9 Suggestions For Remodeling The ReaderX Fic

     A while back I posted an essay in defense of reader insert fanfiction in which I stated at least twice that many, if not most, reader inserts are not well-written (but that everyone needed to calm their tits anyway).
   
     Other than reader insert writers practicing more, reading up on writing techniques, and improving their skills bit by bit (or more experienced writers jumping into the tidepool), there's not much that can solve the most prevalent issue with self inserts, which is, as I stated, lackluster technical skills in writing and story-telling.  With practice and with time, those things will come, but for now I do have a few suggestions that could improve the quality of ReaderX fics by restructuring some of the conventions of the genre.

     So now, for your consideration, I suggest to you:

1.  Do away with (y/n), (f/c), etc.

     Y/N, Your Name, F/C, Favorite Color, E/C, Eye Color, H/C, Hair color, F/F, Favorite Food, the list goes on; this vague parenthetical command is meant to draw the reader deeper into the narrative by allowing them to insert their own name, appearance, and various favorite things.

     The goal is noble, but the result is more distancing; having to read the clinical projection cues time after time only serves to remind us that we're reading a story, not experiencing it first-hand.  That's why Pokemon has you input your name before the game and then inserts it into the coding, rather than leaving a blank space or a (y/n) in the game text.

     In place of the parentheticals, a short description works better.  Because these stories are written in the second person, we're already experiencing the story as ourselves; it's okay to say, "You give them your name," or something like that.

     Doesn't, "You told them your name and they repeated it joyfully, thrusting their glasses in the air" flow better than, "'My name is (y/n).'  '(y/n)!' they shouted joyfully, thrusting their glasses in the air"?

     If something is going on that your character's name is said so often that it's necessary for it to be included in quotations rather than just in narration, an easy out is to have one of the other characters give "you" a nickname--either something cutesy/related to the fanwork, or something that has to do with the plot of your AU.  I'd be hard-pressed to find a place where a (y/n) is ever strictly necessary.

     There are a lot of places where the details are entirely superfluous anyway--because the author is already projecting their own tastes when they do things like design costumes, it seems silly to bring the audience out of the spell for the sake of a color.  Still, "She handed you a dress in your favorite color, much to your delight" is more seamless than "She handed you a (f/c) dress, much to your delight," and as I've discussed before, making sure your audience stays trapped in the reality of your story is The Most Important Thing, ESPECIALLY for a reader insert story.

2.  Fewer protagonists in default white

     As a white girl, I see myself reflected much more prevalently than any other race in pretty much every form of media.  The tides are turning of course, and many of us creative types are doing our damnedest to see more representation find its way into the public eye, but it's been hard work trying to break the back of this institution.

     But ReaderX fics are all about making sure that the audience is as absorbed as possible in the reality before them, right?  That's why we have the (y/n) (f/c) convention in the first place.  So it's extremely jarring to me when the author, who will be hard-pressed to describe concretely something as relatively inconsequential as an eye color or favorite type of burger, describes the POV character's skin color--invariably something along the lines of, "your peaches-and-cream complexion" or "the contrast between your white hand and his gray one."

     The white default is a setting that a lot of people haven't yet unlearned; we're taught from a young age that white skin is "normal," and the rest of the spectrum is "other," so when we go to read fiction a lot of people just assume that their characters are, of course, white!  And writers will do the same thing, which leads to entire series of books where the only characters who get a description of skin color are the ones that aren't white, because they are Not The Default.

     This is harmful for a lot of reasons, not least of all because it alienates people who aren't white and reinforces the idea that they are Not Normal.  In a reader insert story, it also reads as a statement from the author to any non-white person reading it that it wasn't meant for them to enjoy.  I know most people don't mean for it to come across that way, you just did what so many people do and went along with what you think of as the default skin tone, the same way we think of 5'4 as a default height for a woman or pizza as a default meal for Americans, but it can still hurt.

     If you had blue eyes and every ReaderX story you read had brown-eyed protagonists, you might feel excluded, right?  Like you were being ignored or worse, singled out--like you didn't belong in that fic, that "space."

     The best thing to do with a ReaderX fic in regards to skin color is just--don't mention it.  Unless race is super important (or you're some kind of alien creature with a canon skin color), leave it completely out of the equation.  Don't default to white; default to blank slate, the same way you did with the eye and hair colors.

3.  Give the character a stronger background/personality

     A lot of characters are these mostly blank slates with a tiny bit of personality and a smidgen of backstory.  Blank slate is great and all, especially with reader inserts, but part of the fun of imaging that you're in a different world is imagining yourself as having lived a different life.  In a lot of stories this is already a prerequisite--most of us don't live in the city that the story takes place in (if any of us do), and sometimes we're placed on entirely different planets, or in universes in which magic is real, etc.

     Don't be afraid to let the character have a bit of history.  Any detail you include in a story is going to make it so someone isn't going to be able to project themselves fully into that character without some cognitive dissonance, so you might as well make them interesting and less cardboard while you're at it.

     Giving a character a strong personality is also a risky business in this situation; you don't want it so strong that it's overpowering, because then people are going to be constantly saying, "I would never do that!"  Then again, the reason you read a ReaderX is because you'd never do what you're reading about doing.

     So go ahead and give us a strong, interesting personality.  Just make sure the character the audience is playing isn't too obnoxious; this is one of those times that a protagonist pretty much has to be likeable.  Otherwise the audience will feel like they're being insulted and will piss off.

4.  Less blushing please

     One thing that really gets my goat is how much blushing goes on in these stories; you'd think everyone had rosacea!  One blush for every three chapters should be the max, I'd say.  Some people may blush a lot in real life, but reading about it gets old. Especially when it's in almost every ReaderX.  

     Blushing is boring.  Blushing is the status quo.  It's time we break free of that.  And this is more than just about the blushing.  This is about a specific type of personality that we've seen a thousand million times, and maybe it's just person taste, but as a reader insert reader I am sick to death of blushing and stumbling over myself every other sentence.  I've been that person IRL; I don't need to read about being that way.

     Let your characters be confident, charmed and charming in return; let them be flustered when flustered is appropriate, sure, but don't make the protagonist go all stupid every time they accidentally touch the main love interest.  Most of us in real life hold our lives together pretty well, no matter how punchdrunk we are around our special someone, and don't let ourselves fall to pieces just because they know our name.

     We're not the stereotype that Disney created, and I think it's time that reader inserts explored a fuller range of emotion.

5.  More realistic flaws

      ReaderXes suffer from a lot of the same problems as OC fanfiction, because every reader insert is an OC on top of being a more-or-less blank slate.  One of those problems is the Mary Sue issue; no flaws.  Or, if there are flaws, only those which don't impact the plot.
 
     Problems are never their fault, they may stumble around cutely, but they're not going to do something like embarrass their date because they have no table manners, or become possessive or something of the like.  Try to give your characters flaws that will influence and even drive the plot; we're not perfect.  The protagonist doesn't have to be perfect, either.

     Alternatively, we see characters that are just walking Flaw-Bombs waiting to go off.  They're obnoxious, they make unnecessary drama, and no one should like them, yet for some reason everyone does.  Make sure your other characters are responding accordingly to the stimuli provided them, no matter how pretty your protagonist is.

6.  Fewer miscommunication plots

     Rule of thumb; if your plot can be resolved in under two minutes if your characters just sat and talked, it's not enough of a plot to warrant a serious story.  Miscommunication is great for comedy, but in serious plots it gets frustrating.

     The whole "This isn't what it looks like!" storyline, for example:  if a character can say, "Tom, he's my cousin," and the whole thing is resolved?  Not worth more than five hundred words as conflicts go.  If a character says "Tom, he's my cousin," but she's lying, on the other hand, or it's not the whole story, then that warrants a fuller investigation.

     Also, if your character is so jealous they can't even wait around for someone to explain themselves after being caught in a compromising position, they clearly don't trust their partner, which is a red flag as far as the health of the relationship goes.  In fact, if they're walking out on them without an explanation, they clearly don't respect their partner, and to me that's a "break the camel's back" kind of straw.

     Be careful with your melodrama.

7.  More male POV characters

     Or better yet; more characters with no specified gender.

     There may not be as many men/boys who read reader inserts as there are girls, but that may also just be a confirmation bias; how do you know they wouldn't like it if they aren't given a chance?  Plus, there are many girls who wouldn't mind adopting a male persona over the course of your story, and a lot of people who don't fit into the gender binary who would like to see themselves reflected in the story.

     More stories written with a broader audience focus would be beneficial; anyone can write a story from a male perspective now and again, and you can easily write a story in the second person without using gendered pronouns for the POV character.

     Give it a shot; let's make the protagonists a little more diversely applicable.

8.  More female love interests

     Male love interests are the default in ReaderX land, but there are a lot of people interested in the female characters of a given work, whether boys who like girls, girls who like girls, nonbinary folks who like girls, etc.

    Even outside the context of romance there's a dearth of female characters.  I'd like to see more involvement of the female characters in these types of works, not just as love interests but as friends, colleagues, even siblings.  Don't turn them into strawman bitches "getting in the way" of your self ship or ignore them altogether; give them a chance to get in the mix, too.

     I guess the title of number eight should really be More strong female characters, not just as love interests.

     And as a side note, friends in general are always good!  Too many ReaderX protagonists are lone wolves who have no one to talk to except the person they love; people need friends outside of a romantic relationship.  Whether it's a character or characters in the cast or an OC, let the insert have some companionship.

9.  More choose-your-own-adventure type stories

     These needn't be the complex type you see on the shelves of your local library, but I'm a sucker for a  ReaderX that sets me up with a storyline, then veers off into different paths that I can choose from.  Do I want to pursue this character, or this character?  (I'll probably choose one, then go back and read the other bc I'm a fiction ho, shhh ;) )

      This semblance of interaction makes the audience feel like a part of the story, and wraps them up further in the protagonist's skin; it gives us agency, and we all love to feel like our choices matter.  After all, if our choices matter it serves to reason that we matter, right?

   

     So there you have it folks; my take on how to improve the ReaderX genre as it stands.  Do you have any opinions on the ReaderX genre?  Do you have any suggestions I might be missing?  Or am I the only self-indulgent asshole with a writing blog?  Leave a comment below, so that I might one day embark a journey to become self-aware.  ;)

Writing Marginalized Characters: A Ramble

     I grew up afraid to write minority characters.  For me this came from two primary places; the first was the idea pervasive to our culture that people who aren't white, cis, heterosexual, middle-class/wealthy, able-bodied, neurotypical males are "other" to such an extent that they're often seen as not fully human, or maybe human but in a different way.  Society insists that those who don't fit inside the rigid little sector it's blocked off as "normal" aren't really people in the same sense that those who do fit into the sector are.

     Obviously, I'm not all of the above; however, society's belittling of marginalized groups is so pervasive that it's not uncommon for marginalized people to marginalize themselves (see: internalized sexism, racism, ableism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, intra ableism, intra racism, biracialism, etc.).

     Growing up a tomboy in a primarily masculine household, I came to see women as lesser, and later fell prey to the many ailments inherited by young girls--the conflicting standards, the fear of being seen as inferior, the apologies, the feeling of being a burden, etc, etc, etc.  Unlearning these things was (is) a long process I won't talk about now, but I guess my point is that when I started writing novels at the ripe old age of nine, the only reason I felt comfortable writing girl characters was because I was a girl, and even still I had a lot of trouble at first with writing female characters that weren't either based off of real people or stereotypes.

     The other thing that caused this fear was my limited experiential resources.

     I grew up in two towns, one of them full of rich white people and the other full of not-rich white people.  In the town I usually say I'm "from," I had exactly one black classmate, and the only black classmate I had in the town I "grew up in" moved away after first grade.

     I never thought of people who were different than me as really different.  They were people just the same as I was, and I recognized them as such, as I'm sure many people do when they meet "othered" people face to face, especially in their youth.  Even with my internalized sexism, I still judged every girl on her own merits once I met her--I generalized groups, not individuals.

     But when writing, and trying to be socially conscious in our writing, we all have groups that we feel ishy writing about, not necessarily because we don't want to write them, but because we're scared to get it wrong.

     As a kid I was afraid to write people of color--a pretty common fear among white kids, because after they teach you about slavery and genocide and Jim Crow laws in first grade the last thing you want to do is exacerbate that White Guilt everybody's always talking about, and you certainly don't want anyone to think you're racist or, even worse, to find out that you are, in fact, a racist.

     The only way to keep yourself safe and cozy is not to bother, and say things like "I'll leave it to them to write themselves into a story."  As a little kid that feels very valid, especially when you grow up in an environment where racism isn't something you notice in your day-to-day life, and is instead subliminally flashed into your brain as you watch your all-white-with-maybe-a-token-PoC cartoons.

     Sadly, leaving it to a marginalized group doesn't always work--how often do you see black authors being lauded?  For a book that isn't exclusively about white people?  When was the last time a female author got big in something that wasn't YA or Romance?  Do you even know of any books written by someone with a disability?  I guarantee you it's not from lack of talent or trying--unfortunately, the system is still heavily weighted in such a way that it's exponentially more difficult for a marginalized individual to make it big--or make it at all--than for a white abled cishetero male of the same or lesser talents, and the exponent tends to multiply if the author-of-marginalized-origins writes about characters who are also not white cishetero males.

     Sometimes, when you're at a party and things are loud and crowded, the only way to get people to listen to the guest of honor is for the host to jump out with a microphone and shut 'em up.

     I didn't know all that when I was little.  I just knew I wanted to write about superheroes and dragons and magic and weird science.

     The funny thing is though, unlike a lot of people I've spoken to over the years, I wrote about people with higher melanin counts before I became afraid.  In part it was actually because I wrote about them that I became afraid.

     I should probably explain:  My uncle is very, very racist.  I hate him.  I don't just hate him because he's racist, I have a lot of reasons to hate him, but this has certainly always been a point of contention between us.  I didn't always hate him of course, because when I was younger I was small and naive and thought that shared blood meant shared love.  Probably should've realized sooner how bullshit that was.

     I was a creative little kid, and after finishing my second novel at age eleven, I wanted to tell everyone about it.  As I was going through the first edit, I stumbled upon something that didn't make sense and asked his opinion--in order to do this I had to explain the concept to him--four types of shape-shifters live on an island and fight amongst themselves, sort of Animorphs meets Warriors meets gorn-tastic political intrigue/adventure-fantasy.

     Instead of helping, my uncle, being as uncouth as he is, decided to ask me which group were the "n" words--I was repulsed by the language, but was all at once struck by the realization that not only could the division between the shifter-types be construed allegorically as a division between the races, but that I had written people of color into my story--I hadn't thought about it as I wrote, I just sort of correlated fur color to human skin color, so shapeshifters with darker fur ended up with darker skin, and shapeshifters with lighter fur had lighter skin; it wasn't like any group was composed all of one human race or another, they were completely mixed-color societies, but I was still afraid.

     I didn't go back and white-wash my draft, what was done was done, but I wouldn't write people of color into my drafts for a long time afterward because I was afraid of doing it wrong.  I don't exactly know now what I thought the "right" way was, but that was the only way I wanted it done; I was a conscientious child and didn't want to offend anyone, and since I was only just getting the hang of the internet I had no idea that there were places where writers gathered in bulk to discuss such things.

     My resolve to write only about white cishetero abled rich men and women--or, even better, aliens and robots and monsters, oh my!--lasted until I discovered Tumblr as a thirteen-year-old.

     I know, I know, Tumblr has a mixed bag of a reputation among the liberal crowd, but for a white girl in a town of 1,000 people, 98% of whom are white, and most of whom are also hetero and cissexual, middle-ish class, able-bodied, and neurotypical, Tumblr was the best place for me to break into a world that was, up to then, largely unavailable to me.  Today it's known as a toxic wasteland, and some parts are, but it was an important part of my development as both a writer and a liberal (in case you couldn't already tell which way I lean).

     Within a year I was writing stories with "othered" individuals again--people of color, people with disabilities, people of a multitude of genders, sexualities, religions, you name it.  Through Tumblr, and the many websites it introduced me to, I'd found out there were tons of resources on how to write this group and that group and the other group, and I learned that it was okay to trust my own real-life experiences and those of my family and friends; every experience was valid.  And though there are going to be different characterizations and complications with each new type of character you create, it was freeing to find out that everything truly boiled down to something I'd known all along--people are people.  Nothing more, nothing less.

     That's what it all comes down to.  People are people--we all have wants, needs, feelings, we all have things we care about, we are all our own.  What makes me different from someone of a different race has less to do with race itself than with upbringing and societal pressure and our personal likes and dislikes.

     Fear can be good--I think, in my case, fear was good, because it drove (and still drives) me to seek out the information I need to avoid creating a caricature or a stereotype in place of a human being; fear led me to ask questions and make sure that I did (and do) everything in my power to not just keep from offending people, but to keep myself from harming myself and others with poor portrayals of certain out-groups, and to make sure that I use my privilege as a white person not for accolades and the like but to assist and teach, to encourage others to hear the voices of those whose voices aren't being heard, and to normalize what should already be, but is not yet seen as, normal.

     Fear can also stop us in our tracks--and if you write marginalized characters, you're going to end up being criticized for it, even if you are yourself part of the group you're writing about!  But you can't please everyone; every time I write a sensitive male character, someone tells me he's not realistic even though I know for a fact that everything the character does is nothing I haven't seen my brothers and my male friends do, and every time I write a female character I risk being called out on her promiscuity or her aloofness or her hatred of babies because no matter how hard you work to go against a stereotype or humanize someone, even yourself, someone is always going to get pissy about it; that's how life works.

     So yes, it's important for people without privilege to speak up and have their stories heard, and their voices are going to ring the most true and should hold more weight.

     A story written by someone with absolutely every privilege there is probably won't be authentic, of course, but it's important for people with privilege to speak up as well--not to drown out the voices of your downtrodden kin (as some are, unfortunately, wont to do), but to help raise awareness and compassion and facilitate love and understanding and conversation in ways that some, through the horrors of a discriminatory society, are unable to do.

   So write.  Whoever you are, whatever you want to write, write it; try to include marginalized characters when you can, because the sad truth is that there's not a lot out there, and even less of it is well-written.  Be careful, don't be too afraid--just don't be a dick, either.

     And when you think you're finished with that manuscript; stop, wait a minute, fill that cup put some liquor in it--now pour it out, take a deep breath, and go look for some critique partners and beta readers that know what's what in whatever subject you've chosen, because no matter how well you think you know something, if you're writing from a place of privilege you're bound to make mistakes

     The fewer mistakes make it out into the real world, the better it'll be for everybody.

     And even if you're writing from a point of diminished privilege yourself, it never hurts to have extra eyes on the ground.  No two experiences are ever exactly alike, and you may not be as enlightened as you think--I like to think of myself as having cleansed myself of my internalized sexism, but on occasion I still catch myself mentally criticizing a woman for doing something I wouldn't think twice about a man doing, or using the phrase "like a little girl" in a derogatory fashion.

     When we write only from our own experiences, we're also at risk of making every character's experience practically the same, which serves to homogenize the group and sometimes creates a new stereotype.  I don't think we need any more stereotypes than we already have.
   

TL;DR:  Don't be afraid to write marginalized characters, no matter how privileged you are; just remember to treat everyone as human beings, do your research, ask questions, and seek out the opinions of people with first hand experience before you go tell the world about how great you are (for writing something that may actually be offensive).

Maggie C's 7 Commandments For Writing Diversity

     White cisheteronormative wealthy able-bodied, neurotypical males; we all know how to write 'em and they're not hard.  They're literally the most vanilla character to write and read about, and yet we keep cranking 'em out like they're Mountain Dew and we're Bros and/or emotional teenagers dealing with their problems by self-medicating with sugary beverages in an effort to not completely destroy themselves while they self-destruct.
     And I get it.  Writing diverse characters is a scary prospect.  It's not as difficult as we make it seem when we talk about it--it's work, yes, but it's not like you're driving screw drivers into your eyeballs in an effort to excise your spleen.  You're writing about a person.  And writing about people is kind of your job, friend.
     I don't pretend to have all the answers.  I'm an eighteen-year-old with no current profession pursuing an education and career in the arts.  What I have to offer are my own life experiences, the research I've done, and fifteen or so years of experience writing fiction.  I'm not perfect, and I can only do so much.
     But diversity in fiction is important to me.  It's supposed to be the goal of an artist to reflect real life, to, as Shakespeare hath proclaimed, "hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
     Modern art doesn't even reflect half of the human experience.  It's white-washed and full of narratives about the wealthy and/or middle class, usually about men trying to succeed and/or get their dicks wet.  When women are included, it's usually as props, or as thin paper creatures that don't really know what they want until a man comes and tells her; when LGBTQ characters are involved, it's usually G, sometimes L, and the entire narrative typically revolves around how difficult it is to be queer, or else they become a stereotypical gag; when a person of color is included, they usually have few speaking lines, or are also stereotypes; when a person with disabilities is included, it's either a cure narrative or an acceptance narrative or a pity-me narrative, and they're usually a stereotype.  By and large, diverse fiction these days is largely made up of stereotypes people pass off as characters to try and reach some sort of quota, and it's not good enough.
     I've been writing fiction featuring diverse protagonists since I was eleven.  I've learned a lot, I've unlearned a lot, I've done a lot of research, I've done a lot of research that negated that research, I've done a lot of researched that negated the negation of that research--and I've come to develop a personal code to write by, compiled here for the first time ever.
     Maggie's Laws of Fiction Diversification:

6.  Thou Shalt Never Assume That You Know Everything: Do Your Research

     Never assume that you're qualified to write a story about someone or something you don't fully understand.  Even if you think you understand it, do some research; trust me, you'll benefit.  Find some surveys, get books out at the library, read articles online, binge relevant tv shows on Netflix, spend hours scanning relevant pages on Wikipedia and eye-guzzling related tropes on tvtropes; the more you can take in, the better equipped you'll be, and the closer to the source these things are, the better.
     Read articles straight people write about the gay experience, sure, that'll help you write relationships between gay and straight people, but always give more credence to first-person reports, because in the end, no one knows something as well as the one who's lived it.  Abled people can totally understand and sympathize with disabled experiences--they just usually don't, and they'll never be as intimately familiar with the teeter-totter of acceptance and resentment, or societal stigma, or the physical/emotional sensations as someone who's lived it.  Any source is valuable, if only because it gives you some idea of how different people see the issue in question, but some are more credible than others.
     And no, that stuff you learned in school about the Civil Rights movement is not enough; I could go on forever about subpar nature of the public school system, but suffice it to say you have an internet, so use it.

5.  Thou Shall Ask Questions; Get Involved

     Routinely ask yourself questions as you write; is this respectful?  Is this accurate?  Does my research support this?  What do other people think?  Is this portrayal stereotypical?  Is this stereotype justifiable, or would people take offense?  Don't be afraid to reach out to people who know what they're talking about and ask questions or contribute to discussion; follow @WeNeedDiverseBooks on Twitter, or keep an eye out for the #DisChat tag, follow authors that frequently discuss life as a marginalized person, and don't be afraid to DM someone from an advice blog or an advocate who welcomes questions (such as myself).

4.  Thou Shall Get Betas

     Okay, so you did a great job, you used your research, you asked questions, that's wonderful; now get Betas that belong to the groups you've casted your characters into.  You protagonist is a black paraplegic?  You should have both black and disabled CPs/Betas, paraplegic if at all possible.  You may not be able to find a beta or CP for every demographic you cover, but the closer you can get, the better--and absolutely do not assume that you don't need this step.  You can do all the research, avoid stereotypes like the plague, and still make a mistake--it could be something simple and stupid, a mistranslation of a language you don't really speak, you used the name of the wrong tribe, you used a term or grammatical structure that only seems offensive to the people to whom it would actually refer.
     There are a lot of things you can get wrong and never realize, and a lot of other people might not realize either--which is why it's important to fix them before your MS goes anywhere near print.  Just because most people won't notice doesn't mean it's okay not to fix it.
     Make sure the right people are betaing your work.

3.  You Will Get It Wrong

     It's inevitable.  No matter how much you rake over that MS with a fine-toothed comb, you're gonna fuck it up somewhere along the line.  It's inevitable.  That's why we have CPs and Betas and Editors and Agents and more Editors and Publishers and more Editors; humans err.  That's kind of our thing, and it's to be expected.
     You're gonna fuck up.  Just like I fucked up the 10 Commandments theme right here right now.  That's life.  Sometimes you screw the pooch.
     Don't let it get to you.  Don't let it scare you.  Every mistake is something to learn from, a lesson you needed but just got a little late, and it's okay.  As long as you don't close yourself off and insist that you're infallible, things will be okay; you'll figure out where you went wrong, apologize to whoever you offended, and get it right the next time.
     Also:  If you've done the research and you did your best, anyone who screams at you for making a mistake isn't worth your time.  Listen to the people who critique your work, but don't bother trying to please everybody because

2.  Someone Will Always Be Offended

     There was that "Trans-Ginger" episode of South Park a while back that stirred up quite a controversy; I knew a lot of trans people who were really pissed off about it, but I also knew some who were really pleased with the way it turned out.  Likewise, I'm sure there were people who were offended by the South Park episode featuring Tourette's, but I personally have found it to be the most accurate depiction on television I've ever seen.
     I've also seen a number of cases where people were offended by someone's story only for it to come out that the experiences of the marginalized character were based off of the experiences of the like-marginalized author.  Actually, that one's not uncommon--I can't tell you how many times I've seen long, drawn-out arguments on Twitter break out because so many people don't want to hear autistic stories written by autistic authors.
     Point is: there's always going to be someone who likes what you write, no matter how terrible, and no matter how factually and emotionally accurate, there will always be someone who takes offense.  You can't let it get to you.  Consider the reactions of your audience, take them into consideration, ask yourself if you could have done better, but if you honestly wouldn't change a thing?  Don't sweat it.
     I, for one, fully expect people to be offended by the way I write characters based off myself.  I certainly won't like it, but I expect it.  That's how the internet often works these days.

1.  Everyone is human

     As I see it, this is the most important thing to remember when writing diversity--no matter who they are, no matter what they look like, no matter where they come from or what their motivations or limitations are, this character you've chosen to create is a human being.  They have thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams; they are three dimensional, with hobbies and passions and friends and complex relationships with those friends or families and hopes and dreams; they're the best at something, they're the worst at something, they're decent at some stuff, they're bad at other stuff, they have things they do for profit and things they do for others and things they do just because it makes them happy, they have virtues and vices, talking points and flaws.
     Your characters are not just what makes them diverse, and forming their entire arc around that one (or those multiple) thing(s) is a failure on your part as a writer to impart life into your character.
     Before anything and everything else, I make sure that my characters are three dimensional; the rest will follow.  People are people are people are people, and that's what it all comes down to.  You might get things wrong--your research might be from the wrong sources, you might have conflated two groups on accident, you might have played into stereotypes without realizing it, and if that's so, you fix it--if you can--and apologize and learn from that mistake; you make better decisions next time.  But at least you'll know that you created something real.  Maybe not perfect, maybe not fully accurate, maybe not what everyone wanted!  But you didn't steal away anyone's humanity in the process.

0.  Do No Harm

     I don't do stereotypes; I don't half-ass my research; I don't pin "types" into certain categories, and I try my damnedest to make sure that I'm not accidentally demonizing diversity (and since I have a soft spot for writing objectively terrible, immoral, and amoral protagonists, I have my work cut out for me) or giving in to harmful tropes and plots.
     As writers, we have an obligation to be honest and hard-working, well-researched and goodwilled, because artists determine the fate of mankind.  That may seem a little overdramatic, and maybe it is, but who would you say has been most influential to you over the course of your life?  After your parents (for good or for ill) and possibly your siblings or extended kin, it's probably an artist--a writer, a movie-star, a photographer, a director, a comedian.  Artists have immense power in this world--we are the voices children are listening to, we are the modern philosophers.  Science teaches kids the how and the what; we deal with the whys.
     Doctors and psychologists take an oath to Do No Harm, and it's my firm belief that it's our job to do the same.  We can't promise we won't accidentally do harm, but we should strive, at all times, to make sure we aren't making life hard for ourselves, our kith, our kin.
     Art is exceedingly influential, and we should never use that influence for evil.