Bit conceited to think you know anything about a writer's creative process, and plenty of authors describe their story telling in exactly this way - that it's an organic process and they don't necessarily know where the next line will take them. I also don't see why an author has to offer up their "reasons" for doing anything. It's their story. I'm an amateur writer, I have a protaganist, he's a white male. That's just how it has always been in my head. Should I sit down and think, "actually he could have been a woman?" Well...he could have been a small tray of raspberry puddings I suppose but he's not. He is what he is. If he was someone else he would be someone else. Same goes for the rest of your rhetoricals. It might not have been worse had the Nuban been from Greece. It might not have been better. It's a complete non-point because it's not something that requires any sort of justification.
I don't know how Lawrence wrote the story, or how anyone else did. I'm not trying to divine that. But my point is that, whether consciously or no, those are still choices that he made and could have been made differently.
As you say, the protagonist in your head is a white male in your story. That's just the way it's always been for you. And that's fine. I'm not telling you that has to be different. It's your story. But when you start writing a story, you are still choosing to make it about a white male protagonist. For you it doesn't register as a conscious choice, because it is baked into your brain as an assumption. Maybe that's because of culture, or maybe that's just because you are a white male (assuming you are), or maybe that's because all the stories similar to the one in your head feature white males as protagonist. Or maybe there's a different reason entirely -- I can't speak to that. I'm not asking for stories with white male protagonists to be banned, after all.
But are you now saying that you cannot think about what you are writing? That you don't have any choice but to write exactly the story as it magically appears in your head? That your brain, your culture, your history, the stories you've read don't inform you, on a conscious or subconscious level? That you cannot engage your brain while putting pen to paper or finger to keyboard?
I would argue that no matter how much you just write where the story takes you, it's your brain that's doing the talking.
Your brain. It is not an object that is divorced from your thinking. The story doesn't exist as an objective reality. It is
your story, and everything you put into it is a result of the choices
you make -- whether you make them explicitly or implicitly.
I am not asking for a justification. Mark Lawrence made those choices, and he's entitled to make those choices. It's his story. As I said: no author can be obligated to write a story a certain way. He doesn't need to justify anything to me or anyone else. I just find it a little dubious to hide behind "the story" as the reason why it has certain characteristics. That line of thinking denies that an author has any say over what he writes, and that, to me, is nonsense.
Rolynd said:
An author shouldn't have to consider shoehorning social commentary of real life discrimination into every story choice.
I'm not asking for social commentary, really. I'm asking for more diversity in fantasy. Which is why I posed my questions (not all of them rhetorical) the way I did. How would making Jorg a woman be social commentary? Why would making the Nuban Greek be a form of social commentary? It's just changing some features of a character.
I didn't ask for a treatise on race or gender, though I do think a fantasy novel engaging those issues of discrimination actively could be interesting. In fact, I'd say the world as presented by Lawrence could be very interesting for that sort of thing. But that has nothing to do with the story he tells. And really, there is quite a bit of fantasy out there that does have social commentary of various sorts.
What I'm asking for is much simpler. I'm just asking for literature that's a little more diverse, literature that doesn't employ the tropes of discrimination we've seen for ages. I'm just a little saddened every time I read a novel that continues to employ those tropes.
