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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48314
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48314
License name: CC BY-SA 4.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

I don't think your diversity is a problem, however, from a writing perspective, I DO think that **_any_** special quality of a character should have some impact on the plot or the character.

So my answer is that **A** story can be "too diverse" in the sense that the author is specifying Jack is gay, but Jack being gay doesn't seem to have any effect on Jack's character and doesn't influence anything he does in the story.

In other words, if the minority status is **superfluous** it shouldn't be there at all.

I intentionally write many of my characters without race, and don't describe anything about them related to race. They have a gender, a height, a weight, a level of fitness, maybe an accent. Because I don't want their race to matter in my story, I don't want to have to come up with ways it might matter.

Being gay typically would determine some externalities like who you date or marry or live with, and how others treat you. It can affect mentality and interpretation of what people are saying. If I make a character gay, I want the character to have a gay life experience, a gay past (realization, coming out, first gay sexual experience), an anticipated gay future (dating, love, marriage, kids, whatever).

If none of that matters, there is little point in making a walk-on waiter gay if all he is going to do is take your order, deliver your food and vanish forever. His homosexuality is empty, it doesn't create diversity, it looks like checking a box on a diversity form.

I don't think you can have too much legitimate diversity, I do think a story can have too much token diversity.

Original score: 1