Speak like a subaltern: Elizabeth Bear on writing the other

Writer Elizabeth Bear on creating characters outside your experience:

For one thing, stop thinking about this person you're writing as The Other. Think of them as human, an individual. Not A Man. Not A Woman. Not A Chinese Person or A Handicapped Person or A Person With Cancer or a Queer Person. A person. Stop trying to make them universal, and make them unique.

Edited to add:

For more, deepad continues the discussion, here:

I distrust universalising statements proclaiming our inherent mutual humanity because they are uni-directional; they do not make everyone more like me, they make everyone more like you.