Random Writing Tips – DEI

 

Twenty-some years ago, when I really started writing, one of the hot-button topics was gay marriage.  I wanted to do my part and show support with my writing, but most of the stories I wrote then were only a few hundred words and covered like a five-minute event.  So what I usually did was have a character meet someone at a company Christmas party who would introduce themselves as, “Beth, Jill’s wife,” and then they’d have a normal, pleasant conversation for a minute or so, and then the aliens would show up.  Did my “groundbreaking” stories change the culture of the country?  No.  The best I could hope for was that at some point a gay person read one of these stories and knew that there were people out there who didn’t hate them and just thought of them as … people.

When I create a main character, my default state is thinking of them as me, so most of my main characters start as a white, heterosexual cis male.  It’s what I know.  But something I started doing early on in my writing, was trying to have more women characters.  And when I say characters, I don’t mean damsels in distress.  When women show up in my stories, there’s a good chance they will be bosses, or starship captains, or Presidents.  Still, what I usually do is have a main character named Amy out walking her dog, and when she turns the corner there’s an alien.  When your stories are only a few hundred words, there’s not much depth you can go into.  Not to mention, I’m not the person who should be writing stories about the struggles women go through in the early 21st century. 

I would like to say that about half of my characters are women, but I don’t think the numbers would support that.  A few years ago, I was putting together a collection of short stories – some I’d published years before and new ones written for the collection – and I noticed that most of the stories had men as the main character.  So I gender swapped the main characters in a few of the stories, and it went from only having about 20% of the stories with women main characters to about 40%.  Not great, but better.

Another not great part of my writing would be covering race or ethnicity.  And there’s two big reasons for this.  One, years ago I read a novel and every time a character was introduced, we got a paragraph giving detail descriptions of them.  Like, this guy was 5 foot 9, 147 pounds, deeply tanned, very near-sighted but fixed by thick glasses, left-handed, enjoyed jazz, parents were from Greece….  What irked me was that none of these details were relevant to the story.  I’m sure the author wanted readers to have a vivid image of the character, but for me, my eyes just glaze over whenever exposition is just vomited like that.  The second reason, probably related a bit to the first, is that I don’t really care who the reader pictures when they read my characters.  If I have a character named Dave, unless there is an important reason, the story doesn’t care if he’s white, or black, or whatever.  I’ll let the reader picture him however they want.  I might put in that he took off his glasses, or scratched his beard to add some detail, but skin color is rarely important enough in most of the stories I write to be mentioned. 

And in the last few years, the hot button topic has been transgender people.  Which is a topic I haven’t figured out how to write about.  Even in my longer, thousands of words stories, I can’t think of a way to have transgendered characters without a character just vomiting exposition that they are trans.  The one, tiny positive of this though, is that if I ever become famous and my stories are turned into movies or shows, it will be perfectly fine to cast trans actors for any part, because I’ve never explicitly stated that they weren’t. 

Anyway, as a white guy, I knew that there were assholes out there who hated gays, women, blacks, trans, whatever, but I assumed that they were ever so sloooowly being pushed to the irrelevant fringe, where they belong.  But then, to steal a phrase, the Fire Nation attacked.  Jesus Christ are there a lot of assholes out there.  My privileges shield me from the worst, but I’ve been shocked at how casual some people are about being assholes. 

Which brings me finally to the point of this post.  Basically, if you are a writer, I’d recommend doing everything you can to have more characters who aren’t white, heterosexual, cis males.  Because there are many different types of people in the world, so why shouldn’t your stories reflect that.  But also, we need to redouble our efforts to push the assholes to the fringe.  Part of that will be having stories about black lesbian starship captains or even trans Presidents.  And if you’re worried that having such characters may harm your sales, it’s probably a safe bet that the assholes aren’t the biggest readers.  But imagine the loyal fan base you’d have if your stories are full of strong gay, women, black, trans, whatever characters.

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Image from Pixabay.