Some Advice on Diversity
- Elijah Jeffery
- Mar 23, 2025
- 1 min read
Some of the best writing advice I ever got, as a straight white man, was from a friend in high school. They said to write people completely different from me. When making a character, instead of starting with straight white men, I start with gay black women, and my inherent biases shift all the characters in my direction, resulting in a scatter plot of a cast.
This works a lot better than the opposite approach, where you begin with characters that are like you and try to push them away on the spectra to create diversity.
Realised I was making the mistake of writing just straight white men (mostly because I was trying to emulate Australian political figures) but I didn't want to abandon the already established world I'd written so I introduced new female characters to put a spotlight on, plus writing about an alien invasion gave me the opportunity to create a storyline about an intersex alien benefiting from the unique male and female physiology of their species. That is all to say, your point has been very true for myself and helped me grow my abilities as a writer.
P.S. Hope your writing is going well and I wish I could get the chance to check it out eventually! I'm here from the…