Why Diversity in Our Writing is So Important - "The Danger of a Single Story"

I'd like to give one example of someone who wrote a diverse book on multiple scales: Kameron Hurley. If you don't know her or haven't heard of her latest book The Mirror Empire, it's what I think future fantasy and SF might look like if everyone decides to write more diverse fiction. She writes for Angry Robot books, a traditional publisher, but a daring one that takes risks on radically different approaches to the genre. She does a lot with race and gender in her books, subverting traditional ideas and doing loads of world-building in the process. It's fascinating to read from the stand-point of a straight, white male. Everything is completely foreign to me, but in a good way. It's also Angry Robot's fastest selling book to date. So there's that.

I think one thing I've tried to find in fantasy is difference. I don't read fantasy to read about people like me. Not typically anyway. I want to read about weird places, fantastical creatures, forbidden magic, and characters bursting with personality. My normal life doesn't involve these things, so I'm attracted to stories that utilize them.

While I'm an advocate of more diversity in books, I can only really do my part and encourage other people to do the same. I fear that the call for diversity just makes people shoehorn ideas into their novels to appease a certain group. I'm not sure that's the right approach. The only way to truly get diversity into SFF is to write good books that include these ideas. If they sell, then we'll get more of this. If they don't sell, then we'll be looking at the same old, same old. Not that the same old is necessarily bad (I still love medieval fantasy no matter what), but I think fantasy has a lot more growth to experience as a genre. I'm excited to see where it goes.

 

I haven't had a chance to watch the video. I'm taking a note and will make an effort to watch it later.

I've talked about this before, but I'll try to boil it down. If you're talking to an individual, the attitude you should speak towards is this one:

Don't tell me what to write; tell me how to make the story I'm writing better.

That is, everyone here has a story in mind that they already want to write, and it's normal to come to a discussion like this from a fan perspective, "I want to see more diverse characters!" But this isn't a fan site. This is a site for writers. This is a site you go to in order to improve your stories.

So I have story X, what are some tips I can use to make it more diverse, and do so without over-extending the boundaries of my story or my own ability to identify with these characters?

It's a difficult question to answer. But it's the one that needs to be answered in order to make real progress.

 

I don't buy the "it won't sell" argument. That argument boils down to baseless assertions and circular reasoning. You end up with some variation of:

A: Publishers don't publish books with diversity because they don't sell.

B: How do you know they don't sell?

A: Because look at what's being published!

When it comes to the landscape of traditional publishing, we have a sample size of n=1. You'd need a mirror publishing regime in place wherein everything else was equal except for diversity v. lack thereof to make any kind of assertion along the lines of the "it doesn't sell" argument, and we don't have that. The reason you'd need such a system is also to isolate variables, because unless you isolate the variable of diversity you can't make a reasonable statement about the success or failure of any given book that includes diversity being either a success or failure because of it.

I also don't buy the argument that talking about it, or raising awareness among authors, publishers, and readers, has no effect. The idea that any kind of change or evolution simply comes about without driving forces doesn't make sense to me. Change and evolution require an impetus, and raising the social consciousness around an issue can certainly have an effect. Getting a little more diversity in fiction can encourage more diverse writers, or writers who just want to include more diversity. It ultimately shifts the norm, and there's no guarantee at all that this would happen without help.

Lastly, writers, artists, and the like who take calls for or discussions about diversity as attacks on their art are completely misunderstanding the issue, in my view. It's an emotional response to the topic rather than a reasoned one.

 

I'm gonna have a go at it, from my angle.

Let's assume something first: let's assume everyone is different.
Then by including different people in your story, you already have some kind of diversity. Your characters will have different personalities and backgrounds. They will have different wants and needs - they're different to each other. Already, we have a certain amount of diversity here, and then we haven't even gotten to things such as gender or skin color.

Now, let's add gender and skin color and all that jazz. Does that change your characters in any way? Put in a vacuum, it shouldn't.
But, your characters aren't in a vacuum, they're affected by the world around them and the world around your characters do not (at first) know anything about the character's inner characteristic. The world only knows what it sees and it's what it sees that defines how it reacts.
In other words: people are treated differently based on their visual appearance.

I think this is a really central point that might actually be easy to miss when dealing with diversity questions. If I want to include a dark skinned woman in my stories I shouldn't primarily ask myself what the personality of such a person would be. I should ask myself how the world they live in treats that person and how they would react to it.

That's my advice - for now.

 

The question is, where's the evidence for this statement? I'm sure there are cases of this happening, but the idea that every single day books are rejected for being too diverse is an extremely broad, all-encompassing statement. I've never seen any evidence to support it, and I don't believe that it exists, frankly. Not on the kind of scale you're talking about. Not only would you have to look at all of the rejected books, but you'd have to somehow distinguish which ones were rejected solely for the inclusion of diverse elements as opposed to for some other reason. Has any kind of analysis like that ever been done? And if not, how can we make general statements about it with any degree of accuracy? Are there tons of authors out there somewhere with rejection slips that say "Hey, we'd love to publish this, but you've got too many black people in it?"

I'm suspicious of the extent to which that sort of thing goes on, even unacknowledged. I don't doubt it has happened, but I doubt it is a daily basis for attrition in the slush pile.

I also don't agree with the "wrong audience" argument. Both publishers and writers are the right audience for this discussion, not just one or the other. And, as far as conversation on the topic goes, readers are another appropriate audience.

 

You really think my posts in that thread are in opposition to the one above? I don't even - I don't even understand.

In that thread I was talking about people who raise the issue without addressing the challenges associated with it. I then went on to suggest that we develop new diversity tropes to lessen those challenges.

In my post above, I suggested that people offer tips for using diversity within a story. Note again: Tips. As in, specific ways to overcome the challenges that I also named within the post: Over-extending the story to include diversity; failing to identify adequately with diverse characters.

I have been pretty consistent, from the start, in asking for a discussion of specific techniques for incorporating diversity, instead of simply demanding that people do it.

 

You'll have to forgive me for responding to the same post twice, but I feel the need to respond to this beyond my hurried post above.

First, I have to point out the oddity here, of arguing with an approach on the grounds that it only leads to more arguing. But that aside, arguments aren't a thing to avoid, only a bad attitude within those arguments.

I'm more concerned about the section of my post you chose to highlight. It seems deliberately misleading. My quote is clearly a build up to a concluding statement:

So I have story X, what are some tips I can use to make it more diverse, and do so without over-extending the boundaries of my story or my own ability to identify with these characters?

By leaving out the main point, I can only conclude that on some level you're choosing to misunderstand or misrepresent my post in an effort to equate it wrongly with one that others have made. I wasn't simply taking a "pro-diversity" side in an argument, but making a call for actionable suggestions, which presumably anyone could choose to accept or not on their own accord.

Similarly, you accuse me of previously seeking "an easy way out" of complicated problems. I have in the past called for tips, for tropes, for archetypes, for people to herald not just examples but concrete explanations of how those examples work: That is, I have called, repeatedly, for people to help develop the missing literary framework that normally underpins everything we do in our writing but is currently - I said missing, but missing isn't the right word - let's say underaccepted, when it comes to diversity. That is far from an easy way out; that is a call for people to work on it.

Finally, you accuse me of massively misreading what other people have said. I didn't really see any in a brief perusal of that particular thread, but I'm sure that there are examples of it. However, I would suggest that as I see a clear throughline in my posts on this issue, which you have chosen to ignore on a number of occasions, that you may be projecting your own unwillingness to accurately address my position, in an effort to avoid responding to it.

 

I get the feeling there's a few different discussions going on in this thread (and other threads we've had on the topic).
1. Who's responsibility is it to provide diverse stories?
2. How do you include diversity in your stories.
3. What is diversity anyway?
4. Why should we bother with it?

I think all four are interesting topics of discussion, and I tend to quite enjoy them. However, these threads can get a little heated, which in turn leads to confusion.
Basically, we're all rather different here, with different views on what's important. That's also something to consider.

5. Meta-discussion about the discussion.

 

A friend of mine brought up an interesting point about the new Alien game (I forgot the exact title). It's some kind of survival horror with a strong female main character.
What my friend pointed out is that in just survival horror female leads are more common than male ones (I accepted this without double-checking). He then asked what this says about how we associate powerlessness with player controlled characters?