I have a black character in my book but I am struggling to let the audience know they are black and not a normal character. I thought maybe I could describe her skin as ‘charred steak black’ but I heard black people dont like having their skin compared to food. Which is silly because I always describe my white characters as creamy or my east asian characters as cheddar.

Should I just use the N word? Seems simple, but I am not sure. I dont want to be offensive when describing a nig-