Help with adding ethnic diversity to a story.

[Riftwolf]

I'm an amateur fantasy writer, and long story short I want to get more diversity into my characters. My problem is I don't want it to come across as tokenism, nor do I have the writing chops to write a story based purely on the race or ethnicity of characters.
I've been thinking of adapting an urban fantasy story to change the ethnicity of the main character. At the moment she's a new student in an unfamiliar city (Escafeld) and is struggling to fit in but going about it the wrong way. The story's in an alternate world, so I've been dodging real world issues for a while, and thought with this story she's not just from a different town (Calshan) further to the south, but a different country or region.
I've avoided reference to skin tones as this feels like a cheap description, and wanted it to be more of her being percieved as different rather than the audience being told why she's different. One idea I had was the city she moved to is colder than her home, and the society less strict.
The other, probably more controversial idea was how she's percieved by men. Currently in the story, the character has a one-night-stand; I wanted to add that men find her exotic because she looks different, or that Calshani women have a reputation (which is unfortunately common enough in UK stereotypng that I don't think I'd be accused of portraying any real-world ethnicity) and she's been given racist pet-names before that put her off. (exactly what the epithets are I haven't decided)
I wanted to get thoughts about whether I'm going about this the right way; it's hard for me to understand subtleties and other people's perspective sometimes.

[Emperor Ing]

I know this'll come off as trite, but I cannot stress this basic building-block of storytelling enough. Reading through your description, I read all sorts of information about a conflict you want to create, how others perceive your character or might perceive them, etc. What I didn't see anything about is who your character is. Who are they? What do they think? What's conventional wisdom among Escafeldians that someone from Calshan would find bizarre? Are there any commonalities? Are there people who'ved livde in Escafeld their whole lives who disagree with this conventional wisdom?

The need for characters having different skin tones is fallacious, in my opinion. What does them having brown skin add to their character? The story? Diversity for the sake of diversity is how you get tokenism. Characters whose definining attributes as a character are their gender, or their skin color.

Just write good characters, and all will be well.

[Riftwolf]

Politically, Calshan and Escafeld are probably closer to different states than different countries. Calshan used to be a seat of Empire, but a war twenty years ago crippled it and caused it to fracture. Since then a lot of former Imperials have become disillusioned and feel an emptiness. Calshan was a strict atheistic nation, who hundreds of years ago attempted to purge magic from the world. Escafeld was quicker to return to spirituality than Calshan after the war; while Calshan remained 'real world', Escafeld rediscovered magic and became urban fantasy.
The main character (Jill) feels the same loss of national pride and disillusion as other Calshani, and moved to Escafeld to attend uni, hoping to meet like-minded people. The story is about her finding out about herself whilst also learning about a group of shapechangers, who've found fulfilment through reconnection with their totem animals. At the start of the story, she makes wrong moves and doesn't think things through, but towards the end of the story she's learnt why she was being irresponsible and starts to take control of her life rather than hoping other people makd decisions for her.
In terms of race, I don't think I've got enough writing talent to make the differences between Calshan and Escafeld a big thing; like I said, Escafeld and Calshan have been culturally close (if several hundred miles apart) for most of their histories. I suppose I should try a story about someone from a culturally different land from the start, rather than writing a story and trying to insert differences clumsily. Problems arise when I set out a country as the Other; that's when I get accused of cultural appropriation/casual racism, which if I am guilty of, I'm actively trying to combat.

[Lycunadari]

This blog has a ton of resources about how to respectfully write characters of colour. Just read the FAQ and then look though the different tags (fantasy, coding, description are a good start), that should probably answer a lot of your questions.

[Emperor Ing]

Problems arise when I set out a country as the Other; that's when I get accused of cultural appropriation/casual racism, which if I am guilty of, I'm actively trying to combat.

You're already on the right track. What is and is not 'cultural appropriation' or 'casual racism' is often so poorly defined, writers need to accept that they won't satisfy everyone. As I said, just write good characters, and all will be well.

You're off to an interesting start. A few questions i'd ask: Does Jill's disillusionment come from previously having a sense of pride, that was torn down? Was there a singular pivot-point event, or was it gradual, over months or even years perhaps, that caused her to have distaste for Calshan? Did she ever feel pride for Calshan at all, or is her disillusionment a result of being brought up to be cynical against Calshan and she can't really articulate her reasons for her disillusionment?

We're covering her beliefs well enough, and you have a good idea for a character arc. Now what does she aspire towards? What is her relationship to her parents? Siblings? Friends?

[JNAProductions]

Number one rule: Write good characters, regardless of ethnicity.

My personal philosophy is this: Skin color (or eye shape or whatever) doesn't make much of a difference to a character, in most circumstances. Obviously if you're writing a story where racism plays heavily in it, skin color suddenly matters a lot, but in fantasy story, about adventurers? It shouldn't be nearly as big a deal. So don't think "This character is black, so they should act like X." Think "This character feels strongly about X, so they should like act like Y."