Keep watching this space. There will be new stuff added.
From flat to fab (or at least believable): The Word Nerd weighs in on characterizations
Alasdair's previous posts on characterization introduced excellent ideas and advice on creating characters by making them underdogs, placing them in jeopardy, and by giving them vulnerabilities and conflicts to resolve, either within themselves, between themselves and others, or between themselves and their environment. I had a few thoughts on this (of course).
Characters are created with the following in mind:
- actions
- speech
- thoughts
- other characters’ perceptions of them
- appearance --but with a million caveats. I shouldn’t have to tell you what they are, right?
Gregory Peck and Mary Badham from the 1962 film adaptation of
Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
There
are many stellar characterizations in literature that I could hold up
as examples, but I chose Atticus Finch from Harper Lee’s classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Rather
than give us a running internal monologue from Atticus’s point of view,
the story is told from the point of view of Atticus’s daughter Scout,
who is six at the beginning of the book and nearly 9 at the end.
However, thanks to Lee’s use of dialogue and other people’s
perceptions, we get a fairly thorough picture of Atticus as a lawyer, a
legislator, a father, a friend, a brother, and as a crusader for human
rights. He seems nearly perfect in all respects--patient, tolerant,
brave, unselfish, intelligent, loving--the moral center of the book.
However, the seemingly mild-mannered man who appears to fit into
segregated Southern society like a hand into a glove is actually a
boat-rocker and a progressive thinker. Atticus’s job, his reputation,
and even his family are placed in jeopardy when this white attorney from
a small Alabama town decides to take the case of Tom Robinson, a black
man accused of rape by a white woman. His children are taunted in school
and the case is discussed at dinner tables all over town. Atticus is
quixotically and stubbornly determined to wake up his fellow citizens and make them rethink their ideas about not only race, but also
about their own humanity and what that might mean.Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird
We empathize with the middle-aged widower and single parent who never remarried after his wife died. He never mentions her in the book. Our narrator was only two when her mother died of a sudden heart attack. She only knows about her from the stories her older brother Jem tells her and from the vitriolic comments flung at her from one of the neighbors, Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubose, on how the overall-clad tomboy was a disgrace to her mother’s memory. Romantic-minded souls are left to infer that losing his wife was so painful that Atticus cannot bear to speak of her. Cynics might say that perhaps the marriage wasn’t a happy one and that he’s sparing his children the details. Our modern sensibilities question Atticus’s motives for not talking with his children about their mother. While this may not be considered a “flaw,” it creates tension for the reader and depth--even a little mystery-- for the character.
Atticus Finch cannot conceive of the idea that such an evil human as Robert Ewell can exist, despite the unsavory revelations made about Bob Ewell during Mayella Ewell’s testimony on the stand at Tom Robinson’s trial. Atticus is certain that Ewell had gotten his anger out of his system the day after the trial when Ewell spat on him and threatened him; and that since “there’s not much chance to be furtive in Maycomb,” it’s not likely Ewell will try anything else. Until a moonless Hallowe’en night when Ewell follows the children home from a party at the school and attacks them in the schoolyard. Scout and Jem might have met a violent, senseless death that night. Instead of infusing Atticus with a more obvious weakness such as hubris or a quick temper, Lee, in a stroke of brilliance, makes idealism Atticus’s “flaw.” He clings to the belief that all humans are basically decent, and this extreme hope and trust in humanity nearly costs him his children.
Lee leaves it up to the reader to decide whether Atticus’s idealism is admirable or foolish. Many lively classroom discussions have resulted from the information Lee doesn’t give us. A good writer is able to create a layered, complex character who is, by turns, admirable and frustrating.
Up next: The flawed, tragic hero.
From flat to fab, part II: More thoughts on character development from The Word Nerd
Originally published at The Creative Writing Toolbox and posted here with slight revisions.
Remember, characters are created with the following in mind:
As we progress through the books, peeling back layer upon layer of Snape’s story, we also find out how talented Snape was at an early age. We read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and we are sad for his wasted potential. Having lost the love of his life, haunted by his past and the obsessive drive to atone for it, Snape leads a lonely half-existence. Some fans say that’s a natural consequence for his service to Voldemort as a young man. Others argue that it’s a little harsh to force an individual to pay their entire life for a stupid choice made while still a teen. Sarcastic, misanthropic, and bitter, struggling--and often failing--to put petty resentments aside, Snape isn’t easy to like. Yet he was capable of deep and abiding love. He helps Harry behind the scenes in ways Harry doesn’t find out about until it’s too late to thank him. He was loyal, unselfish, and brave, and he made the ultimate sacrifice to help defeat Voldemort.
Snape may not have been a character you’d want to hang out and have coffee with, yet he was admirable in many ways. I applaud J. K. Rowling for having the courage to create a such a difficult personage and then leaving it to her readers draw their own conclusions about this flawed tragic hero, one of the most morally ambiguous to ever grace the pages of a story directed at a young adult audience.
How many modern American kids have lost a father in a mine explosion and have had to learn to hunt in order to keep their family from starving? How many of them live in a society where “reality TV” is required viewing, and it consists of children killing each other? No reader can fully relate to 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, resident of a post-apocalyptic, dystopic society. Instead, we stick by her as she confronts this society and makes her way through two Hunger Games and a revolution. What we can relate to are the things that are part of universal human experience: love and loss, overcoming adversity, the making of difficult choices--sometimes with disastrous consequences--and questioning the world and our place in it.
It’s not about creating characters who are likable all the time. It should never be about an author’s wish fulfillment or self-insertion into a story. It’s not about creating characters whose shoes the reader can “step into.” Great characters are multifaceted, vulnerable, flawed. There may be times when your reader may want to smack one of your characters upside the head. That’s okay. It’s even healthy. Your readers should care enough about your characters that they evoke such strong emotions. Instead of thinking of your characters as entrants to a popularity contest, aim to create characters with whom your readers want to make the journey.
Female Characters and the Readers Who Love Them
Originally published by my friend A. C. Grant at The Creative Writing Toolbox and presented here with slight revisions.
- actions
- speech
- thoughts
- other characters’ perceptions of them
- appearance --but with a million caveats. I shouldn’t have to tell you what they are, right?
Alan Rickman as Severus Snape from a publicity poster for
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
There's some amazing fan art out there, but not all the pictures have attribution or go back to the original site. If I find a better "tormented soul" Snape picture and am able to get permission from its owner to use it here, I will.
Another fine example of a layered, complex character --and a flipside from Atticus Finch, who was analyzed in my previous post-- is Severus Snape from the Harry Potter books. Snape, a contemporary of Harry’s parents, was bullied while a student at Hogwarts. Unfortunately, one of his antagonists was James Potter, Harry’s father. Snape becomes a professor at the school and, instead of being more compassionate for having suffered abuse at the hands of classmates, becomes a bully himself and makes his students, especially Harry, his targets. He comes across as aloof and uncaring, not the ideal qualities of a teacher. As a young wizard, in an extreme teenaged lapse in judgment, he became one of Voldemort’s minions before Voldemort’s downfall. He later changed sides and spent the rest of his adult life spying on the Death Eaters, but how does one find redemption from such a dark and violent past, none of which can be undone? As we progress through the books, peeling back layer upon layer of Snape’s story, we also find out how talented Snape was at an early age. We read Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and we are sad for his wasted potential. Having lost the love of his life, haunted by his past and the obsessive drive to atone for it, Snape leads a lonely half-existence. Some fans say that’s a natural consequence for his service to Voldemort as a young man. Others argue that it’s a little harsh to force an individual to pay their entire life for a stupid choice made while still a teen. Sarcastic, misanthropic, and bitter, struggling--and often failing--to put petty resentments aside, Snape isn’t easy to like. Yet he was capable of deep and abiding love. He helps Harry behind the scenes in ways Harry doesn’t find out about until it’s too late to thank him. He was loyal, unselfish, and brave, and he made the ultimate sacrifice to help defeat Voldemort.
Snape may not have been a character you’d want to hang out and have coffee with, yet he was admirable in many ways. I applaud J. K. Rowling for having the courage to create a such a difficult personage and then leaving it to her readers draw their own conclusions about this flawed tragic hero, one of the most morally ambiguous to ever grace the pages of a story directed at a young adult audience.
How many modern American kids have lost a father in a mine explosion and have had to learn to hunt in order to keep their family from starving? How many of them live in a society where “reality TV” is required viewing, and it consists of children killing each other? No reader can fully relate to 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, resident of a post-apocalyptic, dystopic society. Instead, we stick by her as she confronts this society and makes her way through two Hunger Games and a revolution. What we can relate to are the things that are part of universal human experience: love and loss, overcoming adversity, the making of difficult choices--sometimes with disastrous consequences--and questioning the world and our place in it.
It’s not about creating characters who are likable all the time. It should never be about an author’s wish fulfillment or self-insertion into a story. It’s not about creating characters whose shoes the reader can “step into.” Great characters are multifaceted, vulnerable, flawed. There may be times when your reader may want to smack one of your characters upside the head. That’s okay. It’s even healthy. Your readers should care enough about your characters that they evoke such strong emotions. Instead of thinking of your characters as entrants to a popularity contest, aim to create characters with whom your readers want to make the journey.
Female Characters and the Readers Who Love Them
Originally published by my friend A. C. Grant at The Creative Writing Toolbox and presented here with slight revisions.
Agatha Heterodyne, Girl Genius, turning the Damsel in Distress convention on its head
After sending them for Alasdair to use in his blog, I realized that my posts about characterizations featured only males as examples of multifaceted, interesting, complex characters. Surely there are some female characters out there that can be held up to similar scrutiny. I’d like to think that the difficulty in creating complex female characters lies in how complex women are in real life, but I’m afraid it’s due more to misunderstanding and even misogyny on the part of society. In fact, it’s a sad commentary that, here in the early 21st century, this even has to be an issue.
Women are pulled in so many directions and sent mixed signals by modern society regarding career, children, education, appearances, aging, and even personality. Assertive, opinionated women in politics or on television are often vilified (you know the word they use. It starts with a “B”.) Thirty years ago, a TV news anchor named Christine Craft was fired from her job for being "too old, too unattractive and wouldn't defer to men." She was 37 years old at the time. I don’t know what’s more horrific here--that a person in her ‘30’s is compelled to file an age-discrimination lawsuit or the idea that a female news and sports reporter had to be deferential to men in order to appeal to the viewing public.
Go to your newsstand and count how many men’s fashion magazines are on the racks. Then count the ones aimed at women. There are far fewer magazines for men, and even they don’t deal with only skin care and accessorizing. I remember when I was a teen and my dad subscribed to Esquire. It wasn’t uncommon to find featured articles by Kurt Vonnegut or Norman Mailer or one of Lloyd George’s grandsons. I haven’t seen anything by Anne Tyler or Amy Goodman showing up in Glamour or Good Housekeeping. Once in awhile, we’re thrown a bone with a two-page article on health care or reproductive issues, but those are rare and, though relevant, keep the worldview pretty narrow. Don’t look for a meaty article on foreign policy or history because you won’t find it.
Instead, women in America are are bombarded with images of size-0 airbrushed plastic figures, gooey romances, celebrity gossip, and cake recipes. Of course I like cooking and make-up and shoes, but I feel insulted that these editors and publishers believe that’s all there is to me. American pre-teen and teen girls are glutted with princess and “damsel-in-distress” stories and told “boys won’t like you if you. . .(get good grades, kick a soccer ball better, have your own opinions)” As a teacher, I see it every day: girls who dumb themselves down because they don’t want to intimidate their friends or alienate the boys. Suddenly, what they think of themselves takes a back seat to what their peers think of them.
I am seeing eight-year-old girls who should be riding bikes and getting dirty sitting in the nail salon having a set of acrylic nails put onto their fingers. Once I saw a little girl in Target who couldn’t have been older than four with expensive salon streaks in her hair. When we begin at such an early age teaching little girls that nails and hair are more important than brains and hearts, it makes it difficult for them to identify true role models when they read or create them when they attempt to write fiction of their own.
Literary archetypes are another problem. Female archetypes generally fall into three categories: The Good Mother, The Bad Mother, The Soul Mate. Women are defined by their relationships, by whether or not there are children or a man in their lives. 1,000 years of Roman rule where women were chattel and a thousand more of Roman influence on government and society haven’t helped the situation any. Similarly, there are thousands of examples in mythology and folklore that present women as conniving and vindictive or as earth-mother-goddess types with very little emotional range.
How to create a female character who isn’t conniving and selfish, a princess, or a Mary Sue?
Stay tuned.
Bitchy vs. Badass: Female Characters, Continued
Originally posted by Alasdair Grant at The Creative Writing Toolbox and presented here with slight changes.
So. . Word Nerd, you got all meta-analytical-cultural-anthropologist-amateur-shrink on us in that last post. Now that we know why it’s sometimes so difficult to create strong female characters, are you going to actually give us pointers on how to do it?
I’ll try. I should mention that the insight shared in this piece was derived from conversations with a psychologist friend and with a friend who worked at a shelter for battered women. Thanks to them both.
Create female characters who’ve given themselves permission to have a voice. The usual character-building advice applies: Give them layers, weaknesses, flaws. Perfect goddesses and gorgeous princesses and the prettiest, most popular girls in school are boring. Make them work for their happy endings, like Terisa Morgan from Stephen R. Donaldson’s Mordant’s Need, (warning: not a YA series) or Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series, Leviathan’s Deryn Sharp, Harry Potter’’s Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley, Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett or Emma Woodhouse, or any other girls/women who take chances, screw things up, learn and grow from their mistakes, move on. They will experience pain, love, and loss in the process, but emerge better and stronger for their experiences. Any of the above-mentioned characters deserve an entire post of their own, but I will instead encourage you to read the books that feature them. As I’ve advised before, read them as a writer, not as a reader.
In giving your female characters permission to have a voice, please be certain you understand the difference between assertive and aggressive. Or, if you will, between badass and bitchy. An assertive person knows who she is and what she wants. She stands up for herself and others but does not force her ideas or desires on somebody else. She can still be proud or stubborn, prickly or cynical, but be careful that it is not at others’ expense. If at any time she has to pay for a mistake, she shoulders that responsibility and does the best she can to make amends, without claiming victimhood or blaming others. In popular culture, Buffy Summers is a good example of what I look for in a “badass” heroine. However, she doesn’t need to have magical powers or mad martial arts skills to qualify as badass. What is much more important is how she evolves as a person and meets her challenges.
An assertive character doesn’t need to be completely self-assured, either. Give her moments of uncertainty, regret, or doubt. She can even carry some bitterness or anger, as long as those are not her defining characteristics. Moments of bitterness or anger are human, so let the bitterness or anger be over some specific event in her life. Seriana, the main character in Carol Berg’s Bridge of D’Arnath series, is carrying some emotional baggage because her husband has been put to death for sorcery and her estate forfeited to the crown. Seri at first comes across as somewhat unpleasant, but when a disoriented young warrior shows up on her doorstep, Seri takes him in, cares for him and embarks on a perilous journey to help him discover who he is--or was. By contrast, a bitchy character would have been so swallowed up in her bitterness over her own troubles that she would never have stepped outside herself to help a stranger, unless she stood to gain personally from doing so. Aside from the occasional bitchy moment, Seri qualifies as badass in my opinion.
A fully-realized heroine doesn’t need a love interest in her life, so when she finds love, it is contentment and fulfillment and partnership, not the missing piece to a puzzle. I know it’s a favored trope in romance, but the problem I have personally with the notion that everybody has a “soul mate” or that one person can be another’s “destiny” is that free will takes a back seat. Nobody should be “irretrievably and irrevocably” in love with anybody else, nor should any female character identify herself by her relationships (a girl with a boyfriend who’s a soccer player referring to herself as a “soccer girl,” for example; she may not even like the game or know anything about it).. Girls and women so portrayed can suffer physical or emotional abuse at the hands of the “irrevocable” partner, and it allows the author an easy “out” --portraying controlling, possessive behavior as protective, romantic, even loving.
You knew there would be feminist rantiness here.
Aggressive women are the bitches of literature. She says, “I want what I want”; her attitudes and actions say “it’s all about me,” with little to no regard for what effect her words or actions will have on others. Some consider the courage and tenacity of Scarlett O’Hara of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone WIth the Wind admirable. She saves her father’s plantation from being taken over by Carpetbaggers and changes with the changing times in the post-Civil-War South. However, Scarlett also steals her sister’s fiance, leases a gang of convicts for cheap labor at her sawmills and hires a ruthless supervisor to oversee them, knowing her charges will be underfed and brutalized but choosing to “think about it tomorrow,” and for Scarlett, tomorrow never comes. For some, her greed and unscrupulousness outweigh her courage and strength. The aggressive character will always stand up for herself but will also demand respect whether she deserves it or not. The assertive character earns our respect and gets ahead on courage and hard work and, sometimes, with a little help from her friends. The aggressive one reaches the top by climbing, literally or figuratively, onto dead bodies.
If your heroine is a character from a time or a place where women have few options, you’ll have to remember that she is a product of her time. Elizabeth Bennett from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice refuses to marry without affection even if it means an uncertain future for herself and her sisters. This typically modern mindset brings applause for its proto-feminist stance. On the other hand, it doesn’t even dawn on Lizzy to try to get admitted to Oxford, or to open a shop in the village so she can take care of herself. Women weren’t admitted to Oxford in 1810, and there was strong social stigma attached to people in trade. If she doesn’t marry, she will have to be at the mercy of male relatives, something we would not find at all admirable for a female character in a modern setting. Yet Lizzy follows her heart and speaks her mind, even to the wealthy and powerful Mr. Darcy and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and we all love her for her wit, intelligence, and courage despite an admittedly narrow worldview.
John Donne wrote that “no man is an island.” There are plenty of Christic figures in literature, and sometimes it’s a cop-out for an author to create such a protagonist so he or she doesn’t have to work on character development for any of the other characters. I challenge you to give your female protagonist some friends. Don’t worry about your heroine looking bad by comparison if she has friends of whatever gender who are prettier or better at math or sports or magic. The fact that she is not insecure because she has diversity in her social circle makes her all the more badass. Develop the supporting cast, and develop her through their eyes.
Finally, as stated in the previous posts about creating characters, don’t try to create a character who will win a popularity contest. Girls and women in our society are often known to set impossibly high standards for themselves at times; the last thing we need is to feel inferior to a character in a book. Your readers should occasionally be frustrated with her choices or actions, just like we all are with our real-life friends. *broken record alert!* The key to character creation lies in creating somebody with whom your readers are willing to make the journey.
Women are pulled in so many directions and sent mixed signals by modern society regarding career, children, education, appearances, aging, and even personality. Assertive, opinionated women in politics or on television are often vilified (you know the word they use. It starts with a “B”.) Thirty years ago, a TV news anchor named Christine Craft was fired from her job for being "too old, too unattractive and wouldn't defer to men." She was 37 years old at the time. I don’t know what’s more horrific here--that a person in her ‘30’s is compelled to file an age-discrimination lawsuit or the idea that a female news and sports reporter had to be deferential to men in order to appeal to the viewing public.
Go to your newsstand and count how many men’s fashion magazines are on the racks. Then count the ones aimed at women. There are far fewer magazines for men, and even they don’t deal with only skin care and accessorizing. I remember when I was a teen and my dad subscribed to Esquire. It wasn’t uncommon to find featured articles by Kurt Vonnegut or Norman Mailer or one of Lloyd George’s grandsons. I haven’t seen anything by Anne Tyler or Amy Goodman showing up in Glamour or Good Housekeeping. Once in awhile, we’re thrown a bone with a two-page article on health care or reproductive issues, but those are rare and, though relevant, keep the worldview pretty narrow. Don’t look for a meaty article on foreign policy or history because you won’t find it.
Instead, women in America are are bombarded with images of size-0 airbrushed plastic figures, gooey romances, celebrity gossip, and cake recipes. Of course I like cooking and make-up and shoes, but I feel insulted that these editors and publishers believe that’s all there is to me. American pre-teen and teen girls are glutted with princess and “damsel-in-distress” stories and told “boys won’t like you if you. . .(get good grades, kick a soccer ball better, have your own opinions)” As a teacher, I see it every day: girls who dumb themselves down because they don’t want to intimidate their friends or alienate the boys. Suddenly, what they think of themselves takes a back seat to what their peers think of them.
I am seeing eight-year-old girls who should be riding bikes and getting dirty sitting in the nail salon having a set of acrylic nails put onto their fingers. Once I saw a little girl in Target who couldn’t have been older than four with expensive salon streaks in her hair. When we begin at such an early age teaching little girls that nails and hair are more important than brains and hearts, it makes it difficult for them to identify true role models when they read or create them when they attempt to write fiction of their own.
Literary archetypes are another problem. Female archetypes generally fall into three categories: The Good Mother, The Bad Mother, The Soul Mate. Women are defined by their relationships, by whether or not there are children or a man in their lives. 1,000 years of Roman rule where women were chattel and a thousand more of Roman influence on government and society haven’t helped the situation any. Similarly, there are thousands of examples in mythology and folklore that present women as conniving and vindictive or as earth-mother-goddess types with very little emotional range.
How to create a female character who isn’t conniving and selfish, a princess, or a Mary Sue?
Stay tuned.
Bitchy vs. Badass: Female Characters, Continued
Originally posted by Alasdair Grant at The Creative Writing Toolbox and presented here with slight changes.
Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood, Emma Watson as Hermione Granger, and Katie Leung as Cho Chang, three witches from the Harry Potter book series. Hermione has been called by some a "sidekick" or a supporting player, but I must respectfully disagree. By any standard, she is a fully-realized character.
Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne Collins's The Hunger Games. It was heartening to see so many students come to school dressed as Katniss this past Hallowe'en.
So. . Word Nerd, you got all meta-analytical-cultural-anthropologist-amateur-shrink on us in that last post. Now that we know why it’s sometimes so difficult to create strong female characters, are you going to actually give us pointers on how to do it?
I’ll try. I should mention that the insight shared in this piece was derived from conversations with a psychologist friend and with a friend who worked at a shelter for battered women. Thanks to them both.
Create female characters who’ve given themselves permission to have a voice. The usual character-building advice applies: Give them layers, weaknesses, flaws. Perfect goddesses and gorgeous princesses and the prettiest, most popular girls in school are boring. Make them work for their happy endings, like Terisa Morgan from Stephen R. Donaldson’s Mordant’s Need, (warning: not a YA series) or Katniss Everdeen from Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games series, Leviathan’s Deryn Sharp, Harry Potter’’s Hermione Granger and Ginny Weasley, Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennett or Emma Woodhouse, or any other girls/women who take chances, screw things up, learn and grow from their mistakes, move on. They will experience pain, love, and loss in the process, but emerge better and stronger for their experiences. Any of the above-mentioned characters deserve an entire post of their own, but I will instead encourage you to read the books that feature them. As I’ve advised before, read them as a writer, not as a reader.
In giving your female characters permission to have a voice, please be certain you understand the difference between assertive and aggressive. Or, if you will, between badass and bitchy. An assertive person knows who she is and what she wants. She stands up for herself and others but does not force her ideas or desires on somebody else. She can still be proud or stubborn, prickly or cynical, but be careful that it is not at others’ expense. If at any time she has to pay for a mistake, she shoulders that responsibility and does the best she can to make amends, without claiming victimhood or blaming others. In popular culture, Buffy Summers is a good example of what I look for in a “badass” heroine. However, she doesn’t need to have magical powers or mad martial arts skills to qualify as badass. What is much more important is how she evolves as a person and meets her challenges.
An assertive character doesn’t need to be completely self-assured, either. Give her moments of uncertainty, regret, or doubt. She can even carry some bitterness or anger, as long as those are not her defining characteristics. Moments of bitterness or anger are human, so let the bitterness or anger be over some specific event in her life. Seriana, the main character in Carol Berg’s Bridge of D’Arnath series, is carrying some emotional baggage because her husband has been put to death for sorcery and her estate forfeited to the crown. Seri at first comes across as somewhat unpleasant, but when a disoriented young warrior shows up on her doorstep, Seri takes him in, cares for him and embarks on a perilous journey to help him discover who he is--or was. By contrast, a bitchy character would have been so swallowed up in her bitterness over her own troubles that she would never have stepped outside herself to help a stranger, unless she stood to gain personally from doing so. Aside from the occasional bitchy moment, Seri qualifies as badass in my opinion.
A fully-realized heroine doesn’t need a love interest in her life, so when she finds love, it is contentment and fulfillment and partnership, not the missing piece to a puzzle. I know it’s a favored trope in romance, but the problem I have personally with the notion that everybody has a “soul mate” or that one person can be another’s “destiny” is that free will takes a back seat. Nobody should be “irretrievably and irrevocably” in love with anybody else, nor should any female character identify herself by her relationships (a girl with a boyfriend who’s a soccer player referring to herself as a “soccer girl,” for example; she may not even like the game or know anything about it).. Girls and women so portrayed can suffer physical or emotional abuse at the hands of the “irrevocable” partner, and it allows the author an easy “out” --portraying controlling, possessive behavior as protective, romantic, even loving.
You knew there would be feminist rantiness here.
Aggressive women are the bitches of literature. She says, “I want what I want”; her attitudes and actions say “it’s all about me,” with little to no regard for what effect her words or actions will have on others. Some consider the courage and tenacity of Scarlett O’Hara of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone WIth the Wind admirable. She saves her father’s plantation from being taken over by Carpetbaggers and changes with the changing times in the post-Civil-War South. However, Scarlett also steals her sister’s fiance, leases a gang of convicts for cheap labor at her sawmills and hires a ruthless supervisor to oversee them, knowing her charges will be underfed and brutalized but choosing to “think about it tomorrow,” and for Scarlett, tomorrow never comes. For some, her greed and unscrupulousness outweigh her courage and strength. The aggressive character will always stand up for herself but will also demand respect whether she deserves it or not. The assertive character earns our respect and gets ahead on courage and hard work and, sometimes, with a little help from her friends. The aggressive one reaches the top by climbing, literally or figuratively, onto dead bodies.
If your heroine is a character from a time or a place where women have few options, you’ll have to remember that she is a product of her time. Elizabeth Bennett from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice refuses to marry without affection even if it means an uncertain future for herself and her sisters. This typically modern mindset brings applause for its proto-feminist stance. On the other hand, it doesn’t even dawn on Lizzy to try to get admitted to Oxford, or to open a shop in the village so she can take care of herself. Women weren’t admitted to Oxford in 1810, and there was strong social stigma attached to people in trade. If she doesn’t marry, she will have to be at the mercy of male relatives, something we would not find at all admirable for a female character in a modern setting. Yet Lizzy follows her heart and speaks her mind, even to the wealthy and powerful Mr. Darcy and Lady Catherine de Bourgh, and we all love her for her wit, intelligence, and courage despite an admittedly narrow worldview.
John Donne wrote that “no man is an island.” There are plenty of Christic figures in literature, and sometimes it’s a cop-out for an author to create such a protagonist so he or she doesn’t have to work on character development for any of the other characters. I challenge you to give your female protagonist some friends. Don’t worry about your heroine looking bad by comparison if she has friends of whatever gender who are prettier or better at math or sports or magic. The fact that she is not insecure because she has diversity in her social circle makes her all the more badass. Develop the supporting cast, and develop her through their eyes.
Finally, as stated in the previous posts about creating characters, don’t try to create a character who will win a popularity contest. Girls and women in our society are often known to set impossibly high standards for themselves at times; the last thing we need is to feel inferior to a character in a book. Your readers should occasionally be frustrated with her choices or actions, just like we all are with our real-life friends. *broken record alert!* The key to character creation lies in creating somebody with whom your readers are willing to make the journey.
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