There’s this advice that’s given to beginning writers.

It is this: write only male, straight, whole, white characters because they are “easier”, they’re not “complex”, because the beginning writer just can’t handle it and why not reduce the load on their infantile-like brains?

This is some of the worst advice to ever give, ever. Humanity is complex and nobody is that simple. The above aphorism, I’m convinced, leads to such a lot of the sexism, racism, ableism, queer-phobia, and general xenophobia that infects a lot of beginning writing. Why do this to writers in the first goddamned place?

I almost committed that error in NaNoWriMo 2011. I’m not going to blame anybody but me, because I was non-self-aware enough to not think about it, and let it soak in.

So I’ll tell you a story.

Once upon a time, The Pantheon Plot was going to be about three gods attending, basically, God University. Three, for lack of a better term, white gods. If you know anything about gods, you’ll know this makes no goddamned sense because gods, like people or perhaps even moreso than people, develop out of actual cultures.

And there are a diverse number of cultures that produce gods, and they are not all of them white by far. So my choice of character backgrounds made even less sense.

It took me a few days to realize this. Gods, what an ass I was. I’d already chosen names based on moons, since a lot of them are indeed named after gods. I changed one name, Lysithea, to Lisao, as a Chinese goddess—or at least, a spirit who has been chosen to aspire to deityhood. I changed another name a few times, eventually landing on Vidor, another aspiring-to-be-goddess who actually did have a real Old Norse culture behind her, rather than just assuming, hey, unnamed mainstream culture good enough (what bullshit).

Why goddesses? Because I remember a criticism I had received was that I tended to write female characters into the background, giving them no importance. This is especially ironic because I am female. That straight-white-able-male advice, it’s fucking insiduous, and I was a fucking stupid-head. Poof, gender change. And by now I had read enough analysis and enough books to know that all that advice that says gender has no real meaning anyways? Yeah, fake as something that’s really fake. And also gender is a complicated concept that depends on culture. See how this all ties together?

The last was a character I named, from the start, Siarnaq, the white god in this trio. Ahahaha, now we reach the really no goddamned sense phase of things, because Siarnaq is an Inuit deity (and also the name of a retrograde satellite around Saturn—perfect for an odd, eccentric character).

I could have changed the name and had a white Greek god. But I decided to roll with it—as I later found out, Inuit mythology is so ignored that it’s practically criminal for those of us fond of mythopoeic literature. But at the time I decided it made more sense regardless for Siarnaq to become an Inuit god.

No, the rabbit hole of nonsensicalness of my character background choice goes even deeper. Siarnaq is one of the most important goddesses, if not the most important, of every Inuit culture. She goes by many names, in fact, but she’s female and happens to have had all her fingers chopped off.

Now, I could have backed things all the way out. But what kind of cowardliness is that? Bigoted cowardliness, that’s what. Anyways, I like rolling with things because they’re interesting, and not only because it’s considered unwise by all those advice-givers. Siarnaq became Sanna who would change that name to something male, because I still wanted a god, but obviously he’d started out as a goddess. Or a female seal spirit, you know how these things go. Working from that, he’s obviously an FTM transexual.

And those fingers? Well, if the Terrible Old Woman Down There who controls all the animals of the sea, and the sea itself, and can cause famine and horror and etc when displeased couldn’t get her fingers back, neither was he. Disabled character for whom no magic in the Universe was going to heal him all up nice and neat.

Now I had a trio of deities for my protagonists: two female, one male.

Someone will say that I cheated, that I only created Psann neé Sanna because I wanted to bow to inclusiveness. That Lisao and Vidor were only the result of that same desire for inclusiveness.

No. It wasn’t because I wanted to be inclusive for the hell of it. It was because of brainstorming and also making goddamned sense while I was thinking.

(I’m also waiting for someone to accuse me of cheating because why not have three goddesses, and transexuals are cheating, and gods, don’t make me punch you.)

And so it goes.

I admit, the background of my eccentric and shallow-acting character made me want to explore him more. I innocently started a backstory story that has turned into a novella, from the planning of it, and involves another female character who I’m not going to leave behind to the background. I also refuse to let that story fall into the stupid stereotype of what I call Surprise It’s a Trap! end reveal, because that shit is just insulting and unimaginative.

Psann started as the Seal Maiden, but it’s just a title and he was always a he, even if nature conspired against that, and later some rather sexist gods.

But here’s an important part to take away from all this bungling of mine. These attributes do not define these characters. I’m not saying these attributes have no effect; obviously they fucking do, and to say otherwise is asinine. To write as if they don’t matter, and yet to write them as stereotypes (good gods) is also asinine. There are real-people personality traits these characters have, such as Psann’s tendency to follow his heart rather than his head, his eccentricity (no, his transexual aspect does not count in this), his strange emotional core in the face of severe trauma.

I have seen the following question asked: if you’re not going to write, what shall we call them, hmm, how about white bread characters (what a horrible thing), how do you write about them if you’re not them?

This is where reading widely comes in. Read widely: across genre, across culture, across gender, across fiction and non-fiction. Read personal accounts on blogs, in books, in articles, and so on. And most important of all, get in variety. And for gods’ sake, do not turn to paternalistic methods ((Example I have seen on NaNoWriMo boards: “Write them with a cultural aspect they should be proud of!” which is another fine way of saying “write stereotypes!”)) to write “ethnic” characters.

That’s one of the best pieces of real writing advice I’ve received. Wise men and women have told me this. For once I’ll actually listen.

And yet… it’s also one that a lot of people don’t want to do. It’s hard, I admit, but once you do it, you become that much more secure in what you want to do, and you grow as a writer. That’s what I found out, anyways. And yes… it’s time-consuming. But do you want to turn out ill-researched crap people will punch holes in?

I hope the answer is no, but you know, we all do our own things, and obviously I’m biased.

I’ll also add that… just try to understand people, whoever they may be. I have a hard time with this, because I’m as self-reflective as a rock and I tend to be about as reflective about other people. But I believe it’s the path to being a good writer. Is it the path?

Well, I do rather know nothing.