Discussion Character of Other Races?

I think one of my problems with my fanfiction right now is that I desperately want to introduce characters of other races but there's no in-universe way to name them. I think this can partially be blamed on the fact that George Lucas merely reinvents Asians and Latinos as racial caricatures (looking at you Gunroy and Nien Numb) in his movies. That being said the only really type of race I can name are black people (Disclaimer: I am a black person so if I slink into any casual definitions of race regarding my own culture it's just me being you know...black? I don't know I just feel like that needed to be said).

Latinos or Mexicans/Asians/Indians are all named after the region they came from and it'd just be super awkward for me to casually say people were yellow, brown or anything like that.

I've read tons of the EU but I've never really come across any author who is able to address this issue. Are there any fanfic writers here who have figured out a way to reference other races other than black and white people in-universe? Or should I just break the fourth wall?

I'm this close to just claiming there's one massive planet named Asia or India and going from there but that just seems too easy.

 

I think describing the color would be best. Dark brown, pale, lightly tanned, dark pigmented, reddish skinned. I guess you could use earth words like olive skinned or rosy complexion without readers calling foul. You can say the skin had a yellowish brown tint to it. I can't remember how Lando was described but I bet it was dark skinned and not black.

 

Ive used "caucasian" myself to describe fair-skinned humans. The word is strange and foreign enough to pass for some planet in Star Wars, I suppose.

"Hi, I'm from Caucasi, where you from?"

But I agree with Jedi_Lover, simply describing the color should be enough.

 

That's a good point. Perhaps I simply lack the vocabulary to define people's looks in the terms that I want to. I guess I need to take a trip to a thesaurus than.

 

Another option would be to relate the skin color and texture to perhaps an object. An imposing ruffian whose scarred face had more pits than my worn-out holster, and a color to match.

 

His skin was red like an angry hemorrhoid. Yeah that works.

 

Great topic for discussion!

I must say I haven't seen it in much in SW fanfic, sadly, but I have seen as Jedi_Lover suggested in many other fandoms. I think that description is almost always a better thing that just naming the race or species of someone. For Han, Leia or Luke, we don't necessarily need a vivid description, but for other characters, especially OC's it really helps the reader to understand/visualize your characters and makes them feel more real.

 

From the famous planet Hemorrhoi.

Agreed with above. In almost all cases, a description is better than just the word itself. This is especially true of non-humanoid species--I want to visualize, not guess.

 

Yellowish brown tint can also be honey toned. Similarly, dark skinned/black can be described as molasses.

 

Yeah, I'd go with descriptions. Do you ever read fantasy? Racial characteristics are usually described there, since places like Middle-Earth don't have Africa or Asia or whatever, obviously. It's not been much of an issue in SW for me, since I write mostly canon characters which are almost all white (or, like Lando or Mace, well-known enough that I don't need to describe them anyway), but I write fantasy too and always end up going with descriptions there. Fair skin, tanned, skin the colour of ebony, freckled skin, ruddy-cheeked, etc. There are tons of ways to describe features.

There were some threads in the NaNo forums about writing characters of various races, you might find some useful tips and links there?

http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/67166
http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/fantasy/threads/82857
http://www.nanowrimo.org/en/forums/writing-101/threads/63390

Aside from that there are tons of articles about it out there, so just google "writing different races in fantasy" or something and I'm sure you'll get some advice.

 

As others have said, the best way to address ethnically oriented visual traits is through strait up description. This can get a bit lengthy at times if one desires to be explicit, since no one feature, including skin tone, pins down 'race' on its own. If brevity is desired you can, with care, proxy race across planetary lines, since there are legitimate reasons for certain planetary populations (outside of the largest, more cosmopolitan systems) to be divided in this way due to bottleneck and genetic drift effects. This is also the approach needed if you wish to meld cultural traits that are associated with a particular ethnic heritage to those physical features, as oppossed to all human characters retaining the default, westernized Star Wars spacefaring culture.

 

Ditto to all of the above. As a writer, part of the journey is figuring out how best to describe people, places, and things in a way that is most appropriate to the situation. Questions to ask yourself might be: how do I want readers to perceive this person in question? Is my purpose in describing a person this way meant to set a mood for a scene? Is it meant to show the reader a character's perception of the person being described? Playing around with this general idea will help you decide the best way to go on this one.