It’s come to my attention that I take for granted that a lot of aspects of this subject—writing characters with backgrounds other than your own—are “common sense.”
My bad.
Since I have insomnia tonight (again), I thought I’d try to make it up by making a blog post about some of the most important aspects that I generally consider to be common sense. But then again, my own sense of what “common sense” means fluctuates wildly depending on all sorts of things. Like the culture I’m most attuned to or the language I happen to be thinking in. Or my mood at that particular moment.
To be totally honest and transparent, I’m writing this to and for myself. Because while I do think about this sort of thing a lot, it’s hard to hold everything in my head at once. So even when I say “you” in this post, I really mean me. If it helps someone else too, that’s awesome! If not, no offense is intended to anyone. (I’m looking at you, future me. I see you glaring back into the past.)
This is not a list I’m saying anybody should adhere to! It’s just a sort of guideline, for authors feeling stuck or insecure (as, at this particular moment, I do).
Here’s the standard disclaimer that I don’t state often enough: everything I say is purely my opinion. I’m not trying to say this is what’s right, or that my opinion is somehow better than someone else’s. If anything I say seems off to you, feel free to leave a comment educating me, or find someplace on the internet that’s more your speed. I’m grateful if you do the former (even if I don’t agree, I like hearing what other people are thinking), and I’m happy you’re happy if you do the latter.
The Big Question: Is it okay for me to write a character of a background not my own?
Just in case you haven’t heard me talk about this before: YES. YES YES YES YES YES!!!! My answer to this question has, so far, always been yes.
Write what you want to write. Don’t let anything hold you back.
Writing is, by definition, living lives not our own. What would the world be if we only ever wrote characters from our own backgrounds? There’s something that can be groundbreaking in a story that reflects the reality of the author, writing their truths about their own background into a character. But that’s not the only way to write.
Okay, I’m doing this! Where do I start?
Okay, let’s back up a bit. You’re writing a diverse character. I would start with the question: Why give this character this background?
Let me be clear: I’m not saying that this should be a deterrent. Not at all. What I’m saying is this: Take a good, hard look at why you’re doing what you’re doing. Know it, so you can own it.
What do I mean by this?
Step 1: Digging Up Your Motive
Whatever your motive is to include diversity among your cast, your motive will likely bring with it some strengths and some weaknesses. By knowing and owning your motive, you can balance out some potential weaknesses.
Sometimes, an author’s seeming motivations are painfully cringe-worthy—and I do say “seeming motivations” to remind us all that I can’t tell you what was actually going on in their minds. I can only say how they looked to me. Off the top of my head, I can give you several examples of these seeming motivations:
- Through this minority character, the non-minority protagonist learns to support minorities.
- I need a minority character in my book for the sake of optics.
- I don’t know, I just wanted a character of this background, I guess.
Let’s talk about these motivations for a second.
I’m going to say something you might not expect: nothing is wrong with you if any of the above is your motive. There are all sorts of reasons why you might decide to do something as an author.
However, if your readers can recognize that that was your initial motive, then…well. That becomes a different story. Let me walk you through a very simple rundown of how I might conclude that an author of a book I’m reading was motivated by each of these 3 compulsions.
- The character is going through a struggle having to do with his/her background, yet his/her emotion and struggle are for some reason almost, if not entirely, shouldered by the protagonist instead.
- There is a single minority character among a bunch of otherwise non-minority characters. This character is treated as a joke/stereotype/nuisance/disposable.
- ALTERNATIVELY, if the character is from a non-visible minority, then the fact that they are of this minority is treated as irrelevant to their character or the story, but the fact that they are of this minority is treated as a BIG DEAL.
- The character is of a certain minority, but at certain points, there’s a certain cognitive dissonance.
- For example: a deaf character has no trouble following and participating in a group conversation where no one’s using sign language. Now, this is not impossible. However, lipreading in a group conversation where you don’t necessarily know where to look as different people stop and start talking would be extremely difficult, and probably exhausting. If the text doesn’t reflect this challenge, it can come off as the author forgetting that this character was deaf and the limitations that come with it.
I would also advise caution if your motivation includes “championing” the cause of a minority of which you are not a part. I don’t say this because of any judgement of the motivation. But when we feel that we’re doing something “right,” we’re more inclined to be blind to what we may be doing wrong.
Step 2: Know That You Do Not Fully Know Your Character
Now that we’ve considered our motivations, we move on to the next step.
You’ve started crafting a character of this cool diverse background; maybe it’s been long enough that you already deeply love and sympathize with him/her. That’s awesome, but don’t forget—you don’t know this character. In many ways, you probably never will. This character has lived a life you can imagine, but cannot experience.
It may be impossible to turn your brain entirely back to a blank slate to try to understand this character—but that’s okay.
As part of this step, remember: you have a bunch of friends of this minority that you love? Great. That has no bearing on your ability to portray this character.
Beware especially of the thought process: I have one friend of this background, therefore I can write this character.
Sure, we can base a character on a person in our lives; but basing a character on a real life person including their background with no other frame of reference is extremely dangerous. I do not advise doing this. (In fact, even as I envision this scenario, there are at least 3 voices in my head screaming, “Abort! ABORT!!! ABORT!!!“)
Step 3: Take the Time to Research
There’s only one solid rule in my mind about writing a character from a background not your own, and that rule is this: do not rush the research!
Sure, you can write drafts even while your research is still young and shallow. But just because your story seems to be working just fine without more research, don’t stop there.
By research, I don’t just mean learn the figures and numbers and statistics about this minority.
You’re not representing the entire minority. You’re representing your character. And that character grew up with a culture or traditions or norms that you do not share. The statistics and cold hard facts only go so far to building this character. Knowing them will help you, but they aren’t enough.
Step 3a: What do you take for granted that your character doesn’t? (or vice versa)
Every minority, be it race or disability or gender or religion or anything else you can think of, has something (actually, multiple somethings) that they struggle with that the majority takes for granted.
Therefore, whether you see yourself as a member of the majority writing a minority, or a member of one minority writing another minority, or even a minority writing the majority, be on the lookout for these things that some take for granted and others cannot.
Don’t stop when you find the most obvious ones—keep looking. If it seems easy, look harder. (Or longer. Don’t stress yourself out about it. My writing tends to get measurably worse when I’m stressed.)
Step 3b: What assumptions have you been making about this minority?
Try to find the things that never occurred to you—the things that run contrary to what you might have expected.
The benefit to this is two-fold. On one hand, you gain insight into your character’s background. On the other hand, you also gain insight into what used to be a blindspot of your own.
For instance, take this video by Molly Burke. Despite the fact that I have a published short story featuring a blind main character, and as such have done a great deal of reading and researching about what it’s like to live without sight, much of Molly’s perspective still surprises me. I don’t see my ignorance as anything to be ashamed of—it’s a chance for me to learn something new, and in case I was getting arrogant, reaffirm that I don’t really know what it’s like.
(And yet I feel compelled to tell everyone—I wrote that piece a really long time ago. It was only published last year, but I wrote it back in 2010. It was, in fact, the first piece I ever wrote after deciding to make a go of being a “real writer”. It’s also my first short story. In a way, it’s more a reflection of what I thought literary magazines wanted than anything.
Okay, moving on!)
Step 4: Overlooked Blind Spots
This is a tricky one. “Look at your blind spot!” is an insanely unhelpful piece of advice.
As a general rule, this is probably where I would start seeking external guidance if I haven’t already been consulting with anyone. If I have been consulting with someone or someones, I might go hunting for a fresh, alternate perspective.
Again, the point is not to take this alternate perspective and weave it religiously into the character. The purpose is to possibly make you aware of anything you might not previously have thought of.
Step 5: Live Your Character for a Day (or however long feels right)
I’d probably only go over this step for a protagonist. Actually, I have a lot of stories on hiatus because I live in terror of step 5, even within my mind.
This is the step where things get really hard.
You’re writing about a refugee. Have you been to her hometown? Have you been to the sort of environment where this character would have gone to apply for asylum? Have you observed the difference between what it’s like to be going through the process of applying for asylum, versus how it is to have been granted asylum?
You’re writing about a character of a religion not your own. Have you spent any extended period of time surrounded by this religion? Have you been to religious services?
In some cases, there’s nothing you can do to try to live your character’s life. Things like skin color, gender identity, sexuality, biological sex—we’ve got what we got, and there’s no getting away from that. But that very fact can make us that much wiser when writing these characters—it makes us aware that we’re leaning heavily on the limits of our minds.
Step 6: Show Your Story to Someone
I’ve been assuming that, during this whole process, we’ve been writing and editing and going through draft after draft.
At some point, show your story to someone. It doesn’t have to be someone of the minority (or minorities) you were writing, but that probably helps.
Remember to take their opinions with a grain of salt, positive or negative. They’re just one person.
The Bottom Line
Even as we try to be conscious of all the things we might be missing, we’re not aiming for perfection. If the story feels right, and the character feels right in it, then that’s that.
It shouldn’t become a source of stress.
Write however feels best.
As I’ve written this, it’s struck me that this is probably a process that it’s good to go through with any character, not just minorities. We’re not just talking about societal majority/minority issues, after all. We authors are each 1 person trying to weave stories with dozens or hundreds of characters.
Anyway. I hope that this was useful to someone, somewhere, sometime. (Looking at you, future me.)