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@hope-ann So I myself would first ask the question, why am I having a person of a different nationality? Is it because I want to, or just because I want diversity? Because I, as a minority, would rather not be represented in literature and media than be misrepresented. For my own characters, a great deal of them are Chinese or Asian because I myself am Chinese, and I feel comfortable having characters of those nationalities. For myself it feels natural as to having those characters, and not like, “Oh, hey, they’re from a different country.” I label them as “the ferryman”, “the weird guy who shouldn’t be trusted”, and other such things, not “the Chinese dude”. If, when thinking of your characters, there’s nothing else about them besides their race/nationality in their tagline, then there’s probably something wrong. Finally, when having a character from a country that I am not familiar with, I would probably try Google, or, even better, actually talking to someone of that nationality and making friends with them. Once again, however, I do not think of this character as “the Indian guy”, I think of him as “the Fallen Prophet”.

And also, if your character is of a different nationality, I’d love it if you could tell me right upfront. I don’t want to find out halfway through the book that the person in question looks completely different than what i imagined. For example while Wendy Mass if a great author, I was kind of annoyed that we didn’t find out that Miles was Chinese until the second book in one of her series.

One author that I really appreciate for his portrayal of different nationalities (in my case, a Chinese character) would be John Steinbeck. While some people say his books are racist, his books are the least racially offensive books I know. Sure, the characters in the book may be racist towards the particular character, but the character is portrayed as an intelligent human being who is no less than the others.

So my final word of advice is: write characters that you’re comfortable with. I do not recommend adding characters for the sake of diversity. As a minority, I feel particularly annoyed and even a bit offended when I see an author purposely shoehorn a lot of different things into their story just for the sake of diversity.

I think that’s about it. Sorry for the semi-rant. Good luck on whatever you’re writing!