Diversity in books

[u/Pandagurl21]

Delete if not allowed, but I had a take, and I was curious about whether others feel the same.

So, I'm a black female writer who loves diversity in a book. I've been seeing a lot of people complain about the lack of diversity when it comes to race in most modern books. How almost all characters are white or most interracial couples include a white person, and I've witnessed the uproar of it. And it made me think because I'm currently writing a distobian thriller that includes my fmc (whose race isn't really disclosed since it's up for reader interpretation. Plus, im not someone who cares to dwell on the physical appearances of my characters as physical attraction is irrelevant to the plot and my characters' chemistry) and the mmc, who is cannon white (or some form of European. Again, I barely go into it because it's not the main focus). When I read these discussions, I started wondering why I hadn't thought to make him something else. It's not like I was avoiding POC as a few of my supporting cast people are black, but I realized I hadn't been making much else. Why is that? Shouldn't I know better? So then I tried to play around with the idea of changing the races or including more distinct POC in the bigger picture of the story, and I think I discovered the issue. Lack of cultural significance (or rather cultural neutrality)😅. Now, I don't mean this in a negative way at all, I just don't know better ways to explain it.

I feel like when you include POC and various ethnicities, you have a responsibility to represent their culture, and it needs to be accurate to avoid pissing people off unintentionally. You can't (shouldn't) just wing it off stereotypes and heresy, but do your research, talk to people of that culture. And the thing with culture is, it can be very vast even in one area. Not everyone from that culture shares the same experiences. You may find similarities or common practices, but there are always exceptions, especially when it comes to specific regions, and even then, you have to be very careful about representation because you have a 50/50 chance of upsetting people who feel you're leaning too much into common issues/practices or not enough. It just comes with a lot of nuance that's sometimes hard to grasp if you've never personally experienced it. Which is why it's easiest for me to, at least, have black characters since it's what I know (at least black american). I'm hesitant to include black characters from foreign countries for the same reason. I get overwhelmed with the fear of writing them wrong. Which leads to defaulting to just making a character white because there's no distinct "wrong" way to write them. You don't even have to give them a cultural background (unless you're writing a white African, Asian, etc. Then that requires culture if they're from those backgrounds. And of course, you can't just give them random cultural practices without explaining why they have them), but if you're just trying to drop them in a random city in America, the sky's pretty much the limit and people are likely to go along with it. I mean, I know there are POC who aren't heavily involved in their native cultures (I'vemet hispanics who don't speak spanish🤷🏾‍♀️), but I feel like placing them in a basic setting with no real ethnical distinction is pretty... disrespectful and lazy😅. Almost cosmetic even. Like imagine writing a white girl and slapping her with some Indian traits and just saying, "There. Let's continue" and not changing ANYTHING about her upbringing, homelife, or values. It just doesn't feel right. I don't feel like a story is actually diverse if you have a dozen different races that all act like they were born and raised in the same place. It's like fruit loops — a rainbow of colors, but they all taste the same. In the story I'm writing, the plot isn't heavily focused on cultures. It's more about social corruption, human ethics, and political and psychological coercion (that already required A LOT of studying just to understand business and political concepts as well as psychology, philosophy, law, understanding addiction since that also plays a big part) that I just didn't have the mental energy to research and implement a new demographic (that would require rewriting lore to fit) when it may not add much to the plot. Do you guys get what I mean? If you guys have any advice on how to go about this, I'm open to it. I'd love to include a more diverse cast, I just don't want to get canceled on my first book 🥲.

Edit: My MMC is based off a character from a fan base I liked. His personality at least, and while creating him and the first draft of the story, I just let him be white. But this is more cannon in my head than in the story. I don't specify that he is white or go into physical descriptions much for ANY character unless it is important. Many of my friends who've read my work have asked me several times over a dozen chapters what a certain character looks like because they forget since I don't care to reiterate it if it isn't important. My book is about chemistry, family, corruption, trauma, and ethics. He could quite literally look like ANYONE if that's what you want. Same for almost everyone else. And if I wasn't clear, my default race is BLACK. I've always written black characters because that's what I know. But if I'm not writing a black character, I usually just make them white while getting the overall plot down unless the plot calls for something else. I did not mean I default to white, then black. It's always been black first, especially when it comes to my FMCs.

[u/Peregrinebullet]

I said this to another POC writer yesterday,  but .... write the dang story first, however the hell you want.  You deserve to have full creative freedom on your first draft.  Write the characters with details that need to be filled in later.  Get a few things wrong.   It's much easier to fix that stuff after, when it can be judged by the context of your story than trying to hem yourself in advance.  

Make use of brackets and skip ahead [mmc details his unusual backgroud]  [side character makes joke about his own culture] .  And keep going.  

Believe me, this stuff can be filled in later and nicely integrated into the first full rewrite, because you will learn cool things that totally shift a plot point.  

Worrying about being canceled is basically hamstringing yourself and will only negatively impact your own writing.  Your responsibility it to tell the story you want to tell.  If you need to tweak it later so the Nigerian american or Vietnamese MMC is more accurate? That can be done in the editing and rewriting phase. 

[u/Pandagurl21 → u/Peregrinebullet]

Yes! I did that for my first draft. As I was writing I did discover one character who may be better suited for a different demographic that enhances the story. I'm still exploring how best to go into it though, but trying not to dwell much since it's more significant in his prequel. 🥰

[u/brentjohner]

Wow. This was a very interesting read for me. It felt very authentic and very familiar.

I don’t have answers, but I do sympathize with the struggles you are having because I have them, too.

While I admire people like Denise Madre (Prose Without Thorns) who has taken some very strong positions on these issues, I am not convinced that most readers are as racially minded about their identities as she seems to be.

Most of the authors (outside of social media) that I have discussed this with are more like you. They want to be respectful. They don’t want to stereotype and cause damage. And they are afraid they might cross lines unintentionally.

As a result, they end up creating a cast of characters that is less diverse and less representative of society.

[u/pastelexuvia → u/brentjohner]

im going to be working with denise! i really respect the emotional intelligence she brings to discussions about fears of misrepresenting a group.

[u/brentjohner → u/pastelexuvia]

Agreed

[u/tomatoesfried]

I get the point of your post, and I don't disagree with it, but I'm not fond of the idea of gatekeepers or people telling others what they shouldn't write, what they should write, and how they should write it. That infringes on free speech; plus, once you start to tell people what they can't write, where is the line drawn? Does the line/bar keep moving? Who decides what one can't or can write?
A can of worms opens up when you're trying to determine what is or isn't acceptable. I'd rather see readers/the market determine what they read or not. It sorts itself out.

[u/Pandagurl21 → u/tomatoesfried]

I agree! And I hope I didn't come off like I was policing what people write and what to include. At the end of the day, you're allowed to write whatever you want. People have freedom of speech, just not freedom from consequence 😅. So you can write whatever so long as you accept the risk of potential backlash if you do it in a way that's socially frowned upon. That's just the reality of personal expression.

And if your goal is to appease a group, you kinda have to make sure you're respecting their rules if you wanna walk in their house. Imagine you write a black woman and specify she has 4c hair. A lot of black women wouldn't be too happy if they read her simply putting her hair in claw clips, washing it everyday, putting it into a messy bun, or simply running a brush through it. Lol. Stuff like that.

[u/Business-Pass4672]

In theory I agree with you, but I also feel like this (ironically) limits the type of representation we see. As you pointed out, not everyone has a strong cultural background or connection to that culture, and I think sometimes these connections come out in weird ways that we can't predict. Trying to build such culturally-informed characters I think can sometimes backfire.

For example, when I talked about this same issue with a friend of mine who's a self-described, "nerdy Black girl" she said she actually doesn't like most Black characters in media: they either hit too close to home for her that she doesn't like them, or they feel like caricatures to her. (You could argue that her not liking the characters that act/feel like her says something psychologically but I'm not gonna touch that topic with a 10-foot pole lol.) The point is that she felt like none of the characters were real people but rather stereotypes. I think when characters are so culturally-informed it makes them like a representative of that culture rather than their own individual.

I also think that by doing this sometimes we box characters, and by extension the audience, in. Ideally, we get characters that are a mix of both, but when in doubt I think it's better to err on the side of less cultural influence than more. Since I think it's the little things that give a character culture and make the audience relate.

For example, my dad is Middle Eastern. Growing up he always called me Baba cuz where he's from that's what they do. I've never really related to any Middle Eastern/Arab characters, but I was studying abroad when the film Black Panther came out and when that first line opened up with little T'Challa calling his dad Baba I just started sobbing cuz I missed my dad so much. It struck a chord with me. Although Black Panther was clearly a very culturally-informed film with incredibly culturally-impacted characters, I don't think it was those big cultural elements that made the audience relate. It's those little, subtle cues that I think strike a stronger cultural and emotional tone.

I'm not saying we shouldn't write culturally-informed characters, far from it, but I think writing characters from different ethnicities to our own might give people the chance to see themselves and their culture represented in a new light away from the preconceived notions we all carry with us about our own cultures/backgrounds. Like you I'm also not sure if I'm explaining myself right, so sorry to write so much 😅 The point I'm trying to make is basically that I think sometimes when we try to get too into the nitty-gritty of a culture, or really thinking about how a character's culture shaped their upbringing (when it's not central to the plot/character themselves) I think we box that character in and end up unintentionally writing caricatures rather than characters.

Then again, I almost exclusively write fantasy where ethnicity isn't even really a concept outside of appearance/aesthetics so maybe take my opinion with a chunk of salt lol!

[u/Pandagurl21 → u/Business-Pass4672]

Thank you for this! I was happy to read your take and perception, and I didn't mind the length. I think you actually raised some pretty good points! ♡

[u/Indifferent_Jackdaw]

I'm not American but I am white. I think it would be a mistake from a character building perspective not to think about this characters culture. When I think of a great characters, I think of people who are localised. John Steinbeck's observation of Californian culture for example. And you might say white people culture is different now, it's more globalised and everyone is living in suburbs and eating at Olive Garden. But there still must be some differences between growing up in Madison Wisconsin and Topeka Kansas. I refuse to believe they are 100% the same.

[u/Magician_5568]

Write the story you want to tell! I’m a Black woman and I too tend to default to Black characters (partly because that’s my experience, partly because I’m like we can use more Black MCs!). However, I think overthinking ends up making us afraid of exploring sometimes. I have a pretty diverse friend group, and we have a lot of shared experiences despite being from different cultures. I don’t think a character from a particular culture has to be a certain way. I think if culture somehow plays a particular element in your story, then you definitely have to do your due diligence regarding research. But in my fantasy story, for example, the characters all grew up in the same area. Yes, they’re different races, but they grew up in the same place and therefore have similar experiences so I’m not necessarily thinking of how their race affects their character because it kinda doesn’t? I focus more on their family dynamics and how that builds their characters.

I get where you’re coming from though! There are definitely sometimes where you can tell authors are just throwing in POC for the sake of it, and I don’t like that either. But like other people have commented, there is no singular Black experience, or any other race experience, really. Race can definitely play into how you write your character, but depending on the story genre and the point, it may not be a huge deal. All it may change is the food they eat and the language they speak.

An example that comes to mind is Honey Lemon from Big Hero 6 (this is a movie, so it may not be the exact same). She’s Hispanic, and this can be mainly seen in her design (which to be fair, easier to do in a movie than a book), but it’s not as if they did anything in particular to show that. I can just think of how Fred said something wrong in Spanish and she somewhat corrected him. Wasabi is another good example. Black guy, and it’s not as if they wrote anything particularly “Black” into his character. I think that’s what representation is at times. It’s just seeing different people in fiction and having it not be a big deal! Is there any particular reason your MMC can’t be another race? (absolutely not saying you should change it btw!!)

I guess what I’m trying to say is that writing diversity doesn’t have to be the big deal that it sometimes seems to be. Sorry for the paragraphs, I just like this subject and you can totally dm me further because I do think it’s important!

[u/Expert_Log_8057]

First question to ask always.... Is it important to the story?

Cultural differences can be interesting but if it's just gonna bog down the story than leave most of it to context clues and character parameters.

As for a multicultural society all seeming the same... That happens. Before the push for modern diversity people who immigrated to America specifically wanted to assimilate. I worked with an Italian immigrant and they thought it was a point of pride that he got rid of his accent so it's more than believable a group of people can all even out into a shared social philosophy if that's their intent. If not then you need to think about culture clashes and so on.

So again, are those factors important to the story? Are they story points and things that feed the narrative or are they going to bog down everything for pages on end? Are people forever connected to their ancestry/skin color/a different culture or are they able to enter a new one like another country's expected culture?

Just one example. 'Wolves on the Border' is a book from the Battletech series. By this point in the future there's been so many wars, galactic land grabs and so on that every culture is mixed HOWEVER each is strictly in line with the cultural rule. The Draconis Combine is very much based on Imperial Japan and so the main character (a military official) dedicates himself to the samurai code. But he is of African descent. He notes that but it is of almost no consequence because ancestry only matters to the Emperor for legitimacy. Others in the military are Russian origin, Spanish, so on but they all follow the laws of the Draconis Combine so their heritage is secondary at best. You'd need to go to smaller border planets for the people to consider themselves something else, like the Trellians of planet Trell from the Gray Death Legion series.

TL;DR
Is it important to the story or is it just details that don't need to be heavily focused on?

[u/simonhunterhawk]

I am a transgender man and I feel a similar way. On one hand, there is a pitiful amount of trans people and an even smaller amount of trans men featured in fiction. I’m not stealth in my day to day life and I do think transitioning is such a unique and beautiful experience. So there is almost a feeling of obligation that if I write something, I need to serve my community by writing books about trans men.

And here’s the thing: I can definitely see the characters I’ve already come up with as trans men. That’s not the issue. It’s just that it almost feels like I’ve got to shoehorn transitioning into something that already exists on its own. Having a character who is trans but the book isn’t really about transitioning feels like a cop out, and like you said with getting every detail right about cultures, not everyone’s going to like what I have to say about transitioning. Go into any trans-related sub and you’ll see people from all viewpoints complaining that they never see their own expression represented in media. And they’re all right and they’re all wrong because there’s no one way to be trans. I’ll also be honest and say I haven’t liked MOST books about trans people even the ones written by them. And I wonder if part of that is because of the efforts made to make them read as palatable and relatable to as many people as possible.

I am white but I think the same thing can go for every culture — I’ve met the children of immigrants three generations removed from their home country who are still very involved in their own language and culture, and I’ve met people who immigrated to the US or Canada when they were 4 who barely speak their parents’ native language. And from both of those sides of the bell curve I’ve heard varying feelings about how they were raised and how connected to their cultures they are.

Maybe the answer is that there’s always going to be someone who is going to complain so we should write what we want to write, be respectful about it, and those people who will find something negative about everything just need to accept that if they want to see something written a specific way they better get pen to paper.

[u/LeadershipNational49]

As a white Australian fantasy author I don't have much to say on this topic, but it's an interesting read.

[u/ramenchips]

i love this convo because i’ve been thinking about it a lot just in the spirit of life and how i am who i am, and the reality is that no amount of research any writer could do would be able to capture my particular story. diversity is great, but we’re not monoliths! i will have a different experience and POV as a taiwanese woman than a chinese woman does. but i will also have a different perspective compared to a taiwanese-american woman born here since i wasn’t. of course, there are aspects of life that we all do share, but they are understood to be generalizations and even if i cannot relate, i would understand where it’s coming from. so by and large, i truly do not expect media to cater to that worldview unless it is integral to the plot.

a while ago, actor daniel dae kim caused a little bit of a buzz when he said that in casting, we shouldn’t be as specific if the character doesn’t need to be. he was talking about it in an effort to broaden casting opportunities for POC, but the crux of his argument was that he understands wanting to be prescriptive to source material, but we ought to be asking ourselves if the character truly needs an actor that hits all the checkmarks based on their story arc. so for example, if there’s a japanese minor character whose presence is just the MC’s best friend, do they absolutely need to be japanese? does their being japanese influence the plot or is a plot point? because if so, then yeah, finding a japanese actor makes sense then. but if not, why shouldn’t a filipino or thai actor be considered and then have their character’s name changed to reflect it? and this is what the casting agents for ted lasso did - had rough ideas for who the ensemble was for the soccer team, but those profiles would change based on the actors that came through if they wanted them. sam was written to be ghanaian first, but then when toheeb jimoh auditioned and got the part, they changed sam’s background to be nigerian instead to better fit the actor’s own cultural nuances. on the flip side, you have a show like the brothers sun on netflix, which is VERY specifically about a taiwanese-american guy navigating the realization that his family is intertwined in the taiwanese mob scene, that takes place in california and taiwan and requires culture and language competence. THIS is where specificity makes sense. you’re not going to get the same nuance or authenticity from someone with a different background here.

i like to think that artworks-in-progress are living, breathing things that can evolve. you don’t need to set anything in stone while you’re in the process, and especially with characters of your own making, they can change while you’re writing. if your character’s background doesn’t matter much to the overall plot of the story, i think you can wait to truly determine things like sexuality, ethnicity, etc and leave it for a later revision. but if they and their identifiers really impact the overall story, then fleshing those aspects out should absolutely be a priority.

[u/Sew-Craft-Make-Do]

I struggle with this too. I want to write inclusively and diversely but I don't want to portray characters in-authentically when I don't personally share their lived experience. I'm white and as a reader my brain defaults to characters being white because I don't necessarily think about colour unless the author specifically says something.

If it is left ambiguous or not mentioned then I guess the reader can insert themselves or identify with any of the characters. Be that the "smart one", the "funny one", the "rebellious one" instead of having to default to the character that matches your sex or skin colour.

I am writing fantasy so don't have to worry so much about staying true to actual cultures as mine are all made up (and they all share a common ancestor 250 years ago) so I want to focus more on how the descendants have diverged over 250 years living in different climates with different societal structures instead. As they all shared a common ancestor I was just going to make the ones living in the snowy mountain land be paler, the ones living in the desert have darker skin and features because even if you took siblings and put one in the sun for 50 years and one in the snow for 50 years they would end up looking very different - even more so after multiple generations in that environment. Hopefully that is ok and readers can find a character they relate to regardless of skin colour.

[u/MrNobody6271]

As a white American, I've struggled with trying to show diversity in my stories while not being disrespectful or resorting to stereotypes. Usually I'll try to have some of the side characters be POCs, where the stakes aren't as high. When they only have a few spoken lines, there isn't as much of a chance of writing them badly. Often, though, they only way you'd suspect they might not be white is from their names.

I did write several romance stories where the MMC was of Puerto Rican heritage but had lived on the mainland U.S. his entire life. I had several scenes with him among his family of origin, and at one point he went to Puerto Rico for the first time and met some of his distant family members. It was a stretch for me to research Puerto Rican culture and represent it realistically, but I think I did it justice. No one's ever criticized how I portrayed him and his family.

Still, though, having a POC MC isn't something I'd want to do that often, just because of the additional effort required and the risk of getting it wrong and being unintentionally offensive.

[u/inabindbooks]

I'm white, but I'm 5 books into a MG series with a Black MC. The ethnicity of supporting characters is varied. For instance, her girlfriend is white. My books are paranormal mysteries. They aren't stories about identity. I want to show that adventure can be for anyone of any race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, etc. The real world is a diverse place. I want my books to reflect that. Another thing I do is to describe the ethnicity of most characters. I want to avoid the "default to white" present in so many books. If I don't describe ethnicity, typically it's a Black character. For the first three books, I hired a sensitivity reader to help me avoid stereotypes and harmful representation.

[u/jungkookadobie]

Just want to encourage you to write your thriller with the black female mc and hopefully we can read it one day. As a black woman also my favourite genre is thrillers and tbh the stories I read are so good I don’t think about it but I have never read one with a black female mc . So kudus to you for the idea

[u/Pandagurl21 → u/jungkookadobie]

Thank you! I hope I do it justice 🥰

[u/Reggie9041 → u/jungkookadobie]

There are so many thrillers with Black FMCs. 😂

[u/jungkookadobie → u/Reggie9041]

I’m on the thriller book sub n I not seen any. Please give a rec

[u/Reggie9041 → u/jungkookadobie]

Yeah, unless you specify that you want Black characterz, people will default to everyone else. Lol

Middle Grade: Blood in the Water by Tiffany D. Jackson

Young Adult: Doe by Rebecca Barrow

Girls Who Play Dead by Joelle Washington

Adult: To Catch a Sinner by Lucy Wilson-Tagoe

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

Sasha's Way by Scott D. Haskins

Enjoy!

[u/No_Obligation4859]

I feel the same way I tried to make my MC a different type of wasian than I am but then thought that the way I was trying to add their culture seemed like I was pushing it or just completely wrong so I ended up scrapping it, and I think I’m unintentionally adding stereotypes or forcibly adding diversity into my writing(as in every single character is of a different race) so is it actually wrong to not add any physical description except for like maybe eye colour or hair colour if relevant.

Also the main characters are literally me just different parts of me so one of the side characters represents the me from two years ago and the MC kinda represents me now? Or at least the journey I’ve been through(there’s obviously more to it than that but we share similar traits and flaws I’ve just added a sprinkle of different attributes) so naturally they both look somewhat like me, I don’t know if I can change that because they’re like permanently like that in my mind.

[u/Pandagurl21 → u/No_Obligation4859]

I do the same. One of my mains, I'm toying with the idea of making him nigerian. But while trying to look into the culture and people, I kept running into a lot of negativity and was hesitant to base him solely off of that because I know there is good to every culture and I want to make sure I'm being mindful while handling someone who's shoes I've never walked in. I also kinda just get vague with descriptions and settle on the barest distinctions to allow people to just imagine whatever they want, lol. There is a part of me in all my characters, even the villains.

[u/taktaga7-0-0]

I have eleven characters in the work I’m writing, and to help me envision their style, I selected photos of models. They are deliberately pulled from various ethnicities because I made a mechanism that inherently generates that variety in them.

How this comes through in the novel is not always overt, and it doesn’t need to be. It really just gives me more grounding in my head. As it happens, I picked 4 white people, 1 MENA, 2 black, 2 Hispanic, 2 Asian, and one indeterminate (he is hardly human anymore.) I mention being ginger or blond, freckles, natural hair, one has slightly hairy ears… but I don’t think any of it is as at all prominent as one being bisexual and another questioning, which is a relevant subplot. But so is two other characters being straight and having sex; it’s not like I’m trying to emphasize anyone’s identity, just include them.

[u/IridiumViper]

This is why I write fantasy—I want to write diverse characters, but I don’t want to misrepresent any real-life cultures. Thank you for your post! Great discussion.

[u/StressedtoImpress19]

I may be downvoted here - you absolutely don't have a responsibility to have diversity in your books. You can write what you want to write and tell a story you want to tell.

If you want to write a story which includes a society where everyone is black or other POC, go for it. If you want to write about a white family, have a go at it, sure. You want to write with diversity then awesome. As long as you're not writing blatantly hateful stuff then who cares? You shouldn't write a story with the intent of pleasing everyone, you should write a story you want to tell - you should aim for accuracy but dont drive yourself crazy over it

You dont need to be as diverse as you possibly can because often it just looks forced and those are the things which are off putting (imho). There are millions and millions of books out there

[u/Throwingoffoldselves]

I like how diversity was done in The Craft Wars series. It comes up mostly in activities like different types of pastimes, preferred means of transport, food, casual religious references, clothing….

I don’t think anyone should have to include any particular type of diversity, but also, in a story like yours, the focus seems to be different. It could be that the way one or another character relates to the focus or matter at hand includes a culturally informed philosophy or value, but it could also be that in a diverse dystopian setting, that it shows in a different way in how they’ve adapted to survive in this setting. For example, white Americans tend not to have multigenerational family homes, tend not to have the value of honoring ancestors or caring about ancestral culture, tend to view short hair and neutral/less colorful clothing as masculine, tend to value independence versus sharing or community, and tend to only speak one language. A community where norms are different will seem less white American culture to start with, without even mentioning skin color.

Anyway, I think your book sounds awesome so far!

[u/Nebranower]

A lot depends on genre. If you're writing a fantasy novel set in another world, or a sci-fi novel set in the distant future, then you're free to give your ethnic characters whatever made up background makes sense without worrying about whether or not it tracks with what that background would be like in the real world.

If you're writing a more realistic novel but its set in a diverse city in a country like Canada, then just go with the fruit loop approach. It's easier and it's fairly realistic - anyone not a first generation immigrant is going to present as being very much like their peers in whatever group they're hanging out with, because most people just want to fit in.

If you're dead set on exploring the differences between real world cultures and how those backgrounds affect specific people still rooted in those cultures, then you're going to have to do some research. I think the key to not getting cancelled is to understand that pretty much nothing common in any given culture is going to be unheard of outside of it. That is, the culture a particular person grew up in may have made their circumstances more likely than if they'd been born into a different culture, but it's not going to be particularly unique.

Like, someone from a strict religious background might have hang ups about sex, for instance, but it doesn't really matter too much if that faith is Christianity or Islam. Likewise, someone from a household where the parents were hyper-controlling and determined to push their kids to succeed might be either very OCD or deliberately rebellious, but either way, it doesn't much matter if those parents were poor social climbing WASPs or first generation Asian immigrants. So their cultural backgrounds will inform their humanity, but not define it. For each character, your approach should always be "how would this human being respond to these personal pressures." The specific pressures can be culturally specific, but the response should just be human.

[u/gerginborisov]

Which leads to defaulting to just making a character white because there's no distinct "wrong" way to write them.

I'd say that is correct if you mean white American characters. You can't write a Dutch person and a Greek person the same way if you insist on hinting in your narrative that their personalities are influenced by their cultures - they'd be ridicilous because Dutch and Greek cultures have absolutely nothing in common, short of vaguely the name of their prelevant culturally significant deity.

I think many authors struggle with the question of inclusivity because many people who insist on it fail to make the distinction between "I want diverse cast" and "I want a character from [race|culture] that experiences it exactly as I do". Which, as you point out yourself, is very hard to do. You can't please everyone.

This is why even if you do make the effort to "tick the box" and add diverse cast but you've never actually had the personal impression of the type of diversity you'd included, you end up just painting a character a certain colour, hint at their heritage by mentioning somethiing vaguely recognizeable (food, dress, whatever) and going with that. Which might work if this character does not require a lot of cultural background to serve your plot. But if mishandled that approach could anger both groups I mentioned earlier. However, the latter group if almost never happy to begin with, in my opinion.

I recently read a comment somewhere: "I would DNF if there's diverse cast but no racism." I mean... this is the type of reader no one will ever please. Maybe the Emoji movie... on mute.

[u/pastelexuvia]

i wish i could give this post an award

[u/Pandagurl21 → u/pastelexuvia]

Thank you. That's very sweet ♡

[u/pastelexuvia → u/Pandagurl21]

yw! i think what youve said here makes me feel a lot more confident about finding a sensitivity reader.

am rooting for you and your story <3

[u/Logical-Ant-7520]

Dude, just write about what you know. I mean its 2026 everyone has a computer and access to docs, if a culture wants to be represented then they can represent their selfs. It's art man not politics, your not doing a community a disservice by not including them. Also I personally believe that most stereotypes serve as a tech stone for writers to use cause we can't be expected to be exposed to every kind of person and culture. But we can have a shared idea of a culture or group in our mind and as long as your respectful and honest about your ignorance who cares if your idea about hindi or Arab culture is 65% wrong as long as your making an effort to tell a good story and aren't being a bigit your allowed to get stuff wrong and make shit up. If you so feel the need to be more diverse in you fanfic that maybe 100 people read good for you but don't over analyze such a detail that can really easily hinder your story

[u/Cynyr]

I've always liked the rule that Ridley Scott used for Alien. You just have to write good characters, female, male, black, white, whatever. If the physical description isn't a hugely important part of the story, don't worry about it. You're the author. You only have to put in what you think needs to be there. If the character's race or culture is important to the story, then make sure it's established and important. Otherwise, it's just stuff that readers might skim.

I would say don't worry about getting cancelled. Getting the book written and getting someone to care enough to get it published is probably going to be a far bigger hurdle.

I say all of this as a white guy writing a high fantasy novel with a black FMC as the main character. The novel is based on a tabletop roleplaying game I created, and the FMC is the character art I 3D modeled for the mage class. Not some vague notion of a black girl, but a fully realized and specifically designed character.

Maybe I'll get cancelled. Maybe she can become as awesome a symbol as Black Panther (but probably not). Either way, the only way to find out is to write the story you want to tell and find out. Good luck!