Quoted from FrankM For this particular story I want to keep everyone recognizably human, just not whitewashed. Other stories that want to get out of my head and onto paper lend themselves much better to your sorts of ideas. The color-coded-countries thing started out just using Red, Green and Blue as placeholders in my earliest notes, but it evolved into a way to let viewers of all ages keep track of which country is currently on screen. Neighboring countries (just as big, but peripheral to the story) became Yellow, Purple and Gray. My current challenge is describing the people of Silverplains (the "Gray" country), where the ethnic majority is supposed to be vaguely northeast Asian, Inuit, or Native American. I can describe everyone else without resorting to proper names.

Okay. Got it. Seems to me then just pick  one (Asian, Inuit, or Native American) and use their physical traits

My son recently asked me to get him some novels by Malorie Blackman. Her Noughts and Crosses trilogy sounds very much like what you're attempting here.

Quoted from DustinBowcot My son recently asked me to get him some novels by Malorie Blackman. Her Noughts and Crosses trilogy sounds very much like what you're attempting here.

In that particular case, the two sets of naughts I simply describe as "brunettes" and "fair-complexion" while the set of crosses I describe as "dark-skinned" (it really doesn't matter if the reader pictures them as African or South Asian since as I said I'm not transplanting any racial stereotypes into this world).

What I'm having trouble with is describing Asians/Inuit/Native Americans without using a capitalized name. Current version is "tanned with black hair" since any mention of distinctive eyes seems to invite accusations of racist stereotypes (professional script readers might not care, but they aren't the only ones who read these things).

It might be clearer to the reader if I have a Glennish character claim to be ¹/₃₂ Plainsman because her family has high cheekbones