Boot me up and let me play in

[sovay]

(And now, a rare non-housing query.)

Hey, my friendlist! Can you point me toward especially good articles on writing a diversity of characters that are not from one's own sexual/social/cultural background? I am trying to aggregate links for people who are working in this direction.

derspatchel gave me this song. It's a horrible earworm. I realize that may not be fair payment for you linking me helpful things. Have this comic, too.

Comments

[rinue]

I thought immediately of Nisi Shawl's essay "Transracial Writing for the Sincere". I know she and Cynthia Ward also wrote a book/manual called Writing The Other that they've used to teach workshops on the subject, although I haven't read it.

Possibly helpful articles from Reflection's Edge (where I was nonfiction editor years ago, which is why I know the archive pretty well) are:

"Still Seeking Chloe and Olivia: How to Write Strong Female Characters" by Sarah Monette (which talks about among other things how underrepresented female friendships tend to be)

"Writing Visual Dialect in Fiction" by Tony Burton (some guidelines about how to represent non-standard English so that the characters sound like themselves without being unreadable)

"Aliens at the Office Christmas Party: How to Write Subtle Discrimination" by me (a piece about cross-cultural relationships and the frictions that can emerge)

We published a fair number of primers on different subcultures; one I particularly remember is "Chains of Words: Writing Sadomasochism" by Meredith Schwartz.

If any of that seems particularly like or unlike what you're looking for, point me in a direction and I might be able to dig up more.

[sovay]

If any of that seems particularly like or unlike what you're looking for, point me in a direction and I might be able to dig up more.

These are very much the sort of links I was looking for; thank you! Both derspatchel and I have been making a lot of these points in conversation, but it helps to have supporting literature (and also a lot of points we didn't make).

[edit] I knew of Writing the Other, but I think now I would like to encourage this group to purchase a copy; it looks practical as well as thoughtful and well-argued.