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The Other. Other what? Other person, writing someone other than you. The female, the male, the black, the white, the able-bodied, the physically disabled, the transgender, the heterosexual, the asexual, the old, the young. Crawling in their heads and bringing them to the page beyond stock tropes.
George Stroumboulopoulos once interviewed George R.R. Martin and asked him the following:
There’s one thing that’s interesting about your books. I noticed that you write women really well and really different. Where does that come from?
The fantasy master responded with:
You know I’ve always considered women to be people.
As a writer, solid worldbuilding means having characters in your world as diverse as the world you live in and making them real people.
A writer is told to read to outside the comfort zone become better. Reading outside your comfort zone does not mean just crossing genre lines. (See The Man who Doesn’t Read Women by Lorraine Berry, March 15, 2017.) To be well read requires exposure to thoughts and ideas different from your own.
WRITING EXERCISE: Write a flash with The Other as the Point-of-View (POV) character.
READING EXERCISE: Read a book with the main POV character who is The Other.