Anonymous asked: Do you have any advice for writing racially and culturally diverse characters? Ones that are from other countries or areas, as well as characters that are mixed? How would that affect them and how would you describe them physically? That sort of thing.

A few links for you off the top of my head:

• Language Creation
• Skin Deep tag (race, skin color, etc.), and especially A Few Tips and Resources for Writing POC Characters and Gee, I don’t know how to research writing Characters of Color tastefully
• Worldbuilding Series: Religion
• Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions by Patricia C. Wrede

I’m not sure what “mixed” means to you (clarification would be awesome there!), but as far as how race and culture affects characters, you could pretty much do this:

1. Research a place/time/culture, the people who live there, the stereotypes you are likely to have about that place and those people and why those stereotypes are crap.
2. Create a character from that place/time/culture.
3. Think about how your other characters would interact with that character (both from a societal standpoint and a personal standpoint) and how that character would interact with your other characters (both societal and personal standpoints).
4. Think about how that character would handle being in a new place among strangers or else how that character would feel about having strangers from outside of their culture arrive at their doorstep. 
5. Proceed with story.

Thank you for your question! If you have any comments on this article or other questions about writing, you can message us here!

-C