It’s a Small, Diverse World: Creating Authentic Voices for Your Characters

Creating characters who are authentic is the goal of fiction writers and is not an easy task. Creating diversity through ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identification can make it more difficult, but can open a world of new possibilities for your story. Step outside of your own experiences and learn how to create the voice of diverse characters while remaining respectful of culture and community and reflecting the actual world.

In this session you will learn to:

• Consider when inclusivity helps tell the story
• Examine how culture and community influence characters
• Write diverse characters that are not stereotypes
• Examine failures and success of diverse representation by looking at works of contemporary authors