Is Character Relatability the Top Reason You Love a Book
- 2 days ago
- 2 min read
By Tricia Copeland / Maria Jane
What makes for the best stories? A good plot, unique and interesting setting, a likeable or relatable character? For me, and perhaps many others, you can create an amazing world and the best plot, but if I can’t find any characters to root for or relate to, you’ve lost me. This fact is perhaps the leading reason authors strive to present characters readers can relate to. But should authors of one ethnicity write characters with diverse backgrounds?
Many authors strive to provide readers with stories that represent many voices with respect to race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, cultural group, and other ideologies. How do authors write a character of a different background with accuracy and integrity? Speaking from the lens of a white author, I take from my real world experience of being in the lives of people of diverse backgrounds, do research, and have readers who identify with a character’s group read the book.
Even with extreme care taken to present characters authentically, some readers may be sensitive to writers creating characters that don’t align with the author’s own experience.
This can create challenges for authors. Should we not write characters that are a different sex or ethnicity, or vampires, fairies, werewolves, angels, demons, even dragons? Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight series, may have some thoughts on that.
If it is okay for a human author to write from the perspective of a vampire, is it also okay for a female author to create a male character’s voice, or a white author to create a black character’s point of view?
In my Perfect romance series, I’ve created characters of many different ethnicities, religious backgrounds, nationalities, and neurodiversity from white Americans, Latvian Americans, Asian Americans, to Black, Catholic, Jewish, Hispanic, to Autistic peoples. My aim is to mirror the diversity we experience and to provide a group of characters that no matter their race, ethnicity, nationality, lens, or background readers can find a character they identify with.
While a reader may not know what it is to feel like a vampire, be a member of the opposite sex, or person of a different skin color, that reader may identify with a part of the character’s personality or life experience and in the process gleam a bit of perspective on different lived experiences.
And if an author is lucky, a reader will grow to love traits in characters they hadn’t expected. Because even a villain may have one aspect to their personality, or in the past has done one thing that fans can point to and say, yep, that’s when the author had me.
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