Writing Diverse Characters

A Guest Post by Christopher Nutall

(Editor’s Note: Thank you Christopher Nutall for taking the time to write a guest post for us here at Jimbo’s. Chris is the author of approximately elebenty bajillion books, a few of which he mentions below. You should check his work out. He’s an awesome writer.)

A year or so ago, someone asked me who was my favourite character of colour. I think it was an attempt at a gotcha question, because I don’t really think about characters as being characters of colour. There is a difference between a Diverse Character and a Character Who Happens To Be Diverse: the former exists to prove a point, and deflect the blame if the television series/movie flops; the latter is a person in their own right, a person who is far more than just an icon of the endless and rather tedious culture war. The former tend to be too good, denied any failings (Rey of Star Wars is a very good example of this); they wind up being accused, often correctly, of being Mary Sues. The latter work for their happy endings and by the time they get them they thoroughly deserve them.

The first answer that crossed my mind was Captain Sisko. Sisko was easily the most well-rounded captain in Star Trek, a father and political/religious figure as well as an officer and a gentleman. Throughout the seven seasons, we see him overcome his trauma from the Battle of Wolf 359 and grow into his role as station commander, military leader, diplomat and politician and many other positions and responsibilities.

But Sisko was conceived before the modern culture war really took off.

The second answer that crossed my mind was Luz Noceda of The Owl House. We have very little in common, apart from being neurodivergent, and it may seem odd that I like her, but Luz represents a perfect example of a Character Who Happens To Be Diverse. She is smart and funny, but her own preconceptions about magical worlds blind her when she falls into a real magical world; she makes mistakes, some of which have very serious consequences, through misunderstanding the reality around her. Luz works for her victories, and we see her putting in the work, so her victories are of very real value.

Luz works so well because her creator, who is a genius far beyond me, managed to thread the needle between developing a character for greater representation (Luz is Dominican-American as well as bisexual) while avoiding the pitfall of creating a too-perfect character who never struggles, never makes mistakes, and never uses her gender, skin colour and sexuality to bludgeon critics with accusations of racism, sexism, and homophobia.

Put crudely, the key to developing a Character Who Happens To Be Diverse is to remember that they are human. They are allowed to make mistakes.

For such a character to work, in my opinion, they must follow certain rules:

First, they should be as unique as possible. They should not be legacy characters because it is all too easy to dismiss them as cheap attempts to build on an already established franchise/character. (The principal exception to this is universes that allow the creation of additional characters, such as Star Trek captains or Green Lantern ring bearers, but even so the new character needs to be unique.) Ideally, they should be in new universes and/or isolated from other characters. They should stand and fall on their own merits, instead of being compared to pre-established characters.

Second, they should be seen to struggle. If they find themselves in a new world, they should be lost or confused at least for several comics/episodes. If they have superpowers, they should not master them immediately. They should work to gain experience, instead of magically gaining experience they need. (If this is a character who obtains power/experience from someone else, such as Joe90, there should be at least one episode when they find themselves working without their powers.)

Part of the reason that Rey is unsatisfactory as a character is that she is rarely seen to struggle. Luke is very much the load throughout much of the first movie and even in the second he still lacks both skill and experience, note how the only reason he survived his first fight with Darth Vader was because Vader wasn’t actually trying to kill him. It isn’t until the third movie that Luke is a full Jedi (and even then the only person who addresses Luke as a Jedi is Palpatine). Rey, by contrast, has a very easy ride.

These struggles should not be just be with editors, but with themselves. The first meeting between commander Sisko and Captain Picard boils with tension, because Captain Picard was kidnapped by the Borg and assimilated, his knowledge and tactical skill added to the collective and used to ensure a massacre at Wolf359, a battle that killed Sisko’s wife. Blaming Picard for being used in such a way is grossly unfair, but Sisko would be more than human if he didn’t feel, at some level, that Picard was to blame.

A perfect character is a boring character. A character who struggles to overcome their demons can be a very interesting character.

Third, their accomplishments should not come at the expense of anyone else. The character should not be held up against another older and well-established character and proclaimed to be automatically better. (One particularly bad example of this is Green Lantern Simon Baz, who shortly after getting the ring pushes it to do something other Lantern believed to be impossible; don’t worry, he gets better.) This should be true both in universe and out: Finn was the character from The Force Awakens with the most potential for later development, but he becomes comic relief instead of a Jedi, while the narrative focuses on Rey and Kylo Ren.

The infamous and badly written scene where Shuri puts down Tony Stark and Bruce Banner is another example of a character being promoted at the expense of an older character. It grates even for those of us who love Shuri, partly because Shuri has the advantage of knowledge and technology several decades ahead of Stark and Banner, but also because it is simply unnecessary. Shuri is awesome in her own right and shrilling her in such a manner undermines her, making her appear arrogant and condescending and gives plenty of ammunition to the haters.

The key to writing diverse characters is to remember that they are human, that they have feelings and desires and sometimes those feelings and desires are improper or flat-out wrong. A character with racist views who learns the error of his ways and works to overcome them is more interesting than a character who is already perfect, and doesn’t have a drop of racism in his body; in fact, the latter can be irritating as well as boring. You want the characters to be likeable as well as understandable, because a character the reader doesn’t like at a very primal level is a character who can be easily dismissed and discarded, when someone better comes along.

You also need to represent their lives honestly. If they have problems with racism, you need to explain why; if they have problems caused by a mismatch between their physical bodies and gender identities, you need to be honest about why these problems exist rather than pretending they don’t. This is never easy to do, but you have to. One of the many great things about The Owl House is that it acknowledges the issues caused by Luz’s neurodivergence, rather than glossing over them or making them an advantage in her new world.

You should also resist the urge to accuse your critics of racism or sexism or any sort of bigotry. It is true that some critics are bigots, who don’t want to step outside their comfort zone. It is also true that some characters are not paragons of goodness and virtue and proclaiming them as such is not remotely helpful. When you are criticised, listen to the criticism and decide for yourself if it is helpful or not. (Helpful hint; anyone who criticises or insults you personally is a troll can be safely ignored.)

For example, both Blood at the Root and The Marvellers feature African-American teenagers going to magic school. The Marvellers is the better of the two, with a heroine who is more sympathetic and the prose written in plain English. Blood at the Root not only has a far more sharp edged hero, who is somewhat less sympathetic, but it is also written in a version of African-American Vernacular English and comes with buzzwords from the social justice background that can often make the book very hard to follow. If you wrote a book in such a manner, the fact that people are having difficulty following you is a sort of thing you desperately need to know. Blaming people for telling you that, even if you disagree, is a bad move.

The issue of introducing representative characters has been a hot button topic for far too long now. Too many people have tried to move forward too far too fast, instead of doing the hard work of building up their characters naturally; they have been too quick to accuse critics of bigotry rather than listening to their concerns and learning from them. In doing so, they have thrown the entire concept of representative characters into question and made it all too easy for their critics to smear them in return.

It is not easy to build up a character piece by piece, to show the character developing from flawed childhood and teenage beginnings into a well-rounded adult, but it is far more rewarding in the long run. And it does not cast a long and odious shadow over other characters of colour either.

Christopher Nuttall is the best-selling author of Ark Royal, Schooled in Magic, Morningstar and many other works of science-fiction and fantasy. His website is here, his Facebook fan page is here, and he blogs on Substack here. His mother would like you all to know she’s very sorry, and she doesn’t know where she went wrong.