: Re: How to do research to write characters from a different culture? Let's say I'm French and I'd like to write a Korean character. How can I build their personality traits, values, etc. in a

@Lengel543

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I think the first question to ask yourself is: Do I need this character to be from a drastically different culture from my own? As the comments to your question have pointed out, there are a lot of risks attendant upon the task. "Write what you know" is a helpful cliché in this instance: if you know people intimately who are from the culture you're interested in, you can casually interview them at length. Your status as an outsider is a potentially valuable one for the reader, who may well be an outsider as well.

One specific approach is an observational one. David Foster Wallace's essays are a great example of not only observational technique, but also of the pitfalls accompanying any attempt "to know." For example, he pretty much admits to the reader his outsider status to a lot of his subjects, and this is part of what makes his essays compelling. As you read his essays, you can sense the ordering of thoughts as he goes along. You can also pinpoint where assumptions are being made, and they gain authority by experience. The number of footnotes he includes in his essays are also indicative of a thought process: they say, "here is something that requires either additional knowledge or further insight that I do not have."

There are two ways you can organize your work, then: personal observations (which are as devoid of prejudice and assumptions as possible, or acknowledging of them) and factual research (which is as devoid of prejudice and assumptions on the part of the original author as possible). As a writer, the most valuable of the two categories is your personal observations. These are what give you your voice and let readers into your brain (the essays/books by A. J. Jacobs are good examples of this). The factual research is your due diligence, and can often help to correct or add to your personal observations.

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