7 Tips for Writing Across Culture In Fiction

Trying to incorporate culture into our writing can feel overwhelming at times. Culture is a complex, amorphous, and constantly evolving concept. Even those of us born in the same area with the same ethnic background and the same physical characteristics may experience and reveal culture in different ways.

(Elizabeth Shick: On Research Through Immersion)

As tempting as it may be to avoid the topic altogether, the reality in today’s increasingly interconnected world is that culture is an integral part of our lives, and unless your stories are set on a deserted island, you are bound to encounter at least one character whose cultural background differs from your own. Learning to recognize and celebrate the complexity of culture in your writing will make your stories richer and more engaging.

Take a moment to think about your own culture—how complicated it is, how much it varies according to class, religion, and geography, not to mention age, gender, education, and so on. Now think about how much your culture has changed in the last 10,50,100 years, and how much more it’s likely to change in the coming decades. The most important thing to remember when writing about other cultures is that every culture is just as complicated as yours.

I’ve spent over half my life in various parts of Africa, Asia, and Europe, including Muslim, Buddhist, and Christian countries, and I’m still mystified by the magnitude and reach of culture—how it lingers under the surface, sneaking its way into just about every aspect of our lives, often making it difficult to understand one another.

If there is one piece of wisdom I’ve gained from all these years of cultural gaffes, misadventures, and other faux pas, it’s the importance of humility. This became even more evident while writing and researching my debut novel, The Golden Land, inspired by the six years I lived in Yangon, Myanmar. Only by accepting how little I understood about the Myanmar could I begin to ask the right questions and undertake the right kind of research to create full and authentic characters.

Whether you’re writing about a culture you think you know well or one you would like to know better, I hope these seven tips will help you to deepen your writing, making it richer, more authentic, and more engaging.

Before we begin writing about any culture, we need to be clear about our intentions. Why do you feel compelled to write about this culture or character? I’m a firm believer that we need more diversity both within and among our stories, but trying to prove to the world that we’re not prejudiced, or tick some kind of diversity box, is not the right reason to tackle this particular writing challenge. Your characters deserve more. So do your readers.

If, on the other hand, you feel passionate about this particular character or story, if you genuinely want to contribute to a healthier conversation about culture, and you’re willing to put in the work to craft whole, nuanced characters, then read on.

Raising two kids overseas, I was constantly reminding them, and myself, that we are guests in the countries we live in. When you’re a guest in someone’s home, when you eat their food, use their toilet, and sleep under their sheets, you automatically act a little differently than you would in your own home. You become hyper-aware, questioning yourself as well as your host. Should I keep my shoes on or take them off? You’re a little more careful, a little more respectful, a little less quick to judge. At least I hope you are (and I hope my kids are).

This mindset is helpful whether we’re visiting another country, another person’s home, or in the case of fiction writing, a character’s heart, mind, and soul. This doesn’t mean that you can’t point out negative aspects of another culture—we all have them, after all—but you do need to put them in context, understand how and why they might have come to be, and refrain from judging the entire culture based on one habit or belief, which may or may not be widely followed. If you can’t do that, if you can only see it one way, then you shouldn’t be writing about it.

We’re all human beings. We all eat and breathe and defecate and think and hope and fear and have sex and fall in love and worry about our children and feel joy and pain and anger and remorse. We might eat different foods, but we all eat. We may have different toileting habits, but we all gotta go. We might express our hopes and fears differently, but we all experience those emotions. We may not all enjoy basic human rights, but we sure as hell all deserve to. Use these universal qualities to make your characters more nuanced and easier for readers to relate to.

"What sets us apart is how, where, and under what circumstances we were raised." This impacts us in many ways from the foods we eat and ways we present ourselves to the world to the values and beliefs we hold dear. When writing characters from a different cultural background, we need to be especially aware of any cultural taboos or other beliefs that would make that character think twice about acting a certain way. I currently live in Bangladesh, where men and women dress quite conservatively. This doesn’t mean that a Bangladeshi character can’t dress differently, but it does mean that any departure from the traditional style of dressing needs to be acknowledged.

Sorry, but you gotta do your homework. There’s no way around this. That means going beyond Google and Wikipedia to find primary sources of inspiration. The good news is that this can be both fun and informative. Watch local films, television, plays, and documentaries. Read newspapers, magazines, and other local literature. Listen to oral histories and folklore. Attend concerts, art exhibits, and comedy shows featuring artists from the region. Eat local foods. Try locally inspired recipes. Explore neighborhoods where your characters might live. Above all talk to people. Ask them questions and pay attention not only to what they say but also to what they don’t say. Ideally, you’d be able to do all of this in the city/country/region where your story is set. With a few small adjustments, however, it’s equally possible to undertake such research closer to home by digging a little deeper on the Internet and seeking out people in your local area who know the culture well.

One of my characters in The Golden Land is a journalist who avoids government censorship by sneaking his stories out of the country in crates of lentils. How did I know to include this authentic and compelling detail? I sat down with a local journalist and asked him what it was like to be a journalist in 1988 Burma. It’s that simple.

One of the most common pieces of advice you’ll hear when writing about another culture is to avoid stereotypes. Like many popular pieces of writing advice, this is too oversimplified to be helpful. As Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says in her TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” which I highly recommend, “the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete.” Stereotypes are a kind of cliché, a generalization about a person or culture that dismisses the complexity of human life and risks making our writing boring and potentially offensive.

Rather than avoiding stereotypes, which is next to impossible, try deconstructing those stereotypes with the use of precise, nuanced details. Let’s say you’re trying to convey your character’s physical appearance or food preferences or mannerisms. Instead of using the first example that comes to mind, make a list of 10 or more examples and choose the one most meaningful and authentic to your story. Remember, too, that we all belong to multiple sub-cultures and groups. I might be a stereotypical Bostonian in some of my speech and mannerisms, but I’m also a mother, daughter, writer, cochlear implant recipient, and expat of a certain age, who has lived abroad for over half my life. Each of those connections sets me apart from the general stereotype of Bostonians in important ways. Use these overlapping qualities to your advantage to make your characters both more rounded and more relatable.

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As hard as it can be to write about discrimination and marginalization in its many forms, this is a reality that many people in the world experience on a daily basis. To skirt around this fact will make your character less believable, and potentially offend your readers.

In fiction, we need to consider not only how our characters view the world, but also how the world views them. If your character has ever been singled out by TSA at the airport, or harassed by police for obscure traffic violations, or slighted by the cashier at the supermarket, this is part of their backstory that you as author need to know and consider even if it isn’t an explicit part of the story. For more on this point, please read Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

Share your work-in-progress with people who have similar lived experiences to your characters. I promise you that the benefits will far outweigh any awkwardness or discomfort you may feel in the process. In addition to helping to ensure you haven’t gotten anything blatantly wrong, these readers can enrich your writing with concrete details that will bring both setting and characters to life.

In the case of The Golden Land, I am indebted to my local readers who helped enrich and authenticate my descriptions with specific advice (and in some cases photos) on any number of things, from age-appropriate hairstyles for Burmese women in the 1980s to the location of shortwave relay stations to the extent of tree damage along Pyay Road after Cyclone Nargis hit in 2008. No amount of traditional research could have provided me with such interesting and important details.

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