I Don’t See Any Reason Why You Shouldn’t

Should writers be able to write characters of other races and nationalities?

As writers, that's kinda what we do. We create characters that we hope are remembered and loved until the end of time. It doesn't matter the race or nationality, as long as they have some aspect of likablity and are written very well.

What?

Just because I'm not black or a woman, should I not write as if I were them? I'm not Christian, can I not write a Christian character? Or Jewish? Or Muslim? I'm from New Zealand, am I not aloud to write as a character from that country?

If I cannot write as those characters, what's next? Will I not be allowed to write about an immortal elf with magical healing abilities? Or a superhero that can shoot lasers out of their eyes? Or a lesbian angel struggling with their faith? Or a three-headed, six penis, komoda dragon that spits acid from it's tail?

We as writers are granted with two things: imagination and creative liberties, both are intertwined together. We are free to write characters as we wish, and we do so out of respect to our readers. We go through life learning that there are people who behave or do things differently than we do, and their are different cultures and traditions that we are not familiar with. Why do we write characters like that? Maybe we write them because, more often than not, the real world is like that. Maybe we write them as a way for us to learn and understand about them, and hopefully our readers will learn and understand something too. Or maybe we find our own lives a bit mundane and wish to write about a character that is outside our norm.

I can't speak for all writers who do this, but I believe that we all can agree that there is no limit to what you can do when creating the best character.

If you wish to write about a character of another race or nationality, go for it. Write them as you'd like. Hey, I do it. Sins of the Father consists of numerous characters that are different races, faiths, sexual orientations, and nationalities. I even have angels and demons and other beings of different mythologies and theologies written to be very down to earth. But in case you wanna play on the safe side, definitely do some research into different cultures and nationalities before printing. You want be surprised by what you can learn.

#writing #characters #characterdevelopment #creativeliberties