Hi everyone, I am writing a fantasy series (in a fantasy world) and most of the characters are people of color. It's important for me that readers would be able to recognise the race, but I'm not sure how to describe it respectfully - me, being a white person. While it's not an important part of the plot I don't want anyone to assume they're white. My characters are Blasian, Asian, Black and Indian. Do any of you fellow writers have an idea how to handle this situation?
I don't. If I have a character called Lee Kum Kee or Rajiv Gandhi, the readers are smart enough to work it out for themselves.
It's a fantasy book? I'm not going to call my characters stereotypical names and even if it wasn't fantasy, I would not do that? It's disrespectful.
In which case, they can't be "Asian" or "Indian" if Asia or India don't exist. By the way, there's no such "race" as Asian. Asia is a huge and diverse place. If it's not important to the plot, why does it matter what readers assume? It's a fantasy world, they might be green for all anyone knows. And here's the thing - "people of colour" don't regard themselves as people of colour when at home. It's everyone else who is different. The term itself is coined from the perspective of a white person. Get that out of your head first, because if you look at it that way, you are focussing on the wrong thing - skin colour. If you must describe it at all, do it in terms of culture. No one will assume desert nomads are white. In Raymond E. Feist's books, the otherworlders (whose name I forget) are never physically described but their culture is clearly a reflection of Japanese culture. Your POV character might notice someone who is different from him/herself, if it is particularly unusual to see someone of that ethnicity where he or she lives, but not otherwise.
in my fantasy books i have characters with different skin colours because its unlikely that an entire world would have the same skin colour... the men from the western mountains, the Goochise have green skin because in the very thin air of the mountains they have evolved to have photosynthetic reaction (its not called out in those terms in the book of course)... they are migrant workers in the lowlands and heavily discriminated against because of it... he men from the deserts of the far south have what we call black skin but they aren't discriminated against, on the contrary as expert bowmen their company is prized (rather like Welsh Archers once were by English forces) the inhabitant of the eastern isles are humanoid but not human and are seven feet plus tall with tawny to red skin, while the 'men' from the land beyond the western sea (who are only fringe characters in book 1) are referred to as blue skins but tend to paint themselves blue in battle not because they are naturally blue Both the other predominant races are white but the men of the hawk are blonde and fair skinned ..while the southmen are dark haired and dark eyed. Of my protagonist characters Drass is green, Telok is black, Fabianus is a northerner and Aidan a southerner... I call their races out when it matters to the story. Of course no one is Asian, Indian, or European because those terms don't exist in the fantasy universe
Just describe them physically. Black facial features: dark skinned, full lips, brown eyes Black hair: kinky, dreadlocked, braided, cleanshaven, afro For example, Kareem looked up at the mirror and caught a reflection of his bloodshot brown eyes. He shouldn't have drank so much the night before. His kinky black hair was a mess and was in dire need of a run through with a comb. After washing his face he felt better. He had dark chocolate skin just like his mother and he also inherited her full, thick lips...
The only thing about that is "character looks in a mirror to describe himself" is a massive cliche and doesnt work naturally because if you look in a mirror you don't think oh my eyes are brown and my hair is dark because you see it everyday
I'm reading a lot of Jack Vance just now, and all his characters are fantasy characters ...many humanoid, many not. He always takes a moment to describe a new character ...skin colour, hair colour, body type, any unusual characteristic (involving gestures, walking gait, body shape, age, typical facial features, etc.) There is not usually a reference to any 'actual' human racial characteristics, although he often mentions that these particular features are typical of the inhabitants of ...wherever they live. If you're writing a fantasy, by all means, do give a short description. They might have coffee-coloured skin and pink hair and blue eyes framed by black brows, etc. Or pale enough that they don't stand out against the foggy weather that usually plagues this planet. Or have large feet with toes that are long enough to grip onto projections in the rocks that litter their homeland. And etc. These kinds of descriptions are necessary, because these individuals DO deviate from what we consider to be 'human,' and if a character suddenly closes his third eye and we didn't know he HAD a third eye, we're going to be taken aback. However, if you are writing a story with ordinary people from Earth cultures, then I'd say go for the names, and maybe a hint of what they look like ...but only if it's important to know. If the culture or race IS important to know, then say so right away, so nobody gets the wrong impression. That would be my view. Readers can be quite put off if they assume something important about a character that turns out not to be the case at all. Unless this confusion is intentional on your part, as a writer, try to avoid it by making the culture, race, age, etc clear from the start. I'd say what CAN be left out is the laundry list of physical descriptions that should come clear as the story unfolds ...how attractive the character is, etc. That can usually be shown by how the other characters react to this character. Hair and eye colour, etc ...unless it's connected to race or culture.
Point of note, calling your characters by culturally appropriate names isn't disrespectful at all... calling someone who has Korean type heritage Sung Li is no more disrespectful than calling a prototypical white guy Bob Smith.
Definitely - a lot less disrespectful than calling a Japanese character Dave Scott or something gibberish with too many apostrophes.
EVERYTHING! Literally. I'm working my way through the lot. He is such a fantastic author. I am so astonished I haven't encountered him earlier ...or maybe I did in a short story or so, but never followed up. My favourites thus far are the Cugel saga (both books), the Lyonesse trilogy, and the Cadwal trilogy. But I haven't read any I didn't really love. I'm working on Dragon Masters at the moment. What about you? What are your favourites? PM me ...I don't want to hijack this thread.
To the OP - Arthur C. Clarke lived in Sri Lanka leter on in life, so his stories include Sri Lankan characters, or at least characters with Sri Lankan names. He never has the need to describe them physically.
Focus on the aspects of their race that are important to the story. Is it skin color, and if so why? Does it mark them as lower caste (or higher) in the society they live in? Then it's important. But of course that would change depending on where the character lives. He might be despised where he's a minority but not when he's in his own culture.
You can describe a character through another character's eyes, and rather than coming at it from the paler side of things, use a darker-skinned character as the norm and describe the lighter-skinned characters as the "unusual" ones. In the autobiographical book What is the What ghostwritten by Dave Eggers, the protag is a Black South Sudanese boy. He describes his first encounter with a White person (emphasis mine) as:
Similarly, in Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter on Mars series, Martian races included green men, red men, black men, white men with black hair, and white men with blond hair. Some of the races are given names but, IIRC, the red race are always just referred to as the red men. As others have pointed out, if it's a fantasy world, it can't have races that are drawn from real-world Earth. Make up race names, just as you'd make up character names.
My thoughts. Why do you need to tell what skin color the protagonist has? Is this important for the story? Why exactly this combination? How does this affect the story? Should this be said head-on, or can we find out about the character's past and what his parents were like? Then it may not be necessary to describe the main character and give the reader an opportunity to think out for himself.
Um... cultural names are typically stereotypical. All cultures follow naming trends and you're acting like people are terrible because they hear and pick up on those patterns. If I hear the name Zhang Ziyi, I know that's a Chinese name. It is a very stereotypical Chinese name. It also happens to be the name of a real person. And here's the thing: this isn't even a hurtful stereotype. So why are you getting so upset? No idea. If I hear the name Hiram, I will assume they're Mormon. Because an awful lot of Mormons name their kids Hiram. Or it looks like they're just a mash the keyboard and see what comes out.
in my fantasy WIP, my main character is descendent from a race of desert people that i based on Tuaregs (her mother), but she knows nothing of her heritage and lives on an island of brown skinned people (based on Polynesian islands), and her adoptive father is a white guy with red hair. her best friend is a blonde girl who moves to the island when my MC is a child, and her rival is a dark skinned guy who was found floating in the ocean. but of course, i dont just outright say that. Shaula (my MC) is waiting for her father on the dock and notices how the sun always burns his pale skin and says that his red beard had a shine to it in the sun. at another point, i have her father's friend say "you look more and more like your mother each day" to which Shaula reflects on how she doesnt look a thing like her father. A few chapters later, she's on a different island and meets a woman from the mainland who says that she has the burgundy brown eyes of the desert people. her blonde friend, Shaula says she arrived on the island in a halo of golden curls and stood out because the islanders were essentially homogenous looking and Shaula felt comfortable with her because they were both different. so i drop hints here and there. With my dark skinned character, she often speculates where he's from because there is no one like him on the island and it kind of sets it up the lore of the world. She'd learned as a child about a fabled land hidden by storms, mist, and sea creatures, where the inhabitants are as dark as night, and are the original mystics from where all magic comes from. naturally, she believes it to be simply just a story, until she meets him and wonders outright where he came from (spoiler alert: he's not magic or anything and very ordinarily was set adrift as a human sacrifice to appease the sea god) I repeat... I drop hints here and there. In a fantasy world, you dont need "cultural" names that you would use in real life. Just because my characters are based off of real world cultures, doesnt mean i name them as such to get my point across (unless you develop your own culture with naming norms and languages and ways of dress, etc).
A person with one Black and one (usually east) Asian parent. Tennis player Naomi Osaka is a current example:
In my fantasy book the different people are inspired by actual cultures: the Saab (the ethnicity of the MC) is inspired by the Berbers/Moors, Kilimaans are inspired by the Bantu/Zulus, the Jaelans are inspired by 11th century France, the Fians are inspired by the Celtic/Irish...and you get the idea. I wanted to achieved specificity in creating the different peoples of my fantasy world, so I chose specific groups. Also, I posted a resource about describing people of color: Skin Tone Description Resource | Creative Writing Forums - Writing Help, Writing Workshops, & Writing Community
A couple of people don't want you to mention anything about the characters' ethnicities. I don't really know why. It's noted frequently in non-fantasy novels, and it certainly comes up in the real world often enough. Nobody's colorblind. It's generally unnecessary to mention someone's race in conversation, but it's something noticeable that a character would be just as aware of as we are in real life. Skin color is a major component in physical description. Not all authors describe their characters' physical traits, but tons do. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
