I don't know how to phrase this, but all of your "diverse" characters should be based on real people you know in your real life. If the character is not your own identity, you need to come from a place of first hand knowledge (which means no celebrities). If you have never personally known a Black person, or never known one that you've seen in a positive light, don't write about us. If the only way you can write a Black character is if you write them white and then change the model to Idris Elba, don't write about us.

As #PitchWars is ending, I just wanted to do a master-list of all the mentorship programs that are out there. If you know of another one, please feel free to tell me and I'll add it onto the thread. Thank you to @AngelDiZhang for the idea! I'll steal @molly_katheryn and @gigigriffis's lists as they're already there (as part of WTMP's Open Inbox). I also saw @ByGeorgeJreije's list! He's addicted to mentoring so he knows what he's talking about.

https://twitter.com/ByGeorgeJreije/status/1493733586012295174

Let's talk about pitchwars babe.

It's about time. (1/X) I love my PitchWars sibs! They're a great community. I love my mentor (and if Pintip is still the mentee liaison, she was great too!). I love what I learned about my craft going forward after doing PitchWars. It's an OVERALL positive experience. The good is better than the bad.

So. Because it seems the agent world has forgotten about the "Educate Yourself" piece of representing BIPOC, I am back again, to explain the role of coded language in publishing.

Like I said, sometimes I have no problems educating. I am an educator. For the full scope of my earlier work on what AGENTS still need to do (as opposed to what publishers still need to do, which I also have a thread on lol), I outline the other major parts in this thread:

https://twitter.com/themoosef/status/1275476573228015616