WritingWithColor - Ask Rules and Guidelines | FAQ
WWC Navigation | link: writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/navigation.
Stereotypes and Tropes Navigation
Stereotypes & Tropes Nav | link: https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/Navigation2
Ever since WWC opened for business, we’ve been inundated with Asks pertaining to writing PoC, and some of them are quite difficult to answer thoroughly. We check the answers with the other mods to make sure we’re giving you the best advice we can. Please be patient.
On the other hand, here are Asks that we won’t answer:
general writing questions.
questions that are very broad or vague.
questions more than 2 parts not sent via submit.
questions that ask for facts you can easily Google.
questions that ignore our ask submission guidelines.
questions that have nothing to do with PoC or only deal tangentially with them.
questions that ask “how do I write an X character?“ or a variation of this Q. See FAQ.
questions that indicate you have not browsed the tags thoroughly if at all, such as stating “sorry if this has been asked before” or “this may already be answered but-” These Q’s are grounds for automatic deletion.
questions that have nothing to do with writing (we will either direct you to blogs that can answer them or answer them at our own leisure).
questions using “PoC” as a replacement for an applicable race. Person/woman/man of Color is not a fancy way to say Black people; It’s an umbrella term for a coalition including a lot of different races/ethnicities. If your question isn’t specific it’s likely impossible to answer.
More questions we won’t / will no longer answer
questions about Muslim characters + magic. Here is why.
questions about the Wendigo. Here is why.
We will not answer Q’s that are too similar to ones we’ve already answered (Check the navigation and/or our multiple search functions very thoroughly). We will not often redirect you to the answer.
Questions that are not concise and provide extraneous details will likely be deleted. With the amount of Qs received combined with busy schedules, there’s no time to shift through exceedingly long questions that provide way more details than necessary to answer the question.
Additional issues with long asks: Unrelated details makes a question long and complicated to read and thus answer. It might also mean us misinterpreting your concern and/or answering aspects that you weren’t questioning.
Keep asks focused: Avoid providing a laundry list of multiple characters that you want rubber-stamped for correct characterization. Ask about a specific character or two. You’ll get a more detailed answer on that specific character that way.
Have patience with us: We receive hundreds of asks. It takes time. Also, it is impossible for us to answer every question, but we will prioritize questions that are on fresh topics not covered extensively here before.
Slur policy: Finally, we urge you not to send in questions with racial slurs that aren’t blocked out or denoted as “n word” “g word” etc. We may choose to delete uncensored slurs (and any other blatantly offensive Q’s) as to avoid triggering ourselves and/or others.
Please stop asking us to recommend blogs like WWC except for disability, lgbtqa+ etc. Check our recommendations page!
Frequently Asked Questions
“What are ways to describe my character’s skin tone?”
“How do I introduce the race of my characters?”
“How do I denote the race of my characters in a fantasy setting?”
“How do I describe my Asian character’s eyes respectfully?”
“I want my real-world Native American character to do/experience X.”
“I’m afraid my character has harmful stereotypical traits.”
“How do I write a ____________ character?”
“Wouldn’t including PoC make my writing forced?”
“It wouldn’t be historically accurate for my story to include PoC.”
“What is Cultural Appropriation?”
“What is tokenism and why is it harmful?”
“What are appropriate ways to describe my character’s skin tone?”
Please see the Words for Skin Tone Guide.
We’ve covered that too! See the Words to Describe Hair Guide.
“How do I introduce the race of my characters?”
Please see the description tag or this compilation, or one or more of these posts:
Indicating Race Explicitly
Identifying Race Inoffensively
Describing POC and Avoiding Caricatures
Introducing Race and Skin Color Naturally
When to Introduce Race/Ethnicity in Writing
“How do I denote the race of my characters in a fantasy setting?”
Indicating POC in Fantasy Settings
Describing POC without stating Race
Describing PoC and Avoiding Caricatures
Coding Tag (addresses race, ethnic, and religion coding)
“How do I describe my Asian character’s eyes respectfully?”
Please see the Describing Asian Eyes Guide.
“I want my real-world Native American character to do/experience X. Is this appropriate?/I want to write my real-world Native American character this way but I don’t know if it’s right.“
Until you give a nationality other than “Native American”, this question is impossible to answer. “Native American” is a catch-all term for every Native nation across the United States and Canada, which means it encompasses a very large continent’s worth of cultural variety. Stereotypes, beliefs, naming conventions, internal regulations, and day to day lives of each tribe are different, and you cannot accurately depict how a Native person will display their culture unless you give them a specific one.
Please research what tribe your Native character belongs to (actual tribe with a location so you know what fraction you’re dealing with) before continuing, in order to make your question possible to answer.
“I’m afraid my character has harmful stereotypical traits. How do I avoid making them a caricature?”
Trace your logic in this character’s creation. What traits have you given them and why did it turn out this way? Does it just “make sense” for your Black female character to be the motherly figure of the group? Why?
Is your character comprised of several stereotypical traits, or are they allowed to act and think in ways that are not confined to stereotypes? If your character is three-dimensional and allowed to be more than the stereotypical trait(s) they may possess, you should be fine. It also helps to have another character of their same race + gender etc. whom you can say are distinctive from each other, but this isn’t catch-all advice and some cases may require more than just an “offset” character.
Please also see the Tropes and Stereotypes navigation for more information on particular tropes and stereotypes and how to handle them.
Before asking questions regarding characters and stereotypes, make sure to read the guide: Stereotyped vs Nuanced Characters and Audience Perception
“How do I write a ____________ character?”
1. First off, check the tag pertaining to the character you’re looking to write. For example, if you’re writing an Indian character, search terms such as “Indian” and “South Asian” or “Indian Women” might be a good start.
2. A general rule when writing any Character of Color is to be mindful that while they might not be like you in terms of some cultural and certain daily experiences, they are like you in that they’re human. Humans with thoughts and dreams and feelings just like you. Capable of joy, snark, and laughter. So remember: human. Not aliens.
3. Don’t focus so much of whether you’re writing a proper ______ character.
You risk homogenizing your Characters of Color when you do this. Not all Black women think the same. Not all Japanese men act the same. There may be some common experiences and feelings within a group, but everyone has their own perspective, experiences and thoughts despite their race– no hiveminds here.
Also, as with any character, background is a huge factor of a person and where they live and family life has an influence on a person’s making. For example, a Black boy who grew up in a mansion in California will have a different outlook than a Black boy who grew up on a Wisconsin bee farm swapped in cornfields. Same for their accents, style, and overall experience with life.
More recommended reading: to get you started
The Do’s of Writing PoC | Creating Characters of Color | How to Show Culture
“I’m uncomfortable with all the pressure to include People of Color in my writing. Wouldn’t it just make it forced, anyway?”
Distance yourself from this pressure and ask yourself why you feel it. I’ve yet to encounter anyone who’s barging on doors demanding people be inclusive, but rather trying to illustrate its importance and encourage it, so where do you think the pressure to be inclusive is really coming from?
Campaigning for diversity should not feel like an attack, so do not perceive it as one.
This comes easier when you step outside yourself for a moment, and stand into the shoes of those who call for diverse books, who need diverse books. These are people whose voices and faces have and are shunned from the multitude of literature, enjoy an adventure as much as anyone, and have learned to “become” characters who look more like you…yet when it comes to those of color being the hero, being included beyond the small and often troped role, they have their presence immediately questioned, discredited, fought against, because folks just cannot “relate.”
This resistance reflects a larger one.
And that is uncharacteristically high levels of empathy towards White people and a lack of empathy for People of Color, especially Black people.
Reading fiction improves empathy.
Those who read about aliens learn to emphasize with aliens. Those who read about wizards empathize with wizards.
And if we’re only (or mainly) reading about White people, no wonder they’re so easy to relate to. But not so much those PoC I guess, whose pain folks literally cannot relate to.
And we’re just brushing the surface of the adverse effects with lack of diversity, such as lower self-worth in the underrepresented. Because really; it causes pain on high and low levels. Never the beautiful princess in the tower, never the badass kicking butt and flying dragons. Then when we do show up God forbid it’s a two-second role or in the form of a stereotype, not as a real, complex human being.
Long story short: People of Color are people and want to be seen and treated as such. Not as a burden to devote your time to, but people who have a place in the world, fictional or no.
As for the issue of diversity being “forced”…nah, what’s forced is the all-white fantasy some authors conceive for their stories. Whether you consciously or unconsciously make all your characters White, this is a choice. One that does not reflect the magnitude of the real world, which actually has more People of Color than White people. And yet you wouldn’t be able to tell from reading a book…
Becoming comfortable with diversity requires unlearning White as the default and PoC as the Other. It takes setting aside feelings of pressure to emphasize, open your heart and listen.
“Diversity has gone too far!”
Diversity is for everyone.
Children and the Myth of Colorblind Youth
“It wouldn’t be historically accurate for my story to include PoC.”
In topics such as the movie Frozen the argument of “historical accuracy” has been flung around most vigorously by fans of the Disney movie. The story was set in a fictional country bases off of Norway and according to many (white) fans the county has little to no POC. Especially in the time period it takes place. Adding POC to the casting would make the movie historically inaccurate.
And that is nonsense. First of all, there are indigenous people in Norway – the Sami – (and many surrounding countries) and they were a part of the original story and concept art. Now only a token amount of their culture, bastardized as it is, has been permitted into the movie.
But enough of the movie and more on the topic. Historical accuracy can never be used as an excuse (a credible one that is) for media to be exclusively white in its casting. No matter which time period, there are and were POC everywhere around the world. There might be some places which are predominantly white, but there will always be travelers, merchants, sailors, artists, etc. from surrounding countries.
This argument has been a very popular one for stories set in Europe. Europe is known by many for people the home continent for white people. What they do not know, is that is also a home continent to POC. This fact has been written out of history by historians in the past centuries because of racism. White supremacy which has spread its dreadful influence across the entire globe has done so since before colonialism. And of course when you want people to think that they are superior and grand, they whitewash not only their religious figures (Jesus), but also the complete history of the world and its people.
The presence of all the POC in Europe throughout time can be found in many art pieces, such as paintings and sculptures. There have been black people (royalty as well) in Britain. The moors had a great influence and control stretching throughout south Europe from Spain. There have been black Vikings. Sailors, merchants, artists and more from different parts of Asia and Africa.
“What is Cultural Appropriation?”
Cultural appropriation involves a culture and/or sacred aspects of it being worn or used by people outside of the culture with little to no understanding for the significance of the usage at hand. Cultural appropriation is void of any “cultural sharing” aspect, since this would imply someone of the culture inviting them to engage in certain aspects of their culture (aka you can’t put on a headdress and say you’re appreciating Native culture…because who invited you?)
When applied to writing, cultural appropriation/misappropriation is what happens when you write about a culture that is not yours and either perpetuate racist stereotypes about it or egregiously misrepresent it. It’s taking a culture for your story because you think it’s cool or interesting, but when you don’t bother to look into the aspects of how that culture works. Why is this harmful? Because writing about these marginalized cultures in such a way leads readers to believe that your work is presenting the truth about them, even when that’s not the case. Members of these cultures already have a difficult time finding proper representation—that is, seeing themselves as they really are—and it’s incredibly important that outsiders wanting to write them do so with care.
How can you do this? Do your research. Read books by people from that culture. Talk to people from that culture. If you’re writing a story, get someone from that culture and have them read it and point out the inaccuracies. The key is that you’re depicting these cultures with care and respect.
If you’re writing sci-fi and/or fantasy, that doesn’t let you off the hook (one of the most tired excuses people have for cultural appropriation is that because it’s SFF, we all should get over it). You might be writing an imaginary world or a story far in the future, but your work is going to be read by people who live in the here and now, and they’re going to know if you were lazy and didn’t do your homework, and they’re not going to be happy about it.
“What is tokenism and why is it harmful?”
Tokenism in writing is the practice of doing something (such as writing about a person who belongs to a minority group) only to prevent criticism and give the appearance that representation is included. Tokenism is writing about a minority character to give the illusion that the author is being diverse and inclusive while relying on stereotypes as an attempt to make the characters seem “authentic.” while giving majority of characterization to the main (often White) character.
The problem with tokenism is that characters placed into this position are suddenly put into the position of being the single representation of their particular group. Everyone has seen the sassy Black friend, the flamboyant Gay friend, the smart Asian friend, etc… Stereotypes are damaging because they state to readers that if you are in a minority group, you can’t be anything other than what the Eurocentric media portrays you as. It’s hard to rise above these stereotypes. This is even more damaging as this spills over into the real world. (i.e. “You aren’t like other Blacks/Gays/Asians,etc…”)
Tokenism is harmful in media because it reduces a character to his/her most harmful stereotypes. Invoking tokenism does not force creators to be creative and gives viewers a false sense of diversity. Jokes are taken at the expense of tokenized characters regarding their race, ethnicity, accent, etc….. Token characters are only created to be the proverbial Black friend who makes it okay for White characters to make jokes at the character’s expense, inviting the consumers (in this case readers) to make jokes as well. (i.e. Many of us have heard someone being openly racist and excusing it by saying they have a Black friend, so it’s okay) Being an “equal opportunity” racist won’t get you points either. This would be including as much diversity as you can only to take cheap shots at your characters cultures, languages, and/or ethnicities. That is not meaningful diversity and can be just as harmful as tokenism.
How do you avoid tokenism? It’s not entirely “wrong” to have a character of color be the only character of color in your story. There have been plenty of times when I’ve been the only person of color in the room. The problem comes when you place that person in the position of speaking for the entire race and saddle them down with stereotypes that they can’t get away from. It is okay to add a character of color to be a main character’s best friend, but don’t reduce this character to a cliché or a trope. Write the character from a place of empathy, make them three dimensional, do your research on the culture, and avoid stereotypes.
Why We Need More Directors of Color
For any other questions that weren’t answered here or addressed in the tags or found via our search options, feel free to ASK away!
https://writingwithcolor.tumblr.com/ask
Use Submit for questions longer than two parts. On that note, aim for 1-2 part questions and be concise!
areudirty
pixelskylines
vaporwave
tangentwithtanner
gummygunk
