📚 Write On! The four-dimensional protag, Part 1.

Hiya, writers & frenz. Tonight and in a couple or three weeks or so, I’ll boil down and link some articles that speak wonderfully to representing minority and female characters with truth within fiction context. Writers who do that, whatever their genre, seem to be rewarded by the engagement and loyalty of readers who value seeing themselves and others reflected as real and as mattering, instead of feeling they’re made invisible, irrelevant, or falsified. We’ll notice an admirable capacity for candor from tonight’s authors — a certain courage, even, in telling stories that might make them feel or actually be vulnerable, because of drawing upon reality with all its emotions, contradictions, and messy facts. Hopefully we can try their approach in our practice, if in a way that is a little less personally ... challenging! Part 2 will be explicit about methods, using a single background written up in a way I found translating fascinatingly well across the board. First, tonight, less explicit if more open, from last month, PW’s Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2025: “Q&As with Children's Authors on Writing About Culture and History.”Note: None of the illustrations are from the books mentioned, they’re just generally illustrative of topic. Also, I was disappointed to see no books from Pacific Islanders, but maybe PW will cover them in the future. Bea’s Balikbayan Box of Treasures by Christine Alemshah is a story capturing the vibe of the tradition of sending a particular kind of care package to relatives in the Philippines......a physical expression of connection to loved ones [widely distant] from one another ... even for children who may [never] have lived there .... [My own favorite memory is of packing] a balikbayan box ... for my Lola [grandmother] ... in a rural village in Iba, Zambales. I sent her letters and artwork from her great-grandchildren, a framed family photo, tea, and spices for cooking. I [felt such gratitude at the warmth of her embrace of] the family photo when we met on a video call afterward. ...[I wrote Bea’s story from the perspectives of giver and of receiver because both] are rooted in gratitude. Giving and receiving present opportunities for growth and fellowship with others. I hoped to provide a universal experience for young readers and their families. The book’s back matter further expands upon this idea, inspiring children to create their own care packages for loved ones....h/t onomastic Next, Livia Blackburne, whose Dreams to Ashes centers on the Los Angeles Chinatown Massacre of 1871, speaks in the interview about her debt to Carole Boston Weatherford, whose Unspeakable demonstrated that publishing a children’s book about dark topics is possible with careful handling....[my editor and I] wanted to be very mindful about the extent [of description of] violence. Instead of dwelling on specifics, I [highlighted] the racism and xenophobia in the years leading up to the attack, and how that exploded into tragedy. [We also were careful to humanize] the victims. They weren’t just nameless statistics, but people with hopes and dreams, whose lives were tragically cut short.I [hope readers] come away seeing immigrants as human beings worthy of dignity and respect. I would also like them to understand the social forces by which that respect can be stripped away, and the devastating consequences when that happens. I hope they are motivated by this insight to work for a society that respects all its members.h/t funningforrest Axie Oh’s The Floating World is rooted in the Korean legends of the Celestial Maidens, as a backdrop for a tale of star-crossed young lovers: Ren, a princess of the landmass in the sky, and Sunho, an orphan and sword-for-hire from the shadowed-below industrial-like Under World, trying to make ends meets while searching for his missing brother. Ren is not entirely human, but Sunho was born human, even if life events have changed him... Don’t Make Trouble is a very personal graphic novel by Arree Chung opening with young Ming Lee being put in an ESL class, despite his first and only language being English....it was the perfect mix of awkward and hilarious. He already felt different with his second-hand clothes and bowl haircut, and [this class] was the perfect way to show just how out of place Ming felt.For Ming, [not making trouble] meant staying invisible—not speaking up, not drawing attention to himself. But for his parents, especially his dad, it meant focusing on getting good grades and staying on a clear path to success without any distractions.... I wanted to show how kids of immigrants are often juggling two worlds—their family’s hopes at home and the totally different reality they face at school. I hope young readers who sometimes feel stuck in between can see a bit of themselves in Ming and know that it’s okay to make mistakes and find their own way to who they are... Exploring the perception of power, whether in the most popular girl in school, or a heroine of the distant past, is a focus of Aimee Phan’s The Lost Queen, inspired by the legend of the Hai Ba Trung (the Trung Sisters), military leaders in a rebellion against China’s Han Empire to found the country of Vietnam. In the end, the sisters drown themselves in the Hat Giang River rather than surrender. Phan suggests that their story didn’t end there — suppose they were reincarnated into modern times. Because, as Phan observes,when kids go through puberty, they absolutely feel a loss of power, or control, over their identity—or at least what they believe people think of them. [But here, strong women from ancient myth pass along magic to young protagonist Jolie, in the modern present]. I don’t think many teenage girls believe in their own self-worth. It’s heartbreaking to see how many strong, fierce girls change during adolescence. It’s like they lose their individuality to peer pressure, puberty, and social media. I wanted to write a story where young women could find their strength and voices. Magic is a wonderful conduit for them to find this power that I believe exists in all women. h/t onomastic In Mia P. Manansal’s YA debut crime/thriller novel, Death in the Cards, protag Danika, a young queer Filipina woman, heads a cast of queer BIPOC characters, and also — even though many YA novels try to limit familial involvement — a multigenerational constellation of relatives. It was the representation that I desperately wanted and needed as a kid and never got.... if I’d had a book like this when I was a teen, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me until I was almost 30 to realize I was queer [or] to understand that no culture is a monolith, and that just because I didn’t seem to fit in with other Filipinos growing up doesn’t mean I wasn’t “Filipino enough” or that my experiences weren’t valid. Lastly, queer spaces tend to be very white [so] it was important for me to [depict] various kinds of intersectionality...[And] Danika’s dream is to follow in her mom’s footsteps and become a private detective, but her mom, in typical immigrant parent fashion is like, “No. I work this dangerous, unstable job because I have to. It’s what was available to me. But I want better for you.”...h/t onomastic The Salt Princess by Anoosha Syed is the second in HarperCollins’ Everlasting Tales collection. Syed expressed feeling honored with the chance to represent Pakistan’s often overlooked heritage of a beautiful and rich cultural history, arts, poetic literature, cuisine, and diverse people, hard though it was to choose just one traditional tale to do it, She eventually selected one common to many cultures (similar to “Cinderella”) that let her weave a wealth of cultural specificities, most centrallythe concept of “log kya kahenge” or :what will people say.” There can be a lot of pressure to forsake your dreams and follow societal expectations, but as someone who actually went against that and pursued the arts, I wanted to highlight the harms of that kind of thinking. This story is about a girl who struggles to fit in with her family. [But] I hope children have the courage to follow their dreams and stand up for themselves! I did a reading of this book recently and asked the children what [they took from the story]. One very clever girl said, “Parents should respect their kids like we respect them,” which I thought was an excellent thing to absorb from the book, for parents and children alike.h/t Onomastic Chi Thai’s The Endless Sea offers the voice and perspective of a child in a picture book of coming to America, based upon her own family’s constant multi-generational recollections....When I finally began to write, I recorded an interview with my mother—a way to ground the story, to fact-check. This time, I asked questions more carefully, determined to document the fullest version of how my family fled Vietnam.A big part of the creative process is often mysterious—less about conscious choice and more about instinct and trust. In this case, I didn’t deliberately decide on the perspective. It simply arrived with the story itself. That’s often how it happens for me. When an idea takes hold, the protagonist and their journey usually come well formed. My real work as a writer happens later, in the careful layering of character development, details and meaning. With The Endless Sea, it felt as though something deeper—memories and intuition—was steering the process. I didn’t overthink. I wrote. And from the beginning, the story flowed naturally through the voice of a child....Challenge:Think about the real contexts and heritages of members of your own family or very close longtime friends, what you’ve additionally learned or know of that background, and how you’ve felt in times when you heard their unique stories of life and legend.Then write a vignette — first person or third person POV, your choice — in which you have a character starting to write a letter to go with a box of things for someone remembered and cared about.Set it in past or present, but not in fantasy or future. PRACTICE THIS instead. But don’t sweat it. Simply imagine assembling that “care package” and writing the letter — as if for example for someone who survived the Los Angeles fires — Just make it for someone real or imaginary who came through real things you really know about.It doesn’t have to be long or complete. Just pretend you’re starting to pack up a few items that would be/would have been helpful or comforting, and writing to them in words that convey that your character understands and cares about what’s going/gone onWrite On! will be a regular Thursday night diary (5pm leftkost, 8 pm Eastern) until it isn’t.h/t Dalbert 2023. Hover for dataBefore signing a contract with any agent or publisher, please be sure to check them out on Preditors and Editors (at FB their last post seems to be in October 2023) Absolute Write, Critters.org, and/or Writer Beware.As a writing workshop/seminar, rather than open-thread community diary; let’s avoid going off-topic in the comments.Find tonight’s and previous WriteOn Fiction Works-In-Progress diaries and threads AT THIS LINK.