By Ela Mishne.
The Chosen One, Dumb Blonde, The Wise Old Man, Queen Bee.
We’ve all seen these characters. The scientist is always crazy and looks like
Albert Einstein. The bully loves being bad because—well, for no particular
reason. The problem with these characters is that they make the story predictable
and boring. So writers are encouraged to create fresh and unique characters.
But here’s the problem. Readers love familiar
characters because they don’t have to get to know these new people. They feel safe.
But safe is boring, and readers should never be bored.
A solution to this problem is to write these old tropes
with a twist. A twist can be a hobby or something about the character that the
reader would never have thought about. Let’s take Queen Bee for example. This
character is pretty, mean, comes from a wealthy family, and surrounded by a
posse of beautiful girls. After school she’s probably sitting on her pink bed
in her pink room, listening to pop music and polishing her nails. But what if
that’s not what’s she likes to do after school? What if she spends her free
time playing Overwatch with her nerdy brother? Now, that’s a twist. What if she
doesn’t come from a wealthy family? What if she doesn’t like pop music? What if
she likes heavy metal? What if her room is painted black? What if she likes
playing the piano?
Another way to break character stereotypes is to let a
character have a secret. Playing Overwatch with her brother is bad for our
Queen Bee’s reputation, so she would probably want to keep it secret. But what
if her brother is threatening to reveal her secret to her boyfriend? She’d
probably start acting differently, surprising her friends, and the reader.
The third way is to dig deeper into the character’s
mind to find the reasons for her behavior. Why does our Queen Bee so
desperately want to be beautiful? Does she feel that she’s not pretty enough
because her mother has told her that she’s nothing special and she wants to
prove her wrong? Is she mean because she thinks that she’s stupid and the
captain of the football team only likes smart girls?
Finally, you can break character stereotypes by giving the character a goal. Queen Bee might want to get accepted into law school, so she has to have a high GPA. She secretly poisons her biology teacher when she is not ready to take the test. She threatens to spread mean rumors about her best friend if she doesn’t help her with her math homework. The reader understands why she’s so mean, and might actually feel for the poor girl.
