Diverse stories are important, and we don’t have nearly enough of them in speculative fiction. People outside the dominant group of straight, white cis-men deserve to see themselves represented in stories. If we can’t imagine diverse worlds in fiction, how will we create one in real life?
But writing diverse stories can be difficult. We worry, and rightly so, about getting something wrong. The last thing an author wants is to find out that their attempt at diversity has accidentally created something harmful. Fortunately, writing diverse stories doesn’t have to be difficult. In fact, you can get started right now.
1. Use the Far Future and High Fantasy
Contemporary settings are by far the most difficult. Getting all the details of someone else’s culture right requires a huge amount of work. As a white dude from Honolulu,* I am completely unfamiliar with the experience of a black girl growing up in Atlanta. I can research abstract data about the city, no problem, but the experience is much harder. What does she smell in the morning? What is the local gaming scene like? How does she feel when a cop car drives by?
Writing in the far future or in high fantasy* relieves much of this burden. When you’re constructing a fictional society, you need not worry about getting place-specific details wrong and throwing an informed reader out of the story. You could still write a bad setting, of course, but that’s what worldbuilding advice is for.
In a fictional setting, you can employ your more abstract knowledge in order to parallel issues in the real world. Your story might take place on board a space station orbiting Ganymede. That station has a poor sector, where the police are more threat than protection. Refugees from Io have it worst, as reactionary politicians rail against the refugees’ supposed stealing of jobs.
Populate your fictional setting with all manner of diverse characters. You might not be able to write the experience of an old woman in Tampico, Mexico, but you can certainly tell the story of a station administrator whose ancestors hailed from that city.
2. Write About Accepting Cultures
Stories about people facing adversity for their differences have a lot of potential, but they cannot be the only stories we tell. We must also tell stories of people who are different and go through their lives without being unduly hindered by it. For one, that’s the ultimate goal of any just society, and it’s important we see that in stories. For another, telling only one kind of story is boring.
But some commentators believe that if you include gay characters, or female characters, or non-binary characters, they must face some kind of prejudice, as they do in real life. To do otherwise, these commenters argue, would be unrealistic. Fortunately, this is not true.
It’s relatively easy to imagine a future society without such prejudice. Even if you don’t want a Roddenberry style bright future, surely humanity will be over such arbitrary differences as skin color and sexuality by the year 2200. We’ll move on to entirely new arbitrary differences, like if you were born on a ship or a space station!
Fantasy is the real sticking point. Fantasy often emulates the past, and the past is full of prejudice. Prejudice that makes our skin crawl. But contrary to popular belief, that prejudice was not universal. At many points in history, for example, homosexuality was widely accepted. Many cultures had positive views towards trans people way before the modern social justice movement. If you can imagine an ancient Greek city where two men might love without judgement, why not go further?
Fiction is not about playing statistical odds. If it were, most protagonists wouldn’t survive their first action sequence. Instead, good stories are about what could feasibly happen within a given framework. In a fantasy setting where humans are but one of many sapient species, it’s not at all unlikely that prejudice based on the melanin content of one’s skin would seem a laughable idea.
But what about conflict? If you take out prejudice against your character for being outside the dominant group, then where does the conflict come from? It would come from the same place if the protagonist was part of the dominant group. Dragons, mystical plagues, alien invasions: conflict is super easy to generate in spec fic; it need not be based on who your character is.
Editor’s Note: There used to be another section here about drawing inspiration from non-European cultures, but our views on that have changed after several years, so it was removed.
3. Switch Your Character’s Race and Gender
For some authors, writing a diverse cast is second nature. The rest of us, however, still end up with far too many characters who are white and male, from our protagonists down to our extras. This isn’t because we’re bad people, but because white dudes are our assumed default, and it’s easy to go along with that if we’re not careful.
Rather than beating ourselves up over this, the solution is often to go back and switch your characters’ traits. Keep a tally if you need to. Instead of asking, “Is there a reason for this character to be bisexual?” ask “Is there a reason for this character not to be bisexual?” Most of the time, you’ll find that the answer is no.
Some people are opposed to this tactic. They say that if you change your white male character into an Asian female, she will somehow lack an essential Asian-femaleness. It is true that you may have to account for different cultural factors when you change a character’s race, gender, sexuality, etc., but doing that isn’t so difficult. With most characters, you focus on a few key experiences that define them, so bringing those in line with their new identity is completely doable.
When switching a character to be outside the dominant group, don’t assume you need to make discrimination a big part of their story. Take the character of Grace from Southern Reach. She’s a black woman in a high-ranking position within the US intelligence community. Realistically, she would have endured all kinds of prejudice getting to where she is. But what’s important to the story is that she made it to her position and is determined to stop the protagonist from messing with her organization. That role would be the same if she were a white male. Southern Reach is full of diverse characters, which is one of many reasons you should read it.*
Changing a character is even easier if you’re using a far future or high fantasy setting. Remember: you decide the social prejudices of your setting. In your story, characters don’t need to face the same type of adversity they might in today’s world. Their gender, sexuality, religion, etc. are only essential to their roles if you decide that they are.
4. Use Geordi and Toph as Your Benchmark for Disability
Disability is one of the trickier aspects of diversity to tackle. While any effects a character’s race and gender might have are almost entirely social, disability is by definition something physical. This is just as true for characters with a mental illness as those who need a wheelchair. When writing about a disability you don’t have, the first step is to do some research. Fortunately, many youtube channels are hosted by people with disabilities, where they kindly explain everything from living in chronic pain to dealing with a damaged prosthetic limb.
Once you have a basic understanding of your characters’ conditions, the question is always how much it should affect their lives. A person’s disability does not define them; it is not everything that they are. But it is something they consider, more often in the cases of severe disabilities.
Toph Beifong from Avatar: The Last Airbender and Geordi La Forge from Star Trek: The Next Generation provide excellent guidelines. Both of these characters are blind, but their lessons can apply to most disabilities. In both cases, their disability does not define them. Toph does create the alias “Blind Bandit” as a marketing ploy, but it’s clear she does not think of herself purely in those terms.
Both characters have adaptations to cope with their lack of vision. Toph’s is vibration sensing; Geordi’s is his visor. In neither case does their adaptation erase their condition. Toph can’t read or see people when they aren’t in contact with the ground, but she can detect their presence in pitch blackness. Geordi can see the entire spectrum of light, but that means he’s never looking at something the same way his shipmates are. To him, a masterpiece painting is an interesting collection of x-rays and ultraviolet light.
Earthbending Master and Starfleet Officer alike are hindered by their disability on some occasions. In the Si Wong Desert, Toph discovers that sand blurs her vibration sense, allowing robbers to sneak up on her. Geordi’s visor sometimes malfunctions, leaving him in a bad spot. Both characters also have many stories that are not defined by their disability, nor is their disability the primary source of their power. Toph is a powerful bender, and Geordi is a talented engineer. Their abilities are independent from their blindness.
These two characters are good starting points when you’re wondering how much a disability should affect your characters. Watch their stories as part of your research. If nothing else, it gives you a reason to watch Avatar and Star Trek.
Avoid the trap epitomized by Netflix’s Daredevil. While an excellent show in many ways, it stumbles in its portrayal of the titular character. Daredevil pretends to be more impaired than he actually is. For many people with disabilities, who spend a lot of time and energy convincing others to take their condition seriously, this is infuriating.
Daredevil carries a cane he doesn’t need, and pretends that he can’t easily move around rooms, but his super senses mostly alleviate his blindness the same way Toph’s do. There’s no in-story reason for him to pretend. It’s not as if anyone would say, “Matt Murdock can easily navigate rooms he’s never been in, so he must be Daredevil!” Instead, pretending to be more impaired than he is makes people suspicious of him. All he would have to do is tell people his eyesight is bad enough that he can’t read, the one real difficulty he deals with, and there’d be no issue.
5. Make Singular They Your Friend
Ah, pronouns, our greatest foe. Well, maybe not our greatest foe but certainly the most annoying. For many, many people, “he” is still an acceptable default pronoun. To those people, I introduce the concept of women. Look them up. You probably know some.
Obviously, assuming male with “he” is a bad idea. But conventional English doesn’t give us many options. Alternating “she” and “he” as the default can get confusing. Don’t even get me started on using “he or she” constantly. Plus, that completely discounts all the people who identify as neither he nor she.
Thankfully, we have “they.” When used as a singular pronoun, “they” does not assume a gender. That makes it great for any time when you don’t know a person’s gender or if they* are outside the gender binary. Some people object that this isn’t proper grammar. That’s technically correct, but so what? Language changes. That’s what it does. Singular “they” will become proper grammar once the rules catch up with how people already talk.
That’s right, I said how they already talk. Most people use singular “they” without ever thinking about it: “Someone left their car keys here. I hope they come back before the store closes.” Sound familiar? It’s only when you specifically ask people to use “they” that it feels weird. And the best part is that it stops feeling weird once you do it for a while.
But doesn’t singular “they” cause confusion between the individual and a group? It can, but pronoun confusion is something we’ve always dealt with. If you’ve ever read a scene with two women or two men in it, you know what I mean. How do you know which character “she” is referring to? The author provides context so you know, and it’s the same with singular “they.”
Singular “they” has momentum. Many organizations, including the Washington Post,* have adopted it. Some folks use neopronouns like “xe” instead, and those pronouns should always be respected, but singular “they” is still a safe bet. It hasn’t quite penetrated editing classes yet, but it’s only a matter of time.
Edit: This section has been revised to be more inclusive of neopronouns.
6. Don’t Keep Diversity in Your Head
Spoiler: The end of Legend of Korra.
Sometimes, we hear from an author that their story was meant to be far more progressive than it appeared. Some time ago, J.K. Rowling said that in her mind, Dumbledore was gay. It would have been huge for a children’s series in the 90s to have a gay character in such a prominent and respected role. Unfortunately, whatever Rowling imagined, Dumbledore was never shown to be gay in the books. If readers wish to imagine him as gay, that’s fantastic, but the series does not get credit.
A similar event occurred at the end of the Legend of Korra. The titular character, Korra, and her female friend Asami hold hands in a way that could be construed as romantic. The writers of the show later confirmed that’s what they meant. Again, that’s great, but if they had been a male and female character, they would have kissed. That’s the default way American TV shows indicate a romance is happening. Korra’s ending is ambiguous enough that we needed clarification from the writers.
If you want your story to be diverse, you must show that diversity. If you do not, readers will assume that your characters are part of the dominant group. That is, straight, cis, and white. This happens even if the readers themselves are not part of the dominant group!
You don’t have to make a big deal about the characters’ differences, but they must be in there. Work in some dialogue that casually mentions a girlfriend or boyfriend. If your character is asexual, make it clear that sex doesn’t interest them. Simply writing a character who doesn’t have sex isn’t enough.
Some authors worry that establishing diversity this way will sound awkward or forced, but it rarely does. Characters have little bits of plot-irrelevant dialogue all the time. Authors use these quips to establish who the character is. Think of all the times a Star Trek episode starts with Data talking about a new aspect of humanity he’s learned, even when it has nothing to do with the plot. Follow that model and you’ll be fine.
We might someday get to a point where the default assumption isn’t so strong, but until we do, full inclusion is the only option.
7. Avoid Problematic Physical Descriptions
If you’ve made it this far, you probably agree that describing diversity in your stories is important. But how do you do that? For gender, sexuality, etc., it’s as simple as stating it in dialogue. Describing race can be a bit trickier, especially if you’re writing in a high-fantasy setting as I previously suggested. You can’t tell the reader a character is East Asian when there is no East Asia in your story.
Authors often fall back into problematic physical description when trying to bring race across. Describing East-Asian eyes is where many stories fall, and you should avoid it as a rule. Terms like “almond shaped” and “tilted” are not only inaccurate,* they’re often used as slurs. So none of that, please.
Instead, naming conventions will bring across what ethnicity your story is paralleling quite nicely. Thanks to the internet, it’s very easy to research naming conventions in other cultures. You can also find long lists of real people from those cultures, just to be sure you’re creating a name that actually works.
You can also use clothing, customs, religion, etc. to indicate what real life group your characters hail from. With the internet, getting a general knowledge of most other cultures is easy! You need not be an expert in the culture you’re paralleling, but you should know enough to avoid harmful stereotypes. Also, remember that cultures do things for a reason. Your samurai analogues are unlikely to have a tradition of mounted archery if your world has no easily tamed mounts.
Describing skin tone can also be thorny. Avoid food metaphors. Many people of color are tired of being compared to chocolate, coffee, and so on. Instead, it’s okay to simply state what color someone’s skin is. “Dark brown” is not a racist term. At the same time, when someone has European features, you can describe those too. Doing so helps erase the status of whiteness as a default, because you are deliberately calling attention to it instead of simply assuming. This will feel awkward at first, but it becomes natural with time.
I cannot tell you everything you need to know about writing diversity; I am still learning myself. What I can say is that starting off doesn’t have to be difficult. If you’re already a master of diverse writing, then by all means, attempt more advanced stories. Write in a contemporary setting about another person from halfway around the world discovering the truth about their people’s beliefs. If it’s well written, I want to read that story. But if you’re just starting off, these tips can free you from the paralyzing fear that you’ll do something wrong.
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#7 is so important! It bothers me so much when writers come out after the fact and say, “Oh yeah (blank) was gay, totally.” It seems like such a cop-out to me.
“That’s great, Author, but why didn’t you tell me when I was reading the book?”
Okay, I don’t want to get too pedantic here, but I feel this needs mentioning:
Unclear Phrasing: “Obviously, assuming male with ‘he’ is a bad idea.”
Um, if you’re male, then you’re a ‘he’. That’s how it goes in a sexist language. I’m pretty sure you’re referring to the assumption that everyone is a straight white male, but that sentence was a head-scratcher.
Fun fact: Singular ‘they’ has existed since (at least) Shakespeare.
It has nothing to do with blurring the lines of gender. In fact, none of your usage in this article actually refers to an individual as ‘they’. There’s a reason for that; It’s confusing as hell to read:
“Michael was having a bad day. They had tried welding doors, sentry guns, and what improvised poisons they could make, and none of it worked. Now they had to tell them all that they were going to die. This was a really bad day.”
For the people who experience such great anxieties about having one pronoun or another, they (plural) can give themselves whatever they want as a linguistic niche to satisfy those anxieties. The inherent issue with this in fiction writing is that clarity is of utmost importance. If you write a story with someone who has these anxieties, that should be a focal point of those chapters with them in it. You could switch between he, she, and they, as long as it focuses so heavily on them that you -know- it’s them.
Or, y’know, could just use their name or ‘you’, like most nonsexist languages do.
Why do people think “they” singular is confusing because there is also “they” plural, but nobody is confused by “you” singular and “you” plural?
It’s the same thing! Only, one has been established in the language for so long that people don’t find it weird anymore. As soon as “they” singular gets wider usage, it will stop being weird too. That’s how languages evolve and change.
(And it’s not grammatically incorrect to say singular “they” either, because as the article said, it’s also used when the gender of someone is not known or purposely kept secret)
I have been looking in to the culture, history and religion of India as inspiration for something I am writing. The research process has taught me so much. I learn new things all the time.
Although I think a lot of this is pretty much on point (disagree with some, agree with most) I seriously disagree with the idea that you should pillage naming conventions to create/foster quick cultural allusions.
I’m not saying it doesn’t work – it does – but as an alternative for finding a genuinely interesting way to describe someone’s appearance or parallel cultural background, it falls short. It’s the kind of thing that leads readers to assuming things like ‘oh, so they’re basically the space Chinese’ and then turning their brains off to any nuances that you might bring with that. It’s lazy writing and it encourages lazy reading.
Sorry if this comes off as too critical (I really did enjoy most of the piece), but while building and subverting expectations based on names has a place, I certainly don’t think it should be considered as a standard alternative.
This is a really good article, the only criticism I have is in regards to the Legend of Korra. I completely, 100% agree with you that the ending wasn’t enough, it was too ambiguous, but the fault for that doesn’t fall to the creators. Nickelodeon was VEHEMENTLY against letting them do even as much as they did, to the point where, as you said, they had to confirm it out of canon (although Brian DID do some canon art a few months after the series ended of Korra and Asami in a more obviously romantic setting). They WANTED to do more with the ending, they simply weren’t allowed to.
I know this article is from a few months ago, but “Dumbledore wasn’t gay in the books” is my personal fandom bugbear so I’m going to say my bit anyway.
As soon as I got to the right point in the series, it was immediately clear to me that Dumbledore was in love with Grindelwald, who didn’t love him back but was perfectly content to use his feelings to manipulate him. It was so clear to me that I wondered if I was just projecting and seeing things that weren’t there. JKR’s announcement was just confirmation of what I already knew.
Now, if you went into the scenes with those two with the assumption that Dumbledore was straight, there might not be enough there to change your mind. But if you went in with an open mind, it’s pretty clear.
I think JKR’s choices around Dumbledore’s sexuality make sense from a storytelling perspective. I think she made him gay because it made sense for the character, not because she made a conscious choice to make the HP books more inclusive. And she revealed the information in a way that made sense in the context of the story and what kind of person Dumbledore was.
If she had wanted to be more inclusive re: gay characters, Ron would have been a good choice since there’s a documented link between birth order and sexuality (seriously, the more older brothers a guy has, the more likely it is that he’ll be gay). It wouldn’t have substantially changed the story since while Ron does get into romantic relationships, they’re all secondary in importance to his friends and family. I don’t count the epilogue because duh.
tl;dr I think it’s fair to criticize JKR for not being more visibly inclusive but it’s not fair to say Dumbledore being gay wasn’t in the books just because you didn’t notice it.
I’m kind of wrestling with the race thing when it comes to inclusivity in my story. You see, the two lead characters are blond-haired, blue-eyed, pale-skinned men (though granted, one of them is either bi or gay). However, their culture is drawn from several places, including Japan (especially their religion, based on Shintoism).
The other main character looks Japanese except he’s 6′ 2″ and has red eyes. I don’t know as much about his culture yet, but it is very different from my two leads’ culture. Much more advanced technology, for starters.
The thing is, these three characters (and counterparts who have the same soul & appearance but who’ve grown up in different circumstances) have been in my head for years, and I’ve grown close to them in their current form, including their physical appearance. It feels wrong inside to take my leads and change their appearance, but part of me is afraid of offending people by making it look like “great, here’s another story where the lead characters are conveniently blond white guys.”
Uh, I’m going to lay my cards out on the table here: these three characters are based on characters from my favorite manga, Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle. Although, one of them barely comes up in the original, so almost all of his characterization has been my own extrapolation.
Ironically, in the original manga, the blond guys are treated as the stereotypical foreigners, from a faraway land based on medieval Europe, and the other characters are from “normal” cultures based more on Japan.
I’d like some feedback on this issue, if y’all don’t mind. Thanks for the article and the site.
Well, first thing to keep in mind is that being tall doesn’t preclude one from being Japanese, so I don’t think you have anything to worry about on that front.
I’ve never been particularly attached to my character’s appearance, except as it plays into issues of social justice and representation, so I’m not sure how helpful I can be here. My solution would just be to change what the characters look like, but that might not work for you. I don’t think you’ll offend anyone by having white protagonists. There’s nothing wrong with having white protagonists, the issue is just that we’re currently over saturated with white protagonists, so at worst your story might get a “okay, more white protagonists, I’ve seen this before.” Making them Shintoists might be more problematic. Again, the issue isn’t that white people can’t be Shintoists, but that it feels like taking a piece of Japanese culture without wanting any Japanese characters. If there were more Japanese characters it probably wouldn’t be a big deal. If you can’t change what the characters look like, I think you should probably change the religious element just to be on the safe side.
But I still think changing what they look like is the easiest option.
Thank you for your feedback. I have a couple followup questions, if that’s okay. Since my Japanese-looking character’s culture is not very Japanese, what cultures or aspects of cultures should I avoid? (For example, China, Korea, other places with recent bloody conflicts with Japan?)
Also, since my blond characters’ culture is a mix of different cultures (Amish being a big one, but also with a Shinto-like religion (only if I keep it, of course)), what would be some more cultures/aspects I should avoid borrowing for their country?
There is a third culture that is explicitly based on various rich nations in the real world, so I will probably be borrowing mainly from industrialized Japan, industrialized America, etc. Anything I should watch out for?
I’m sorry for bombarding you with so many questions. Thank you for your time. :) Glad to have found this website.
Those are good questions, Jessica, but I don’t think I have time to do them justice. If you’re interested in this kind of indepth feedback on your work, ordering a consultation from our services page is the best way to go.
Thank you very much. :)
Asexuality is a lack of sexual attraction, not a lack of interest in sex. There are asexual people who have a sex drive and enjoy sex, just as there are those who are indifferent or repulsed by the idea.
Once when I was a little kid I was reading a book where a character’s eyes were described as “almond-shaped”. I asked my mom what shape almonds were, and she showed me. I was like, “But all eyes are shaped like that. So why does it specifically mention that her eyes are almond-shaped?”
Wrt disability:
While Toph & Geordi are relatively positive representations of disabled people, the characters & your descriptions of them fall into some bad tropes.
First, sometimes there simply aren’t adaptations to “get around” a disability. This sort of storyline isn’t a problem in an individual work, but collectively representation is limited to people who are “almost” able-bodied with some cool flavor text. For that matter, blindness is one of the most common disabilities in fiction because it’s something that able-bodied people can easily relate to while other disabilities, especially conditions that have systemic effects, are rarely represented.
You didn’t touch on using disability as a signifier for evil or making disabled characters objects of pity, which are obvious no-no’s, but “neutral” and “positive” portrayals come with their own pitfalls. If a disabled person never shows the effects of their disability except when plot contrivances demand it (The Last Airbender at least had a few running gags about Toph’s blindness) which therefore the character must overcome for the narrative to progress, the unintentional subtext is the “inspirational cripple.” For the able-bodied audience, it’s a cheap feel-good story about perseverance & triumph. The subtle takeaway is that (real-life) disabled people who can’t overcome whatever obstacle simply aren’t trying hard enough. Depending how heavy-handed the author is, there can also be a vein of, “If a disabled person can accomplish x, you able-bodied person have no excuse not to!”
“Disability superpowers” are a more extreme iteration of this. Even though the audience knows that whatever media they’re consuming is fictional with fantastic elements, they still absorb distorted ideas about disability. For instance, blindsight is a popular “superpower” but it depends on the cause of blindness. The vast majority of people with intellectual disabilities do not become idiot-savants. Mental illness has only a statistically small correlation with increased artistic creativity. These ideas can lead to romanticizing or fetishizing disability
In your first point, you state that maybe humanity will have overcome modern prejudices by 2200. It’s a solid exercise in worldbuilding to consider what new types of bigotry may have emerged–but so is some consideration & explanation for why the old ones are gone. Historically, society had never woken up & realized that prejudice is wrong; there’s always been an outside engine of change along with activism. You could find examples for any form of societal oppression, but one important shift in the perception of disability is the advent of medical science. Drawing up an entire timeline isn’t necessary, but a broad idea and a few references are tactful and add to the world’s depth.
On that note, an author should examine the story implications of their character’s disability in the bigger picture. If the your setting is a dystopian future with scarce resources, how did your protagonist get their steampunk prosthetic or cybernetic eye? Well, maybe they financed it through the black market and are on the run from their creditors–is the protagonist bitter over leaving their old life behind or exhilarated by the chase, unrepentant over their illegal actions or guilt-ridden? How does your cheater feel about their disability: do they want to prove themselves, are they sensitive to others’ gawking, are they indifferent? As with any other story element, examining the ramifications of disability can enrich your conflict & characterization.
Diversity In Fantasy Novels:
Author J.J. Excelsior has released an Illustrated High Fantasy novel titled: “World Shaken: Guardians of the Zodiac I”. One of the best attributes of this work is a diverse cast of characters in the fantasy genre including but not limited to: gender, race, ethnicity, culture, disability and socioeconomic diversity.
If fantasy is your thing, I welcome you to enjoy an epic story that includes characters that look and feel like you, and represent more of the people in our world.
“World Shaken: Guardians of the Zodiac I” is currently available on Amazon.com in e-book and paperback format. The eBook will be available for free October 29, 2017 – November 2, 2017. Link below:
https://www.amazon.com/World-Shaken-Guardians-J-J-Excelsior-ebook/dp/B01HI6N5ZU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508983858&sr=8-1&keywords=world+shaken+guardians+of+the+zodiac
Please join me in spreading the word about this work and please share with any other groups looking for diversity in fantasy novels.
SPOILER FOR THE HALF-BLOOD PRINCE
#7 annoys me to no end. Rowling saying after the series is completed “Oh by the way, um, this character was gay.” It’s like after a movie is made of a book, the author says they pictured a certain character as a POC when they were white in the movie. Yeah, too late. I haven’t watched Legend of Korra, but the ambiguous gay romance is so common in YA lit. In books like Percy Jackson, The Hunger Games, and Twilight, there are no queer characters. They were written before casually adding queer characters was accepted. (Though in the Heroes of Olympus, Riordan grabs a side character and announces them as gay, showing he had diversity all along.) Rowling did what Collins and Meyer didn’t – acting like she had a gay character in there all along. Making a side character gay outside of the pages is revolting.
I know I’m commenting almost 2 years after this article was written, but I thought it was worth mentioning re: #7 that while the nature of Korra and Asami’s relationship at the end of the series was ambiguous, canon comics currently in production and coming out in the next couple of months (at least one of them is part of this May’s Free Comic Book Day selection) have clarified that they are, in fact, happily dating.
While I have little faith in Rowling at this point, it’s nice to see that the series creators had a hand in these comics and helped make them happen.
Also a late post, but of all your statements the one that annoys me the most is this refrain: Rowling doesn’t get credit for saying Dumbledore is gay after the fact. I strongly suspect that she said it out of sheer frustration with the fact that people missed it in the books.
Dumbledore didn’t sport a green carnation, but in every other respect he is portrayed exactly as you would expect a gay man born in Victorian/Edwardian England to behave. From the fascination with Muggle candies, which replaces the snuffbox, to his decidedly odd wardrobe (even for a wizard) to that introductory speech after the sorting, with its made up words to the repeated assertions that he was a genius but a touch mad all of this is the standard coding of a gay person within what is largely a Victorian setting.
Then Dumbledore blows the expectations out of the water. Instead of a sniveling weakling he is powerful. Instead of being mocked he is respected. Instead of being effete and passive, he is dangerous enough to give a dark wizard pause. And I forgot to mention the most important characteristic of all: he was fiercely protective of his students, not a pedophile.
The depiction is subtle–as you should expect. After all how many of your middle school teachers talked about their spouses in school? More now than was common in the 1990s, but few unmarried teachers talk about their dating habits with their students. That’s a good way to be up on charges before the local magistrate in most places.
Harry had no reason to know whether Dumbeldore was gay or not, until it became a plot point, and even then it was less about did they or didn’t they, and more about betrayal and justice seeking.
My reaction to reading Sorcerer’s Apprentice when it first came out and Dumbledore appears in Privet Drive was “Oh, thank God, a gay teacher who isn’t a pedophile, but a caring educator.”
I can only hope your site’s authorial (and Dash’s) inability to detect this means that the closet is truly dying its long overdue and much hoped for death at last. However, for those of us who know the brutal, career-ending potential of the closet first hand, and who silently rejoiced at the sympathetic depiction of Dumbledore by a straight author, please stop saying that Dumbledore wasn’t gay in the books.
Take the fact that you missed the signs as a good thing, but recognize that twenty years ago, on both sides of the Atlantic an out gay headmaster was about as likely as Delores Umbridge marrying a centaur.
Little correction at the beginning: it’s Sorcerer’s Stone (actually Philosopher’s Stone, unless you’re American), not Sorcerer’s Apprentice (although there’s probably a book with that name somewhere, too).
However, I have to disagree with you on the obviousness. Most people who read the books (teens and younger, but also adults) have no ideas about Victorian or Edwardian coding of homosexuality (including me), so stuff like the sweets actually went right over our heads. I have to admit the way he speaks about love might be telling, but it’s a ‘might’ and not an ‘is’ for me.
No, teachers certainly don’t talk about their dating habits with their students, so it’s a given Harry wouldn’t have known about it as long as he was a student (and Dumbledore was still alive). It could have been a little more explicit afterwards, though. Dumbledore and Grindelwald having been ‘friends’ can also be considered a negative thing after Grindelwald went all ‘Dark Lord’ and ‘World Domination’ after all.
To me, like to a lot of people, Rowling’s ‘Dumbledore is gay’ explanation after the release of the books felt a little bit like ‘it was there all along, now stop pestering me about missing diversity in my story.’
Cay,
Thanks for the correction on the title.
I get that a lot of people missed it. That’s a function of the closet. And for those who have lived in it, that is one of the greatest pains you experience.
My frustration isn’t so much that people missed it, but that you have to hang a sign around someone’s neck in a story for it to count. Rowling did her homework, and she put a (more or less accurately portrayed) closeted gay character in the story. However, because he never kisses another guy, or outright declares “I’m gay,” a lot of people think he doesn’t count.
Having spent nearly all my professional life (to date, and for the foreseeable future) semi-closeted, I am grinding my teeth in frustration. Coming out isn’t an option if I want to keep my job (and quite possibly my life), and it wouldn’t have been an option for 90+ years of Dumbledore’s life.
What I hear when Chris, Oren, or Dash make these claims is something along these lines: “Unless you live/write/act according to a set of prescribed norms (i.e., you must kiss the guy/gal)., then your life is not part of the fabric of queerness.” The Gay Rights Movement (very imperfectly) attempts to recognize the multi-faceted ways in which we chose to express our many and various orientations and genders. However, there are a couple of dominant theories within the larger LGBTQQIA community which have more or less insisted that they have the true path, and everyone else is simply wrong. This theory that you must kiss the girl/boy is unfortunately one of them. Such activists often abusively deride asexuality as a “life-style choice,” and are militant about forcing people out of the closet.
Such an attitude is something I strongly doubt Chris, Oren or Dash would consciously espouse, but the bias seems latent in that frequent dismissal of Rowling’s “authorial intent.” They would be better served by saying, okay, Rowling thought she was writing a gay character, what evidence is there in the stories to support that?
And there is plenty, but you’re going to have to do your homework, and read some LGBT history to learn about it, if you were born after 1940. I suggest Michelangelo Signilore’s books.
This lack of sensitivity to both history and non-Western cultures snags them up on some of their other examples of supposed queerbaiting. It’s also led them to some problems that they have needed to correct (and they have always done so) when it causes the erasure of asexuality.
In my view, it is also leading them astray when it erases the existence of the closet by demanding a certain standard of behavior for a character’s gayness to count–particularly when the story isn’t about that.
For me, the problem with the late ‘outing’ of Dumbledore by Rowling wasn’t that he was gay. As I said, his way of talking about love could be construed as a hint and, if you know what to look for, there are others, as you’ve just shown. And, yes, perhaps Rowling thought that was enough – and that is why she so gruffly outed him afterwards.
The problem was that Rowling came long after the novels were completely published and stated it for one character.
Fact is, with the other teachers at Hogwarts, we still don’t know whether they’re bi, straight, gay, or something else. Well, we can presume Snape was straight, since he was in love with Lily, but then, he could have been somewhere else on the spectrum, too. But, then, most kids don’t really think of teachers as sexual beings, so that’s perfectly okay.
It’s not about giving all people in the story a sexual identity. It’s about singling out one person who was pretty central to the story, but, if we’re honest, well outside the age where it would have played into it much, and say ‘they are gay’ long after the series was completely published. I get it that Dumbledore might have been deeply in the closet (or not, see below) because of the time he was born and raised. But what about the students at Hogwarts, for instance? Wouldn’t it be realistic that a certain number of them are somewhere outside the ‘straight’ area of the sexual spectrum? It’s not about making one of the main characters gay, but even having a same-sex couple or two in that cafe where Harry goes with Cho would actually discreetly make a point. We get quite a bit of worldbuilding and scenes which are descriptive to set the stage, so seeing a few people who’re holding hands with someone of the same sex at Hogwarts wouldn’t be too difficult to implement.
Even in her newest additions (Fantastic Beasts and the play), there’s no openly gay character so far – and we’re in different times now. Why not? The wizards and witches live in a different society, they do not have to adhere to whatever was considered ‘normal’ or ‘legal’ among us normal humans at that time. We see differences between the wizarding society and the muggle one in Fantastic Beasts when it comes to POC. Sexual identity could be another one.
A lot of people were pissed off about the Scorpius/Albus teasing in the play, first being very suggestive about a possible relationship between them and then just pushing both of them into what for many fans did feel as relationships which came out of nowhere. That’s one of the actual problems, because it is queerbaiting.
Rowling could have made a few younger characters gay, like some of the students in Harry’s year. And no, they wouldn’t have had to be outright snogging somewhere. (And it would have been less volatile than the ‘gay headmaster’ you mentioned, too.) But showing a couple in the background, as seen above, perhaps two guys who are coming alone to the ball in the fourth year and spend it together chatting and sitting a little closer than one would expect… That would have been discreet, too, and some readers surely would have missed it, but it would have put a bit more diversity into the series as well.
“I get that a lot of people missed it. That’s a function of the closet. And for those who have lived in it, that is one of the greatest pains you experience.”
So, even if I accept that Rowling intended Dumbledore to be gay all along (which I frankly don’t, given her history of retconning), why would she choose that to be her ONLY depiction of queerness? The series has hundreds of characters and dozens of relationships, literally ANY of which she could have made queer, but NOPE.
My 7-year-old trans son adores Harry Potter, and he explicitly looks for ANY signs of trans and queer representation in all the media he consumes. He didn’t find it in Dumbledore — or any other character. The fictional universe he loves most and has spent the most time in has, in his mind, offered him only straight, cis role models.
I’m not singling Rowling out as particularly egregious at this; there are no trans or gay characters in ANY movie my kid has watched, EVER. Rowling’s failure to show kids identifiably queer role models is totally par for the course. So I’m not especially mad at her about it — but I refuse to give her brownie points for representation when that representation, if we can even agree it exists, is completely invisible to her intended audience.
8. Is it important for fictional culture to resemble real-life one? For example, when it comes to names, I usually use simply sequences of syllables, if they sound good. I hardly ever use real-life names in my fiction.
It depends on what kind of story you want to tell. If you want to speak about a real society in guise of a fictional one, you need to make the resemblance big enough so people realize.
Diversity comes in many forms, though. It can be ethnicity, it can be having strong characters (read: characters with an agenda who are not just stereotyped) of both genders, it can be having disabled characters, it can be having characters with different sexual orientation. What kind of diversity you can use depends on the world you have, of course, but most are always possible. Also remember that even if there’s no big physical difference, unless you have a hive mind, you will always have different fractions within a group of people.
I also wonder about, what I call it, “half-diversity”, when a character is clearly not a part of a real-life privileged group, but at the same time clearly not a part of a real-life marginalized group. I pointed out fantastic skin colors, but what about other examples:
– characters with no biological sex and concept of gender. They’re clearly not male, but they’re clearly neither female nor transgender. (example — “The Land of the Lustrous” by Ichikawa Haruko).
– character with no sexuality (example is, again, “The Land of the Lustrous” by Ichikawa Haruko). Clearly not straight. Clearly not LGBTQIA+. Clearly not any other sexual orientation.
I wonder what should be considered in such narratives, and is it really good idea? I find it good in such stories that characters are not just another straight white able-bodied cis-men, but they don’t seem to me to represent any real marginalized group.
I also wonder about “The Land of the Lustrous”? Would you consider it “diverse”?
Characters with no sexual interests in any gender are asexual, which is the A in LGBTWQIA+. If they also have no interest in relationships (or only have no interest in relationships), they are considered aromantic.
Any kind of diversity from ‘the whole cast is straight, white, able-bodied or -minded, and 99% male with one token woman who is also straight, white, etc.’ is good for a story. And, to a certain degree, all other groups are marginalized, but to a different one. Being a woman already means being marginalized, despite being part of a little over half of mankind. Strange but true.
So you can have characters who do not adhere to any gender norms or have no sexual interest in anyone. It will make your story slightly more diverse than if you left them out. If it’s part of their species, you might have to throw in a little explanation. People will, for instance, always wonder how a species with only one gender (neither male nor female nor trans, just a member of the species) reproduces. You could throw something like that in.
Any diversity from the norm (straight, white, male…) is good. It doesn’t have to be a clear minority. It doesn’t have to be the focus of the story. Instead of asking ‘will it help my story, if character X is gay?’ try asking yourself ‘will it hurt my story, if character X is gay?’ and make them gay, if your answer is ‘no.’ Just show more different people in your stories. If you make their skin-colour, sexual orientation, or gender (or lack thereof) a plot point, though, you need to do your research and see what problems arise for them in real life.
If the majority of the cast is some shade of brown, then how would one describe these different characters? Apparently describing one as coffee colored or mahogany or tweny or tan or beige or carob or caramel or …. (Pick a brown color) is a no? ._.;
I write with a predominantly brown cast but apparently sound like some old white guy when I give my works to beta readers (who don’t know I’m actually a brown lady). If I don’t point out everyone is not some variant of pale, most assume that my characters are white since that’s like some kind of weirdo “default”. However in my mind my default is some shade of melanin infusion because that’s what I’m around – so having to inject descriptors beyond hair and eye color feels forced… :/
I’m only asking because I’m trying to update my writing style to sound less like an old white dude from 50-60 years ago. (Unfortunately my style books are that old and that’s what I had to work with at the time…) What are your thoughts on this?
While I can’t tell you how to make your writing not sound like a white dude, being as I am the whitest of white dudes, I can offer some advice on skin color.
In my experience, it’s usually fine to directly describe skin color. Terms like “light brown,” “dark brown,” “nearly black,” “ruddy pink,” and so on are usually considered fine.
If you’re trying to giving your characters a unique look, you can use terms like that, as well as physical traits other than skin color like height, nose type, hair, smile, weight, and any other physical aspect humans poses. Even with just skin, there are options beside color. The skin of someone who works outside the sun all day will look different than the skin of someone who spends their time in doors.
If you want to know more, we’ve got a post on character description: https://mythcreants.com/blog/how-do-you-describe-a-character/
As for the default white assumption, that is unfortunate, but it’s the reality we live in right now. One way to counteract it in your story is to explicitly describe white characters as well as characters of color. That way readers will learn not to think a character is white unless they are told.
I also wonder about writing transracial characters. Should white writers be careful about transracial adoption (since I heard it had been criticized)? What if it is, for example, human boy in faerie land who is adopted by faerie family? If there’s no racism in faerie land, what else should be considered?
Also, wonder about the changeling thing (faeries abducting children). Shouldn’t that thing be condemned or avoided (since CPPCG 2(e))?
One part of this I can answer easily is that being “transracial” isn’t really a thing. In real life, a person cannot change their race because race is an entirely external classification, whereas gender is at least someone internally determined. A person can know what their gender is from any number of factors, but a person’s race is decided by society.
This can get blurry of course, but in most cases it’s pretty clear cut. The few white people claiming they “identify” as black are at best misguided and at worst trying to profit off black culture.
The scenario you describe of a human being raised by faeries isn’t really the same thing. That’s a classic case of someone identifying with a culture they were raised in rather than the one they were born into, so that shouldn’t be a problem.
Shoot, I think that I need to be more careful with the word “transracial” after Rachel Dolezal. Transracial IS a thing, it means adopting child of other race, not “changing your race”, and my question was entirely about transracial adoption.
Hmm, well I’ve never heard it referred to that way, but so far as I know, there’s no inherent issue with someone being adopted by parents of a different race. Of course, in real life it can get messier, with kids of color often being taken away from their own family and placed with white parents for various racist reasons, but I think you could avoid most of those implications in a fantasy setting. I’m hardly the last word on that though.
Transracial is completely internal. It’s which race you feel a sense of belonging to. It’s cultural as well. My brother is transracial. I find it offensive that you say transracialism doesn’t exist. Though I suppose it’s understandable, since “transracial” is a misnomer. It should be something like “transcultural”.
To clarify, at the time of this comment, I was only aware of the term “transracial” as it was used by people like Rachel Dolezal (a white woman who claimed to be Black), which is who I was talking about here. I’ve since learned that the term is often used by people of mixed racial, ethnic, and cultural history.
Okay, that’s understandable.
Also wonder about ethnic diversity. I think that there’s difference between just representing a character of color, and representing character of a real-world ethnicity. I wonder whether it is problematic for a character of color to have an European name and/or to share European culture.
You’re right that representing some marginalized groups is more difficult than others. In general, it’s fine to simply describe that your character has dark skin. That makes them a person of color, there’s no bar for being “black enough” or what have you. If you’re writing a story about epic airship battles, a black character can act the same way a white character would. Of course, if you want to base your characters of color off of actual POC culture in the real world that can add some great depth, but it also requires more research on your part and there’s a greater risk of getting things wrong.
I have a couple of characters whose names clearly indicate they hail from a different part of the world than Scandinavia, but then there’s also this guy who’s got a “regular” name, whose family has likely lived in Scandinavia for quite some time, but he’s black. I’m not 100 % sure if I get that across.
Eventually my world-building led to a situation where the world I’m writing in never had this large-scale colonization of other areas by Europe… It would be strange enough for the MC (it’s written in first person) to think “oh, this is my friend Max, my black friend, who’s black” when meeting someone she already knows in OUR world, and even stranger to think about blackness in a world with this difference in history. So I can’t really have her think this.
What I do have is her remarking in narration on how he bends his head a little whenever passing through a doorway, because he’s really tall in himself, and on top of that, he’s got this big ball of curly black hair that makes him even taller. Also, at one point, he makes an entrance together with a friend who’s short, chubby and blond, and she thinks something about the contrast between short, chubby, fair and tall, skinny, dark.
I don’t know if this is sufficient, but I’m thinking of leaving it as it is even if everyone won’t get that he’s black, because it seems to me it would be contrived to describe it in a more obvious way.
I’ve generally found that describing a characters dark skin is enough. More than that can start to sound weird, like you’re trying to make a generalization of some sort. Though it never hurts to remind the reader once in a while since they might just forget.
While I agree with the general thesis of this post, I don’t feel that the first two points are particularly practical as advice. I think that, to a certain degree, the types of stories that people want to tell will always have a degree of personal relevance (Being based on a personal experience, an issue or belief that is important to the author or something else that has meaning to the person writing it) so I don’t feel that telling someone to focus on a specific genre or basic narrative structure is going to be all that broadly applicable.
This is not to say that I think this should be used as a justification for a lack of diversity or poor representation of groups of people commonly overlooked in media, just that this sort of blanket advice is not helpful to the aspiring author writing a story of their experiences as a white woman growing up in small-town Alabama who is concerned about how to portray their experiences with the racism of their peers.
As well, with the concept of over-representation of certain viewpoints and story-types, I feel this (And a number of other articles) have a bit of a blindspot with regards to the role of industry gatekeepers in the proliferation of these sorts of stories. The onus in these articles is always thrown back onto the writer, but I think that there are a lot of people out there writing stories that go against this grain but that aren’t being picked up by distributors. Essentially I agree that writers and creators should strive to create works with diverse and inclusive viewpoints, but there is only so much the individual creator can do without also addressing the ways these issues have become ingrained in the distribution side of the system.
Every individual creator who strives to add to the diversity of characters does a bit of work towards more diversity. And today, there’s always the option of self-publishing.
That’s true but authors are not the only contributing factor in changing the portrayal of diversity in media and ignoring the other parties involved in the system and their effect on the media landscape shifts the onus to affect change to be the sole responsibility of creators.
While self-publishing is always an option it remains a more difficult option that does nothing to address the core issue that works that portray certain groups of people or are written by certain people have a much more difficult time getting mainstream recognition and success.
Focusing on representation in individual works only goes so far; eventually we, as a society of consumers, have to confront and change the problems inherent in our current system that excludes certain voices from being heard.
Media is made up of individual work. Every book, comic, movie, TV series, and computer game is an individual work. But if you make a computer game where the first-person main character happens to be an African-American woman and the first reaction of people to the release is ‘oh no, why did they ruin the game by making the character an African-American woman this time,’ you know there’s a lot of ground to cover (and this happened yesterday, with the release of “Subnautica: Below Zero” in early access – a game where the sex or ethnicity of the main character plays no role whatsoever, because they’re alone on an alien planet).
The more media is diversified, the easier it becomes to get published with a character set outside of today’s standards, but if nobody ever starts with it, no shift will happen and we’ll still have the ‘white, straight male’ standard in fifty or a hundred years.
I feel like we’re having two different conversations here:
I am not arguing against diversity in media and have not been at any stage in this discussion. I said the article does not touch on the role of industry gatekeepers in keeping stories with representation out of seeing a wider release. The problem is not just “People need to write stories with greater levels of diversity” it is also “Publishers need to in turn accept these stories and stories from creators of different backgrounds”.
I have lost the thread of what anything you’re talking about has to do with the point I brought up.
I see your point. My point, however, is that the Gatekeepers will never change their view until it becomes clear to them that people do want more diversity. That every piece of media, self-published or other, which does succeed with a diverse cast can be a little grain on the balance which needs to be tipped to change opinion. The gatekeepers will not just change their opinion at once, they will stay with the ‘it worked so far, we’re not changing it’ until proven wrong.
Wonder Woman and Black Panther proved them wrong on two aspects: action movies with female leads and action movies with POC leads can succeed, if they’re good. That has opened up some options in Hollywood.
The same must happen for the publishers, but it will not happen while people do not continue to send in stories with more diverse and different casts. While people do not demand different casts for the novels. Media will only change on demand. Just as the two movies above proved there is demand for their kind and have started a change for Hollywood (which will take a long time), other media needs proof that the demand for different types is there as well. The gatekeepers do keep an eye on what happens outside publishing houses, otherwise books first published in self-publishing (which is a lot harder, I know it, because I do it) would never turn up on the lists of publishing houses. If they see enough stories with diverse casts succeed, they will change their minds. But they won’t just change them because someone writes a blog post, which is why this site advertises more diversity in people’s stories. To bring it out there where it can be seen by the gatekeepers, where the publishers learn that there is demand for it.
But my counterpoint is that I think there is more that we, as a society, can do to change the views of media gatekeepers and see more diverse stories and storytellers promoted within the media. I think we need to do something to change the structure of how publishing/production/other distribution channels are set up so that people who are writing diverse stories do not have the same level of impediment to entry they currently do.
I have found this article incredibly helpful in my writing process. Any progress done for social justice is welcome.
However, I have a problem with 6. While singular they is something that exists in English, I’m from Spain, where I don’t have that luxury.
The equivalent of “they” in Spanish is also gendered (Ellos o Ellas) and the only gender – neutral pronoun we have (Ello) is practically as insulting as calling someone “It” in English. And it’s basically never used anyways.
Do you think there is a solution for that? Because that’s the only part of this article that I don’t think that can be accomplished in my language, not without sounding extremely ridiculous. The best I came up with was to avoid pronouns where it was possible, but that is not always the case.
Unfortunately that’s not something I can be of much help on, as English is the only language I know well enough to give any advice on. I’d recommend seeking out some nonbinary Spanish speakers and seeing what they have to say.
Fortunately we have “they”
*Cries in French*
I’ve come upon an interesting fantasy series which has a diverse cast and a society where race plays little role (although gender does – the sexism, however, is addressed in the novels). “The Case Files of Henri Davenforth” is set on another world where humans, dwarves, dark elves (perhaps others, but they haven’t been in the books so far), brownies, dryads, and various were-creatures live alongside the human populace. There’s some predjudice towards werefoxes for being mischievous and unreliable, but apart from that, non-humans are treated as a regular part of the populace. There’s a weremule who is director of the Royal Museum, for instance, which is certainly a job which brings wealth and influence. Among humans, skin colours don’t play much of a role, either, and it’s mentioned only in passing when it comes to characters. One of the medical examiners has dark skin and so does the new magical examiner joining the precinct in the fourth novel, neither is treated differently for it, both are accepted as they are competent.
Sexism is a topic, as the story is set in this world’s rough equivalent for the early 1900s – there’s technology coming up, but it’s a slow process, and the society is very close to late-Victorian society when it comes to morals and social rules. It’s not just the person who has been pulled into the world who addresses it, though, it’s also the ruling queen who is adamant that women are to be allowed into every profession (and can get quite pissed off when she learns someone isn’t keeping to that).
On the “why can’t this character be an Asian woman?” is *research* since that would take a mountain amount of hours to do it respectfully and all the contradicting limitations of what is and isn’t acceptable to an individual type of POC is exhausting. What I actually took from the Almond/Jet black hair description debacle and the Harry Potter “Cho Chang Controversy” to mean two (or three with a contraction) “Don’t Bother” since everything I’d do would be racist, and I’m POC!
When you write a character who is Asian and female, the easiest way to avoid most of the controversy is to write a character first and foremost. For most stories, it doesn’t really play a role whether the character is Asian, African, European, or from any other area of this planet. If you wish to write about a specific strife of someone from China, say, that’s a different topic and, as with most specific challenges of being Asian, female, gay, or otherwise considered a minority, best left to those who know about it first-hand. Yet, that doesn’t mean you can’t have a diverse cast. It just means you write them as characters and give them a background in different ancestries. Depending on when your story is set (such as the far future), problems that come with non-white ancestry might not even play a role any longer.
The problem with Cho Chang is that she’s clearly not even named properly – five minutes with the tables for Chinese first and last names on Wikipedia give you a better understanding of how Chinese names are usually built and of what to use as which. ‘Cho Chang’ already sounds as if someone has taken the sounds often associated with Chinese (which leaves the question of which one of the 1000 dialects spoken in China) and turned them into a name. That doesn’t look good and it should be obvious why.
Had Rowling done a base amount of research – such as asking a person who speaks Chinese and, optimally, has Chinese ancestors whether they can give her a convincing name for a Chinese girl, it would already have been much better – and there are quite some Chinese people in Britain, so it’s not an ‘I had no access to them’ situation.
In general, don’t describe anyone with food comparisons, no matter whether that’s almond-shaped eyes or whether that’s melon-sized breasts. Don’t make someone a stereotype just because it’s easy.
What about stories set in locations where white is not the majority. If you are writing a story set in the Middle East is okay for them all to be brown cis Muslim straight men. Should you go for religious diversity by making some atheist or Christian. Or is the story is Japan would it be wrong to have only straight males as characters. Interesting how gets muddled when its not white characters involved.
First of all, if you only have straight men, it’s not diverse. You only have one type of character. Women are an addition, gay men are an addition. Yes, a different religion would also add to that. Someone who is not able-bodied would add diversity, too.
This is not about ‘no white characters’ – this is about ‘only one type of character.’ Straight white men just are a horrid majority of all non-diverse characters.
As Cay said, there are plenty of types of diversity out there. You don’t have to have every flavor of diversity all the time, but there is *always* room for something: gender, sexuality, religion, physical disabilities, neurodivergence, less-represented body types. Frankly, having more diversity involved is usually more realistic, despite what some people claim. Just having your cast be fairly ethnically homogeneous (even if it’s non-white) doesn’t automatically make a lack of other diversity a good idea.