. And if you have any questions about the entire concept, this you know fairly broad topic of writing alternative relationships, then flew please do reach out you can email me hello at Sagan morrow.com. Or you can connect with me on twitter or instagram at Sagan lives. Submit your questions and I will do future episodes answering your questions. I would love to answer any questions that you have. So before we dive into this, what type of alternative relationships do I write? Well, I write polyamorous romantic comedies. I like to do polyamorous relationships, open relationships, all of that type of thing. So basically the concept of my characters being in multiple simultaneous romantic relationships that are fully consensual with everyone involved. It is ethical non monogamy some of my characters like to label it and others adapt. So some of them like to use the term polyamorous others, you know, might not necessarily use that exact term. And I'm also fairly, I would say fairly fluid with the term polyamory you know, some of my characters might be a little bit more into the emotional sort of side of it. Others might be a little bit more into the more sexual side of it, and varying degrees of, you know, commitment and all of those different types of things. So that is kind of the way that I like to write it. I like to be fairly fluid with it, and my characters all have slightly different takes on what a polyamorous relationship looks like, and a major part of why I like to do that is because there are so many different interpretations and different ways that you can decide to describe yourself and your own relationships and your own identity. You get to choose your own label and that gets to mean whatever it means to you. My main series that I write is the polyamorous fashion series and you can find it at any major bookstore or visit Sagan morrow.com/books. So if you're curious about seeing polyamory in the lens of a romantic comedy novel, then you should definitely check those out. Visit Sagan morrow.com/books. Link is in the show notes. Okay, so question one for our panel discussion. Do you believe it's inherently radical to write alternative relationship models? Such a good question. I was 29 years old when I finally realized that I identify as polyamorous in my mind, that is way too long to figure it out. Like that is almost three decades of living, that it finally took me to realize, Oh, I totally identify as polyamorous. So if there had been more representation in the media, than I definitely believe that I would have figured it out a lot sooner. It simply is not represented. And in particular, what I find is that the media loves to feature polyamory as a triad relationship, which is that whole concept of you know, three people where they are all in a relationship together, all three people are involved with one another. And that at this point is is just not as I don't want to say appealing to me, but it's not. It's not what has drawn me to polyamory. My my sort of inclination towards polyamory, just on a very personal level, is that I really liked the idea of, you know, one on one relationships, but simply having multiple simultaneous relationships. So those are called a V style. Relationship in polyamory, where you basically have one person at the center of the V and you know, two people off on each corner that are not, you know, they are not in a relationship with one another necessarily, and I mean, that can look like all different types of frameworks, you know, double use and things like that. But what I really found is that when I was figuring this, this out about myself when I was, you know, sort of struggling with my identity. A big part of it was that in the media when I first started learning about polyamory, I was seeing it as this concept of bringing someone into an existing relationship, rather than starting relationships with people outside of your relationship and for me, I struggled a long time I think it took it took me like quite a number of months to figure out that identify as polyamorous and I started exploring it. And for me, I think a big part of it was because I was looking at the relationship I had with my spouse, and I was thinking, you know, I love my relationship with my spouse. I don't want to bring someone into our relationship. I like it just being the two of us. And also I would like to be in relationships with other people. So this whole concept of representing that style of polyamory in the media is really, really important to me. I have also had a number of readers tell me that my books have helped them realize that they identify as polyamorous too, and they had no idea beforehand. That that was a thing, and that that was a part of their identity. That is huge. That is amazing. So the answer to this first question is Yes, unfortunately, I think it is still radical to do this to write alternative relationship models. One day, it won't be radical, and that's a good thing. It'll just be common. It'll just be every day. It'll be completely normalized. Question number two. How does writing alternative relationships affect the way in which you construct your setting and or frame the instore relationship between the level of support or difficulty the alternative the alternative Lee romantic characters have with the society they live in? So my goal with my work is to normalize polyamorous relationships and remove the level of difficulty that they have with it. So to actually make it much more socially acceptable, but in a contemporary world. What I have seen in the media you know, is that typically polyamory is fiction fictionalized in non contemporary societies. It might be featured in you know, sci fi or historical romances or fantasy novels and that type of thing. And I really love this idea of showcasing polyamory in today's society in contemporary Canada. Because when I am doing that, essentially what I'm illustrating is, you know, here's how you can be polyamorous and have a polyamorous relationship in our world as we know it today, right now. That is so important to me. I really love being able to do that.
Some of my characters in my novels have people in their lives who aren't super accepting of it. And the character has definitely asked a lot of questions about these types of things, right? They're wondering things like what if this affects my career, and for other characters, they're just like, oh, I identify as polyamorous cool, done, and done, you know, it's just a complete non issue. So I really like being able to show the different possibilities of things that might be going on in people's heads. I like being able to do that through different types of characters and the dynamics that they have with their own relationships. In small town stilettos, which is my latest romance novel that was released this past July. It features a modern marriage of convenience in which the main character needs to marry one person, but she also has feelings for another person, and she needs to hide those feelings because a relative of hers is trying to use it against her. So, you know, there's just so many different ways but I like to kind of feature it based on the society that they are in based on the level of support or the difficulty that they might have. And the society that I have given them is truly this society so that readers can really put themselves in the character's shoes and really experience what that might be like for themselves, which I think is very, very important if they are considering alternative relationships or if it's something that they might want to explore, to be able to even see it as a valid possibility. Question number three, how do you deal with the exploration and creation of boundaries in alternative relationship models? So I like writing characters as I said, you know, I like to write in a variety of different ecotypes types of characters. I like giving them different lifestyles, backgrounds, goals, and as a result, they all approach boundaries in different ways. Some of them are, you know, have a lot of difficulty read communication. There are definitely some misunderstandings that arise simply because of various assumptions that are made. And that really underscores the importance of clear communication in any relationship, not just polyamorous relationships, but it can be even that much more. It can really come out that much more to the surface communication issues when you are in polyamorous relationships and you know, some of my characters really struggle with speaking up about what they want. So they need to learn to do so over the course of my books, sometimes over the course of multiple books. My readers often say that they enjoy that my novels are informative as well as fun to read. And I think that that is in part because my characters discuss boundaries, and they talk about boundary violations, and they have miscommunications with one another, some of them right out lists of all of their boundaries. They're like here we are going to write it all down. We're going to have it all on paper so that we don't have miscommunications, whereas other characters are much more laissez faire about it. So again, it's really about giving people have so many different possibilities to explore to just sort of broaden your mind of what could this theoretically look like? What is an example of this? And I want readers to be able to look at it as, oh, this could be me or this could be my friends, right to really develop that. Self Compassion and that compassion for other people to view polyamory and open relationships as just as valid and just as worthy as monogamous relationships. So there you have it. Those are my answers to a few of the questions from the weeknight writers story crafting sessions panel discussion on the topic of writing alternative relationships. Stay tuned for part two. I'm going to be sharing that here on the podcast. I will be answering a few more of these questions. I think this is just such a fun topic. There are so many different things that we can explore with us. And if you would like to check out my novels, you can grab your copies of my polyamorous passion series at all major bookstores are just visit Sagan morrow.com/books Link is in the show notes. If you have additional questions about this topic, or any other topic that you'd like me to address here on the indie author weekly podcast, I would love to hear it. Please submit your topic ideas at Sagan morrow.com/question. That my friend is a wrap for today's episode of indie author weekly again, stay tuned for next week where we will continue doing this q&a on the writing alternative relationships panel discussion. You can access the show notes for this episode at Sagan morrow.com/podcast. And please do share your thoughts about this on Twitter or Instagram. My handle is at Sagan lives. Please take two minutes to rate and review in the other weekly on Apple podcasts. And thank you so much for tuning in. I will see you next week for another episode of indie author weekly

People on this episode

Head Shot

Sagan Morrow

Host