Episode Twenty-Eight: Scared of Writing Diverse Characters? Here’s How to Get Started.
You’re writing a book and you want readers to love it. But are you using tropes and worldbuilding elements that could harm your future readers? Whether consciously or unconsciously, you may be including harmful stereotypes or tropes in your stories.
In this episode of the Better Writer Podcast, I’m sharing four mindsets that can help you worldbuild & write with sensitivity so you can avoid limiting your audience prematurely or accidentally falling into your own misrepresentation trap.
Let’s dive in!
Resources related to this episode (some mentioned, some not, all here to help you write better books):
Writing the Other (many resources on representing varied racial & minority groups respectfully): https://writingtheother.com/
Verna Myers’ TEDTalk “How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward them”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYyvbgINZkQ
Molly Rookwood’s Blog Post “Antisemitism in Fantasy and Fairy Tales”: https://www.rookwoodediting.com/post/antisemitism-in-fantasy-and-fairy-tales
My blog post “First, Do No Harm: World Building Tropes to Avoid”: https://www.oliviahelpswriters.com/blog/world-building-tropes-to-avoid
Another blog post from me “3 Resources for Improving LGBTQIA+ Representation in Your Stories”: https://www.oliviahelpswriters.com/blog/improve-lgbtqia-representation-in-your-stories
You can listen in your favorite podcast player here.
Watch on YouTube here.
Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Olivia (00:00)
As a writer, you get to be the god of your story. You get to decide who has power, who is valued, who is oppressed, who is seen as less land, and everything in between. And that is true whether you are literally creating a new world as in a fantasy story, or if you are setting a story in your actual hometown and have to reflect the real world. No matter what you're writing, you have so much power to shape the story in a way that can either reflect the diversity of our world or not. You have so much power to either uplift and empower readers, even if you are dealing with harsh truths, or to harm and diminish them. And today I'm going to talk about how to make sure you are representing true diversity, that you are tackling issues head on if that is what you want to do, but doing so in a way that does not harm your readers. Because at the end of the day, we are here to serve readers and harming them is not serving them.
So let's talk about how to make sure that we are adding diversity to our books, tackling issues head on, but doing it in a way that does not harm. Let's dive in.
Welcome to episode 28 of the Better Writer Podcast. I'm so excited to talk about a topic that I know is on a lot of writers' minds, even if you are not willing to admit it out loud. I think over the last few years we have really seen this boom in conversations about representation and diversity and sensitivity. And I think for some writers, that is really exciting because you grew up not seeing yourself reflected on the pages of the books you were reading.
I know that was true for me growing up. ⁓ for those who have only ever listened to this podcast and have never seen me in real life, I am a black woman, woman of color. ⁓ and growing up, I read a lot of classic fantasy that did not have a lot of diversity. ⁓ I read a lot of other things as well, but I think generally speaking, in fantasy especially, there was a lack of diversity, and we are now seeing that start to change. So for many of us, this is very exciting. But on the other side of that, there then becomes a question of how do I add diverse characters without misrepresenting people. How do I make sure that I am reflecting the reality of our world, but doing so in a way that isn't harmful or isn't alienating? And how do I make sure that I am being sensitive to you know different readers who have different backgrounds when I myself do not come from that background? So I just wanted to address that today.
And it seems like the perfect time. Juneteenth is this week. It is Pride Month. What better time to talk about making sure your book represents all of the diversity in our world, whether that is racial diversity, whether that is about sexuality, gender diversity, all kinds of things. We want to make sure that our books are inclusive, representative, and above all, not harming those communities, especially if we are talking about communities that we are not a part of.
Before we dive in, I do want to say I am not a sensitivity reader by training. That is not a service that I offer. However, as a developmental editor, one of the things that I am always looking out for are potential issues and things that might alienate or harm your readers. So I do keep an eye out for what I call sensitivity issues, even though that is not technically part of my job description. And I would never present myself as a sensitivity reader.
And I will often encourage people, if there's something that is particularly concerning, to reach out to a sensitivity reader at some point in their writing process. so I do want to give that caveat. ⁓ I'm not a sensitivity reader, I am not an expert on every culture and community and you know, minority group out there. ⁓ but it is something that I am always looking out for in my editing practice. Not just because I am trying to be the tone police or to make sure that you are being politically correct. I think it is very important that you are not replicating harmful stereotypes, I will die on that hill that we do not want to harm readers. ⁓ but I think it's also just smart business practice. It is just smart to not do anything that is going to limit your audience prematurely. Why would you close yourself off from readers who might fall in love with your book, but who are going to be turned off if you are misrepresenting their community or if you are deliberately leaving out all forms of diversity because you are just choosing not to think about it, which you know, doing nothing is a choice, people. ⁓ especially now in the year of our Lord 2026 26, it is too late to be, you know, ignorant and just pretend like you don't know the diversity is important. I think we are far past that time. so choosing not to engage with diversity at all, or choosing to lean on a harmful stereotype, that is going to alienate readers. And you are lucky if it just turns off a group of readers.
I think the bigger risk is that it spreads that people find out that you are using this harmful negative representation. You do not want to go viral for all the wrong reasons. And I don't think that you should, you know, do something solely for the purpose of not getting flack food online. I think I have complicated feelings about cancel culture because I do believe that people can change. And I think sometimes no room is left for people growing in the way that we currently talk about these issues. And again, you know, that doesn't excuse people causing harm but I'm going off on a tangent now. So what I want to talk about today is kind of the fear side of it. How do you get over that fear of misrepresenting someone or you know, maybe you were holding yourself back from making your book more diverse, or maybe you were worried about doing something wrong. And I am not going to get super tactical in this episode because every book is different, every situation is different, and you really should consult with the people who are experts in the groups that you are trying to represent who are outside of your own community. And so today I'm going to talk more about guiding principles and just mindsets that you can adopt to help start yourself down that pathway of becoming a writer who celebrates diversity, who does not add in tropes and stereotypes and things like that who are that are going to be harmful to readers.
All right, so the first mindset is that I want you to approach this entire topic, this entire act of you know, bringing in diversity, bringing in sensitivity, I want you to approach it from the mindset of awareness, sensitivity, not fear. And I know that it's easier said than done, especially if you are someone who has made mistakes in the past, which is very real. You might be in that situation. I really want you to see this as an opportunity to learn, to listen to engage with people who may have had a different experience from you. And I think that that is one of the most difficult things to do, but those conversations are happening.
So I think the very first thing that you need to do as a writer is just start engaging with the writing and reading community if you are not doing so already. And you know, I'm not going to go tell you that you need to spend 10 hours a day on social media, but I do think you need to spend some time with your nose to the ground, kind of thinking about what are the conversations that people are having about harmful stereotypes. What are the conversations that people are having about tropes that negatively impacted them or particular characters that negatively negatively impacted them? If someone has gotten canceled in your genre, what did they get canceled for? You might not agree with that person being shunned forever, but what can you learn from their mistakes, the things that they are being called out for? ⁓ those are all opportunities for you to learn, understand what is going on in the community and you might realize something that you never realized was offensive or never realized was harmful until someone who has a different experience from you explained it. And if your general reactions kind of shut down, be like, okay, I'm not gonna touch that at all. If you are scared to address those issues, that's a problem. Don't be completely afraid, be aware, be sensitive to it, and try to learn. And I think that is the very first step is we have to get over this fear of talking about all things that could be controversial.
Again, we want to approach those conversations with sensitivity and awareness. but just because something is related to race or gender or anything else does not automatically make it bad. And I think this is one of the hardest parts of this conversation. Cause I I remember, you know, having years ago this conversation on Facebook that, you know, saying that someone is black is neutral. Neutral statement. I am a black woman. That is a perfectly neutral statement. ⁓
But if you are someone who comes from the mindset that black is bad or that, you know, race is a dirty thing to talk about, then suddenly that neutral descriptor starts to have a lot of weight on it that it shouldn't have. And if you are approaching every single conversation about diversity in books with that weight that any conversation about race is bad. Anytime we talk about racial difference, it's bad, ⁓ that is going to stifle you before you can even get started. So, first off, you need to get over that kind of knee-jerk discomfort and start looking at diversity, differences, things like that. As first and foremost, just a neutral descriptor. Then we want to start moving toward figuring out, okay, what happens? What does it look like when we move past neutral and start to move toward harmful representations that we want to avoid versus what does it look like when we move toward positive representations that we want to embrace? So this does not need to be a topic that is anxiety-provoking or fearful for you. I want you to turn it into an opportunity to learn, to observe, to grow.
All right, mindset number two. And this might step on some toes. ⁓ so one of the genres that I work with most often is fantasy. So I am kind of coming from that lens with this one, just as a heads up. But ⁓ you cannot look to the past as an excuse to justify harmful representations in the present because many of those classic fantasy tropes, many of those classic fantasy creatures are rooted in racism and anti-Semitism. And that is just a fact that we have to get over that a lot of the creatures that are part of traditional European fairy tales are racist and anti-Semitic. And that history cannot be ignored and cannot be used to justify using those harmful stereotypical representations in the present because those harmful stereotypical images are still doing harm to this day anti-Semitism has not gone anywhere, racism has not gone anywhere. So if you are trying to justify your stereotypical dark-skinned, horribly evil fantasy creature because that is a classic trope, you are not let off the hook. You you are not, because that trope is racist. ⁓ I'm not gonna go too much into this, but I I really think that we are starting to have those conversations. That is a beautiful thing. ⁓But there is still that temptation to kind of bury your head in the sand and say, well, you know, this is just classic, this is just the genre. It's not. Those things were not neutral back then, and they are not neutral right now. And I think Molly Rookwood has an excellent article that I will link to about some of those anti-Semitic roots of typical fantasy creatures like goblins, things like that. I think we often see ⁓ creatures like orcs are often dark-skinned they're this mindless horde of you know inherently evil creatures, those representations you know are rooted in racist stereotypes. ⁓ especially fantasy is coming from an era when there was this idea that white communities are going to be taken over by the scourge of black people moving in. That is the root, and it is racist. So, again, it might be a classic trope.But that does not let you off the hook. And we need to do better now that we know better.
So if you are creating a fantasy race that is inherently evil, first of all, maybe we can make things a little bit more complex because it is 2026. but check yourself if those creatures are black in any way or brown in any way, let's change that. ⁓ I think you know, my my favorite is weird word because I think it is just so ridiculous. But if think about the Dark Elves or Drow the ⁓ R.A. Salvatore books, which is Wizards of the Coast, ⁓ Dungeons and Dragons books. in those books, the most ridiculous aspect of that series is that these dark elves have dark skin when they live underground, when we all know that when you live in a an environment that has no light, those dark elves should be pasty, white, pale skinned, and the elves that are above ground in the sun should have brown skin. ⁓ but again, I I cannot speak to what was actively presently in the minds of the creators when that series was made, ⁓ but I have to think that this very matriarchal society that is black skinned and evil…It feels very racialized.
And I think that while creators may not have had racist intentions actively when they created that series and that species, all of us grew up in an environment where racial stereotypes existed. I mean, those books are fairly old. ⁓ I believe the first one was published in the nineties. So think about the culture and the stereotypes that were pervasive at the time that those creators were growing up. it just is reality that we have grown up in a racist society, in a society where racist stereotypes are pervasive, and that has influenced media in so many ways, both in terms of books that we're consuming, movies that we're consuming, it is all there, it is pervasive.
And Verna Myers has a TED talk that I absolutely love. I used to show it every year in my classroom where she talks about how we were all outside when the smog came down. We all breathed it in. These biases are part of who we are, whether we like it or not. Hopefully, maybe that will be different for future generations, but it's not going to change unless we decide to change what we are putting down on paper.
So we have to actively decide to not just you know, avoid the most obvious racist stereotypes. We have to, you know, actually think about how do we world build differently? How do we represent cultures in our fantasy worlds differently to actually create change? which again is a big ask and it's a tall order. So if you are someone who's saying that you're like, my goodness, I already published a book that has a dark-skinned evil creature, once you know better, you do better. We move on. and I'm not saying that you can never have a fantasy creature that has dark skin and is evil. I think the the bigger problem is when it is an entire society of otherwise humanoid intelligent species who are somehow all mindlessly devoted to an evil leader, all mindlessly devoted to doing evil, who do not seem to ever do anything besides harm other people who are, you know, have closer proximity to whiteness. I could go into this more and more, but I think I I will leave it there that, you know, there is room for nuance in this conversation. I am not, like I said, handing down a mandate, but I do want you to keep in mind that just because something is common in classic books does not make it okay. And I think the same goes for gender stereotypes, for sexist tropes. Again, a lot of those things have been handed down to us, but now we have the opportunity to change them.
All right, mindset number three. ⁓ I have touched on this before, but I am a big proponent of thinking about your ideal readers, not your ideal reader. And the reason why I advocate for that is partially because I think when we are focused on one ideal reader, it lets us off the hook for thinking about diversity. Because your one ideal reader has one race, one gender, one sexuality, one socioeconomic class. It is so limited and so narrow that it really excuses you from having to think about the concerns and considerations of people outside of that very narrow band. And this is an example that I give in my course, Reader Ready Revisions, where you might have written a book that is perfectly fine for the suburban white mom of two. But deeply offensive to the suburban black mom of two because you have included stereotypical, bigoted representations of black people that maybe a white woman is not going to be bothered by. But increasingly in 2026, hopefully that white woman is bothered by it and calling you out on social media. you know, so when we are limiting ourselves to just that one person, we fail to think about: is this offensive to someone who is queer? Is this offensive to someone who does not share the exact lived experience of this one imaginary person that I created in my head. ⁓ and and it lets us off the hook for thinking more expansively about what is harmful, what is not, what is, you know, appropriate for our story.
And one thing to keep in mind here is that I am not saying that you can never have a racist character in your books. I am not saying that you can never have someone do anything offensive or problematic. As long as you're not celebrating those things. And I think that is the key. And we have seen people get in trouble for this where they have the romantic hero who is a Nazi or who has participated in a massacre of a minority community. And I have to think that that writer was so narrowly focused on who they thought their ideal reader was that they thought that no one would care, no one would be harmed, no one would be bothered. And in reality, there are going to be readers of various backgrounds who are interested in the same exact things until you do something so insensitive as have your hero kill multiple people from their racial group with no remorse.
And then you simply present that as part of their backstory and not as something that is deeply wrong. And again, there is room for characters to change. Not all readers will get on board with that. That is something that you are going to have to accept if you are deciding to redeem a character who starts off racist. I personally think it can be done well. Not everyone does. But again, it kind of goes back to the cancel culture idea. And I am a person who believes in change.
Not everyone does. And that is just, you know, something that we are always going to have to deal with. ⁓ so again, there is room to have a racist character. I have read books with racist characters that have not offended me as a black person because that racist person was not celebrated. I have also read books that I have put down because that racism was not questioned, was not dealt with in any way meaningfully. So
The goal here is really to just start thinking about your ideal reader, not as a single person, not as a person who has one narrow set of racial or you know sexual identities or anything like that. And instead think more expansively. Think about your ideal reader in terms of what is interesting to them. Think about your ideal reader in terms of the genres that they love. Think of your ideal reader in terms of the questions that they are asking, the stage in their life that they are at.
Think about them expansively because I would love to see a world in which I, as a, you know, black reader of fantasy do not have to just cringe my way through because that is the only thing available in the bookstore, which is what I did when I was younger, where these problematic representations come up. And I'm still reading this book because I have another week until I can go back to the library or back to Barnes and Noble. and that is just what was there on the shelf. Nowadays we have so much more choice. People can walk away from you, and they will. So why not think expansively and avoid limiting your audience before you even really get started? So I'll get off my soapbox there now.
All right, then the final, final mindset. I think this one is a little tricky and this one might be controversial and people might disagree with me, but I think that sometimes when we talk about diversity and representation, there is this mindset that everything has to be hyper-realistic to the world as it is right now. And I don't think that's true. I think that there is a time and a place for that. I think if you are writing contemporary fiction, you definitely are going to have more limitations for what you what you can do in terms of dreaming of a world that is different. ⁓ if you're writing contemporary anything, you will need to think about what is the current reality. So you're not erasing people's experiences. If you're writing historical fiction, your hands will be tied even more because again, you do not want to erase people's experiences but at the same time, there has always been room for black joy and queer joy and joy among people who are otherwise being oppressed.
Obviously, time and place is a big factor, and that joy is going to look very different depending on the setting. So again, historical fiction writers tread carefully, ⁓ contemporary fiction writers tread carefully. But especially for those of us who are writing futuristic settings or completely made up settings, don't be afraid to dream bigger. And I have this isn't me that I've really been thinking about, both because I've been seeing a trend in agent wish wish lists, where they're asking for queer norm literature, which is essentially literature where being queer is normalized, it is not a source of oppression, it just exists in a world. And that is especially true that people are looking for that in fantasy. And I think the same can also be true of various racial and other minority groups, a world where that discrimination just does not exist. And that doesn't mean that other forms of discrimination may not exist in that world, but it doesn't have to be racial. It doesn't have to be about sexuality or gender identity. And for some people, that again is gonna be a little bit controversial.
And you know, what really inspired this part of the podcast is a post I saw a while ago that was critiquing Fourth Wing. Because Rhiannon I think I'm saying that correctly, I'm not actually a hundred percent sure. ⁓ Rhiannon is a character who is described as having you know black or brown skin. ⁓ and yet she is not discriminated against racially. And the person writing this post essentially said it is wrong to have this black character without ever addressing her skin color or without ever addressing racial discrimination. And my my disagreement with that post is that this poster, who I believe was not a person of color, I'm not a hundred percent sure, was basically arguing that racial discrimination is the natural state of human beings, and I don't believe that is true.
Race is a social construct, racial discrimination is a social construct. It doesn't have to be this way. It has been this way on Earth, but it doesn't have to be this way. And why not create fiction that explores that possibility? Because if you've read Fourth Wing, there are people who are discriminated against in Fourth Wing. It's because of which magical creature they are bonded to or not. It is about whether they belong to a part of the country that has previously rebelled, there are forms of discrimination and oppression. They're just not racial. And what a beautiful thing to imagine a world where it is not just the color of your skin that determines how you are treated in society. So I have absolutely no problem with a black character existing in a fantasy world who is not discriminated against.
And I think it is actually problematic to suggest that racism is natural and required in order for a world to feel believable. I I don't agree with that. And I think that that in and of itself represents someone who is trying to be racially conscious, but is maybe not actually anti racist. I don't know. I don't know that person. I don't know, you know, who they are. It was just a social media post that I am reacting to. But my encouragement to you is to say that if you are someone who is trying to add diversity to your books.
That doesn't automatically mean adding in a group that is discriminated against. It just means creating diversity, having people of different skin tones, having people of different faith, if that is applicable, having people who have different sexualities, and they don't have to be hated for it.
And what a beautiful thing to imagine a world where that is possible. And again, you know, your exact scenario is going to differ. You might be a person who is explicitly trying to address issues of discrimination based on race. That's totally fine. Do it. That is great. We still need those books, but there's also room for books where those characters exist and they are judged on their own merits and they are not automatically discriminated aga against just because of that identity factor. So I believe there is room for that. I think again what I am seeing on agent Wish lists is that there is room for that kind of story. ⁓ it doesn't have to all be trauma porn. That's not the only form of representation that is available to us. And I will tell you, I
As a teacher, I always worked in urban schools, always worked at high poverty schools, schools that typically had a very diverse student population. ⁓ actually, you know what? That's a lie. They were called diverse because they were all black and brown students, but actually not diverse because it was entirely black and brown students. I actually did not teach a white student until my fifth year as a teacher. So that this is not diverse, it's just not white. ⁓ so I can tell you from you know from that experience, I was a reading teacher and our English curriculum that was given to us was all about being diverse, but it was all traumatic, all about the struggle. And I finally had an opportunity as a guided reading teacher to teach One Crazy Summer by Rita Williams Garcia. and it is a book about three sisters who basically travel to go visit their mother over the summer. The sisters happen to be black, but it is not a book about the struggle. And my students loved it. And that is something that they explicitly said that it was so nice to just read a book about black people being black, living their lives, going through other conflicts, other challenges that were not directly related to their race and being discriminated against. And the book did not completely ignore the realities of that society. There was a very small segment of that book that you know did feature one moment that was, you know, a little bit prejudiced. But otherwise it was just a book about that family, their life and so I really want you to encourage you. If you are thinking about adding diversity to your books and your mind immediately goes to representing the struggle, racism, et cetera, that is not your only option. And that is true no matter which kind of diversity you are trying to add to your stories. ⁓ so just think expansively, think about all of the possibilities for what you can add to your stories. ⁓ and don't be afraid to dream of a better world, especially if it is a world that you are creating. All right, and that is where I will leave you.
Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. If this episode resonated with you, if it taught you anything, please, please, please consider sharing this episode with a friend or posting about it on social media. I am really trying to reach as many writers as possible with this show, and I would have really appreciated your help doing that. All right. Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful day. Keep writing, keep getting better, one word at a time. See ya.
