: Limited 3rd Person: How to reveal character's black skin? I have a scene that I'm working on. The character in the scene is an actor who's black wearing a black face. At the end of the scene

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You're sort of tricking the reader, inasmuch as you're subverting their assumption about the character. Whether or not it works lies entirely in the reveal, which could be as simple as merely stating at the end that he is a black man working in a minstrel show, perhaps after saying "the black gave way to brown" (or similar phrasing) as he removed his makeup.

However, be sure of your historical context here. Black actors did commonly perform in blackface minstrel shows without conflict. And minstrel show performers (white and black) used burnt cork to color their faces until greasepaint makeup was popularized in the early 1900s. A quick newspaper search turned up plenty of contemporary and later references. A black former minstrel interviewed in old age described wearing blackface--for whites as well as blacks--as "pure showmanship" and compared it to circus clown makeup.

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Putting the race of the Actor doesn't fit in the paragraph that you show us. If you do put the race of the Actor, it would feel rushed and forced. You could put it in a different paragraph or you could just put it at the beginning of your story. (Sorry, that was vague. Sorry, if this isn't helpful.)

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First, drop a line about actor's dark complexion. This would serve as a hint, but not the actual plot twist yet.

Second, drop a "bomb" - a clear and unambiguous reveal of actor's race. I understand the complication here is that you have to write it from a limited 3rd person view. Also (I assume) it should happen in a scene when your character is alone in his room, so there is no one else to point out his race. Establishing the race descriptively (i.e. by skin color and other features) I feel would not be concise - you would need several sentences to make sure that the reader would understand it.

So, the "bomb" must be the character's own thought. I recommend two thoughts. One, the actor thinks of the audience as a racially distinct one, referring to them as "whites". Second, he reveals a memory or memento that quickly establishes himself as black - for example an old photograph of his grandparents, a freed slaves.

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It's often clumsy and artificial for a character to make references to their own race in a first-person or limited-third-person narrative, because most people don't often actively think about the color of their own skins, unless some situation forces them to. But you're depicting a situation in which almost anyone would be forced to ponder their own race, so it shouldn't actually be that difficult to reference here.

This gives you a range of options about how to do it. He might contrast the ugliness of the makeup with the beauty of his own skin, or ponder the irony of having to dress up as a stereotyped version of what he actually is. He might rage at the fact that he can't "be seen" except behind the mask of the makeup, or that his culture can only be appreciated as appropriated and repackaged to meet racist expectations. He might wonder how many people in the audience knew they were watching an actual black person instead of a white performer in blackface, and what they felt about it.

There is no one right answer here. The direction you go should match your themes, message, and character development.

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