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I seem to be spawning a novella. Woot!
Jan. 24th, 2013 01:53 amProblem being, the connecting point for most of the cast is Irish heritage, specifically music. Ireland being and Irish-Americans generally being white as Easter lilies, this could easily result in an all-white cast. In fact I suspect that if I do not have an all-white cast, at least among the characters claiming Irish heritage, readers will side-eye me hard and abandon me for implausibility.
I do not want an all-white cast.
I cannot make my lead a person of color, I think, because the metaplot is her realizing her privilege and trying to do something about that (core of the story is Child 200, and it just plain don't work if she doesn't start the story well-off), and also I dunno how 'be a proper young lady' instructions to a little girl play out when the little girl is of color. Which means her parents are white too, and that's three of my ten named characters, and five of the remaining seven are in this Irish music group and the sixth is a sibling to one of those five. Number seven is not Irish even a little bit, but, well, if anyone's a villain of this piece, it's him. If he's the token PoC, that would be bad.
I'm thinking about making two or three of the characters PoC anyway. Maybe the siblings and number seven, though I'm not sure yet. Does that sound like a good solution, or do you have other thoughts?
(The cast also looks very heterosexual and cisgender. I think I'm going to have to suck up the cisgender, but maybe the love story can be queer het instead of straight het.)
I do not want an all-white cast.
I cannot make my lead a person of color, I think, because the metaplot is her realizing her privilege and trying to do something about that (core of the story is Child 200, and it just plain don't work if she doesn't start the story well-off), and also I dunno how 'be a proper young lady' instructions to a little girl play out when the little girl is of color. Which means her parents are white too, and that's three of my ten named characters, and five of the remaining seven are in this Irish music group and the sixth is a sibling to one of those five. Number seven is not Irish even a little bit, but, well, if anyone's a villain of this piece, it's him. If he's the token PoC, that would be bad.
I'm thinking about making two or three of the characters PoC anyway. Maybe the siblings and number seven, though I'm not sure yet. Does that sound like a good solution, or do you have other thoughts?
(The cast also looks very heterosexual and cisgender. I think I'm going to have to suck up the cisgender, but maybe the love story can be queer het instead of straight het.)