The last few years have shown a growing trend towards diversity in both the characters featured in books as well as the authors writing them. This movement is still gaining momentum, but the contrast it’s already produced in the world of fiction novels is striking.

However, many authors find diversity an intimidating concept. There is an understandable fear of causing offence as well as the sense of simply not knowing how to approach it. My aim with this article is to assuage some of these doubts.  

Consider diversity in terms of what you already know about the writing craft. Some of the earliest pieces of advice a writer receives are to avoid clichés and commonplace descriptions in the narrative. This advice aims to steer a writer away from presenting information to the reader in a manner they’re so familiar with that their brain ignores it.

When one views fiction novels with this knowledge in mind, it soon becomes clear that the vast majority are populated with characters that fit a certain image. The clichéd and commonplace descriptions in terms of characters are straight white people who roughly conform to societal standards. Even when these characters seek to defy a barrier imposed by society, it’s often something reflecting the narrower views of our own world. While there’s certainly a place for fiction works that explore sexuality and gender roles in this manner, the trend is already moving past it. People from marginalised groups no longer want to read about their fictional representatives overcoming societal bias; instead they want to see these characters slaying dragons and finding love. All the things young, white men have set out to do in books for hundreds of years.

It’s not enough, however, to see the disparity in representation as a clinical fact. To truly embrace diversity in your writing, you need an understanding of the effect it has on the reader.

The concept of diversity covers a wide range of topics, traits, and characteristics. We can sum it up as a general desire to veer away from the archetype of ‘normal’ in favour of expressing that which individuals are forced to hide in order to conform. Sexual identity, mental health, and ethnicity all fall under this umbrella, but within each of these we find a wider range of definitions that influence how people identify themselves. That is what authors need to speak to.

We all have that one book or that one character that left a lasting impression on us. These books are often the driving inspiration behind a writer. Hold that book in your mind for a moment and recall the feeling when you discovered how deeply you identified with it. Now realise that many people have never had the fullness of that experience. Bits and pieces have fallen into place but never the whole.

Look into the hype surrounding Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone and you’ll find a plethora of voices stating that they’ve waited for a book like this their entire lives. A lifetime of waiting is no small thing. It doesn’t matter if someone is sixteen or forty, an entire life of waiting still means a life previously barren, a hole that nothing else has filled.

Diversity is a big deal but it needn’t be intimidating. In part two I will cover a few simple changes in thinking that will help you write diverse characters with ease.