A Reflection on Diversity

Yeah, yeah, so this is going to be one of those posts that is writing about writing. Unlike some of the other ones I’ve done, this is way less about craft and more about content and the fundamental underpinnings of character. So if you are here only for the short fic, might want to give this a pass. Also, I am not writing this to call any author out, except for maybe myself.

Here’s the thing. I’m a cis/het/white able-bodied dude creeping up on his forties. I write speculative fiction. For decades, spec fic was written for my demographic.  I count among my influences Robert E. Howard, Michael Moorcock, H.P. Lovecraft, Roger Zelazny, Clark Ashton Smith, and yeah, even some Robert Heinlein. I grew up reading R.A. Salvatore and David Eddings.

It is only relatively recently that other demographics are starting to make gains in those fields as writers. As a result, many, many characters that I’ve read are through the lens of a male perspective. And hey, guess what my default is when I start writing? People that (more or less) look like me. Write what you know, right?

But.

Isn’t that a failure of imagination on my part? If I can write a knife wielding blood magician as a hero, if I can write an expy of a Roman legionnaire trapped in a sword, if I can write a mech pilot flitting through space fighting aliens, why can’t I write a character different from myself?

Part of the answer, of course, is that writing a character who is even superficially like me is comfortable. I know what that experience is like. The problem inherent with that is that when someone picks up a story I wrote, are they ever going to see themselves in place of the hero? If my daughter picks up one of my stories, is she going to wonder why the girl can’t do the rescuing, can’t be the badass? Yes, this is something I’m working on.

Part of the answer as well is a fear of getting it wrong. Of trying to write a non-heterosexual character and being accused of queerbaiting. Of writing a person of color and flailing horribly. Of writing a female character and getting it absolutely mind-boggingly wrong. Of writing a disabled character and screwing the pooch on it completely.

All of that feels like excuses though, doesn’t it? First drafts should and are encouraged to be able to be imperfect. Editing is where the magic happens, where you make the words not suck. That isn’t only about fixing the surface issues. Grammar. Spelling. It’s also about shoring up the story structure. Of taking a long, hard look at characters and making sure you are treating them as characters and not window dressing or worse treating the thing that makes them diverse as the sole aspect of their character that makes them unique.

So what’s the answer? Is there an answer?

Well, the first step is to treat the characters as characters, and not a collection of tickboxes. A disabled character might use a wheelchair, but they are not their wheelchair. A character might have dark skin and suffer discrimination because of it, but they are not lesser because of it. A sword in the hand of a woman is as dangerous (or more so) in the hand of a woman as it is in the hand of a man.

And if you are looking at your fiction and say that diversity has no place because “history” take a good long hard look at what you are writing. Even the Arthurian legends had Palamades, a Saracen. And Shakspeare has Othello (well, and Aaron too if you want to go strictly villainous). And if you are including potatoes and tomatoes but not diverse characters because “history?” That speaks more to your own lack of research than any historic veracity. This goes double if you are writing spec fic in anything other than a real world historic context. If you limit diversity to non-human races, but all your characters look like you? That’s a problem. Fiction should give us a chance to rise above ourselves, to tell truth about the world and sometimes to reshape in such a way that we can show what is possible as opposed to what is.

So the question becomes what next? Where do I go from here? My answer is that I’m going to keep writing, working to be cognizant of where I can do better and knowing that everyone reading what I write doesn’t have the same background, the same lens through which I see the world. And I’ll keep my daughter in mind for the day when she picks up something I wrote and looks for herself in the words.