: Re: Writing Historically accurate diversity vs. Telling someone else's story I am writing a story that takes place in a period of heavy political tension. It is a fictional world, but based off

@Candy753

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I think you may be misunderstanding the complaints about "telling someone else's story". Every story is the story of someone other than the author, in whole or in part. The complaints come when:

The author takes a writing spot from someone closer to the experience. For example, people would complain if a white writer pitched a story with a black main character to a publishing house that had a limit on how many such stories it would accept in a year. This is less likely to be a problem if the member of a minority is not the main character. You can mitigate this concern by not pitching to places that have limits on diversity, and by publically naming and supporting the authors who are members of a minority group that you read for your research.
The author misrepresents the experience, especially in a stereotypical way. You mitigate this by doing your research and by having friends and paid sensitivity readers read your work to find points you missed. (Sensitivity readers are a suggestion from the Writing Excuses podcast.)
The author takes credit from members of a minority group. For example, if you took a major accomplishment of a member of a minority and wrote about it, but changed the character to hide their minority status.

So, as long as you do your research it is completely possible and even praise-worthy to tell a story about people different from yourself. As an example, the writer for the movie BIT isn't trans and the movie has a trans lead. Far from angering trans people, he's something of a hero to me and several trans people I know. I've seen similar praise for non-black authors of young adult novels with black protagonists.

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