“‘Diversity’ should just be called ‘reality.’ Your books, your TV shows, your movies, your articles, your curricula, need to reflect reality.” —Tananarive Due, author and American Book Award winner

The above quote is extremely true. This week I’m discussing diversity in writing and why it’s important to have it, but not just for the sake of having diversity. The reason I’m discussing this now is that in An Undercover Dream the topic of racism crops up quite a bit. It’s something I did consider in the first two books but in this one it’s much more important.

Earlier this week, I was wondering what are the appropriate terms when describing different races, and how to put descriptions of skin colour into my writing without offending someone. There were a fair few different answers on the internet, and it made me realise that this stuff isn’t straightforward. Especially if you don’t want to offend anyone. In a book series about equality and being unprejudiced, this issue still arises for me as an author. I try my best for equal representation and to relay the images I have in my head of characters in the books as well as I can, but like it or not, when describing someone race does play a big part. And sometimes you just have to describe it, because we all notice someone’s race. Even our characters notice it.

So, how do you ensure equal representation? Do you just put characters in who are different races for the sake of it? I think that does happen quite a lot – diversity for the sake of diversity, and it’s an easy way to tackle this. It’s not wrong, but I hope that one day it won’t be the case. That we won’t have to just put characters of different races in because we’re forgetting to do so in the first place. One day I hope that it just happens. That people will read a character and not just assume they are white if they have no description of their colour. I think it’s just part of how writing is in this current time – I know I don’t describe skin colour of white people nearly enough as I should compared to other races, but it’s because Luke doesn’t necessarily notice this. If he was a different race, he may notice white people more. It just goes to show that even he isn’t PC. I don’t think anyone is. But we just need to do our best to ensure our intentions are good and learn what we’re doing wrong and how to learn and improve on it.

I wrote Luke as a white male because I wanted people to see that even someone like him could experience prejudice. But, he’s a believer in abolishing all kinds of prejudice so when he comes across different kinds, he does tackle it. I wanted him to have a reason to empathise with it, so we could look at him as a character and realise we too should be able to empathise with others who have been oppressed because of who they are even if we ourselves aren’t.

It is a very tricky subject but I think as long as you go back to that quote, you’ll know what to do. Don’t think of it as adding in diversity. Think of it as reflecting reality instead.

Atlantic Split and At Liberty To Live, the first and second books in The Luke Bright Series are available to purchase NOW! An Undercover Dream – the third book in the series will be released in SUMMER 2019! 

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N.A.K.