Been writing a novel for a while, and I’m well aware that authors can unintentionally convey sexism, racism, or various forms of bias/stereotype without meaning to. I’m pretty sure my novel contains nothing overt (I’ve gone to lengths, for instance, to avoid having anyone live up to stereotype, such as a black guy playing basketball or a woman being interested in fashionable clothing - there is an Asian guy who is a math/science-ish guy but that was unavoidable.)
What are other things, though, that authors can commonly unintentionally let slip into their writing without even realizing it?
IMO your examples are bad, since there is no problem with anyone being interested in basketball or fashion. An example of bias/prejudice would be mentioning “primitive culture”, “exotic(?) music”, or similar judgement. Or even being repetitively specific about a “black guy” or “Asian guy” or someone’s gender when this is not relevant to the story, or having them talk funny.
ETA I agree that if your story is set in, e.g., Indonesia, or a Los Angeles ghetto, or your character is, and you are not familiar with the place then the burden is on you to make sure you do not describe something ersatz.
There are probably nigh infinite possibilities. I don’t think there’s any way to be 100% sure, as a writer, that you’ve avoided every possible type of prejudice, stereotype, etc. But one way to try and catch your mistakes is to have a very diverse set of beta readers prior to publishing - especially women readers, if you’re a cis man writer.
There is such a vast multitude on things that could be introduced into a story that could be unintentional prejudice or inadvertent stereotyping. Rather than trying to tediously list them out, I’m just going to recommend the Mythcreants Podcast. While the podcast is focused on science fiction and fantasy writing much of the guidance is applicable to pretty much any genre of writing. You can also search through their articles and podcast transcripts on various topics, e.g. stereotyping. They also provide copyediting and line (content) editing, although those are really services for professional writers.
People make fun of them a lot, but if you really care, it’s worth considering a sensitivity reader. Their whole job is to spot subtle issues you maybe didn’t think about. I plan to hire one for my next book, as it features a protagonist with an amputated limb. It’s sci-fi, so it’s not as limiting as it would be IRL, but I don’t want to gloss over it either.
As someone who has a roommate who recently had to amputate a leg, and as someone who has a sister whose leg is bothering her so badly that it may eventually come to that, I’d be very interested in reading that book when it comes out, @Spice_Weasel.
Well, hopefully I can do it justice. As is usually the case, I didn’t plan this, he was a secondary character in the first book who lost his leg, and then I decided his story had to be told, too.
The first book probably couldn’t be helped by a sensitivity reader. The issues are so visceral and personal and taboo I’m not even sure I want it to see the light of day. At least not in its current form.
But he’s better on this than many, IMO. Fictional portrayals of women written by men are often overly focused on how hawt they are, and imagine the women to also be very focused on their own and one another’s hawtness. Or sometimes it’s all about the lack of hawtness. Either way, try to give your female characters some more interesting things to worry about.
That’s one form of racism my parents indulge in. They canNOT interact with someone less white than Albino Lutheran, without bringing up their ethnicity as soon as they’re out of earshot: “Well, that certainly was a polite Chinese boy… or maybe Korean, could you tell? I suppose he could’ve been Huh-mung, but really who expects people to know? I mean, these days…”
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Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book? It took me years to write, will you take a look? It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear And I need a job, so I wanna be a Cis Man Writer… Cis Man Writer…!
I’ve started to notice this. In a novel written by a man, there is almost always mention of a women’s breasts somewhere. In women’s writing, there hardly ever is.
you don’t need anyone’s permission to write about woman. if you you write a sexist book it probably wont sell well. if you ask strangers on the internet how to write about women, it probably wont sell well. Write what you know of women. not what the sdmb knows of women.
Even in totally irrelevant places. “The waitress was an older, matronly woman with solid, round breasts under her Waffle House uniform shirt”. No other physical detail worth mentioning. Or, creepy and way too common, "the girl was around 11, with breasts just beginning . . . ".
It seems to be just reactive. A woman IS tits. It’s the laziest, grossest fucking writing.
I’m writing a blog post about this very subject right now, so I gotta say… Some people really care about the impact their fiction has, and don’t want to do any harm with it. This is not “asking for permission” so much as it is caring about who you might hurt.