What Writing Diverse Characters Taught Me About Listening and Responsibility

There’s a moment every writer dreads when you stare at a character on the page and realize you might be getting them wrong. Not just in their dialogue or background but in the way they feel. I’ve had that moment more than once. And each time, it reminded me about the challenges of writing diverse characters and how they’re about approaching stories with humility.

As someone who writes across languages and cultures, I’ve never had the luxury of thinking about characters in one dimension. My upbringing, leaving Syria at age nine, living across Europe, and writing in French and English gave me access to many worlds. But that access comes with a responsibility: to tell stories that reflect real complexity. And when it comes to writing characters who are not like me, that responsibility grows even heavier.

The Weight of Representation

Let’s start with the obvious: fiction is not journalism. It doesn’t require documentation. But when you write a character who represents a community, especially one that has been misrepresented, silenced, discriminated against, marginalized, or exoticized, you’re not just writing fiction. You’re creating something that could either reinforce assumptions or challenge them. That’s the heart of the challenges of writing diverse characters.

Take Le temps d’une saison. It’s set in 1920s Paris and New York, with characters from different social classes and cultural backgrounds. I had to research not just the history but the emotional realities of that time. What did it mean to be a woman moving between worlds? What kind of prejudice, freedom, or friction existed in spaces that history books often gloss over? You can’t guess those things. You have to listen. Read. Ask. And then finally write.

Between Imagination and Accuracy

Some might argue that fiction is fiction! That writers should be free to imagine anyone. And I agree, to a point. But imagination isn’t an excuse for laziness. When I wrote Paul Ollenson in A Coeur Perdu, I was writing someone who had undergone a heart transplant, an experience I haven’t lived. So I spoke with people who had. I read their testimonies. I immersed myself in their fears, their resilience, their silence. Only then did I begin to understand how trauma reshapes identity.

The challenges of writing diverse characters demand this kind of immersion. You can’t wing it. You can’t base an entire persona on what you’ve seen in films or heard in passing. You have to do the quiet, invisible work. And you have to be willing to sit with the discomfort that maybe, even then, you might not get it entirely right.

Language Matters More Than You Think

When I’m writing in French, I think differently than when I write in English. The cadence changes. The emotional range feels different. I suspect readers experience this, too, even if they don’t notice it consciously. That’s why when I write characters who speak in another cultural rhythm, I pay close attention to how they speak, what they leave unsaid, how they respond to love, to loss, to conflict.

For instance, in Guard Thy Heart, which is an English adaptation of A Coeur Perdu, I didn’t just translate words; I translated their intention. The protagonist navigates cultural expectations, suppressed longing, and internal conflict. His transformation isn’t Western in its arc; it’s more internalized, more subtle. That’s when I realized how important tone, silence, and even pacing are when it comes to portraying someone from a different background authentically.

The Danger of Good Intentions Without Depth

It’s easy to think that because your intentions are good, the result will be too. But the challenges of writing diverse characters aren’t solved by good intentions alone. I’ve seen characters in novels written by well-meaning authors who wanted to “represent” but ended up flattening the very people they meant to uplift.

So, I ask myself often: Why am I writing this character? What purpose do they serve in the story? Are they fully realized, or are they a plot device? Are they defined only by their identity, or do they exist in all their contradictions?

The most powerful feedback I’ve received on my books has never been about the plot. It has been about readers feeling seen. A woman once wrote to me saying that Angèle in Le temps d’une saison reminded her of her own experience immigrating to the U.S. as a teenager. She said, “You didn’t write me, but somehow, you wrote my silence.” That, to me, is the goal.

Lessons I Keep Relearning

• You can’t shortcut empathy.
• You don’t need to be an expert, but you do need to be honest about what you don’t know.
• Your job isn’t to “include” diversity; it’s to tell the truth about human lives.

And most importantly, people are never just one thing. They are complicated, self-contradictory, layered. If you can’t capture that, you’re not writing a character; you’re writing a version of yourself in costume.

In Closing- Write With Accountability, Not Fear

I don’t believe in censorship. I believe in accountability. And the challenges of writing diverse characters are not about fear of backlash; they’re about writing from a place of listening, respect, and curiosity. When you get it right, something remarkable happens. Readers who have never met each other, who may never meet, suddenly share a space. They connect across stories. Across lives. Across pages.

And that, to me, is why we write.