: Re: Diversity conflicting with authenticity This is not quite the same question as Writing Diversity because it's not my intention to focus too much on diversity for my story, nor am I struggling

@Carla500

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I cannot, for the life of me, think of any book that I've read where I thought, "Man, this book would have been so much better if the MC was black/lesbian/asexual." I've thought, "I wish this guy would man up," or "Oh, wow, this MC is such a snooze," or "This book sucks like a Dyson" plenty of times, however. I can safely say, no amount of diversity will save a bad book. At best, it's just adding sprinkles to a banana split.

It feels like you're more afraid of getting zapped for not be diverse enough rather than focusing on writing a good story. The problem with this kind of thinking is that one assumes said critics are also the consumers. From my experience and research, that's rarely the case.

If you're gearing for diversity, focus on the characters themselves. I read comics books, and the books that try to have as much skin deep diversity as possible utterly fail at making each player sound unique with their own set of thoughts and ideas and character, fielding their own troubling flaws and disbeliefs. In other words, make them sound like real people. For example, a pseudointellectual that talks in adverbs and purple prose; one who talks cute to everyone and everything, another that's very snide and condescending, and the like.

In the end, you should be only concerned about the story YOU want to write. The moment you start making allowances for unfounded concerns, that's the moment you lose sight of the goal. Should someone bring up, "This book needs more diversity," only then would I address it with the question, "Why?" Because divesity for the sake of diversity is really just playing a numbers game.

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