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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41079
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/41079
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> Is it alienating to readers who are white and straight to be put into the shoes of someone who is drastically dissimilar to them?

Is it alienating for a modern American to read a story about medieval France? Or about short hairy-footed Brits who live in fantasy-land?

Those differences you mention are superficial. End of the day, a person is a person. Who is more drastically dissimilar to me - someone who is attracted to a different subset of people than me, or the medieval knight, for whom the entire frame of reference was different, since the natural order was that the person he married was not the person he loved, the person he loved was married to someone else, and sex was a sin anyway? Whose life is more different from mine - the person whose skin colour is different in my country, or the one who lived before the Industrial Revolution, and was probably illiterate?

If you can tell stories about medieval knights, you can tell stories about guys loving other guys. For that matter, surely one can tell a story set in Mexico? And surely the characters wouldn't be all blue-eyed and blond?

"Too much diversity" only becomes an issue when you start having characters that have no business being there, just so the minority is represented. [Writing diversity](https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/33824/14704) should help you understand what I'm talking about, though it doesn't seem to be a problem with your story.

It is also helpful to remember that the "white" skin colour is not in fact the most common one in the world. Depending on where your story is set, it is the "everybody's white" preposition that might in fact be unrealistic.

Original score: 20