To finish off the month of writing about The Other, I’m going to look at a phrase with which many people became familiar in 2020: “implicit bias”. As we go through life, we create biases in our heads, mostly unintentional, about people and places. Writing is a reflection of the writer, and these biases tend to come out without the writer intending it. I’m going to answer two questions: “What does this look like?” and “How do I avoid it?”

One of the most frequent places this pops up is race. Often, when white people write a main character, the character is white. This isn’t always the case, but it tends to be a fallback. I did this in Girl in Red, again, unintentionally. Even in Skwyr Court, where white characters are a minority, Roshil, arguably the main character of the six, is white. I’ve been a little more conscious of race as I write, which is far easier to do when I have complete control over the characters, but even then, there are still biases that come out.

Another bias that comes up is when characters act a certain way. Whenever I would write Elves in Dungeons and Dragons campaigns, they always ended up with an English accent. Elves often consider themselves to be above the other races, part of the higher society. My biases towards humans equates that with being English. Is that wrong? Yes, that’s why I don’t do it anymore.

How does one recognize one’s biases? Unlike other problems with writing The Other, this is one problem that research can’t necessarily solve, despite being similar to some of them. My approach is to spend a lot of time introspecting to the point where you talk to yourself more than you talk to other people. I don’t recommend this. Instead, share your writing with as many people as you can. It’s important to circulate it to people outside your normal social circle. While the idea of talking to other people may sound terrifying (at least to me), people within your usual circle may have some of the same biases that you have. That’s why diversity is important here.

Like in life, it can be hard to overcome one’s implicit biases in writing. It isn’t a matter of ignoring race, religion, etc. while writing, because if the characters were raised differently, then they should act differently. While it might seem fine to some readers, others will find it offensive. And while it’s not possible to please everyone, you shouldn’t alienate readers without intending to. When writing The Other, there are two major fixes: do your research, and ask others for their opinions. Remember, this is for your writing; it’s worth the effort.

#Essay #TheOther

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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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In Dungeons and Dragons, there’s a creature called a Nimblewright. Basically, it’s an animated suit of armor with intelligence and personality. In year three of Girl in Red, Rose made two of them to guard Gryffindor Tower against Sirius Black. Their names were Taltria and Alavel (“Blade Dancer” and “Knight Sword” in Elven). After third year, they continued to patrol Hogwarts and look after the students. Alavel was terse, serious, and kind, while his sister Taltria was more carefree. Following Rose’s orders, Alavel looked after Harry.

At first, Harry didn’t get along with Alavel. Alavel was just the latest in a long line of adults telling him what to do and how to live his life. While Alavel tried to connect with Harry, Harry was having none of it. It wasn’t until Harry broke up with his then girlfriend Ellie, breaking down himself, that he opened up to Alavel. Harry cracked, and Alavel happened to be there as someone to whom he could vent. Harry finally wanted help from someone, and Alavel knew just what to say. That was the end of fourth year.

Throughout fifth year, Harry went to Alavel for help and advice. On paper, Alavel was working as an assistant to Filch, but he functioned as a guiding hand to the students. Harry talked to him about everything: Quidditch, school, dating, Voldemort, his friends. When Harry started teaching younger students Defence Against the Dark Arts, Alavel was there to support him, and lent them some credibility by having a staff member present. When Harry saw Sally-Anne slipping away into Umbridge’s clutches, Alavel was there to put things into perspective so he didn’t come to hate her. That lasted until Umbridge took over Hogwarts and sacked Alavel. This was one approach to removing Alavel and allowing Harry to grow on his own, although it didn’t go well for Harry. He blamed Sally-Anne for Alavel being sacked (it was in part her fault, and that wasn’t the only reason he was angry at her). Under different circumstances, Harry might have grown, but with everything else happening, he couldn’t.

Later that year when the main characters escaped Umbridge’s clutches and ran into the Forbidden Forest, there were Death Eaters waiting for them. Despite their best efforts, the main characters were only students, ill-prepared to handle twenty and change trained killers. That’s when Alavel stepped back into play. He brought a few others with him, and together, they were able to fight back the Death Eaters until Voldemort himself arrived. Even then, Alavel stood against him, determined to stop him from hurting Harry. For a while, he was winning, until another Death Eater stepped in and killed him.

I made the decision to kill off Alavel for a few reasons. First, to allow Harry to grow without him. Unfortunately, I’d made him too responsible and wise, able to solve Harry’s emotional problems too quickly. Second, I wanted to cement that specific Death Eater as a threat, because in reality, that Death Eater was Rose. Due to Slytherin’s influence, she’d had to join the Death Eaters, and she had to convince them she was against them. Killing one of her own creations, something she’d already been dead set against in previous years, would convince them (and my readers) that she’d changed.

Even after Alavel’s death, he was never forgotten. Harry worked to be like him, becoming the primary source of emotional support for his friends, as Alavel had done for him. He always asked himself what Alavel would do when faced with a problem. It’s because of this that he’s able to rehabilitate Ginny when she loses her mind in sixth year, and stand by her as she recovers in seventh year. Despite having to kill off Alavel to make this happen, it gave me the opportunity to see Harry grow in a way that wouldn’t have happened with Alavel alive. This also provided the inspiration for the poem I Know I Can Fly.

An effective mentor is tricky to write. I had to ensure that Alavel was there as needed, thus staying in character. Harry couldn’t open up to him immediately because it wasn’t in Harry’s character. Sacrificing himself for Harry was exactly the way Alavel would’ve wanted to die, if he’d had to die at all. I like how it turned out, and I hope other people can learn from my work.

#Essay #GirlInRed #Mentors

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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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We’ve seen it in Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and Harry Potter. The wise mentor sacrifices himself to allow the hero to grow to their full potential. While this creates drama and gives the hero a reason to fight, there are plenty of other ways to do both of those. But without that sacrifice, the question comes up about the mentor handling the forces of evil himself. If not that, then the hero hides behind the mentor, falling back on him when he can’t do it himself. But is it necessary?

As I often do, I’ll look at Animorphs, specifically for the reason of the heroes handling the problem when there’s a more capable entity available. Specifically, the Ellimist, the all-powerful being that helps them out with his patented brand of non-interfering interference. Near the end of the series, his battle with the being Crayak is explained, and with that, the rules of their “game”. Instead of fighting each other directly, as they reasoned they’d only destroy and remake the universe over and over again, they use pieces, such as the Animorphs themselves. This provides a way for the heroes to handle the Yeerks (who are one of Crayak’s pieces) despite the fact that the Ellimist is more capable (being all-powerful and all).

Instead of killing the mentor, he can be removed from the story for other reasons. It could be that he recognizes the hero’s need to go it alone, finding his own way. In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged returns to his teacher, Ogion, while trying to escape the shadow he unleashed onto the world. Fearing for his teacher’s safety, he leaves, and Ogion lets him go, recognizing that only Ged can face the evil he let loose on the world. There was no need to kill Ogion to get him out of the way.

The show RWBY takes another approach. The main characters are all being taught to fight monsters, as monsters plague their world. When the controlling force behind those monsters goes on the offensive, the main characters have to leave their homes to fight back. Their teachers show up to help them from time to time, but the heroes all have to fight, and that’s what the teachers are teaching them to do. The heroes have to grow and learn because they know they have to go into battle.

It’s easy to simply kill off the mentor when preparing a hero, but it’s done so often that it’s predictable. There are other approaches to doing it, and I’d recommend finding a different one. It’s easy to look at one of the big names in science fiction or fantasy and want to do it their way, but the problem with that is that everyone else already has. When making a story, it should be yours, so do it your way, and trust yourself.

#Essay #Mentors

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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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