“If you’re writing from the point of view of somebody who isn’t you, it’s just as well to pass that beneath the eyes of somebody more like that person.”
“In our age, we no longer think there are two packages, pink and blue, and science has backed that up. . . It’s a continuum, and your character can be situated anywhere on that continuum.”
Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, The Blind Assassin, et al.
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“Differences are observable in every species on our planet. The question becomes whether our culture ascribes any meaning to those differences.”
“If you’ve created a society of human beings and you want your society to have plausibility to your readers, it’s got to have . . . power dynamics present. These things will ultimately affect the character that you elect to tell the story through.”
N.K. Jemisin, author of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Inheritance trilogy), The City We Became (The Great Cities series), et al.
(This is a distillation and a starting point. Following the research that sent me here, there, everywhere, I ended up with so much information that, if I put it all in, would make a diary longer than my master’s thesis.)
It was the quotes from Margaret Atwood that got me thinking about how I include “others” in my writing, and it was N.K. Jemisin who directed writers (including me) to Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward. I’m in the most boring, ordinary societal space—cis-het, white, female, middle of the middle class, and a very early Boomer. As far as ROAARS, I’m downright old, and I have several disabilities, but basically I’m plain Jane. But I’ve spent decades of my life immersed in groups of “others” who aren’t like me. (“Immersed.” Not to be confused with “Some of my best friends are_________”) It just feels normal to have those in different societal roles have a place in my writing. But am I doing it “right”?
I notice if a book doesn’t do that. I don’t expect it if, for instance, the story takes place in a closed community, in isolation. It wouldn’t make sense to plop an Innuit man into a story taking place at a dinner party in the antebellum South or at a monastery in Edward I’s England. Don’t force it. But if the society and social structure is diverse, does the writing reflect that? And this applies even if you’re writing SF/F. Build diversity into that world.
And for heaven’s sake, don’t go back decades later to artificially paint “other” over an existing character. Where are the characteristics that make Dumbledore gay or Hermione, Black? (JKR is trying to take the heat off of her anti-trans stance.)
When you write the first draft of any work, it’s very possible that you’ll write mostly about characters who are like yourself. There’s nothing wrong, and several things right, with rewriting, in the second draft, to make characters more diverse. But it involves changing more than just the one thing. Don’t add a bit of melanin and call it good. Don’t plop someone in a wheelchair and say, “Done!” If religion is part of your world, and it makes sense to have people of diverse religious backgrounds or practicing faiths, do that. People of different marginalized groups will have a different life experience, and they’ll bring that background to any interactions on your page. Think that through. The point of diversity in writing isn’t to minimize differences and make it as bland as possible; the point is to make the story as authentic as possible.
It’s especially important for writers to make the distinction between the traits assigned to a group or category and the traits belonging to an individual.
from “Writing the Other”
In planning your characters, you likely will have more about them than will fit comfortably onto the page. That’s fine. Everything you know about the characters will inform their actions and dialogue.
Your readers will be bringing their own assumptions to your work, so be prepared for that. Some people will pick up on your description the first time; others will need to have it repeated before it gets past their own internal assumptions and “takes”.
Writing the Other will give you a starting point. The authors define the “others” they include as ROAARS (Race/(sexual) Orientation/Age/Ability/Religion/Sex), and they deliberately don’t include Class. The book has information about these designations, and accompanying exercises. There’s also a series of online classes, at a considerable price point. I expected to spend some money, and not necessarily a small amount, in researching for my writing, but not that much, if I did all the classes.
All cultures tend to incorporate aspects of other cultures into our own. The issue comes up when that appropriation becomes inappropriate. . . when you have members of a majority or powerful culture taking cultural aspects from a less powerful culture and using them in a way that’s out of context or in disrespectful ways, or in ways that muddle the value or meaning of those cultural aspects to such a degree that it’s . . . harmful. N.K. Jemisin
If you’re writing about a culture that no longer exists, research is all you have to go on. There won’t be any members of that group for you to consult. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas’ book, Reindeer Moon, is written with sensitivity and depth, but without consulting a single member of a stone age culture. If you’re a member of a marginalized minority, you likely already know what you need to about your own community as well as the dominant culture. But if you’re writing about a different group that you haven’t been immersed in, this is where a “sensitivity reader” comes in, possibly more than one, since “no one person can speak for an entire culture” (Jemisin).
“Ask yourself how would powerful people act in this society? How would less powerful people act?. . . Who is the person who has the greatest ability to accomplish your goals. . . and who is the person for whom it is the least likely? Which would be the more interesting story to tell?” N.K. Jemisin
Expect to get it wrong sometimes. It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It means you have more to learn. Also expect to pay for a sensitivity reader or sensitivity editor; it isn’t the obligation of a marginalized community member to educate the rest of us for free. The last quote I saw was $250 for a book-length review. They’ll do more than go over the manuscript and make little frown-y faces in the margins; they’ll tell you where your assumptions are off, or when you’ve said something that might be offensive. They’ll tell you what needs to be changed but they won’t rewrite your book for you because that would make them a co-author, so expect to get what you thought was a finished manuscript back for even more rewrites. A writers’ critique group will be a help in this way only if it’s a diverse group. Otherwise, you may get into a confirmation bias loop.
I published a novella last summer at OFPM about a member of a community I don’t belong to. It’s a group I’ve had a lot of experience with over decades, and it was about a real person I know, but before it showed up here, or anywhere else, I still did indeed “pass it beneath the eyes” of a member of that community, the POV character, himself, and asked how he felt about it being published. (I wasn’t able to hand it off to one of the Fair Folk for review, unfortunately.) And please, please, please don’t put a Content Warning on a story for this reason. Someone being “helpful” posted a link to the story on Twitter, with the CW: “Paul is gay.” The intention was to warn people who might be offended. Paul is on Twitter. I hope I persuaded the ‘helper’ to take it down before he saw that. If someone reads the story and is offended by Paul’s orientation, __________ [insert F-bomb here]. And you aren’t limited to just one of the ROAARS groups per story. If you’re bored with anything of any length that I write, you can amuse yourself by counting the number of marginalized community members I include. No Innuits yet, but other North American Indian groups will be represented in an upcoming work that takes place in the early 1880s in Tennessee and Arkansas.
Final word: Don’t make one person a token, whether good or bad or walk-on. Use significant numbers of good/bad/background ROAARS characters. (See mettle fatigue’s excellent WriteOn! diary of March 21 about writing minor characters.) Want to see it done well? Walter Mosley in his Easy Rawlins series, beginning with Devil in a Blue Dress. James Baldwin in Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone. Diane Glancy with Stone Heart. Fantasy writers, see N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season, first of the Broken Earth series. Writing about the Fair Folk? Read Eloise McGraw’s The Moorchild.
Challenge:
Starting from scratch to develop ROAARS characteristics fully would involve more world-building than I can do in a reasonable amount of words/space/time in a challenge here, so the challenge(s) will involve more planning than actually writing a scene. If you can make writing an original scene with that much character development work in a small space, go for it, and my hat’s off to you.
- Choose a scene in one of your works between two characters. From the list of ROAARS, change two characteristics of one of the characters. How will the dynamics of the relationship change? How will the interaction in this scene change because of it? You don’t have to write the scene so much as analyze it.
- OR: Begin building a character for a current or future work. What ROAARS characteristics will you include or exclude? How will that change the amount of power that person has in personal relationships and in moving through the society of your literary creation?
- OR: If your first instinct is a defensive, “But I already have a character who____” , stop and do a bit of reflection.
- OR: Write something.
Further reading:
Sensitivity Readers! What are they good for? (A lot!)
Sensitivity Readers: Who Are They and Should Authors Use Them?
The Problem with Sensitivity Readers Isn't What You Think It Is
Have a bit of money to spend?
Writing the Other Online Classes
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