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Hi, I’ve been considering starting a book in the fantasy genre. I really wanted to give some Native American representation in it, since it's something that I rarely see. However, this story wouldn't take place in America, it would be in a completely different world (though one loosely based off of earth in the 14 hundreds ish?) This is similar to your mixing cultures post, but I wanted to know: is there a good way to give Native American representation in stories that aren’t historical fiction?

Representing PoC in Fantasy When Their Country/Continent Doesn’t Exist

The core of this question is something we’ve gotten across a few different ethnicities, and it basically boils down to: “how can I let my readers know these people are from a certain place without calling them by this certain place?” Aka, how can I let people know somebody is Chinese if I can’t call them Chinese, or, in your case, some Native American nation without having a North America.

Notes on Language

As I have said multiple times, there is no such thing as “Native American culture”. It’s an umbrella term. Even if you are doing fantasy you need to pick a nation and/or confederacy.

Step One

How do you code somebody as European?

This sounds like a very silly question, but consider it seriously.

How do you?

They probably live in huts or castles; there are lords and kings and knights; they eat stew and bread and drumsticks; they celebrate the winter solstice as a major holiday/new year; women wear dresses while men wear pants; there are pubs and farms and lots of wheat; the weather is snowy in winter and warm in summer.

Now swap all those components out for whatever people you’re thinking about.

Iroquois? They live in longhouses; there is a confederacy and democracy and lots of warriors from multiple nations; they eat corn, beans, and squash (those three considered sacred and grown together), with fish and wild game; they wear mostly leather garments with furs in winter; there are nights by the fire and cities and the rituals will change by the nation (remember the Iroquois were a confederacy made up of five or six tribes, depending on period); the weather is again snowy in winter and warm in summer.

Chinese? They harvest rice; there is an emperor appointed by the gods and scholars everywhere; they use a lunar calendar and have a New Year in spring; their trade ships are huge and their resources are plenty; they live in wood structures with paper walls or mud brick; they use jade and ivory for talismans; their culture is hugely varied depending on the province; their weather is mostly tropical, with monsoons instead of snow on lowlands, but their mountains do get chilly.

You get the gist.

Break down what it is that makes a world read as European (let’s be honest, usually English and Germanic) to you, then swap out the parts with the appropriate places in another culture.

Step Two

Research, research, research. Google is your friend. Ask it the questions for “what did the Cree eat” and “how did Ottoman government work.” These are your basics. This is what you’ll use to figure out the building blocks of culture.

You’ll also want to research their climate. As I say in How To Blend Cultures, culture comes from climate. If you don’t have the climate, animals, plants, and weather down, it’ll ring false.

You can see more at So You Want To Save The World From Bad Representation.

Step Three

Start to build the humans and how they interact with others. How are the trade relations? What are the internal attitudes about the culture— how do they see outsiders? How do outsiders see them? Are there power imbalances? How about greed and desire to take over?

This is where you need to do even more research on how different groups interacted with others. Native American stories are oftentimes painful to read, and I would strongly suggest to not take a colonizer route for a fantasy novel.

This does, however, mean you might not be researching how Natives saw Europeans— you’ll be researching how they saw neighbours. 

You’ll also want to look up the social rules to get a sense for how they interacted with each other, just for character building purposes.

Step Four

Sensitivity readers everywhere! You’ll really want to get somebody from the nation to read over the story to make sure you’ve gotten things right— it’s probably preferable to get somebody when you’re still in the concept stage, because a lot of glaring errors can be missed and it’s best to catch them before you start writing them.

Making mistakes is 100% not a huge moral failing. Researching cultures without much information on them is hard. So long as you understand the corrections aren’t a reflection on your character, just chalk them up to ignorance (how often do most writers get basic medical, weapon, or animal knowledge wrong? Extremely often). 

Step Five

This is where you really get into the meat of creating people. You’ve built their culture and environment into your worldbuilding, so now you have the tools you need to create characters who feel like part of the culture.

You’ll really want to keep in mind that every culture has a variety of people. While your research will say people roughly behave in a certain way, people are people and break cultural rules all the time. Their background will influence what rules they break and how they relate to the world, but there will be no one person who follows every cultural rule down to the letter. 

Step Six

Write!

Step Seven

More sensitivity readers! See step 4 for notes.

Step Eight

Rewrite— and trust me, you will need to. Writing is rewriting.

Repeat steps seven and eight until story is done.

Extra Notes

I’ll be honest— you’re probably going to need a certain amount of either goodwill (if you’re lucky enough to make friends within the group you’re trying to represent— but seriously, please do not make friends with us for the sole purpose of using us as sensitivity readers. It’s not nice) and/or money to get to publishing level. 

The good part is the first three steps are free, and these first three steps are what will allow you to hurt others less when you approach. While you’ll still likely make mistakes, you’ll make a few less (and hopefully no glaring ones, but it can/does happen) so long as you do your due diligence in making sure you at least try to understand the basics.

And once you feel like you’ve understood the basics… dive down even deeper because chances are you’re about to reach a tipping point for realizing how little you know.

People will always find you did something wrong. You will never get culture 100% accurate— not even people who were born and raised in it will, because as I said in step five: cultures have a huge variety of people in them, so everyone will interact with it differently. But you can work your hardest to capture one experience, make it as accurate as possible, and learn more for next time.

~ Mod Lesya 

#worldbuilding

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New year writing goals

Trying to write more often is self-care. We write because we love it. Let's not make it a chore.

There is more to writing than getting words on the page. Research, plotting, outlining, daydreaming, making moodboards... all that is writing.

Not being able to write some days is NOT failure. Breaks are essential to refill your creative energy. Maybe just listen to your writing playlist and relax a bit or read a book or watch a show that inspires you.

Word counts are not absolute. If you realize you can't achieve your word count in the set timeframe, revise it. It's NOT failure, it's being efficient and aware of your own energy.

Be kind to yourself. Not finishing your goal is okay. Just engage with your creativity. Your mental health is more important.

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Things I’m doing to help with my motivation for writing

I am currently working on a manuscript for a novel. It’s interesting I don’t want to get into the idea yet but here’s what I’m doing to help myself stay motivated with  my mental shit. 

Having a journal to write with pencil and paper: This helps because I have a hard time remembering and keeping track of where I’m at when I’m typing. It’s easier for me to type stuff up chapter by chapter to edit. Not to draft. 

Keeping a doc of raw ass lines I want to include: If I have these dope ass lines I have to get to the point in the plot to include otherwise no one else is gonna experience them and that would be a damn shame. 

Have a page goal a week: With finals my goal is lower than normal but it’s usually at about 5 pages a week. 

#writing

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World Building June 2020

Hey there everyone! I know I know I’m a bit late announcing this year’s World Building June! But considering our world is falling apart, I had a lot of fish to fry. BUT! This just means that we have all the better motivation to world build this year! Considering the outside world is more or less shut down. You’ve heard it a thousand times, but I hope you’re all safe and that you’re taking care of yourselves.

Since I’m awakening last minute, I don’t have too many bonus plans for this year’s WBJ but it’s a new decade and maybe it’s a good chance to take things back to basics! What is World Building June? World building June, or WBJ for short is a month where we focus in on building those worlds that have been banging around in our head! This means putting the world to paper though. This can be done in many ways! Writing in a journal, creating art, making tumblr posts, starting a wiki, making audio logs to be found by an adventurer in the nuclear post-apocalypse to provide exposition, whatever works! As long as you can reference back to your work later and keep building upon it. What sorts of worlds are we building? Any worlds really. Fantasy, sci fi, alternate history, AUs. They can also be for all sorts of purposes like tabletop games, novels, games, comics, fanfiction, etc. This is more of a month to celebrate the concept of crafting worlds in general and sometimes what can help someone develop an caste of elves who live in sand dunes can help you find the missing link your greaser vampire biker gang.

How exactly do we participate? There’s no real right or wrong way to do this. You can work on it by yourself and talk with folks also working by themselves to throw ideas at each other. You can post on tumblr using the #WBJ tag. You can join our Discord and discuss world building ideas with others. As long as you’re building then I’m happy. I’ll also be posting prompts to help kickstart world building ideas, or to help you get unstuck when you’re stuck on what to do next. If you have further questions, shoot us an ask, but till then HAPPY BUILDING!

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writer culture is having that one scene that really scratches your id, and being willing to write forty thousand words to get to it.

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Writing With Color – General Topics

A collection of WWC posts that deal with more general writing advice, character creation and diversity topics applicable to most marginalized people, particularly People of Color and some ethnic and religious groups.

Writing Characters of Color: The Generals

On “Overthinking” Writing Characters of Color

On White Authors “Getting it Right”

On White Writers Writing Characters of Color (I, II, III)

Researching PoC + Supporting Writers of Color 

So You Want To Save The World From Bad Representation

Writing POC with Little Experience

Writing Authentically From Your Own Experiences

Useful Non-WWC Posts

Diversity Exists in the Real World by shiraglassman

How to Write WOC and MOC if you are White by kaylapocalypse

“I feel pressured to be inclusive in my writing!” by nimblesnotebook 

On White Fear & Creating Diverse Transformative Works by saathi1013

Diversity/Representation Topics

Diversity vs. Exploiting Cultures

Diversifying a Predominately-White Cast

On “Diversity Quotas”

On Excluding Diversity Out of Fear

Different Heritage POV’s in a Story

Including Realistic Diversity Naturally

“Normalizing” Protagonists of Color

Villains of Color

White-Dominant Rural Areas and Diversity

White Privilege, Publishing, and Diversity Quotas

Writing: Making Efforts in Diversity 

Character Creation

Character Creation: Culture or Character first?

Character Design and Assigning Race and Ethnicity

Characters’ Races Added Last During Development 

Determining your Characters’ Race and/or Ethnicity

More on Assigning Race after Writing

Characters of Color & Culture

A Discussion on Culture and Erasure

“Culturing” Culturally-disengaged PoC

Characters of Color with “No Culture”

Mixed Race + Disconnect from Culture

Stereotyped vs Nuanced & Audience Perception

Tradition and Culture vs. Stereotype

Western Neutral Characters

‘Whitewashed’ Character of Color?

Fantasy & Coding

Defining Coding (& Islam-coded Fantasy)

Denoting Race in Fantasy Setting

Fantasy Races Based off of People of Color

Naming People and Places, Avoiding Explicit Coding

Racially-coding Aliens

Real Religions in a Fantasy World

Religion in Fiction & Fantasy

South Asian-Coded Fantasy Caste System

Whitewashing in a Fantasy Setting

Including Racism in Fantasy

World-building: A Fantasy World without Racism

Writing Sensitive and Controversial Topics

Do I Need Permission to Write About Marginalized People?

Writing a Genocide to which you have No Personal Connection

On Outsider-Written Stories About Issues Of Another Group

Outsider-Written Stories, Issues of other Groups, Speculative Situation

Writing about Prejudice between People of Color

Reclaiming negative, dehumanizing stereotypes outside the group

Representing yourself when “yourself” isn’t white

Racism and Micro-Aggressions 

Everyday Racism, Friendship and White Allies

Incorporating Micro-Aggressions in Writing

Racist Characters + Including Racism in Stories Not “About” Racism

The Pitfalls of Racist Character Redemption Arcs

PoC Educating White Privileged Friend (Context: Black Characters)

–WWC

#wwc #writing #reference

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Cheep and easy ways to find a basis for your plot.

When you have characters:

What does your character aspire to do or become? Making that aspiration really hard for them to reach.

What does your character love? Take it away from them and make them earn it back.

What does your character hate? Bind them too it and make them work to get rid of it.

When you have a world:

What is the most chaotic thing that can happen to this world’s politics? Find the character this chaos would effect the most and see what they do about it.

What is the most dangerous thing that can happen within this magic system? Figure out who would come to stop or reverse it and see what they do.

Who is the most damaging person in this world and what are they doing? Figure out who of those they hurt might rise up and defeat them.

When you have only spite:

What story do you absolutely hate the execution of? Take the very basic concept of its plot and build it into the story you wish it produced.

What plot structure do you enjoy but wish writers would be more original with? Take it and then throw a dozen spins on it.

** Remember to mix and match for more elaborate plot structures. Carry on this format with your own tricks to digging up basic plot structures!

#story planning #writing

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for all you writers out there:

donjon has tons of generators. for calendars. for demographics of a country and city. for names (both fantastical and historical) of people, nations, magics, etc.

this site lets you generate/design a city, allowing you to choose size, if you want a river or coast, walls around it, a temple, a main keep, etc.

this twitter, uncharted atlas, tweets generated maps of fantasy regions every hour.

and vulgar allows you to create a language, based on linguistic and grammatical structures!!! go international phonetic alphabet!!!

#world building #language #writing

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#writing

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hey do you have any tips on plot development? how to do come up with relevant but dramatic things to keep the plot going? i also don’t want to make it too intense?

I actually have quite a lot of resources that I’ve created over the years surrounding plot development. I’ve linked as many as I could find for you:

Resources For Plot Development

Useful Writing Resources

Useful Writing Resources II

31 Days of Plot Development

Novel Planning 101

How To Write A Good Plot Twist

How To Foreshadow

What To Cut Out Of Your Story

Tackling Subplots

Things A Reader Needs From A Story

A Guide To Tension & Suspense In Your Writing

How To Turn A Good Idea Into A Good Story

Planning A Scene In A Story

21 Plot Shapes and the Pros and Cons Of Each

How To Outline Effectively

Tips On Writing Intense Scenes

Writing The First Chapter

Tips On Starting A Scene

Plot Structures

Finding & Fixing Plot Holes

#plot #writing

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© (c ) copyright 1990-2011 Rebecca Sinclair

See the original HERE

#character #writing #reference

[eversansa]

Making your angst hurt: the power of lighthearted scenes. 

I’m incredibly disappointed with the trend in stories (especially ‘edgy’ YA novels) to bombard the reader with traumatic situations, angry characters, and relationship drama without ever first giving them a reason to root for a better future. As a reader…

I might care that the main siblings are fighting if they had first been shown to have at least one happy, healthy conversation. 

I might cry and rage with the protagonist if I knew they actually had the capacity to laugh and smile and be happy.

I might be hit by heavy and dark situations if there was some notion that it was possible for this world to have light and hope and joy to begin with.

Writers seem to forget that their reader’s eyes adjust to the dark. If you want to give your reader a truly bleak situation in a continually dim setting, you have to put them in pitch blackness. But if you just shine a light first, the sudden change makes the contrast appear substantial.

Show your readers what light means to your character before taking it away. Let the reader bond with the characters in their happy moments before (and in between) tearing them apart. Give readers a future to root for by putting sparks of that future into the past and the present. Make your character’s tears and anger mean something.

Not only will this give your dark and emotional scenes more impact, but it says something that we as humans desperately, desperately need to hear. 

Books with light amidst the darkness tell us that while things are hard and hurt, that we’re still allowed to breathe and hope and live and even laugh within the darkness.

We as humans need to hear this more often, because acting it out is the only way we stop from suffocating long enough to make a difference.

So write angst, and darkness, and gritty, painful stories, full of treacherous morally grey characters if you want to. But don’t forget to turn the light on occasionally.

Support Bryn’s ability to provide writing advice by reading their debut novel, an upbeat fantasy about a bloodthirsty siren fighting to return home while avoiding the lure of a suspiciously friendly and eccentric pirate captain!

#writing

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Three-Act Structure in 30 Days

A Cog Special for NaNoWriMo

Hey friends! I’m unable to participate in NaNo this year, but! I thought I could share with you a “prompt list” I developed for myself. One prompt a day, this list might just help you achieve a complete book in 30 days! (Maybe.)

ACT ONE

11/01 - Develop what most inspires you. Let your world blossom, your character present themself, or your conflict begin.

11/02  - Introduce your protagonist’s day-to-day routine. Show who they are in their own element before their life spirals out of control.

11/03 - Show readers a conflict that’s been occupying your protagonist’s mind–use this as an opportunity to reveal another dimension of your world and the characters that inhabit it.

11/04 - Delve deeper into the side characters. Explore their superficial relationships with your protagonist.

11/05 - Bring in a new face. This face might belong to a new friend, a love interest, or even the villain.

11/06 - Take a moment to breathe, then destroy your protagonist’s world. Break it in such a way there’s no taping it back together. (And remember! This doesn’t have to be a bad change! Just an irreversible one.)

11/07 - Let your readers wallow in the fallout. Show how your protagonist initially responds and who they reach out to (if anyone).

Congratulations!! You’ve completed Act One! You’re well on your way to a book!! Remember to take a small breather and reward yourself. Look how much you’ve accomplished in as little as a week!

ACT TWO

11/08 - Your protagonist is on the precipice; let them jump. Encourage them. This is where the plot truly begins.

11/09 - Show your character the paths they can take. They don’t have to choose one yet, but let them know what their options are.

11/10 - Introduce conflict between your protagonist and one of the characters they thought they trusted.

11/11 - Explain away the conflict. Put your protagonist and that character back on somewhat firm ground–maybe there’s still suspicion, but it won’t break them. Yet.

11/12 - Make your character choose a path. It’s too late in the game to be all wishy-washy about what to do and how to do it.

11/13 - Show them that they’re not yet equipped to handle the primary conflict of your novel.

11/14 - Let them take a step back and re-asses. Let them consult with those that they trust and try to find how to best tackle the conflict.

11/15 - Give them a way to grow the skills they need or learn the information they need to best succeed in the main conflict.

11/16 - Renew their confidence. Little-by-little, help them remember that they can do this.

11/17 - Let your protagonist’s relationship with another character take an unexpected turn. This could be anything from them having helpful knowledge/skills to having a connection with the villain to being romantically interested in the protagonist.

11/18 - After all their hard work is paying off and your protagonist thinks they might just be able to succeed in their goal.

11/19 - The newfound skills/information/etc. your protagonist has gathered are put to the test, and they come out victorious. Delight all around!

Take a moment to think and reflect. Have a nice tea and prepare for everything to go utterly, terribly wrong, because that’s where we’re going with this.

11/20 - Your protagonist’s worst fear is confirmed and all the bravado they’ve gathered comes crashing down around them. (Hint: This is a great place to bring back the 11/10 conflict.)

11/21 - Your protagonist struggles to cope with the last blow they took, but they don’t have much time. They need to compose themself.

11/22 - Time to gear up for the grand finale. There’s no going back now, and everyone knows it. Let your protagonist and their allies gather.

Look at you go!! You’ve written the majority of a book?? You’ve made it through the hardest part and you’re in the home stretch. You can do it!!

ACT THREE

11/23 - Shove your protagonist into a room with the conflict that’s been haunting them from the beginning and let them have a moment with it.

11/24 - Bang! Pow! Climax time!

11/25 - Just when your protagonist thinks they’re winning, make it all go wrong. A fundamental piece of the puzzle is missing and we’re in disasterland now, lads.

11/26 - Let a side character prompt the protagonist’s defining moment–let them do something unexpected to prompt an even more unexpected response.

11/27 - Ideally, this will be victory time! Everything we’ve been hoping for since the beginning comes to fruition and all the protagonist’s hard work pays off. Alternatively, you could make this end real bad. It’s up to you.

11/28 - Let the results of the final conflict settle in. These could be good or bad, depending on your story, or even better: both.

11/29 - Go back to the beginning. Rewrite the first scene or develop a prologue. Now that you have a sense of the ending, you’ll have a better idea of where things should’ve started!

11/30 - Show your readers where everyone ended up–did they get a happy ending? A sad ending?

You’ve finished your book!!!!!!! YOU’VE FINISHED YOUR BOOK!!! Heck yeah.

#nanowrimo #reference

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trying to get your story together like:

[eversansa]

Writing Resources, I guess

So when I’m writing I sometimes need prompts or sometimes I just want to write random shit, so I will use generators. This is just a few that I use and like;

Family Tree, Relationship Generators

Battletech Family Tree Generator - Generates 2/3 generations, can choose options such as name types (real life/fantasy/ethnic fusion/place/gang).

Demarco - Generates a family trees based on info provided, P/Matriarchs, Years born, married and died, and current imput year. Also includes a Type of “race” choice: Human: Medieval, Scottish, Eqyptian or Modern or Dwarf (Fantasy race). All generations up to imput current date are automatically open.

Ja.Partridgez - Family tree generator, similar to Demarco but without the Type option and the generations are not automatically opened, you click a button to see it. 

Gayahithwen- Family Tree generator that follows the Male line, it’s a Harry Potter one, so you can choose Hogwarts houses. Options include; Family name or randomly chosen English or Irish surname, Year of birth of family founder, or choices between eras 800-1100, 1100-1400, 1400-1700 or 1700-2000. You can have Hogwarts houses chosen randomly or choose percentages. Also you can choose options to suggest partners names and to include year of death.

Rangen Family Generator-  doesn’t so much generate a family tree as members and their names and ages, Parents, Siblings, Children, Grandparents etc. Includes Simple (Just name and age) or Detail (whether they get along with main character, personality) Options.

Rangen Pregnancy Generator - generates a birth/s, whether it’s a boy/girl/unknown, birth weight, date of birth, whether it resembles the mother/father/relative/family friend, whether the baby/ies is/are heathy/weak etc. Generates Single Births, Multiples, No Conception.

Cities, Towns, Kingdoms

CrystalBallSoft - Fantasy City You choose the name, size (from Thorp up to Metropolis), whether it’s by the sea, or a river, whether it has military, if it has gates. You can generate Wards, and Professions. Choose major race (Human, Hafling, Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Half Elf, Half Orc or Other) and Society (Isolated, Mixed or Integrated). It’ll also generate GP Limit, Imports and Exports, what the city is famous for and infamous for, no. of wards, and professions.

Mathemagician - You choose the name, size (Thorp-Metro) and population percentages (Human, Dwarf, Elf, the usual). It gives you Power Center, Alignment, Population, GP Limit, Community Wealth, You can view all the Militia/Town Guard/Aristocrats/Experts etc members. Names/Race/Gender/Level/Profession/Personality. As well as a list and opening hours of all Blacksmiths, Scroll and Potion shops, Jewelry Store, General Stores, and Taverns. You click and it’ll also give you the  Names/Race/Gender/Level/Profession/Personality of employees  for each of said options. Tavern option also gives hour by hour list of currently working employees, patrons and entertainment as well as a full menu. 

Rangen City Generator - This gives you single word descriptions of things like Settlement type (e.g Metropolis), Size (e.g Large), Cost of Living (e.g Expensive). Etc. Good for general outlines, and basic stuff. 

Lucid Phoenix Kingdom Population - Give you Civilisation vs Wilderness size and %. Number of castles and castle ruins, Population density, Total Population, Population breakdown (No. Rural, Urban or Isolated). Also now gives Urban Population Centres (big cities) with demographics of population size and businesses.

Worlds and Solar Systems

Donjon Fractal World Generator - Gives you a basic map/image of a world. You choose Map Projection (Square, Spherical, Mercator etc) Map Palette (Atlas, Olsson etc), % Water, % Ice, Image Height, Iterations and Rotation.

Donjon Fantasy World Generator - First, the servers for this are busy a lot of the time but it’s worth it. Basically does the same as  above but different options. Map Style (Atlas or Antique), Font (Black Castle, Tengwar Others etc.), % Water % Ice, Geography (Yes or No), Rivers ( Yes, No or Many) Cities and Castles (Yes, No or Many), show Hex Grid and/or Labels.

Donjon SciFi World Generator - You choose things such as World Name, Map Projection (Square, Mercator etc.), Map Palette (Atlas, Barren, Antique etc.), %Water, % Ice, Image Height, Iterations and Rotation. It gives you things like; Basic Image, Physics (Type, Radius, Surface Area, Land Area, Mass, Density, Composition (Iron, Oxygen etc). Gravimetry (Gravity m/s2, (# x Earth), Escape Velocity km/s), Rotation (Period and Axis Tilt), Hydrosphere (Water and Ice %), Atmosphere (Type, Pressure in kPa, # x Earth, Composition), Climate (Type, Min Temp, Avg Temp and Max Temp in Kelvin and Celsius), Biosphere (Chemistry, Lifeforms), Civilisation (Type, Population, Tech Level). If you us the Imperial you’re out of luck.

Donjon Star System Generator - Star Name, Companion Star (Random, None, Close or Distant), Planets (Random, None, Few, Several, Many). You can force a system to include a terrestrial world. It’ll generate things like the Star/s and it’s data (Type, Radius, Mass, Temperature and Luminosity), any terrestrial worlds, rock planets, jovian planets, ice or neptunian planets and their data also. If it includes a terrestrial planet you can further click on that and get more data like that of the SciFi World Generator above.

Donjon SWd6 System Generator - Made for use with Star Wars d6 RPG, generates a basic system, and information basically like that from SciFi World Generator. 

Donjon Traveller System Generator - Again, generates a basic system, includes whether there is a naval base, starport or scout base and tech levels on a terrestrial planet.

This is just a very small portion of generators I use for Fantasy and SciFi stories. If you want or need other generators feel free to message me, I probably have several. Also let me know if you want me to make another for purely SciFi/Food/Drink/Pretty much anything. 

#writing

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The Do’s of Writing People of Color:  Start on Easy Mode

Diversity makes stories better, plain and simple. This year, we’ve partnered with the good folks at Writing With Color to get some advice on how to write stories populated with people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. In this post, founder Colette Aburime gives advice on how to begin incorporating diversity into your writing:

When you write with racial and ethnic diversity, you hear a lot about what to avoid. Now, it’s not without good reason. The road to good representation is paved with harmful stereotypes and worn-out depictions of People of Color. Advice-givers, like me and the rest of the folks at WritingwithColor, put up caution signs and leave the rest of the journey up to you.

Still, there are some do’s that make for both good writing and good representation.

Keep reading

#diversity #reference