Diversity
is something I have always been mindful of in my writings. I’ve taken time to
layout lists of characters and their aspects for many of my stories. I’ve made
sure to have racial diversity, religious diversity, language diversity, skill
diversity, personality diversity, as well as moral diversity. I try not to
write too many stories where all of the characters in them are from the
majority or are Caucasian.
I’ve
had people ask me about diversity in my writing’s before. One of my primary
readers once approached me about a book I was working on and asked, “Are all of
the character’s white?” I politely reminded her of a few characters who, at the
point in the story she was currently at, had only been mentioned a couple
times. As that story progressed, my African American, Hispanic, and Korean
characters became more prominent figures. Seeing as this particular story is
meant for publication one day I will not be posting it on any of my social
media sites so I therefore cannot provide you a link to it. To be honest, I
spent a lot of time on diversity with that story. Racial and class diversity
were a couple of the story’s elements that I paid the most attention to.
In
another one of my writings I wanted to make a point of having religious
diversity, especially since the subject matter at hand was one that would cross
into religion and theology. In this fantastical tale of myth, I have creatures
from all sorts of mythology and those creatures each have their own belief
systems. My main vampire character is Catholic, the main Siren character is Greek,
and another vampire is Atheist (http://writingangel2010.deviantart.com/gallery/50286567/Everlasting-Lie-Trilogy).
I also have stories that include Egyptian mythology and the difference between
cultures (http://writingangel2010.deviantart.com/art/The-Pharaoh-s-Guard-Introduction-453055286).
I like to keep my characters as diverse as possible.
Lately
though, I’ve crossed a new line. I posted on my Instagram a couple months ago
about starting work on a story that would contain my first ever non-straight character.
The response I got was predictable. Very few people liked the photo and
comment. Most didn’t respond to it at all. This isn’t surprising to me. One
person, one friend, did comment though and she was someone of the LGBT group.
She liked the idea of me writing a character that she could possibly relate to
on the level of sexuality.
To be
honest, I had wrestled with the idea of having a character that wasn’t
heterosexual before, but I had chickened out and decided to make him
metrosexual. In all honesty, I think that was a good move at the time. My
writing skill has progressed from that point and there was no way I would have
been able to portray that character as being homosexual without feeling guilty.
Why? Because at the time I was but a child. I had no idea of how I felt about
the LGBT group let alone how people would react to it. I feared that portraying
such a character would lead to fractures in some of my friendships. Now though,
I can honestly say that I feel no guilt or sense of ‘wrongness’ for writing
such a character.
Scythe,
son of Mortem and Vita, is a new character for me and stands out amongst the other
characters I’ve created. He’s free spirited, lost, and struggling with the idea
of destiny. And, as I mentioned, he’s bisexual.
I have no regret in his creation. I actually spent a lot of time in
prayer and meditation about the impact he could have on my writing.
I am a
Christian. This is something I would proudly proclaim to the masses. I’ve been
taught that homosexuality and bisexuality is a sin. I’ve been taught that it’s
a choice. These are not matters that I wish to argue over and I respect
everyone’s opinion on them. When it comes to this mater I am normally quite. I
tend to keep my opinions that I think people will blow out of proportion to
myself, but there is one thing I want to say about this mater. No mater your
religion and no mater your beliefs on whether it’s a choice or not, it still
exists. It’s existed for a long time. And what is literature, my friends, if
not a mirror?
Many
symbols have been given to literature, but my favorite is the mirror. Think
about it for a moment. Literature, in any form, shows society. It shows
humanity. It shows the struggle of the Human Condition and the Human
Experience. It shows us who we are.
The
purpose of literature is to teach, to inform, to document, and to let people
know that they aren’t alone. If you think about it, every story ever written
–every news article, every pamphlet, every book, and every poem –is about
humanity. Yes, there are specific kinds of literature that target specific
subjects, such as a pamphlet promoting an event or a new business, but
literature in every form seeks to unite. It seeks to show humanity as a whole
and to teach us that there is help out there, that we’re not alone, that the
problems we face every day have been faced and beaten before by others who have
gone before us.
Since
humanity is the subject of all literature, and humanity is diverse, why then
should literature not be diverse? This, my fellow humans, is why I’ve decided
to write a bisexual character. I wish to portray humanity as it is. And to do
that I must be diverse in all things.
However, there are two last things I would
like to point out. The first being that I know that some of you who read this
will not like my ideas and will be completely against me writing this
character, but neither Scythe nor I care. What you must understand is that the
characters of a story are the not author. Yes, the story is part of us. Yes,
when you buy a book you are purchasing a piece of the author’s soul. But no,
the Characters –the shadows on its pages –are not mirrors of the author’s
personal life. I am not my characters, and they are not me. To use an analogy I
do try to stay away from just as God created man in His own image and man does
not always resemble their creator –does not always show or proclaim who their
creator is –so characters do not always resemble their authors. In fact, the
great play write, William Shakespeare, is a perfect example of this. Nowhere in
his works is it possible to point at a character and say, “That’s Shakespeare.
Right there. That’s him.”
The last thing I want to point out
before I conclude this little article –I guess that’s what it could be called
–is that I am a firm believer that every great library has a book in it to
offend everyone. Like I said before, one of the main purposes of literature is
to teach, and to do so some times is has to offend.
So am I sorry that I no longer have
all straight characters? No. Do I feel guilt at having a bisexual character? Do
I feel like I am sinning by writing him into existence? No, on both points. I
write what I feel I must. I write the stories I feel that should be told. If I
start to write something and get a sense of wrongness, I throw it out because
A) it either is really wrong to write about it or B) I need to solidify what I
personally feel about the subject matter before I embark on the journey of
writing it.
Now, I am not going to tell you my
personal feelings on this particular subject matter, for the only personal
feelings that mater here is the feeling that Scythe belongs in his story. That
his story is one that I feel compelled to write. It may not be my best story
and it may never be seen on the shelves of a Barnes and Nobel, but it is one I
will write. One that I will continue to post chapters of up on my DeviantART
site. Because I believe in diversity and believe that as a mirror literature
should be diverse. Just like there isn’t just one type of chocolate or one type
of coffee there isn’t just one type of person, and literature should reflect
that.
(Scythe's story can be found at: http://writingangel2010.deviantart.com/ Under the titles of: A Weight of a Prophecy and The Callidus Chronicles)
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