forum Writing discrimination?

Started February 15, 2020 by @Katastrophic group

tune

Hey all! So I'm struggling with parts of my story and need help. It's a fantasy world with magic, and very originally, having dark-aligned magic makes someone "evil." As this is more a background aspect for now in the beginning, I'm struggling to write it in without completely info-dumping, "show, don't tell" and all that. I live in a pretty modern area and am fairly privileged when it comes to this sort of thing, so I don'y know how to subtly hint at it all. Two of my characters outright use dark magic; one is a bully like the assumption, and the other is really sweet and the opposite. Part of my difficulty is that it takes place in a school environment (good teachers and rules). While I'm planning a scene where such discrimination is very openly stated in a city area, it doesn't take place until much later and I need the idea of dark magic being seen as bad planted in my reader's heads early on. It's also worth mentioning my MC is kind of sheltered, so she wouldn't necessarily know or understand any of this.

So, can any of you give me some advice to subtly work this into my story without seeming over-the-top? Any little things that people do or have done that are related to this sort of thing?

Hm. I must say that I personally haven't had much experience with this either, but I'd say to subtly hint it in people's conversations around her. Things like: "Oh, well _______ uses dark magic. You know what that makes them." "They can use dark magic, of course they're a criminal." "I don't want you associating with people like that. Dark magicians, you know." Just…treat it like an assumption, that anyone who has dark magic is inherently evil/bad/stupid/whatever. Think about how many minority groups can be negatively portrayed by the media, such as POC and the LGBTQ community (at least in America, idk about other countries) and draw inspiration from that. That's all I know how to help. Good luck!

thank you, that helps!

Np! I'm not an expert by any means, though, so please take my advice with more than a grain of salt