Character Tools: Nationality vs Ethnic Background

When I make character profiles, there are two things that I like to take into consideration:

1. Nationality
2. Ethnic background

I do not consider these things to be the same. In fact, I use them as two individual parts of my characters. I find them very useful when I'm developing the characters as realistic people in my world.

Nationality

Nationality is commonly defined as where you come from and have legal citizenship status. Since most of my current work-in-progress takes in place in the US, all the characters have legal US citizenship. However, I do have one character who has dual citizenship, since she was raised in a different country before moving to the US.

Nationality can determine a large portion of a character's personality and background. Factors that are affected would be ones like whether or not they are bilingual, and how they view the culture or trends that they are immersed in.

Ethnic Background

Ethnic background is what I consider what many would call "race." Ethnic background describes physical features and not legal details. I like to note ethnic background as well as nationality so that I know what country the character lives in as well as what country they look like they would come from.

If I have a character who was born and raised with one nationality, but genetically has a different ethnic background, then I note it down on the character's profile so that I know better how to write them for future reference.

In short, I use nationality to describe culture, and ethnic background to describe physical features. Personally, I find it helpful since I have characters who come from different places and have various physical appearances, and this is a good way to distinguish appearance and background from each other.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully you find this helpful in your own writing journey.