We're Doing Identity Wrong

"This isn’t an argument against representation. It’s an argument for liberation"

I delivered this as a speech to my screenwriting class this morning.

We’re doing identity wrong.

Don’t panic. You’re not about to read some conservative complaint about wokeness or a bleat about representation. This is a lament about how badly we’re failing young creatives – screenwriters (my profession) - by teaching them to begin a creative journey with “who they are” rather than “what they want to say.”

The workshops so often start with the same prompt: Who are you? It sounds empowering. But is it? The question subtly insists that your value as a writer begins and ends with your demographic makeup. Your gender, your ethnicity, your neurodivergence, your sexual orientation. These are framed as your “voice.” They’re not. They’re context. And the two are not the same.

Great writing doesn’t emerge from self-description. It emerges from self-interrogation. Identity isn’t a story. It’s a starting point. But the real drama - the real writer - is revealed only when they attempt to articulate a perspective, a moral claim, a contradiction, or a paradox they can’t resolve but feel compelled to explore.

We’re now producing a generation of screenwriters who have been told repeatedly that their “lived experience” is enough. It’s not. Not in art. Not in story. Not if your ambition is to move someone who doesn’t already agree with you, who doesn’t look like you, who didn’t grow up where you did. And not if your goal is to reach beyond yourself — which, in the end, is the only thing worth doing as a writer.

Identity, as it’s currently taught, functions like genre: a marketing tool. Are you a queer Pasifika woman writing coming-of-age dramas? Great. There’s a fund for that. We know where to slot you. The system rewards this. But it also begins to expect it from you. You’re groomed into a thematic niche. Your face fits. Your background becomes your brand. You’re praised for “authenticity” rather than ideas.

This is deeply limiting. And it leads to formulaic art. What begins as a celebration of “your truth” quickly becomes a policing of which truths you’re allowed to tell. What if that queer Pasifika writer wants to write a grimy noir about a corrupt banker? Or a talking dog movie? Or a scathing critique of their own community? Suddenly, the system gets nervous. That’s not what we commissioned you for.

And here’s the sad part: young writers learn to internalise this. They censor themselves before the script even begins. They mistake their social identity for a subject matter. They become afraid to ask themselves difficult, dangerous questions because those don’t always align with what their identity should say.

This is the exact opposite of what writing demands.

When we teach screenwriting, we shouldn’t start with “What’s your experience?” We should start with “What bothers you?” “What do you love irrationally?” “What idea won’t leave you alone?” “What contradiction are you trying to live with?” These are the gateways to voice - not skin tone, not gender markers, not a box ticked on a funding form.

Your voice is not who you are. It’s what you’re willing to risk. And if your writing doesn’t risk something - offending, confessing, dreaming beyond what you were told you were allowed - it’s not your voice at all. It’s the safe, sanctioned echo of identity politics.

Again, this isn’t an argument against representation. It’s an argument for liberation. We should want young writers - especially those from marginalised backgrounds - to be as expansive, as unruly, as unpredictable as possible. To not feel chained to trauma narratives or cultural testimony. To write monsters and lovers and idiots and astronauts. To be political and impolite. To be universal.

We say we want diversity. But real diversity is diversity of thought. And that comes not from identity, but from agency - from allowing writers to define themselves by the questions they pursue, not the labels they’re handed.

So, let’s stop doing identity like it’s the story. It’s not. It’s the first line of the pitch, maybe. But the plot, the turn, the climax, the stakes - those come when a writer stops asking “Who am I?” and starts asking, “What do I need to say, no matter the cost?”

That’s a writer.

The rest is marketing.