Writing Characters Other Than Your Own Experience: A Roundtable

[etaylor]

It's a complex issue.

There are wholly valid reasons to fight for equality of representation and better understanding of each other's experiences. And I support that. But I also don't feel it's fair for authors to be attacked and berated for not being able to personally reference the experience of a culture completely different than their own. No matter what you do, someone is going to be unhappy.

If I were to ever write something popular, I would hope that it would be something where there was some meaningful representation of an underserved community OR that it's something where the demographics quite frankly don't matter at all, just to avoid that whole messy situation. But I also feel that if someone took one of my works and turned a main character into something other than what I intended them to be, solely for the purpose of sating some perceived need for inclusivity (legitimate or otherwise) then I'd be more than a little annoyed because of the way that kind of forced pandering lends legitimacy to the excesses of the internet rage machine and causes misery for everybody without making any meaningful difference, and because that's now how I intended the character to be so just don't screw with it. The authors work is the authors work. Leave it alone.

 

[Steve Harrison]

It's not something I plan to worry about. If I need ethnically and/or racially diverse characters I'll write them, as I do women characters, hopefully as authentically and sensitively as I can manage. There are enough challenges in writing already without concerning myself with social media fallout.

In fact, given my sales so far, I should be so lucky!

 

[Robert Zwilling]

"that we set the story we expect and not the story an authentic voice might want to write."

That is the entire point. For example to write and speak about slavery in the past tense shows no understanding of the fact that it has never stopped. The tools to implement it have been greatly updated such as redlining while at the same time plantations are still being built that employ everyone one from the young to the old. Write a story about slavery where everything is set in the past is treading a fine line if the author believes or somehow implies that the story ends happily ever after and slavery no longer exists.

The advice for using sensitivity writers was pretty blunt. They are the last step in the chain before the book is okayed for publishing, after the betas, and editing. The outcome will be, this is okay and can be published. Or it is not okay, ans should be rewritten, or not published.

Its not about pleasing everyone, its about not spreading material that is outdated and designed to subjugate a portion of the population.

What is being accomplished by putting multicultural material into a story for a monocultural audience that doesn't go on to attract a multicultural audience. Creating characters with all different kinds of descriptions, traits, and histories, so as to create a feeling of multculturalism can fall flat when all the characters have the same basic mindset that represents a particular group of people. Perhaps if we have to ask, we might want to consider having someone who has experienced what is happening, participate in the writing of the story, so we have a chance of getting it right. How many authors participated in the creation of this document. That can also fail. Why isn't writing a story like being in a band. In the world of music it seems like there are a lot of bands as well as individuals, and even most of the individuals have bands helping them get their music heard. We all want to be one person bands when that isn't reality.

I have a stake in this as I wrote a story where I didn't describe anyone's physical characteristics. Some people told me that meant that everyone in the story was white. You stay out of the fray, you're guilty, you try to be creative, you're guilty, it seems like there is no middle ground when the authentic audience isn't on board.

 

[The Big Peat]

To be clear, I am not bemoaning the plight of the white male.

The danger isn't that whitey isn't going to get his book published, but that the book that he does get published contains even less diversity, lest the author risk attracting negative attention. The goal should be to normalize the inclusion of diverse character types, not punish anyone who gets the details wrong.

In the case of American Dirt, not only is the latina author getting killed for writing a book that draws attention to the plight of immigrants, but Stephen King is getting criticized for saying it is an entertaining and well written book. The lesson isn't "do better", but "shut up about anyone who you're not".

Why should the goal be to normalise the inclusion of diverse character types? What is gained?

If the aim is to give people from minority backgrounds more role models, or to encourage people to have empathy and respect for others, then certain details need to be right and certain types of stories that are commonplace maybe should be avoided. Yet another story about the struggle of being an illegal immigrant probably doesn't change what people think about Mexicans. If the purpose of diversity is a noble goal of understanding, then not just any story will do, and clearly a lot of people from minority backgrounds think bad representation is about as welcome as none.

If the aim is to the sell books by creating a wider diversity of story... well, it doesn't necessarily need to be great to sell books. But there's a whole other ballgame here. Not a good look either. If we're gonna make money off of other people's cultures, we should at least show some respect, right?

Put bluntly - I see no useful pursuit of diversity that doesn't demand a certain standard.

Are there some overreactions? Sure. But is that really the most important thing here?

And if your reaction to the whole thing is simply "Its too hard, I'd rather not try than be judged", then why are you in a thread about trying to do it?

Well, no. We don't even demand that SF authors write science based stories, so why would we demand that JK Rowling (for instance) write an accurate depiction of fictional Native American wizards? She isn't passionate about Native Americans, but creating fantasy. There is no real magic culture anywhere to get right - it's made up.

Answer - you're not passionate about accurate depictions of Native Americans, so you don't see the point.

People who are passionate about accurate depictions of Native Americans do care and think she should have left it alone if she wasn't going to do it well.

 

[Star-child]

Why should the goal be to normalise the inclusion of diverse character types? What is gained?

If the aim is to give people from minority backgrounds more role models, or to encourage people to have empathy and respect for others, then certain details need to be right and certain types of stories that are commonplace maybe should be avoided. Yet another story about the struggle of being an illegal immigrant probably doesn't change what people think about Mexicans. If the purpose of diversity is a noble goal of understanding, then not just any story will do, and clearly a lot of people from minority backgrounds think bad representation is about as welcome as none.

If the aim is to the sell books by creating a wider diversity of story... well, it doesn't necessarily need to be great to sell books. But there's a whole other ballgame here. Not a good look either. If we're gonna make money off of other people's cultures, we should at least show some respect, right?

Put bluntly - I see no useful pursuit of diversity that doesn't demand a certain standard.

Are there some overreactions? Sure. But is that really the most important thing here?

And if your reaction to the whole thing is simply "Its too hard, I'd rather not try than be judged", then why are you in a thread about trying to do it?



Answer - you're not passionate about accurate depictions of Native Americans, so you don't see the point.

People who are passionate about accurate depictions of Native Americans do care and think she should have left it alone if she wasn't going to do it well.

The problem is that, whether an author is an an expert in Native Americans or not, they were actually a normal part of 18th century America. The choice you seem to be offering is that an author either become a cultural anthropologist, or whitewash a period of history by leaving out people that were obviously there because including them without intense realism is appropriation.

This makes it essentially impossible to write a fantasy story that contains Native Americans because there is no real version of their history that contains magic. There's no white magic wizards in history either, but fictional white Brits aren't any kind of appropriation, so we just call that creative writing.

My geographic community has huge Asian, Latino, black, gay and trans populations. I couldn't write about my experience and eliminate all of my minority neighbors, but I'm also unlikely to fully get all of their experiences correct. So is it better to whitewash, research everything to death or just do the best I can and suffer the consequences of putting a normal distribution of folks in my stories without first becoming an ethnographer to write a trite little space monster story?

People like to complain that Arthur C Clarke didn't write women characters, but it sounds like he wisely avoided writing about people he didn't understand, leaving a largely male universe in his wake. Did he do the right thing?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just a heads up that I would like to see posts commenting on what they've read in the original article, and whether they agree/disagree with any of those points - rather than simply dive in with their own opinions on social-political issues, which we are not going to do here.

 

[Toby Frost]

There are enough challenges in writing already without concerning myself with social media fallout.

To begin with, this seemed a bit dismissive, but on second reading I think it’s a very good point. What do actual people out there think? Not internet people whose aim is to push a political opinion or entertain their followers with outbursts of performance rage (I'm not directing this at the people on this panel, who seem pretty sensible). I don’t want to purely conflate age with maturity (God knows there’s some old morons ruining the world right now), but this seems to be much more of a problem with YA.

Further, the breaking down of everything into tropes in these sorts of decisions is unhelpful, and misses degrees of subtlety and skill. In genre writing, almost all characters can be squashed into some kind of identifiable trope, good or bad, if you try hard enough.

My own view on this is that “diversity in writing” covers two separate issues that are often wrongly squashed together: (1) what gets written (and who writes it) and (2) what gets into print. With regard to (1), the decision of the characters, themes and so on that I put into a story is mine to take. In that way, the responsibility lies on the author to make the decisions, do the research and so on. Basically, write what you like, just do it well. This seems like a pretty elementary description of how one writes fiction based in reality. Similarly, Justina Ireland says:

And I think that’s really my problem, is the people who don’t want to put in the work. You should be willing to put in the work, whether your character is white, whether your character is brown. You should be willing to put in the work.

This strikes me as very true. There are no “lanes” for a writer to stay in: there’s either good writing or bad writing.


However, decision (2) doesn’t lie with me. If Publisher X offers to publish a struggling author’s book, I find it incredibly unlikely that they will say “No, please skip me and publish someone less white/male/etc”. If Publisher X says “We need a book by a black woman living in Manchester”, that’s their decision. It’s also open to criticism and so on. It is clearly not my decision or the decision of the black female Mancunian writer because neither of us has the power to make the printing-presses make the copies.

Alternatively, just write comedy, which nobody takes seriously, or historical stuff, where everyone is dead and can’t complain, or something in the far future where Mankind has united to blow up those weird-looking alien guys.

 

[The Big Peat]

The problem is that, whether an author is an an expert in Native Americans or not, they were actually a normal part of 18th century America. The choice you seem to be offering is that an author either become a cultural anthropologist, or whitewash a period of history by leaving out people that were obviously there because including them without intense realism is appropriation.

This makes it essentially impossible to write a fantasy story that contains Native Americans because there is no real version of their history that contains magic. There's no white magic wizards in history either, but fictional white Brits aren't any kind of appropriation, so we just call that creative writing.

My geographic community has huge Asian, Latino, black, gay and trans populations. I couldn't write about my experience and eliminate all of my minority neighbors, but I'm also unlikely to fully get all of their experiences correct. So is it better to whitewash, research everything to death or just do the best I can and suffer the consequences of putting a normal distribution of folks in my stories without first becoming an ethnographer to write a trite little space monster story?

People like to complain that Arthur C Clarke didn't write women characters, but it sounds like he wisely avoided writing about people he didn't understand, leaving a largely male universe in his wake. Did he do the right thing?

Those aren't the only options in terms of containing people with different backgrounds in your story though, because you don't have to make them the stars of the show. It's perfectly fine to show them through the eyes of someone who's not them, someone who knows a lot about them but is also ignorant of other issues; to maybe use their PoVs where appropriate, but not live in their skin. That's on the table. The question of knowing them incredibly well comes to the fore when a writer decides to put them the fore, and writes stories and characters that are primarily focused on a different background, culture, life experience etc.etc.

Also - what does "doing your best" look like to you? How much research are you willing to put into getting your story right?

 

[Boneman]

Just a heads up that I would like to see posts commenting on what they've read in the original article, and whether they agree/disagree with any of those points - rather than simply dive in with their own opinions on social-political issues, which we are not going to do here.

I read the transcript, and the one quote that gave me the most hope, for trying my best to get it right and not be offensive (after research, research, research, avoid stereotypes, read books and interact with the characters you'e trying to portray faithfully) was this:

Justina: I actually think that’s great advice. I think if you want to write a main character of color, you need to start with writing fully fleshed-out, awesome secondary characters of color. And like you said, not caricatures; don’t write me a magical Negro and a sexy Latina best friend and those kinds of things. Give them their own story arc. Give them their own sh*t going on, basically.

Jaymee didn't completely agree with this, but it's a great place to start.

Not sure if this has been posted before, but some great pointers here:

12 Fundamentals Of Writing "The Other" (And The Self)

<b>How to respectfully write from the perspective of characters that aren't you.</b>

www.buzzfeed.com

 

[Star-child]

Also - what does "doing your best" look like to you? How much research are you willing to put into getting your story right?

I don't know. What are the options in terms of time and expense to write a fictional story with no real promise of publishing or sales?

 

[Dan Jones]

@AMB seems to get the balance right for me.

If you're setting a book in a modern western society (ie mid-20th century onwards), it's axiomatic that your cast is going to be diverse in many different ways. If you have a multitude of characters then "staying in your lane" as AMD says, may be safe, but it's also strange, unrealistic and stretches credibility beyond breaking point.

Historical fiction may be an exception, but I guess is out of scope for this thread.

In any case, when creating characters, drawing attention to their blackness, gayness, caucasian-ness etc isn't really drawing a character, it's creating a reductionist / essentialist cipher. I have written PoC, and that was simply a matter of geography - I needed a people from particular countries to play a part in my novel, and ipso facto had to include people from that country for the plot to work. And to be perfectly frank I didn't worry about my representation of them (which in itself is comprised of a broad collection of ethnicities and religious groups); I was more worried about writing believable characters who could drive the plot forward.

In this respect, while it's impossible for any one person to empathise with every other person on the planet because we don't all share the same points of reference, it is possible to create sympathy for any fictional character irrespective of their ethnicity, sexuality etc because there are certain human characteristics that everybody does share. Some examples might be: the fear / threat / response to violence; power dynamics / positions within hierarchies; the desire for more (to advance oneself); sex; the spectre of death; parental protective instincts; hunger etc etc.

How different cultures deal with these things may differ, but these things are common to all, and I believe it's possible to create complex characters filled with drive, remorse, regret, hate, love, antipathy, despair and the whole range of emotional responses / states. Similarly, anyone, regardless of background, can encounter difficult decisions, which is the key to good fiction.

But to take Pete's example, I believe he's mulling over how to approach writing mythology.

Mythology is a tricky one, but I believe that, similarly to the point above, that there are certain fundamental psychological truths that apply to the structure of mythologies, regardless of where they appear in the world. As a westerner, the majority of my mythological understanding is rooted deeply in Judeo-Christian culture, which is unbelievably sophisticated (otherwise it wouldn't have lasted so long) but it's hardly unique. The famous example is the Flood Myth. Almost every major culture in history has had its version of the Flood Myth, and a couple are world famous (Noah, Gilgamesh). But take a look at this - there are dozens and dozens of Flood Myths which appear in cultures which couldn't possibly have encountered one another.

The point is that they all are rooted in the same set of human anxieties, and the correct response which has been aggregated over thousands and thousands into highly distilled essence of truth. Which goes something like this: the flood is gonna come, whether you like it or not. And you'd better be ready. And if you are ready, when the worst happens, then perhaps you can ride it out and get to the other side in one piece. In short, you'd better build an Ark. A flood is used as a portent of disaster I suppose because most cultures around the world would have experienced a flood at some point in their collective history. We saw it in the terrible tsunami in Asia in 2004.

My slightly rambling point is that really researching the mythologies of various peoples will uncover kernels of common truth, from which you can extrapolate - even if you're taking a liberty with the detail - a new mythology (or understand an existing one) and you can create something with which a wide variety of people can sympathise, because on some deep, historical, collective level, it binds us all together. And if you do it properly it doesn't really matter about the colour / origin / history of the people in question.

TL: DR Buy my book.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

The point is that they all are rooted in the same set of human anxieties,

I would rewrite that to say we are all rooted in the same set of activities in any number of ways, but the degree to which the anxieties or lack of of, effect different groups is not the same.

 

[The Big Peat]

I don't know. What are the options in terms of time and expense to write a fictional story with no real promise of publishing or sales?

I can't give you an answer there. Best effort is self defined. I don't know what your ambitions are, your personal situation, your passions and possibilities and so on.

I just know it's easy to say "I gave it my best shot" without doing anything of the kind. People do it every day. I look at some of the criticisms of American Dead and think if that was her best, god help us all. I think having an honest think about whether we're actually doing our best - or an honest good effort - is always relevant as writers, nevermind on a topic like this.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just a general reminder:

Just a heads up that I would like to see posts commenting on what they've read in the original article, and whether they agree/disagree with any of those points - rather than simply dive in with their own opinions on social-political issues, which we are not going to do here.

 

[The Big Peat]

I don't entirely agree with what you're saying here Dan but I think the important thing here is your "Why".

You wanted realistic characters for a global thriller. That's all. You didn't want a deep examination of what it means to be a Nigerian magnate's son working in England, or a visceral experience of what it means to be poor and trying illegal immigration, or even just how they interact with their dear old mum, and so on. You're not writing a book that'll be picked up by the Nigerian or East End South Asian communities either. Therefore, you didn't need a high bar. You didn't need to be in the skin of someone with that deep sense of difference.

And I think that, yeah, there's plenty of possible good books in that area without the deep knowledge.

It's when you come to things like writing a Mexican immigrant sneaking around the border to the US that the rules of the game change and the high standards kick in. The closer you, the more it matters.

I think that a lot of fantasy books, ones that are big on worldbuilding and culture, can trend a lot closer to the latter than the former. It's something to be wary of.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just re-reading for choice tidbits in the linked-to article, and I do like this quote from Justina:

Basically, if you’re going to get upset about people criticizing your books, you really shouldn’t be writing books anyway, because somebody’s always going to hate your book for some reason. Now whether that criticism is valid, like you butchered a culture and piecemealed it out for your own plot building, or whether that criticism is just about your prose. But I, as a writer, would think my criticism about my flat, stilted dialogue is just as bad as my criticism about my flat, incredibly stupid character.

And I think that’s really my problem, is the people who don’t want to put in the work. You should be willing to put in the work, whether your character is white, whether your character is brown. You should be willing to put in the work.

 

[Dan Jones]

To return to the OP, in the transcript Jaimee Goh mentions that another potential author got in touch with her asking about advice on writing Native American characters.

“How do I write indigenous, how do I write Native American characters?” And I was like, “Well, have you gotten in touch with, you know, the tribe that you’re writing about?” and she was like, “Yeah, I have.” She’s like, “I’ve researched it; I know how to contact them, but…” “Have you contacted them?” It’s like, “Not yet, but I will.” And I’m like, “Well, great. You’ve done some of that really important work. Go, go do that thing. Go contact them. Write them, just say to them: ‘I’m writing this novel. I would like your advice. I don’t want to be offensive. Please… Is there anyone who’s an enrolled member of your tribe to help me out here somehow?'”

And I don’t know what it was; I tried so hard to be so positive to her, and she looked so miserable at my answer, and I was just like, “But… What… What—What did you want me to say?” I don’t know. So that was just my whole thing about, I just—I just wanted to understand. So I was using this Twitter thread to kind of think through it.

This seems to get the root of the problem that a few posters have touched on here about whether it's worth the effort, and the answer is of course, yes it's worth the effort. And if you pour your research and your sympathy and your heart and your honesty into your work, and still make an honest mistake, then I think most people would be forgiving and acknowledge the effort, and if you've made that much effort as the writer into getting it right, then you're more likely to be receptive towards open and honest feedback in that respect.

But if you're not making at least the effort, or are looking for a magic pill like the writer in this anecdote, then you frankly the deserve the negative criticism that you're inviting upon yourself (and are probably not cut out to be a writer if you don't / can't put the hard yards in, anyway). You can obviously cause harm through negligence, which is why we have convictions for manslaughter and dangerous driving.

You're not writing a book that'll be picked up by the Nigerian or East End South Asian communities either.

That's an interesting assumption. I wasn't writing a book for any audience in particular (apart from me, I suppose). And at the Essex Book Festival (I think in 2017, before MOW was published) I met a couple of Nigerian writers (funnily enough in a writing workshop about writing PoC) and we got chatting about what we were all doing and they seemed really interested that I was writing something (partially) set in the Niger delta, and said they would look forward to reading it. When I went to LBF in 2017 I met a young woman at a publicity company called Jacaranda which specialised in publicising fiction by / about African people. I told them about the book and they seemed eager to do some work about it. I kept in touch with them, and although not much came out of it apart from a bit of social media back-and-forth, they were open to the possibility and were attracted by the book content rather than wary of it.

Personally I would've been over the moon if I'd managed to get some sort of tiny market access to Nigeria, as apart from anything else it's a huge audience which is crying out for new material (the publishing industry there is undercut by digital piracy something chronic, but that's another story).

 

[Dan Jones]

@Brian G Turner Snap!

 

[.matthew.]

I only got through about 25 minutes of the original link. The people in it are so clearly biased it's not even funny. They both are likely to make their livings on this exact subject, and so stirring the pot with lines like "trying doesn't matter" and "the mainstream audience is white, aka white supremacists" is just publicity for them. I don't doubt they feel a deep connection to this issue, but once it becomes about their voice and their livelihoods, they gain a huge incentive to keep the cycle going.

I'll answer exactly why the "mainstream" audience is white... we write in English. The places people speak English as a first language are largely white majorities. So yes, it makes sense to write for that audience, and the vast majority of those don't care about these issues, and are just looking for an enjoyable book. In the same way, I wouldn't expect books written in India to feature white people accurately, or as anything other than colonial stereotypes.

I've seen a few posts on here about how Rowling messed up the native American wizards, but since (at a guess) 99.9% of her readers aren't native Americans, it doesn't matter. I will say I haven't read it myself, so maybe it is actually offensive and not just ill informed or stereotyped. As above, I also wouldn't be offended if an Indian Harry Potter had a spin off where English wizards spent their time plotting in towers or binge drinking down the pub, as I'm not the target audience.

The line for me is whether or not you're trying to depict them in a realistic context. Peat said, "the closer you, the more it matters," and that makes a lot of sense, especially when dealing with the real world where accuracy can make all the difference, but fantasy is all about making things up. We write about heroic knights, brave farm boys, and evil barons keeping beautiful princesses locked in dungeons. These things are not accurate representations of western history either, they're fantasy. Once you start adding fantastical elements to a setting, it quickly loses all credibility unless you change the setting to accommodate them. You wouldn't portray an accurate Christian mythology in a world where wizards can bring down lightning... are they chosen by God? Possessed by the Devil? Do they have a divine right to rule, or have to be hunted down like animals? Any one of those things changes the history of the people the story is based on, and it ceases to be about those people at all. It's set dressing.

What about sub-divisions? I mentioned western history, but that covers a hundred different peoples, over more than a thousand years. White history then? same thing. If you're striving for true accuracy in the work, you have to narrow it down to a freaking town, even a street. What is true for one is not true for another. You had rich and poor, prosperous towns and farming communities after a bad harvest, dozens of different interpretations of faith, dozens of different ways a community could interact (with itself and it's neighbours), everything changing a dozen times or more over the years. Short of flat out saying that your fantasy world is based in York, in the year 1567, etc, even 'traditional' western fantasy is going to be full of holes.

If people want their culture portrayed properly (although as above, there are too many sub-division to do so without angering even 'their own') they can go ahead and write a book themselves. I've got to believe that a more accurate book by one of 'their own' would sell well enough to justify the effort and go a long way to balancing out the misrepresentation that comes from outside sources. But, even they will get it wrong, just as a white man will write medieval Europe wrong. We are as alien to our ancestors as anyone else.

As to the more general modern fantasy (a lot of the YA for example), it's true that they seem mostly white focused and the representations of people of colour are flat. However, many people forget that the white characters are also pretty flat, and by and large, young people try to fit in to a mold. There were two black kids in my year at school, one of them was pretty much just a 'normal' kid (albeit a goth), while the other made so much effort to be the black stereotype, with the backwards cap and the slang that nobody else used etc, and everything was about his colour. This representation did not speak for everyone with his background, and if you were to write that character you'd probably be accused of racism (even though it was entirely based on a real person).

People come in very different shapes, and just because you are from that culture, doesn't give you sole claim on it. Neither does it make your interpretation of it the right one.

In short, if you're writing fiction, do your best to make the characters entertaining and believable to your target audience. Research can help with that, but screening it for anything that could offend would leave your book with nothing left.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The places people speak English as a first language are largely white majorities.

Just a quick heads up on this - according to census data from the USA, white people are expected to constitute less than 50% of the American population within the next 10 years.

Additionally, there are almost as many people who speak/read/write English as a second language as there are first language speakers, obviously to various degrees. We actually have a lot of members on chrons for whom English is a second language. Point being, be careful of being dismissive of them as part of your target audience.