How do you go about choosing the gender identity/ethnicity/sexuality of your characters?

:chill:

This thread needs to get back on track. Wow, page two and we're already getting reports.

 

I think a lot of readers want diversity that comes out naturally. That's hard because a lot of us don't have particularly diverse peer groups or neighbors, so it isn't front in our minds.

To make it easier, I think writers can study a little about the racial and ethnic backgrounds of a place and time. After that, read a bunch of fashion and makeup blogs written for those demographics. Then read about period clothing for people from this or that place.

Naturally, all that helps with creating a diverse mental image. The background work helps a lot.

 

So, to possibly get things back on track, I'll submit mine.

I don't think I have a set way I do things. I get an idea for what my character's personality is like, generally gender is part of that. Ethnicity, hm, I tend to have mostly white characters, although I have been trying to include more diversity lately. But since I've switched to writing all in my fantasy world, most of my characters will probably switch races when I get around to them.

(Sexuality is all strait. I don't like writing gay stuff.)

 

Usually it's just a feeling. The characters unravel themselves, sometimes like a good melody, more often like a cheap roll of toilet paper.

 

Fun fact: I'm an asexual-aromantic virgin. I used to feel the same way about heterosexuality being "shoved down my throat" as a teenager.

 

I can see from looking above that my Sister in Arms, @KaTrian, has already spoken and it seems that her words are not being heeded. That is untenable. Utterly untenable. The derailing member is hereby thread-banned from this thread, permanently. The gay, Puerto Rican admin of this forum is telling you all that he has just about had his fill of the Identity Politics, from BOTH sides of the house. Seriously. Totally getting on my tits, as our Brit friends are fond of saying. Stick to the intent of the thread, or find yourself denied access herein.

To remind everyone of the original intent of this thread, I present the OP once more:

How do you go about choosing the gender identity/ethnicity/sexuality of your characters?

(The reason for this post and @KaTrian's prior post may no longer be apparent as I have trimmed this thread back to those posts that are actually on-topic. If your post was deleted but no action was taken against you, you are not on the receiving end of corrective action. It's just that clean-up must be thorough else it all just comes right back.)

 

My MC is always male and I pick gender and sexuality of other's with great purpose because I emphasize sexuality and gender in my writing.

I also pick ethnicity based on how I want characters to interact and where the setting takes place.

Example of some cast from my current work:
Bisexual Male lead of Mediterranean decent in 1800s, Son is half Chinese from a mistress he found working in the opium industry, Betrothed is an Irish woman because both of them are considered of lesser whiteness, He's paired with more conservative, white male counterparts to emphasize how different he is one of which is married, and his lover currently is a white, gay guy from affluent origins.

 

I came back to this thread to restate something I posted originally, and offer an example.
I ended my original post with this:

I just read one of @BayView's books. Title was Chemistry something. The story was fantastic. It was rare that I ever thought about the people or their sexes. The story took me on a journey through a longing and potential courtship, and worked perfectly. In fact, there were parts (like the elephant part) that had me wondering if I was reading part of a Cary Grant script. The story itself was so well written that instead of it being 2 men, it could have been a werewolf & earthworm and it still would have been great.
A well crafted/written story trumps anything else & should come first.

 

Gender, ethnicity, and other physically obvious characteristics (physical build, hair color, etc.) are generally set by how I first envision the character. I only decide on sexuality if it ends up being relevant to the story. It's rare for me to change a character from that initial vision. The last time I did (a male heroic fantasy protagonist from a "barbarian" tribe to a female one) was because I figured the anthology would be swamped with Conan knockoffs and the story would have a better shot if it stood out from the crowd.

 

I'm, so far, a "write what you know" kind of person, so my characters tend to be straight, white, and generally male. I know that this is a diversity no-no, but honestly when I write in side characters that are more rainbow-rific (either in melanin content or sexuality) I'm kind of terrified of negative stereotyping.

On the the other hand though, when I imagine my characters, they're rarely described in much detail physically, so it could fall under Andy Weir's statement (prior to the movie) of "Who said Mark Watney was white?"

Something I need to think on.

 

I find it difficult to write about things outside of my direct experience, so I pay close attention to the people around me and their interactions with others. The former applies to strangers as well, and so I find that I right them more honestly. And because gender and ethnicity are topics that never come up in my immediate social circle, and rarely come up in my more extended social circles, most of my characters end up pretty vanilla. Usually straight, though I especially enjoy playing with "show don't tell" when it comes to sexuality. I write it as if it were accepted by all and treated as normal as the wind.

My characters change race when a character I've made reminds me of someone I personally know of that race. Ethnicity? Either, I suppose.

So, yeah. I reduce the people in my social circles to their most basic parts, then play Mr. Potato Head with my characters.

 

Oh, I hear you, I'm just worried about writing negative characters, or characters with negative traits, and having them be anything other than SWMs. If my character looks and sounds (generally) like me and is a backstabbing, grifting bastard, I'm okay, but if he were black, am I stereotyping? If the character is scatterbrained and a woman, will it be seen that she's scatterbrained because she's a woman? I know those are really common and broad stereotypes, but I'm just using them as exmples of the minefield I fell like I'm negotiating.

 

If Kyra Sylvan had been the only female character in my Doctor Who fanfic (in contrast to the number of male characters all being distinct in their own unique ways), then she would have created the impression that all women are sensitive, religious, and obsessed with The Rules.

If Captain June Harper had been the only female character in my Doctor Who fanfic (in contrast to the number of male characters all being distinct in their own unique ways), then she would've created the impression that all women are hypersexual, bloodthirsty savages who should not be entrusted with positions of authority.

If Arachne had been the only female character in my Doctor Who fanfic (in contrast to the number of male characters all being distinct in their own unique ways), then she would've created the impression that all women are non-humans at best, objects at worst.

If Colonel Leeson had been the only female character in my Doctor Who fanfic (in contrast to the number of male characters all being distinct in their own unique ways), then she would've created the impression that all women are obsessed with making other people "better" at the expense of their subjects' own livelihood and well-being (and, as with Harper, should not be given positions of authority).

If TL-13-Beta "Kathryn" had been the only female character in my Doctor Who fanfic (in contrast to the number of male characters all being distinct in their own unique ways), then she would've created the impression that all women are (as with Arachne) non-humans and that they should all go into blue-collar trades.

See where I'm going with this

 

@Simpson17866
I see the point you are making, but I don't know that I agree. If you portray a character from one particular demographic, why does that imply that you think all members of that demographic would think or behave the same way?

In my WIP I have one character who is black. But I am not trying to imply that all black people behave the way she does. I have one character who is autistic, but I'm not suggesting that he is a template for all people with autism. I have one character who is a dog, but I know dogs have unique personalities. I have one character who is a sentient AI, but I know this one would be different from others like it.

To be frank, if a reader thinks I'm trying to make a generalisation just because I don't have more than one character from a particular demographic group, then that's not my problem. That is, as long as I'm not portraying them stereotypically (which might imply that I have a stereotyped view of those groups).

 

I think of it more this way:

If I read or watch something with a character who's bi, and this character is the embodiment of every garbage stereotype about bi people - they're unfaithful, flaky, sleep with everyone, act in a sexually predatory way - I know bi people aren't inherently like that. For me it's a big sigh and eyeroll and "Of course you wrote your one bi character to fill all the stereotypes ... really original and interesting writing". It's tiring and stupid, and most likely I'm going to find this character really hollow - unless the tropes are explored further, I look at this character and just see an expy of previous stereotypical bi characters. Certainly I don't connect with them. They're a cardboard cutout.

Someone who doesn't know bi people aren't inherently like that? This cardboard cutout is now their template for all bi people, combined with whatever else they've gleaned from cultural representations of bi people. It's shitty, but it is what people do: we simplify and categorize. "Jeff The Only Bisexual I Know cheated on his girlfriend with a dude - now I assume that bi people are just like that."

I don't think it's about what we assume the author thinks about X group of people (at least it's not for me). It's about know what readers will do with the information we give them.

I have this character Lianna. She's bi, and she embraces her role as a seductress / femme fatale of sorts - she sleeps around, flirts, manipulates, is generally crass about people's feelings, gets what she wants, and is completely unapologetic. It's not a great look. I balance this out with the fact that she's an orphan who's been poor her whole life and learned to be a grifter using whatever she had to survive and take care of her sick, volatile brother.

People could still take her the wrong way - even I'm not classifying her as a heroic character - but I also have bi characters who don't fulfil stereotypes (or do to varying degrees, because that's what people are like) on both the good and bad sides. No one can come away with the impression that Li's surface behavior is Just What Bi People Are Like, because I know they'd try, and I purposefully worked against it on two levels.

It's a lot easier when you have a larger cast. And if your characters are thoughtfully fleshed out, it's not going to be as likely a problem anyway. People will still simplify and categorize, but if you make it harder for them to just reinforce their existing biases, I think you're doing a good thing.

I rambled. Hopefully this makes sense / is useful.

 

@izzybot
I completely agree, and that's what I meant by this:

 

But you might happen to fit an element of a stereotype. If there's a stereotype that all short people are fry cooks, and you happen to have a short person who happens to work as a fry cook, and that's the only short person in the book, then there's some evidence that you adhere to the stereotype and no evidence that you don't.

So I think that to some extent this comes down to what the author fears people will think of them. It's not logical to assume from a single data point that an author follows the stereotype--one height-challenged fry cook shouldn't point to anything. But people are not logical.

I'm having that difficulty in the Highly Flavored Novel. The only character that needs to be white is Irwen, and even that isn't really mandatory--the fact that I'm essentially making her genetically Welsh is sort of whim-like, but it's a whim that's pretty embedded by now.

Swietek could be nonwhite, but that means that all of his people would be as well, and they're really Not Very Nice People.

Meldryd is Very Nice, but then I fear that I'd be falling into some sort of kindly service stereotype, plus he has flexible views in areas where the other characters are pretty puritanical.

Ava is a submissive little servant.

If someone were going through this to explain why they couldn't have female characters, I'd say "For God's sake, just get over it!" I should say that to myself. But I hesitate.

 

I'm going to ramble...

I really wish people focused more on serving the story. I'm not going to caveat that or answer to any sort of outside demands from other people, be they liberal or conservative or whatever flavor of demands.

I've certainly given a second look at the nature of certain characters, but it's always been as regards how they fit into the story, or don't fit as the case usually is when I feel like I need to alter someone.

When I changed Brenn's character from a swarthy Young Lord of the Manor™ to a meek, somewhat round introvert, it was because writing about two hotties who hook up was boring and could have been written as a smutty flash fiction rather than a novel because there's nowhere for that to go that's of any real interest to me. And I repeat, to me. I'm not representing "body positive". I'm writing what I think is sexy, to me, for me. Sue me if I dig little muscle-bear dudes⸮ I'm not serving you or anyone else. I can take that original soft, meek Brenn and story him through a few chapters into a Brenn whom I think is sexy, and who, lo and behold, learns to find himself sexy as well, and never mind if he thinks he's worthy of Tevin, is Tevin worthy of him‽

When I changed Amila from the simple, barely literate little scullery maid to the sharp-as-a-tack housekeeper, it's because I realized that her original roll wouldn't serve the story she was meant to tell. A dull scullery maid isn't in a high enough position in a household for her to have the relationships I need her to have, and she most certainly isn't the kind of person that Lady Petla would have in her close sphere of engagement. I rewrote her to a more appropriate roll in the story, one that better suited the furtherance of the story, and in doing so she evolved in many ways. One of the little things that came up out of her re-write is that she's mildly obsessive. It serves her in her roll and in the story. It helps me engage her and the way she looks at things. I didn't change her because I thought writing a girl who's as sharp as a spoon is bad. That person does probably work somewhere in Lady Petla's house. But she can't be the person I use to tell the story I want Amila to tell. That person is someone very different.

These are the things with which I concern myself.

 

The sexuality and gender of my main characters is dictated by genre - I'm trying to break into the M/F romance market, so I have to have one non-gay man and one non-gay woman. I've had gay side characters. I definitely want to write non-M/F romance one day!

I take @izzybot's approach to ethnicity, and actively make my cast racially diverse. The core story in each of my books works with characters of any race, but by choosing a race I change the story in small ways. In my last manuscript the FMC was the daughter of Indian immigrants and she makes Indian dishes, is a lacto-vegetarian, and feels out of place when she has to travel from west London to a place where 99% of people are white. These factors add richness to the story or to the conflict - e.g. she's resentful of being sent away from home, and being the only non-white person in view adds to her irritation.

I do think my stories are all better for having diversity.

 

But I increasingly think that forcing oneself to think past the obvious IS serving the story, or at least is opening up the possibilities for the story, and one of those possibilities may be better for the story than what came up first.

Which is not to say that you don't naturally think past the obvious, but apparently I don't. I posted elsethread about the way that my reading experience kept trying steer me toward Male Rescues Female, over and over. And there are an infinite number of other ways that a somebody's-in-trouble plot can go. I recently wrote a scene that was originally Male Detects Danger, Male Protects Female and Self. And if that's the logical way to go, that's fine, but in this case, the female was more appropriate as the person to detect the danger. She also could have been useful for both strategy and defense, but in this case there were in-story stereotypes to deal with; there's no way Male Character was going to cooperate with that. But my own fiction-fed stereotypes kept me from seeing that she could be anything other than a parcel to be ushered and defended.

It turns out to be useful that I wrote my previous post, because in doing so I realized that there's absolutely no reason why my main setting needs to be substantial-majority white. Nonwhites don't need to be exceptions that need a backstory for being there; there are bits and pieces in scenes that suggest that the setting has been populated by people from multiple locations for generations.

 

I have to argue about this one. (Well, I could argue about the fact that there were more blacks in Europe than common belief suggests, but that would require research that I'm not going to do right now.) Stories aren't always about the people that are granted power by society. They're often about people who aren't powerful when the story begins.

Now, maybe by "strong female role" you literally mean a female character who has power, rather than a female character who is well drawn and compelling. The second is always how I define "strong female character".