Just Like Life/Kathe Koja on Dark Park and diversity in fiction

Diversity in fiction is such a huge terrain: today let’s stay in the park, Dark Park, there with the people who people it. 

Every character I write, in this book or in any of my books, arrives in my mind’s eye fully formed, with a presence, a physicality and a backstory—just like in real life; just like when we meet someone new. And then it’s my task as a writer to first understand, then replicate in words that character, just as they are, in a way that serves and advances the whole story being told. 

Not that I think of it that way when I’m doing it, just as I never think that my story has a specific character checklist it has to meet. If I keep working to create that story as if its story were real, real life, the characters’ diversity will surely be there. 

Because in real life it already is. Because that is real life.

For me as a writer, it’s a matter of attention, of seeing characters as who they are, then depicting them with as much skill and care as I can. And it’s understanding that I don’t unilaterally understand every mode of being a person might have, every life circumstance, so I work to the best of my abilities to educate myself to help make that depiction as respectful and authentic as it can be, within that character’s boundaries. And if more learning is needed, I welcome corrections.Because I want my book, this book, Dark Park to feel real when a reader experiences the story, to feel like the characters are people that reader knows, or might want to, or can recognize as fellow humans. Because that’s what makes fiction real.