I know there’s some information out there: blog posts and templates. I’ve been kind of failing forward, writing gender-swappable player-sexual romantic options for my game. I thought I’d try to one-source questions and findings to make it easier for anyone who wants to give it a try.
Findings
A) It takes much longer to write.
Doing all pronouns for all characters slows me down quite a bit, especially in intensive passages. Having done it for more than 350k words now–so, I’m faster than I was–I can say a typical passage can take me half again as long. My editing time is easily doubled, since I tend to have to do a pass solely for this. This, for me, means I can write 1,500 words in the time I usually could write 2,000; I can edit 1,000 words in the time I can usually edit 2,000. Taken over hundreds of thousands of words and months, it can really add up.
B) It takes more words to go the same distance, plot-wise.
This is because of parallel events or descriptions. e.g. I often have to write both male and female outfit descriptions. Also, one word can end up being a fly in the ointment for a male versus female description. Is their chest hard of soft against you? Believe it or not, it can throw off how and whether someone is attracted to a character. And vary by gender. So you end up coding swaps for adjectives, or I did anyway.
C) Gender extends to MUCH more than pronouns.
This is eye-opening and insidious. But names for common objects sometimes have gender, enough to break immersion with misuse. e.g. perfume versus cologne. Clothing is especially rough. You’ll want to pay special attention to this. It makes me wonder if gender swap is even possible in a language like Spanish where objects have gender attribution. In addition, sexist or not, some actions don’t read the same having a man and woman do it. Societally either. E.g. two men boxing behind a bar in medieval times might be treated differently by the magistrate or passersby than a man and woman boxing. Or what people find attractive.
D) You'll save thousands of keystrokes with gender-neutral names.
I have some characters, like Saz, whose name stays the same whether they’re male or female. Trudy, however, becomes Rudi if you designate that the character should be male. The additional key strokes across the breadth of my work is enough for me to wish I’d chosen all gender-neutral names.
E) If you do it, it's easier to do it from the beginning.
I’ve coded gender swap both progressively and retroactively now. It’s easier to do it right in the first place. It took me almost 2 weeks of 2-5hrs/day to retrofit 250,000 words. It’s tedious enough that I almost quit because of it. Not so bad when you spread it out.
F) Some pronouns are trickier than others.
EX: Male possessive is “his,” female “her.” Male object pronoun is “him,” female “her.” A sentence like: “he took his coat upon him” can play wrong easily. Or if you use it at then end. “The coat was his” works, but not “the coat was her.”
G) Mass replace can save time but is dangerous.
H) Contractions don't need dedicated designations.
${bob_he}'ll works for male or female, resulting in “he’ll” or “she’ll.” ${bob_he}'s works too: “he’s” or “she’s.” Contraction, not possessive.
Questions
1) What do I do about clunky prose when I have two characters in a scene and either character may be either gender?
The problem, here, is that even if I code the swap for gender pronouns, “she” will refer to both characters 25% of the time. What I end up doing is using full names for clarity which becomes belabored. The time-consuming and accurate thing seems to be elaborate *if (characterA_gender = “male”) AND (characterB_gender = “male”) Excessive use of this will push me past the ideal playthrough length to word count length ratio.
2) Are there trade secrets about sexual descriptions when NPC and PC genders are both interchangeable?
I’m guessing intimate generalization is the way to go for streamlining, focusing on recap or emotion rather than precise physical description? Is this considered lazy writing? More often, I have written 2-4 scenarios. 2 when the NPC gender doesn’t come to bear, and 4 when it does.
I hope this helps someone. I can make this page a wiki if enough people have things they want to add. Cheers!
Like Malin I based mine on ${he} with single-letter variations for different characters. I initially tried to write without using “his/hers/theirs” at all for the genderflippers, but failed and finally added ${hers} as the base pronoun there. If I were coming to it fresh, I would totally use ${they}.