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[Music] hey my dear friends welcome back to my channel if you're new here my name is Holly I'm a writer aspiring to be a published author and in today's video I will be showing you how to write diverse characters and of course I have a special guest with me if you can't see this is right Heather Venkat my twin sister Heather so she has collabed with me I'm making a video before and whenever she's in town we always make sure we get a collabs I guess I'll bet yeah oh yeah it's like the necessity and then also Heather had ran I give away over on her Instagram visit right Heather met Kat yes I'm an instagram so follow her a few parts because you're missing out on tons of goodies so I actually want on her Twitter giveaway this shirt from I write early go away I'm pretending to write which is kind of epic yeah I love it so much so yeah go check out I write early too because she's got some really awesome write early shirt so I will link everyone's social media down below yeah it's really hard to choose from that store so just a warning yeah even if you don't want to buy everything so this is the second video in my character series so if you didn't see the first video how to write realistic characters I will link that down below so we really wanted to touch upon this topic because writing diverse characters is so very important and you know even though Heather and I are twins we're still very different shop so like if we're different then obviously the rest of the world is very different too it's really important for us to put diversity in our novels because we're biracial so we're half black and we know that when you know growing up when we read stories we wanted to read stories about all different types of people and especially now it's even more important to make sure that there's representation from all different types of people and making sure that those kids teenagers and adults are being able to read books with people who either look like them someone like them or someone that they can better relate to so diversity can look like many things that can include POC so people of color it can include lgbtq+ representation phat positivity people with disabilities and other own voices yeah so as far as own voices goes you know it's really important to make sure that you're writing characters that come from no culture or ethnicity that is from your background and you know we don't want a misrepresentation of any one particular group and making sure that it's a relevant issue so if you don't feel like you can say it's your own voice you know just be careful because you don't want to be writing about someone and and kind of putting words in the mouths of that culture right because you don't want to tell a story that's not yours to tell but you don't want to whitewash your novel as well so it's all about finding a balance so for example I like to use the lgbtq+ community so if you're not from that community you don't want to write like a coming-out novel because that's not your story to tell but it is completely fine for you to have characters in your novel who are gay or bisexual or trans but it's not that that story for them is about that yeah and one thing that is really important is to make sure that these characters are having their own adventures so the story is not just about their you know sexual identity or their color or the race or anything like that it has to deal with they might you know for example it might be someone who is in a wheelchair and they're going on their own adventure and the story doesn't revolve around you know them being in a wheelchair so that is one thing to kind of keep in mind to when you want to kind of add that diversity to your novel yeah because those people want to see themselves represented in novels but they want to see themselves like going on adventures too it's not all about you know they're those real life struggles okay so now that we've got that point across Heather and I are now gonna go into how we've incorporated diverse characters and our novels and how we've handled anything that has come up that's been problematic so TCC has a diverse cast of characters including people of color and LGBTQ representation so you know that was my first time really writing such a diverse cast and it was a learning process for me so my main character Lucci her love interest Ram or Jeremy he is black and her best friend Kendra is half Filipino half Chinese and so I really wanted to represent diverse characters in my novels but I didn't quite know how to describe them so when I was first describing their appearance for run I had said that you know his skin was like chocolate and then I had said that Kendra had almond shaped eyes I also said that Lucci was very jealous of her exotic look and I you know maybe you know you know any harm by using these descriptions because I didn't know that that's not how it should be describing those characters but I learned that it's not good to describe these characters using food so chocolate almond we've got to cut that so for Kendra I learned that it was okay to say that her eyes were angular shaped instead of the almond shaped things like that also when I had first introduced Kendra it's in a locker room and the girls are changing after gym class and she's very loud and boisterous and she like while she's talking her like towel you know flies off and she's just like naked and the girls in the locker room are like what is going on forgot to mention that Kendra is also gay so this could be seen as problematic because you know people could generalize oh well all gay people are very loose and just like out there with their sexuality and I didn't want that to come across that way and I didn't want that to be generalised across the LGBTQ community there were also some other things that I didn't even think of so TCC has some like sci-fi elements to it so there are when I was writing it there were black holes and white holes and those are actual scientific terms so most people know about black holes but then kind of the opposite of black holes are white holes so in TCC the white holes were you know the good wormholes the good ways of transportation and the black holes were bad and like once you go in there you can't come back out but one beta reader had told me that you know that could be kind of problematic because you know it could be seen as like white is good and black is bad and I'm like oh my god I totally did it you know what you know I didn't mean for it to come across that way and even though there's four scientific terms I didn't want it to be taken the wrong way so I did change that I kept the black holes but the white hole white holes I just called them wormholes so they're just normal wormholes so that's a way that I dealt with that okay you guys sorry we have to get nice and cozy right here because my I thought my camera was charged and it's not and so like the closest outlet is really really close so we have to be really close to you guys so we were far away now we're close so thanks for sticking around the struggle Israel so then there are also little things that you might not think about for example one of my male characters had a pink door and like my main character like laughed at the pink door and it was because like he's a guy and I realize like that's not okay because like guys should be able to wear pink have you know have a pink door they want to I'm so I kind of changed it where she was just laughing because it like didn't really fit with his personality since he's a little more like serious and he kind of has that playful banter a little bit but he's not as like bubbly and outgoing as like a pink door would represent him so I kind of had to tweak that and then lastly I do have a character who is Hispanic and so he says some phrases and sentences in Spanish and kind of talks in Spanglish sometimes which I felt like that was represented well because all of my baby reader readers had said that they really enjoyed that so I'm going to give some examples of diversity in my novels of so this book has been on hold for quite a while but one of my works in progress is called wings and what is interesting is that I built the whole world it's basically its own world so I found that I couldn't describe characters as you know african-american or you know I couldn't say you know Jeff this characters Japanese because it is all related to that there's just no races there so what I did instead was I just described the skin tones and what helped is that I did get character art of those characters to sort of help with that but I haven't had any beta readers being able to look it over yet to see if that makes sense because one thing that could be a little bit telling are the characters names so for example some of my characters they might have more Asian sounding names so even though I don't have you know Asian countries in this world because it's just this one special world you can at least get a better picture of who that character is and what they look like based on that so that could be a hint to and you don't want to be super stereotypical with it so I've tried to be careful I haven't been able to really validate whether or not that works but that's something to kind of keep in mind too if you're building a whole world in and of itself you can just incorporate that diversity sort of naturally into the world and another tip that I found helpful is there's a website called Korra qu o RA and you can ask any question you want about anything to anyone it's similar to a lot of different websites but I've found it useful because you can get very specific in what you're looking for so you can say is this specific thing whatever it is in your novel realistic for a lesbian character for example if they if what you want and so even if you don't know and you've googled a lot and done research and you've talked to people that might also be helpful and so far I've at least found it helpful to sort of scroll through questions that other people have asked too so I haven't asked those questions yet but I have found it helpful to scroll through other questions that people have asked the only other thing I'm gonna mention about wings is that you want to also think about diversity and representation and trying to not be stereotypical not just for you know just try to think outside of the box so for example in the beginning there's a scene where the characters go into a hospital and the main character starts talking to the receptionist and in the night and then I say the receptionist ba ba ba he said this or he paged bla bla bla we know that you know in our world there are male nurses there are male receptionists there are male wait waiters you know but just trying to think of ways to bring that diversity and things that are natural in the world and not be stereotypical based on sort of gender roles too and so then for my current work in progress crossing the Rubicon I have incorporated diverse characters into this novel and I've tried to do it really naturally so for example in the beginning the characters turn on the TV and then I say newscaster Sylvia Wu says that you know something about the newscaster so instead of just saying John Smith Smith yeah yeah instead of saying like the news newscaster John Smith you know I'm sort of naturally putting in diversity there and my MC my male MC is white but my female MC is lefty max so she's latina and I know in the community it's really important to not generalize there as well so a lot of people say well you know they're not just Hispanic it's like are they Mexican are they Pro Rican are they men the kinetic Porto Rican are the Ecuadorean you know are they actually from Spain and that really makes it important there's a reason why I don't specifically say Nina Martinez her ethnicity but while my beta readers were going through it I never had any questions related to her and a lot of people liked how I incorporated her diversity naturally into the story let's just say without spoiling anything so and I have some other diverse characters in the story I'm not gonna go into details there and but I did want to mention that I think it's important not to just check off a box and say okay I have my person of color in the story I'm good you really want it to come naturally and make sense so you know don't just put a blind autistic Am beauty in your novel because you really want to represent those communities and have that representation it just doesn't make sense and especially for what you can bring to the table you know and you can also talk to some of your friends or coworkers who you know might be able to sort of bounce those ideas back and forth with you and really the importance is to just don't force it let it come naturally but be deliberate about trying to incorporate it into your novel so if you don't have any african-american friends but you have a lot of Asian friends you know maybe it makes more sense for you to have you know one of the other major characters in your novel the Asian because you know you might feel a little bit more comfortable having that character and having their voice in the story but you know that doesn't mean you have to limit yourself and then another thing that I've heard in the community is don't make your only diverse character the villain that is the an important thing and sure they can be villains too but be careful about how you put them into the story so what's kind of like the common thing that we saw with finding things that were column attic in TCC and that you needed to incorporate in wings and crossing the Rubicon is that our beta readers and other people showed us these things we had to go to outside sources in order to realize if we were representing our diverse characters correctly so my number one tip for you is to get diverse beta readers and get sensitivity readers so if you have that gay or lesbian character you want to have a beta reader or a sensitivity reader who is gay or lesbian I know sometimes it is hard to find that but try as best you can or even if you're just talking to your friends in the writing community that's going to be the best way for you to represent them correctly and you also want to do your research so one of my good friends who was a beta reader for the celestial code Julia Simpson Thank You Julia she directed me to a website that helped me with those descriptions to not describe people's skin tone and the way they look with food and so I'm gonna link all of these websites down below but these good resources were writing with color tumblr comm and then also we are all mixed up tumblr comm this is not Africa tumblr comm and then this is not Latin X tumblr comm so these are all great resources for you to make sure that you're describing and representing these characters correctly now I know we have kind of talked more about people of color and people from the LGBTQ community so you know we haven't really incorporated too many characters with like disabilities you know so if that's something that you are interested in having a video about let me know and I can try to find some additional resources for that but all in all I want you to make sure that you don't feel bad if you have described characters in this way if you haven't really incorporated a lot of nice diverse characters and ranek or a realm my very first novel I did have some diversity but I did have a lot of white characters too and it's just like that's just how I wrote it but like I mean we're half black we didn't do it intentionally like we were like I wasn't trying to whitewash my novel but that's just kind of how I wrote it and a lot of it was just a lot of the side characters that were diverse and so as I started writing and I realized that like yeah the world is diverse and I want to represent this and it was having those characters come out naturally for me so don't feel bad if you you know do something or say something wrong but just correct it fix it and make sure that it doesn't happen in the future remember the goal in writing diverse characters correctly is to avoid stereotypes tropes and racism well thanks for having me thank you yes so that's it for this video thank you guys so much for watching I hope that you found these tips helpful please let us know in the comments down below how you've incorporated diverse characters into your manuscripts and also if you have any other resources that you would like to share for us because I'm always looking for new resources in order to provide correct representation please give this video a big thumbs up and click subscribe to support my channel [Music]