Writing Culturally Appropriate Diverse Characters

In the bad old days, (mostly) white authors wrote stories about other cultures in ways that were at best condescending, at worst outright hatefully racist. Things got a little better as (again, mostly white) authors started including them as buddies or protagonists, though often this often had a vibe of tourism or even voyeurism into the “exotic” or “disadvantaged” lives of those diverse characters. 

And then there’s the rabbit hole of the magical negro, inscrutable asian, gay bff, manic pixie dream girl…all stereotypical characters added to a narrative in the name of diversity, but in a way that often depicted them as different from normal human beings. Even well-intended representations often fell short in ways that matter.

Which brings us to today, where the specter of cultural appropriation makes people wonder if they should ever write a character who doesn’t precisely match their own demographic identity. We’re not going to suggest this is as bad or harmful as the days of Charlie Chan and Uncle Remus, but it can pose a challenge. 

If we’re only allowed to write books about people exactly like us, we will end up writing very boring books. On the other hand, if we write characters from other cultures poorly we can do more harm than good. How to strike that balance is tricky, and not a skill anybody has yet reliably mastered. 

We asked several thought leaders writing and teaching today, and found five key considerations to keep in mind when we write diverse characters.

1. Lead With Why

One issue with poorly portrayed diverse characters stems from the reason an author includes them in the first place. In those “bad old days” examples I gave earlier, the character would be inserted for the sole and specific purpose of mocking a particular kind of person. That’s clearly not acceptable, and luckily it’s no longer being accepted. 

Almost as bad is putting a diverse character into a role because it fulfills a stereotype, negative or positive. This could include making a pimp in a detective novel black or the greedy owner of a pawn shop jewish, but also making a kindly math tutor asian or a clear-eyed political activist gay. Unless your story deals directly with stereotypes in a meaningful way, this will land wrong. 

Another level is padding out the demographics of your story so it includes a diverse palette of characters. A lot of people do this, meaning well, but this isn’t the 1990s and you’re not writing ad copy for the United Colors of Benetton. It’s a sort of representation, but becomes meaningless in most cases since writers who do this often fail to include anything but the most superficial traits for each character.

Okay. So those are some of the worst ways to do this. How can we avoid these mistakes? Most of the folks I’ve spoken with identified two ways to make this work. 

The first way is to write a person as diverse because that character in your story needs to have those demographic traits. Not to fill a stereotypical niche. Not to add unnecessary representation. Just because the character would make no sense written any other way. If you approach the problem from this reason, and write the character from the background that reason requires, it’s harder to fall into the pit traps of inappropriate depiction.

The second way is to write a diverse world, where a wide variety of people is simply the norm. That’s harder in for real-world fiction (unless it’s set in a particularly diverse city), but not very difficult in science fiction or fantasy. In such a setting, you can use the United Colors of Benetton approach and make demographic information just another descriptive element like eye color and wardrobe. 

For a Bad Example of Leading With Why…

…look at Hawk from the various Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker. Hawk is a loyal friend and sidekick to the main protagonist, but exists as a magical negro stereotype within the books. He’s there because his white friend needs him, and his personal life and goals are rarely explored. 

For a Good Example of Leading With Why…

…read the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. This is a perfectly executed example of a diverse world, where everything from character names, to skin color, to sexual orientation and presentation are just details among many — and the protagonist is autistic-coded in a way that’s essential to its core nature, and expressed with knowledge, respect, and compassion.

2. Do Proper Research

They say we should “write what you know”, which is nonsense because if people did that we could only ever writer or read autobiographies. That said, writing a character with different cultural or demographic identities from ourselves poses some real challenges because we’re writing about something we don’t know.

What makes this especially dangerous for writers is the two levels of not knowing something. There’s what you know you don’t know, but also there’s the broad swath of things you don’t even realize you don’t know. Every culture has a set of experiences, assumptions, and expectations so ingrained they don’t even think about them — and that are different from the set of experiences, assumptions, and expectations of other cultures. 

One way for your diverse characters to ring false is to give them the physical appearance and other superficial traits of a specific culture, but to then ignore the underlying assumptions their culture carries with them. 

There’s only one way to avoid this, and that’s to do your research. 

Read deeply in books about, and books by, members of the culture you want to represent in your writing. Read fiction, nonfiction, and biographies. Immerse yourself in those experiences, assumptions, and expectations until you can almost step into them and view the world through that lens. 

Attend events like art openings, plays, movies, speeches, and festivals put on by members of that culture. Pay attention both to what’s going on, and to how people behave in the crowd. Take special note of how people behave differently than you would expect in your usual experience, and find people you trust to ask about why that is. 

Travel to places wildly different from your usual routine, preferably to countries where your language and skin tone are not the norm. By spending time in such places, we become more aware of our culture’s set of assumptions…which will help us to find the parallels in other cultures. 

Finally, if you depict anybody who’s part of a culture that’s not your own, get a member of that culture to beta read your manuscript. This can be a professional sensitivity reader, or just somebody you trust to know and tell you the truth. Either way, this kind of feedback is absolutely vital to making certain you’ve hit the mark.

For a Bad Example of Doing Proper Research…

…look at The Education of Little Tree by Forrest Carter. It’s a middle grade novel about a Native American boy coming of age, and has lots of strong details about bushcraft and native culture. However, it was written by a notorious KKK organizer, and comes off as both condescending towards Native Americans, and as a sort of tourism into that culture. 

For a Good Example of Doing Proper Research…

…read Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff. This horror novel draws an oddly appropriate parallel between the relationship between humanity and entities in the Cthulhu mythos, and that between black people in 1950s America and white authority figures. Matt Ruff is white, and nailed this so well he consistently gets invited to events for black artists by black people who assume he’s black. He hasn’t spoken much about how he managed this, but the work speaks for itself. 

3. Acknowledge Intersectionality

People are always more than one thing, and this fact is important to remember when we depict culturally diverse people. The concept of intersectionality expresses this, in that it reminds us that different aspects of somebody’s identity interact with society in different ways. 

For example, an asian man’s experience in America differs from an asian woman’s, and both of those experiences would be different if they were gay versus if they were heterosexual. These interactions create unique experiences that build who a human being is as a person, and should inform how we depict characters. 

One reason this is important is that without intersectionality it becomes exponentially easier to seem like you are stereotyping. When a hispanic man and a hispanic woman, or a wealthy german and a poor german, act much in the same way it implies that members of that culture are “all alike”. 

This can also help you write your characters better. Fully acknowledging and researching intersectionality with a character gives you a strong sense of their basic building blocks as a person…which allows you to add their individuality to that foundation and produce a character who feels very real.

For a Bad Example of Depicting Intersectionality…

…watch “The Parliament of Dreams”, episode 5 of the first season of Babylon 5. In this science fiction show, representatives of the religions of many science fiction races meet at the show’s titular space station. When asked to explain the religious beliefs of humanity, the captain produces a long line of religious leaders, each from a different sect of human religions. It’s a nice moment in some ways, but suggests that only humanity has that sort of variety within its ranks. This was largely harmless because the other species don’t actually exist, but imagine a similar sentiment being expressed about white people vs. hispanic people. 

For a Good Example of Depicting Intersectionality…

…read Care Of, by Ivan Coyote. Ivan is a transsexual author and speaker, and this book is a collection of letters written to them, and their responses to those letters. Within this back and forth you can find a wide array of lived experiences that depict how intersectionality impact life as it’s lived in myriad ways. 

4. Make Certain They Are People

Racism, sexism, homophobia, and all other forms of bigotry are rooted in the assumption that people of a certain type aren’t actually people at all – they are considered less than, to be granted fewer rights, deemed less worthy than members of the “right” group. 

We all agree that bigotry is bad, and I want to stress that writing culturally diverse characters poorly doesn’t mean that writer is a bigot. However, unless your characters are people first, and members of their culture or demographic group second, what ends up on the page is dangerously close to the un-personing done by bigots of all stripes. 

We never, ever want to agree with bigots, even accidentally. So it’s important that we portray our diverse characters as fully realized humans, not stereotypes or tokens. 

Following the first suggestion of beginning with “why” helps a lot here, since it cuts to the core of your character as a human being. The best technique I’ve seen, though, is to think about your story as if this character were the protagonist. 

Just like in real life, everybody you’re around is at the center of their own story. They make their decisions based on their priorities, desires, and experience. Any time a side character makes a decision that really only serves the plot or your protagonist, that character feels less like a person…and if the character is diverse, you come dangerously close to unpersoning them.

For a Bad Example of Making Diverse Characters People…

…read Kipling’s Gunga Din. It’s a poem about British soldiers in occupied India, and focuses on an Indian servant who showed more bravery and patriotism than the British with him. However (and this was likely well intentioned), the very human Gunga Din portrayed as an actual human being as a surprise to the British reader, which sort of goes contrary to the point of the whole thing. 

For a Good Example of Making Diverse Characters People…

…read American War by Omar El Akkad. In this depiction of America after a second civil war, Akkad paints characters from many backgrounds, experiences, and demographics. It’s a tense psychological study of how trauma impact different people differently, and despite some of the mistakes and atrocities some commit, every single one of them feels very human. 

So, Listen…

None of what we said here is a hard and fast rule, universally right in every case. Appropriately handling diverse characters and themes is a moving target, and at the moment fraught with risk to our reputation and livelihood. Take what we’ve said here and apply it to your writing with a clear mind, a kind heart, and an eagle eye for where you might have steered wrong. 

Most importantly, be open to change. What you wrote last year, or that book you loved from last century, probably isn’t the best model or method for navigating the waters of modern writing appropriateness. The more flexible and willing to listen we all are, the better all of our books will be.