Important Issue on Creating Characters

guardianofscrewingup:

thewritingcafe:

I’ve seen something a bit…unsettling among some writers who talk about characters they’re developing and I think it’s important to address this.

We all want to create cool, memorable characters who are interesting. We all know that to do this, our characters need to have personalities, good traits, bad traits, changes throughout the story, and so on. 

However, I’ve seen too many writers talk about certain things that they believe make their characters cooler, more interesting, more original, or more well rounded.

So, to be blunt:

• Making your character anything other than straight does not automatically make your character well rounded, dynamic, cool, interesting, or original.
• Making your character anything other than cis does not automatically make your character well rounded, dynamic, cool, interesting, or original.
• Making your character anything other than white does not automatically make your character well rounded, dynamic, cool, interesting, or original.
• Making your character anything other than thin does not automatically make your character well rounded, dynamic, cool, interesting, or original.
• Giving your character a mental illness, a disability, a neurological disorder, etc. does not automatically make your character well rounded, dynamic, cool, interesting, or original.

Please stop treating these factors as personality traits. They may influence a person’s personality, behaviors, thoughts, actions, and relationships, but they are not traits themselves.

THIISS

It isn’t just that these different things need to be represented in media, they need to represented WELL in media. People of color deserve original, well-characterized, nuanced characters, GLBT deserve the same, and so on and so forth. 

All of those things are traits but not personality traits. They should color the character’s experiences but not be the end all be and all, and the characters should have their own narrative, their own arc, that isn’t JUST about what they are, where they grow and change. 

It’s the difference between “this character is gay and POC that makes them interesting!” and “The character is a gay half African Viking who has to deal with falling in love with his comrade-in-arms in the fight against the evil emperor when deep feelings cloud his ability to use the magic sword that has been bound to him - something that may be their only hope of stopping the enemy. He must also learn to rely on his strengths, like his compassion, to fight the feelings of low self esteem that come of being exiled after his disastrous coming of age raid on an enemy tribe.” 

They gotta be actual people Doing Things.