He Who Has Beautiful Eyes that Are a Blessing From God
Joined: Wed Mar 26, 2008 9:51 am Posts: 3583 Location: Toronto
Wrath, this might be a bit of a touchy subject but I was curious about how you choose the race of your characters. Primarily, your main characters. I noticed in your two MMPB books the main characters were white.
Is this in consideration of the marketplace? Is this dictated by Leisure at all? When you start to write a novel do you see the characters appearances in your head automatically or do you make a conscious effort to choose a character's race?
Thanks in advance.
_________________ Mike Styczen: As far as I can tell, all of Toronto is on the lookout for some sort of demented leprechaun. If Toronto didn't exist, we'd have to invent it
I usually see the character and their race in my head before I write the story. Rarely do they change and almost never do they change race. They might change names and occassionally gender. I've never had a publisher ask me to change the race of any of my characters. I don't think they'd dare and I'd probably tell them to kiss the darkest part of my ass if they did.
Often my books betray my own biases and stereotypes and I have to struggle with them. I made Joseph Miles white because when I wrote it I just couldn't imagine a black serial killer. There have been so few black serial killers in American history. But that's an illusion based on the fact that there are more white people in America than any other race. If one white person in a million is a serial killer than there would be 160 white serial killers whereas if one in a million blacks were serial killers there would only be 60 of them giving the impression that white people are more likely to be serial killers than blacks. The reality is that though there have been far fewer black serial killers than white ones they represent a higher percentage of the population due to the relatively smaller overall population of blacks in America. So there may be three times as many white serial killers as Black ones but there are four times as many white people in America as black people. That means that there is actually a proportionately higher percentage of black serial killers. Had I known that then Joseph Miles may have been black.
The only deliberate sort of political decisions I've made about a character was in making Sarah Lincoln in The Resurrectionist the emotionally stronger character. I did that intentionally because I wanted to write a strong female character who defied the typical stereotypes. Other than that, I just follow me muse.
Sorry for the delay in answering your question. I didn't notice it until today.
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