Clusterfuck Draft To Legible Story

Element 1: Character: Diversity

Diversity

Now, this topic I am keeping for last because I personally find this an important topic to talk about.

Now when you think about diversity in characters, what comes to mind first? I am interested, please answer here before reading further.

Now that you have hopefully answered, (if you haven't, I would appreciate it if you did) let me talk about the two main factors that you can apply the word diversity when it comes to characters: diversity in appearance and diversity in character.

Now let's dive into these two. What is the difference?

Diversity in appearance is exactly what it sounds like. Their outer look, race, hair color, style of clothing, and so on.

Diversity in character is diversity in personality, opinions, their inner thoughts, a way of talking, mannerisms and so on.

Now, both of these, while they are very different, are actually both very important. It is good if your readers are able to distinguish your characters just by their appearance or description. And I will say that diversity in appearance is something most people have no problem achieving.

However, what is usually hidden under the rug is that diversity in character. This is something I can tell that many people don't even take into consideration when writing their character. After all, as long as they all look different and have a label on them that is more than enough, right?

No, and please, if you are one of these people, start thinking about the inside of your character FIRST before you go into their outer appearance.

What I have noticed many people doing is that they will (for example) write a homosexual character just because they want to have a minority group in their story, but they absolutely ignore giving them any kind of personality and only focus on the fact that they are gay. Please, people, this is the same as with the nerd thing. You can not just put a label on your character and call it a day. Everyone is different and I know I have written about this many times here, but please, if you remember at least one thing from everything I said here, let it be this:

Everyone may be different from the outside, but the part of them that cannot be copied and pasted is the inside. This is why you should expound your characters as much as possible and make sure that every single character in just your own story is somehow unique from every other character. Not just their appearance.

Yours,
MilejdyVan.