{"id":211,"date":"2021-06-26T21:50:06","date_gmt":"2021-06-27T03:50:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/?p=211"},"modified":"2025-10-04T08:29:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-04T14:29:14","slug":"5-non-serious-parts-of-life-that-need-more-representation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/2021\/06\/26\/5-non-serious-parts-of-life-that-need-more-representation\/","title":{"rendered":"5 (Non-Serious) Parts of Life That Need More Representation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As the title indicates, this is more of a fun post – I\u2019m not talking about demographic diversity in fiction this week.\u00a0 Rather, I\u2019m here to point out several little elements of real life that don\u2019t seem to make their way into our contemporary fiction very often, but would enhance the realism if included.\u00a0 With everything to keep track of in a story, it\u2019s easy to forget about little realistic details at times, so to help with that I\u2019ve written out a list of 5 things I\u2019ve noticed so far.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Go to 5 (Non-Serious) Parts of Life That Need More Representation<\/a> to keep reading!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Allergies.<\/strong>\u00a0 So many people have them in real life, but how often do you read characters in fiction or other media that have them?\u00a0 The TV series Stargate: SG-1<\/em> has Daniel Jackson, who\u2019s allergic to pretty much everything, and also Rodney McKay\u2019s citrus fruit allergy, but outside of that, I at least don\u2019t see many characters that have them.\u00a0 If our characters were totally realistic, more of them would be asking if restaurant food contains gluten, and sniffling whenever they walked outside in spring.<\/li>
  2. Multiple characters with the same name.<\/strong>\u00a0 We tend to avoid that in stories because it would be confusing, but in reality, it happens all the time.\u00a0 There were three Hannahs and two Suzies in my friend group at one time.\u00a0 I\u2019ve known two different Matts and four Calebs (five if you count Kaleb with a K).\u00a0 The fact that no two fictional characters in the same world ever seem to share a name is quite impressive actually.\u00a0 Of course, you have to keep characters straight in a reader\u2019s head, so you may want to give at least one of them a nickname they go by, especially if the two characters interact with each other and realize the need to differentiate themselves to those around them.<\/li>
  3. Glasses.<\/strong>\u00a0 This isn\u2019t as big of a deal, because there are more characters that wear glasses, but still.\u00a0 As a glasses-wearer, I feel like the ratio between people in real life who wear glasses or contacts, and the fictional characters who do, isn\u2019t quite one-to-one.<\/li>
  4. Going to the bathroom.<\/strong>\u00a0 Okay, so that\u2019s a little<\/em> different than forgetting that real people have allergies.\u00a0 Real people also use the restroom though, and it spoils the story for me in a quiet way when a character gets locked in a closet for a full day and the reader is seemingly given all the details of their thoughts and actions, but the character never once thinks about having to go and apparently doesn\u2019t change after they get out.\u00a0 It\u2019s a subtle reminder that this world and these characters are fake, however cohesive the rest of the story is.\u00a0\u00a0<\/li>
  5. General personal hygiene.<\/strong>\u00a0 Going off of point number four, how often do fictional characters brush their teeth or take a shower?\u00a0 You don\u2019t have to describe their nightly routine if it doesn\u2019t further the plot of course (and you can be too<\/em> detailed as well), but a brief mention once in a while that a character does those things would be nice, if it fits into the story.\u00a0 I find it amusing how Severus Snape gets a lot of flak for his greasy hair, and yet about the only time anyone<\/em> is said to bathe in the whole Harry Potter<\/em> series is when Harry figures out the golden egg.\u00a0 They don\u2019t have room to comment on Snape\u2019s hygiene…

    I do want to point out though, especially for the last two, that I’m not saying you should always<\/em> include them. Whether you do or not depends on how detailed your story is.\u00a0 If you\u2019re giving more of a broader overview of events, you probably don\u2019t want to unless it\u2019s relevant to the plot.\u00a0 It\u2019s more when the story is detailed about the character\u2019s other thoughts and actions as if we\u2019re following them in real time that mentioning they made a quick bathroom trip would make sense.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    If you write speculative fiction, then not all of these may apply.\u00a0 As the author, you could just decide that a certain fantasy race doesn\u2019t have allergies or bad eyesight.\u00a0 If you write contemporary though, they\u2019re something to be aware of.\u00a0 And hey, depending on how you want to represent your fantasy characters, you might still want to include these elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    As always, if you think of more, feel free to drop them in the comments!<\/p>\n<\/section>\n\n\n\n

    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    As the title indicates, this is more of a fun post – I\u2019m not talking about demographic diversity in fiction this week.\u00a0 Rather, I\u2019m here to point out several little elements of real life that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":212,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[30,35],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","tag-idea-lists","tag-realism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.writingforlife.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}