A strawman is a character meant to represent an entire group of people in a simplified way that is easy to criticize. Different ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations all get hit with this. Not only in fiction, but in the real world too. This is the other extreme from The Gay Best Friend, the one that’s not supposed to be good at all. People do this when they want to make a point or to spread propaganda, or when they didn’t do a lot of research because they didn’t care.

Take the movie God’s Not Dead. Like most other movies from Pure Flix, it’s Christian propaganda. Christianity is the best thing ever, and all other religions, or lack thereof, will get you killed, beaten, or cancer. The movie makes no attempt to show the merits of the other side (being not Christianity), because it’s propaganda. The lesson here is to avoid being propaganda.

But what if you’re honestly trying to represent the other side of an argument or other group different from yourself and you want to get it right? Do your research. I’ve said it with every post this month. If you’re trying to make an argument in favor of something, it’s only going to hurt you when you misrepresent the other side. It might help if all you care about is readership, but if you honestly want to make a point, it’s not going to work.

Oddly enough, God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness, the third movie in that series (because of course it’s a series) did this very well. It represented non-Christians as real people with real problems, and even went as far as to admit that Christians might not be the only ones persecuted (something you never see in these types of films). There’s a scene of which I’m particularly fond during which the main character has just had a brick thrown through his window and his talking to a friend of his. Main character says, “I guess it’s different when it’s your window,” feeling that his friend doesn’t understand the persecution he’s going through. His friend replies, “I’m a black preacher in the deep south. I could build you a house all the bricks been thrown through my window.” It’s a good scene, it’s a good line, it’s good writing, and it made me care more about the message the movie was trying to send.

In the end, that’s the benefit of doing your research. If you want to make a good point, if you want to send a message, be fair to all sides. Do your research, bring it to friends or people in your community. Don’t make them into strawmen because it’s easier. It’s not right. Remember, this is for your writing; it’s worth the effort.

#Essay #Characters #TheOther

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The gay best friend comes up a lot in romance films. It’s the one character that has no life outside of the protagonist, and specifically his or her love life. Oftentimes, especially when the protagonist is female, this is an effeminate male character assumed to be gay. This trope also comes up in other movies with the wise black man, who, once again, has no life outside of the protagonist’s troubles, but is full of helpful advice to overcome those troubles. They amount to the same thing: a minority with an infinite fountain of advice and/or wisdom for the main character.

Why does this happen? Overcompensation. I wrote a few weeks ago about the dangers of carelessly writing “the other”. If one isn’t careful, the only representation of that minority group is further marginalized. To avoid this, many writers will elevate that minority to unreachable standards. They are wise beyond their years and selfless beyond all reason. But that’s not helpful either. Not only is it a bad idea to have a character who doesn’t exist outside of the plot, when writers do this over and over again, it ends up squeezing a minority group into a specific role. It’s bad storytelling, and it’s harmful to people already struggling to show that there’s more to them than a bunch of stereotypes.

An example of this being done poorly is the movie Dear Santa. In it, a wealthy socialite is told she has to get married otherwise her parents will cut her off, so when she finds a girl’s letter to Santa asking for a new mom for Christmas, she decides she’s going to become the girl’s new mom and marry her dad. The role of gay best friend is played by her new friend Pete, a chef who wears a pink uniform and lip gloss and tells her that what she’s doing is fine and that the dad’s devoted fiancé is just an obstacle she has to overcome. That’s all there is to him. He has no life outside of her stalking this man’s family. Even if the intent was making a likable minority character, he ends up as a two-dimensional stereotype.

So how can this be avoided? Give them a life outside of the plot. Give them hopes and dreams. Like I said in last week’s post, don’t think of them as black, gay, or whatever minority they’re supposed to represent. The main character isn’t the only one allowed to make mistakes, so long as the side characters don’t steal the show. A good example of this being done well is Shepherd Book from Firefly. At first, he seems like the wise black man there to give advice to the main characters, but as they frequently point out, he knows an awful lot about crime for a preacher. He becomes one of the most interesting characters because of this intimate knowledge and the mysteries surrounding him. He says, “I wasn’t always a preacher”, making the audience wonder what he was before all this.

The best way to avoid this is to have more than one character representing a specific minority. If that’s not easily done – say you only have a handful of characters and you want more diversity – then at least make them all three-dimensional, with lives outside of the plot. Remember, this is for your writing; it’s worth the effort.

#Essay #Characters #TheOthers

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When I started Girl in Red, I already had Rose worked out. It wasn’t a conscious choice to make her a girl, I just decided to. I’ve always liked the idea of Hermione, even if I don’t like how J.K. Rowling wrote her, and Luna and Rose were similar enough that I figured they’d get along great. So those were three of my main characters, all female. It gave me a lot of experience writing women, something somewhat more challenging considering I am male (Edit: No I'm not, but I've lived the life of a male, so bear with me). I didn’t have trouble with this, but I’ve seen characters clearly written by a specific gender of writer, so I know it’s not easy for everyone.

Something I’ve noticed with other writers, men and women, is that they describe the opposite sex as though the author is checking that person out. Every physical detail at which the author would be staring is described. Not only does this make me uncomfortable to read and write, but it makes the character obviously not the sex they’re supposed to be. Maybe it’s a female character doing this with a female author, but if it’s a heterosexual female character checking out another woman like this, she’s lying to herself.

That’s the biggest gotcha of writing the opposite sex that I’ve seen. The best way to avoid this: write them without considering their sex or gender. This is how we got characters like Nausicaä in Nausciaä of the Valley of the Wind, Toph and Katara in Avatar: The Last Airbender, and most of the characters in RWBY, all of which were written primarily by men. They are treated differently than men at times, and occasionally act “girly”, but they’re so busy being awesome the rest of the time that we don’t care. Not only can you get strong female characters like this, but you don’t run the risk of it being obvious that a man wrote it.

I had two advantages that I imagine most male writers don’t have when writing female characters. The first is that my beta reader is female. She could catch anything I did blatantly wrong. The other is that stereotypical gender roles have been turned on their head in my world. My mother is the breadwinner of my house, which is why most of the families that feature in my stories have the mother as the breadwinner.

The quick fix is to not consider gender when writing. The same goes for race as well, although be warned you might still fall into a trap with either. If in doubt, find a woman in your life and ask her to proof-read it for you. It could be a cousin, a sister, your mother (who I’m sure would be happy to talk to you anyway), or a coworker. Remember, this is for your writing; it’s worth the effort.

#Essay #Characters #TheOther

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“The Other” is a term given to those not like yourself. This is most often applied to black characters written by white authors. On its face, this doesn’t seem difficult. Simply write the character with little concern for the color of their skin, and add it in later. But nothing happens in isolation. Not only is there a culture within your story, but there’s one that’s going to read your story, and it is in that that the complication lies.

Take for example The Tombs of Atuan, the second book in the Earthsea series. It focuses around the character Tenar, a girl who was taken from her family at a young age and raised in The Place, a temple where they worship the Old Gods. While she is considered a religious figure in the temple, she has little in the way of rights. This was written intentionally by a female writer, but the problem comes in the means of her escape. She escapes that way of life with Ged, the main character of A Wizard of Earthsea, the previous book. As Ursula K. Le Guin herself pointed out, from one perspective, this has the message that the woman needed a man’s help to escape. The way Le Guin looked at it, they needed each other’s help, because Ged was also trapped within the tombs.

This is the tricky part of writing the other, or any character who would be marginalized in the society reading the book. No matter how you write them, you’re sending a message of some kind. If it’s that women are helpless without men around, that’s bad. On the other hand, this may be a point of growth for the character when she realizes she doesn’t need them and solves the problem on her own. This is much the case in the later books in Earthsea.

It’s a particular problem when a particular sex, race, religion, etc. is represented by a single character. That character then bears the burden of representing an entire set of people. For example, gay characters are often written as stereotypes, gay men in particular. We’ve all seen it: the lone effeminate male character who loves clothes and singing. Not only is this offensive to gay men, but to effeminate straight men who like clothes and singing and are tired of being called gay.

The best way to avoid this is to do research. There are plenty of people willing to help if you ask. People are helpful when you tell them you’re writing a character like them and you want to get it right, because chances are, they’re tired of seeing it done wrong and have a lot of opinions. I myself have a lot of opinions on writing dads, single dads in particular, programmers, smart characters in general, depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, and ADHD. It may be hard for some of us, but this is for your writing. It’s worth the effort.

#Essay #Characters #TheOther

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Despite the story focusing around the hero, sometimes, the entire world’s in danger. The kingdom is collapsing. The entire town is in trouble, and it’s too much for them, or maybe they just aren’t ready yet. Either way, they need help. They need backup. They need the people that taught them everything they know. The teachers, the elders, the wise people. It’s time for them to step in. If this happens in the finale, it can’t be the fight against the big bad; it will be a fight elsewhere, against the big bad’s minions. Otherwise, it won’t be the final fight, because that’s for the main character to handle.

In the show RWBY, the main characters are taught to fight. But at the end of volume III, the entire city was under attack, and the main characters were still only students. So it was time for everyone to pitch in and help. Even their headmaster, whom we’d never seen fight before, got involved. While this was the finale of that volume, it was far from the series finale. It made sense for the teachers to step in, since the main characters couldn’t be expected to handle it all alone. It shows that not only are they a force to be reckoned with, but they are responsible(ish) as well.

In Avatar: The Last Airbender, there is a secret society made up of all of their teachers. People wise enough to see that the war plaguing the world was pointless and had to be stopped. But the only one powerful enough to take down the big bad was the main character. So while he fought the big bad, that society took back the capital city of one of the nations. It gave something for many of the most popular characters in the show to do, and allowed us to see what they could do when put to the test, all without interfering with the final fight between the main character and the big bad.

Another reason to unholster the big guns is to show how much of a threat one of the villains can be. I did this in Girl in Red, in year six when Dumbledore faced off against Rose. This was one of my favorite fight scenes to write, showing just how clever Dumbledore was in his choice of spells. When he ultimately failed to stop her, the four house heads took their shot at her in another of my favorite scenes. There is something that must be considered when going with this approach: if the teachers couldn’t do it, why can the students? In this case, Hermione was able to beat Rose because Hermione knew how to fight Rose’s unique magic.

It’s a tricky business letting the mentors fight. You don’t want them to fight all the time, otherwise the main characters wouldn’t do anything. But sometimes it makes sense for them to fight, so they have to get involved. Balancing the two sides is something that must be learned.

#Essay #Mentors #Characters

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The wise old mentor. The responsible parent. They exist almost entirely to provide guidance and advice to the hero, but what happens when the hero doesn’t want it? What happens when the hero pushes away their mentor? A hero arguing with the adults for the sake of arguing, or to force the hero to deal with the problem alone, should be avoided. At the very least, they should eventually come to realize the adults had a point. This can provide necessary conflict and growth for the hero, but when this becomes the hero’s defining characteristic, it gets old fast.

As I’ve written about before, sometimes it’s necessary for adults to step back so the children or teenagers can save the world. Sometimes, this takes the form of rebellious teenagers that know better than the adults because they’re teenagers. This is to be expected of teenage characters, because it’s common among teenagers. I was no exception at that age, but when it defines the character, it gets old. The fifth Harry Potter book is my least favorite of the bunch because that’s how it felt, like Harry was whining about his life the whole time. Adults make mistakes too, but the heroes should eventually come to an understanding with them.

The previous books fall into this trap as well. Harry refuses to listen to the adults, assuming he knows better, or they wouldn’t understand, or other reasons that are there to ensure Harry has to do everything on his own. While the adults are as much to blame as Harry, it never goes anywhere. Neither side seems to learn anything, making it conflict for the sake of conflict.

Heroes did this rather well. The character Claire Bennet, who could heal from anything, and her father, who tracked down and captured people with powers, had conflict throughout the series. While her father knows what he’s doing (mostly), Claire wants to live her life as normally as she can. They butt heads throughout the first season, but when Claire sees what the people for whom her father works are like, she realizes he’s been trying to protect her from them. At the same time, her father realizes that she’s more capable of taking care of herself than he’d been giving her credit for. Their understanding of one another gives the conflict a satisfying conclusion, instead of existing for the sake of killing time.

Creating conflict between characters is fine, but it should have some sort of resolution. The same goes for heroes not getting along with their mentors and the adults in general. Refusing to get along only so they can see the clarity of each other’s viewpoint later is good, but pointlessly arguing so the hero can go it alone isn’t. Eventually, it has to end, preferably with them seeing eye to eye.

#Essay #Characters #Mentors #Heroes

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A throwaway character is a character that comes up once or twice, serves their purpose, then disappears forever. They’re more important than background characters, in that they have something significant about them, but they aren’t important or relevant enough to become regular characters, side or otherwise. As with all characters that are brought to the readers’ attention for only a moment, the trick is to not make them so interesting that the readers keep asking “Where’d So And So go?”

In Girl in Red, characters dropped in and out of the story constantly. For instance, I gave many of the prefects names, but even so, they remained background characters. Having a name or a line or two doesn’t necessarily bring a character out of the background. In year four, I introduced several characters from the other schools, in particular when there was an inter-school Quidditch match. These characters were brought out of the background, making them, at least for a time, side characters.

Throwaway characters aren’t necessarily a bad thing. For instance, I introduced a Chaser from Beauxbatons named Adele Caron. She mostly remained relevant to the story during the Quidditch match. Because she’d become friends with Sally-Anne, she popped back into the story later, but mostly disappeared. She served her purpose, and there was little reason for her to return to the story. No loose ends, no one wondering why she didn’t come back.

I ran into a problem with another throwaway character, Sophie Caron, Adele’s younger sister. She befriended Luna, but despite this, was rarely mentioned, if ever. I might have tossed a reference to her in a few times, but for the most part, it felt like a loose end, a forgotten part of the story. I was able to find a use for her in year seven, when Adele, Sophie, and some friends of theirs were staying in England, where Luna and Hermione found them. They provided shelter when the girls were on the run, allowing me to use the characters about whom I’d nearly forgotten. It felt as though a loose end had been tied up.

Especially when writing a series in which characters come and go, there will be times when a character disappears from the narrative. While neither of the Caron sisters were particularly interesting, I didn’t like that I’d introduced them, then left them. It’s important that when a character leaves the story, that they come back when it becomes relevant again. At the very least, they should be mentioned, if only asking “Where’d they go?” The best way to handle them, at least that I’ve found, is to trust your instincts. If it feels like they should come back, bring them back for a moment. It’s up to you.

#Essay #Characters #SideCharacters

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“Elevated Extras” refers to a side character that has suddenly become a main character. Or, if not a main character, they are suddenly more relevant to the plot than they were earlier. This happens often in TV shows where a character who was popping up every so often is suddenly in every episode. This may happen because they needed to add more main characters, or because a character has suddenly become more relevant. Like any side character who suddenly has more attention, they have to be interesting, otherwise people won’t care.

There is a difference between an elevated extra and a main character that wasn’t getting a lot of attention. In Girl in Red, I didn’t give Neville much focus until year three, but that doesn’t make him an elevated extra. He wasn’t exactly a side character; I certainly didn’t think of him as one. He was a main character that didn’t get a lot of focus. In Person of Interest, a lot of the characters they add to the cast are arguably main characters that didn’t get a lot of attention at first. Fusco, Root, and Shaw are all examples of this. As with an elevated extra, they must be interesting enough to keep the audience’s attention as they settle into the role of main character, and I would argue that all of them were.

For an elevated extra, I would point to the character Molesley in Downton Abbey. He pops up every now and then, but he’s clearly a side character at first. It isn’t until later in the series when he starts working at Downton that he becomes a main character. Like most elevated extras, this takes place in a series. If it’s in a single book or story, there likely won’t be enough time to establish the character as a side character. However, as Molsley does in Downton Abbey as he becomes a main character, he is interesting enough to keep the audience’s attention. He has his own troubles, and becomes more than just the butt of other characters’ jokes.

In Girl in Red, the best example of an elevated extra is Sarah Perks, who was probably my favorite side character of the series. As Sally-Anne’s mom, she does come up every now and then, always calm and collected, with a frightening knowledge of working people for information. The hint that she’s more than she seems comes from a scene at the start of year three, when she tears down Harry’s Uncle Vernon by citing a specific incident at his drilling company that he doesn’t want known. It isn’t until the end of year six that it’s revealed that she works for a government organization tasked with monitoring magicals in the U.K. and maintaining the Statute of Secrecy, with eyes and ears all over the country. In year seven, her position becomes relevant to the plot when Umbridge actively seeks to dismantle the Statute of Secrecy and take control of both the Magical and Muggle worlds.

The transformation from side to main character must be done with care. When a character suddenly becomes more relevant to the plot, they shouldn’t be ignored either. Take the time to build interest around them, to pique readers’ curiosity. Once you’ve got their attention, you’re ready to introduce the plot point that makes them relevant. It’s best if they remain somewhat relevant to something, though. Otherwise, we’re following a random character for no apparent reason. As with everything else in writing, it takes practice and balance. But it’s worth it to get it right.

#Essay #Characters #SideCharacters

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Side characters require a tricky balancing act. If they’re not interesting, then the readers are going to start to wonder “Why am I reading about this character?” If they’re too interesting, readers are going to ask “Why isn’t this the main character?” I wrote last week about ensemble writing, which makes this easier, but even then, there will still be side characters. So how do you strike the balance?

Harry Potter is an example of the latter problem. As I mentioned last week, I don’t find Harry to be an interesting character, at least not when compared to the others. I found Neville and Luna far more interesting and wanted them to get more focus. Unfortunately, they’re only side characters. Instead, I’m stuck with Harry, Ron, and Hermione. Despite hanging out with the main character, even Ron and Hermione don’t get nearly as much focus as he does.

Animorphs did a much better job managing the side characters. There are a few of them, but they are always in the background, and they’re never more interesting than the six main characters. We have a sense of their struggles, enough to understand them, but not so much that we need more than that. There are clear main characters, who each get about the same amount of attention as one another.

I have a lot of side characters in Girl in Red, but it’s hard to judge my own writing, because any information I want to know, I can flesh out in my head. While my beta reader enjoys the side characters, I’ve never gotten much feedback from anyone else. But writing ensemble occasionally allows me to jump into a side character’s perspective. I do this with many of the professors from time to time, which means they need to remain relevant, otherwise readers will get tired of it and skip to the next scene. Despite having focus, they are still side characters, and thus shouldn’t take up too much time.

Writing side characters is a balancing act. There are many ways to approach it. Side characters are necessary to a story, unless the main character is the only character in the story, which itself is tricky to do. Don’t put too much focus on a character unless you’re willing to go all in on them. And if while writing you find your side characters are more interesting than your main character, ask if maybe they should be the main characters. The best way to find out is to keep on writing.

#Essay #Characters #SideCharacters

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Sometimes in a story, a protagonist turns antagonist. This shouldn’t happen at once, although there may be an inciting incident that pushes them over the edge. That character should slowly change, sliding ever closer to evil as they have to justify their actions to others. It makes perfect sense in their head, and if their friends can’t understand that, it’s their friends’ problem. While many of my characters did have problems that put their friends in danger, there were two that became active antagonists/villains: Sally-Anne and Rose. The difference was that Sally-Anne remained a perspective character, allowing my readers to see what happened in her mind. Rose, as far as her friends knew, snapped. Thus, I’m going to focus on Sally-Anne as an example.

This didn’t happen at once. Sally-Anne was everyone’s friend, trusted by staff and students alike at Hogwarts. Everyone knew her, and even though she was Muggle-born, the Slytherins didn’t actively harass her. People opened up to her, often sharing secrets or gossip. One of a few times she used this to her advantage was breaking up a fight between the Gryffindor and Slytherin Quidditch teams, blackmailing the Slytherin captain into complacency. In her mind, this was justified. As time went on, she saw her friends becoming less trustful of the Ministry (this is fifth year, when the Ministry didn’t trust Hogwarts), and believed that the Ministry was there to help them. She believed Harry when he said Voldemort had returned, but reminded him that his word alone wasn’t enough to cause everyone to panic, which is exactly what would happen if the Ministry agreed with him. Once again, she justified this with “I know better”. This is something that happens often with characters slowly turning: justification. They keep having to justify their actions because other people don’t see things the way they do.

Oftentimes when a protagonist is changing like that, another character is responsible. In this case, it was Umbridge. Sally-Anne saw Umbridge as a Ministry official, not a “goon” as Hermione might’ve put it, someone trying to reassure worried people and avoid a mass panic. As far as they knew, it wasn’t possible for anyone to come back from the dead, upon Umbridge insisted. She seeded Sally-Anne with the idea that Hermione was losing herself to grief after losing Rose. Once again, Sally-Anne understood this. She slowly began to wonder if her friends were right, and if there were other motives for claiming Voldemort was back.

Finally, there’s the tipping point. For Sally-Anne, it was when she started believing Umbridge over her friends. She still didn’t entirely trust Umbridge, but she realized that Hermione refused to see reason when it came to their newest teacher. In Sally-Anne’s mind, Umbridge was reforming the school in which they’d nearly died multiple times in a few years, while Hermione had convinced herself and the rest of their friends that a threat existed where it didn’t. When Sally-Anne learned of a resistance movement within Hogwarts (the original books called it Dumbledore’s Army, while this version of Hermione chose to name it the Crimson Insurrection, which didn’t help their case), she initially tried to reason with them. When Hermione revealed that Umbridge was using physical punishment on students, Sally-Anne made a deal. She gave up her friends in exchange for Umbridge not using the punishment quills anymore. At that point, she was an antagonist.

Sally-Anne’s story didn’t stop there. I’ve written a poem from her perspective, Given Up on Me, which goes on to the point where she realizes that Umbridge has been lying to her. Umbridge’s entire argument was founded on the claim that Rose went mad and killed herself, which Sally-Anne realizes Rose wouldn’t do, not while her friends could be in danger. And if Umbridge lied about that, Sally-Anne realizes that she could’ve been lying about anything. She uses her position as the head of the Inquisitorial Squad to get a message out about what Umbridge has done to the school. After pointing out to Draco that Umbridge would likely throw them both over if it benefited her, he gets his family involved, which puts an end to Umbridge’s reign of terror. But as it says in the poem, “too little, too late”. This is the final part of a protagonist’s descent: consequences. There will be consequences for the character if this is done correctly.

Changing a character like this is tricky and should only be done with care. Both Wings of Fire and Star Wars do this with Darkstalker and Anakin Skywalker, respectively, but in both cases, we see the backstory of a character we know as a villain. We see them change, following the path they believe is right. But doing this with an active character, one the readers don’t know is becoming an antagonist, may lose readers. If they don’t like where the character is going, they may not stick around until the end. If you feel this is the path your character should take, tread lightly.

#Essay #Characters #Heroes #Villains #GirlInRed

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