Maggie C's 7 Commandments For Writing Diversity

     White cisheteronormative wealthy able-bodied, neurotypical males; we all know how to write 'em and they're not hard.  They're literally the most vanilla character to write and read about, and yet we keep cranking 'em out like they're Mountain Dew and we're Bros and/or emotional teenagers dealing with their problems by self-medicating with sugary beverages in an effort to not completely destroy themselves while they self-destruct.
     And I get it.  Writing diverse characters is a scary prospect.  It's not as difficult as we make it seem when we talk about it--it's work, yes, but it's not like you're driving screw drivers into your eyeballs in an effort to excise your spleen.  You're writing about a person.  And writing about people is kind of your job, friend.
     I don't pretend to have all the answers.  I'm an eighteen-year-old with no current profession pursuing an education and career in the arts.  What I have to offer are my own life experiences, the research I've done, and fifteen or so years of experience writing fiction.  I'm not perfect, and I can only do so much.
     But diversity in fiction is important to me.  It's supposed to be the goal of an artist to reflect real life, to, as Shakespeare hath proclaimed, "hold as 'twere the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."
     Modern art doesn't even reflect half of the human experience.  It's white-washed and full of narratives about the wealthy and/or middle class, usually about men trying to succeed and/or get their dicks wet.  When women are included, it's usually as props, or as thin paper creatures that don't really know what they want until a man comes and tells her; when LGBTQ characters are involved, it's usually G, sometimes L, and the entire narrative typically revolves around how difficult it is to be queer, or else they become a stereotypical gag; when a person of color is included, they usually have few speaking lines, or are also stereotypes; when a person with disabilities is included, it's either a cure narrative or an acceptance narrative or a pity-me narrative, and they're usually a stereotype.  By and large, diverse fiction these days is largely made up of stereotypes people pass off as characters to try and reach some sort of quota, and it's not good enough.
     I've been writing fiction featuring diverse protagonists since I was eleven.  I've learned a lot, I've unlearned a lot, I've done a lot of research, I've done a lot of research that negated that research, I've done a lot of researched that negated the negation of that research--and I've come to develop a personal code to write by, compiled here for the first time ever.
     Maggie's Laws of Fiction Diversification:

6.  Thou Shalt Never Assume That You Know Everything: Do Your Research

     Never assume that you're qualified to write a story about someone or something you don't fully understand.  Even if you think you understand it, do some research; trust me, you'll benefit.  Find some surveys, get books out at the library, read articles online, binge relevant tv shows on Netflix, spend hours scanning relevant pages on Wikipedia and eye-guzzling related tropes on tvtropes; the more you can take in, the better equipped you'll be, and the closer to the source these things are, the better.
     Read articles straight people write about the gay experience, sure, that'll help you write relationships between gay and straight people, but always give more credence to first-person reports, because in the end, no one knows something as well as the one who's lived it.  Abled people can totally understand and sympathize with disabled experiences--they just usually don't, and they'll never be as intimately familiar with the teeter-totter of acceptance and resentment, or societal stigma, or the physical/emotional sensations as someone who's lived it.  Any source is valuable, if only because it gives you some idea of how different people see the issue in question, but some are more credible than others.
     And no, that stuff you learned in school about the Civil Rights movement is not enough; I could go on forever about subpar nature of the public school system, but suffice it to say you have an internet, so use it.

5.  Thou Shall Ask Questions; Get Involved

     Routinely ask yourself questions as you write; is this respectful?  Is this accurate?  Does my research support this?  What do other people think?  Is this portrayal stereotypical?  Is this stereotype justifiable, or would people take offense?  Don't be afraid to reach out to people who know what they're talking about and ask questions or contribute to discussion; follow @WeNeedDiverseBooks on Twitter, or keep an eye out for the #DisChat tag, follow authors that frequently discuss life as a marginalized person, and don't be afraid to DM someone from an advice blog or an advocate who welcomes questions (such as myself).

4.  Thou Shall Get Betas

     Okay, so you did a great job, you used your research, you asked questions, that's wonderful; now get Betas that belong to the groups you've casted your characters into.  You protagonist is a black paraplegic?  You should have both black and disabled CPs/Betas, paraplegic if at all possible.  You may not be able to find a beta or CP for every demographic you cover, but the closer you can get, the better--and absolutely do not assume that you don't need this step.  You can do all the research, avoid stereotypes like the plague, and still make a mistake--it could be something simple and stupid, a mistranslation of a language you don't really speak, you used the name of the wrong tribe, you used a term or grammatical structure that only seems offensive to the people to whom it would actually refer.
     There are a lot of things you can get wrong and never realize, and a lot of other people might not realize either--which is why it's important to fix them before your MS goes anywhere near print.  Just because most people won't notice doesn't mean it's okay not to fix it.
     Make sure the right people are betaing your work.

3.  You Will Get It Wrong

     It's inevitable.  No matter how much you rake over that MS with a fine-toothed comb, you're gonna fuck it up somewhere along the line.  It's inevitable.  That's why we have CPs and Betas and Editors and Agents and more Editors and Publishers and more Editors; humans err.  That's kind of our thing, and it's to be expected.
     You're gonna fuck up.  Just like I fucked up the 10 Commandments theme right here right now.  That's life.  Sometimes you screw the pooch.
     Don't let it get to you.  Don't let it scare you.  Every mistake is something to learn from, a lesson you needed but just got a little late, and it's okay.  As long as you don't close yourself off and insist that you're infallible, things will be okay; you'll figure out where you went wrong, apologize to whoever you offended, and get it right the next time.
     Also:  If you've done the research and you did your best, anyone who screams at you for making a mistake isn't worth your time.  Listen to the people who critique your work, but don't bother trying to please everybody because

2.  Someone Will Always Be Offended

     There was that "Trans-Ginger" episode of South Park a while back that stirred up quite a controversy; I knew a lot of trans people who were really pissed off about it, but I also knew some who were really pleased with the way it turned out.  Likewise, I'm sure there were people who were offended by the South Park episode featuring Tourette's, but I personally have found it to be the most accurate depiction on television I've ever seen.
     I've also seen a number of cases where people were offended by someone's story only for it to come out that the experiences of the marginalized character were based off of the experiences of the like-marginalized author.  Actually, that one's not uncommon--I can't tell you how many times I've seen long, drawn-out arguments on Twitter break out because so many people don't want to hear autistic stories written by autistic authors.
     Point is: there's always going to be someone who likes what you write, no matter how terrible, and no matter how factually and emotionally accurate, there will always be someone who takes offense.  You can't let it get to you.  Consider the reactions of your audience, take them into consideration, ask yourself if you could have done better, but if you honestly wouldn't change a thing?  Don't sweat it.
     I, for one, fully expect people to be offended by the way I write characters based off myself.  I certainly won't like it, but I expect it.  That's how the internet often works these days.

1.  Everyone is human

     As I see it, this is the most important thing to remember when writing diversity--no matter who they are, no matter what they look like, no matter where they come from or what their motivations or limitations are, this character you've chosen to create is a human being.  They have thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams; they are three dimensional, with hobbies and passions and friends and complex relationships with those friends or families and hopes and dreams; they're the best at something, they're the worst at something, they're decent at some stuff, they're bad at other stuff, they have things they do for profit and things they do for others and things they do just because it makes them happy, they have virtues and vices, talking points and flaws.
     Your characters are not just what makes them diverse, and forming their entire arc around that one (or those multiple) thing(s) is a failure on your part as a writer to impart life into your character.
     Before anything and everything else, I make sure that my characters are three dimensional; the rest will follow.  People are people are people are people, and that's what it all comes down to.  You might get things wrong--your research might be from the wrong sources, you might have conflated two groups on accident, you might have played into stereotypes without realizing it, and if that's so, you fix it--if you can--and apologize and learn from that mistake; you make better decisions next time.  But at least you'll know that you created something real.  Maybe not perfect, maybe not fully accurate, maybe not what everyone wanted!  But you didn't steal away anyone's humanity in the process.

0.  Do No Harm

     I don't do stereotypes; I don't half-ass my research; I don't pin "types" into certain categories, and I try my damnedest to make sure that I'm not accidentally demonizing diversity (and since I have a soft spot for writing objectively terrible, immoral, and amoral protagonists, I have my work cut out for me) or giving in to harmful tropes and plots.
     As writers, we have an obligation to be honest and hard-working, well-researched and goodwilled, because artists determine the fate of mankind.  That may seem a little overdramatic, and maybe it is, but who would you say has been most influential to you over the course of your life?  After your parents (for good or for ill) and possibly your siblings or extended kin, it's probably an artist--a writer, a movie-star, a photographer, a director, a comedian.  Artists have immense power in this world--we are the voices children are listening to, we are the modern philosophers.  Science teaches kids the how and the what; we deal with the whys.
     Doctors and psychologists take an oath to Do No Harm, and it's my firm belief that it's our job to do the same.  We can't promise we won't accidentally do harm, but we should strive, at all times, to make sure we aren't making life hard for ourselves, our kith, our kin.
     Art is exceedingly influential, and we should never use that influence for evil.

Your Protagonist Should Be Popping Pills

     I like pills.
     No, not those kinds of pills; I like ibuprofen and my gabapentin and, when I need it, some good old 'cillin for those pesky hard-to-kill bacteria!
     I don't abuse anything prescription, or OTC (okay, maybe I take a little too much ibuprofen, but I do what I can to get by), but when I need them I need them. Some people think they make you weak (they don't), and I totally understand choosing not to medicate--if you've read my series on Tourette's, you know I chose not to medicate for that--but popping amoxacillin, tossing back some ondansetron, or chugging some cough syrup makes me feel like I'm doing something.  I can't get down on a germ's level to get my pathogenicide on, so I do the next best thing and drop some poison down my gullet (It's bacteria poison, not people poison, don't worry).
     Taking pills is an active measure--reactive, in a sense, but certainly not passive.
     So your protagonist should be popping pills, too--sometimes it's reactive pills, like a revenge plot, or a murder mystery, or a typical *shudder* Chosen One prophecy.  Sometimes your protagonist will be popping vitamins (or "vitamins") instead, a proactive measure, like when little kids go exploring in the attic, or a troubled youth starts plotting his first Get Rich Quick scheme, or a suspicious dude decides to stake out a sketchy guy's house just to see what the hell his deal is.
     Sometimes they'll have to procure the pills themselves (the pills are metaphors for options at this point) like when any character ever goes after meds for their grandmother (not-so-metaphorical), and sometimes they'll be handed them, like Neo in The Matrix (also not really a metaphor... Well, it was a metaphor in the movie, so I guess it's like a meta metaphor?).
     Neo ostensibly has two options--take the red pill, find out what all his shit's about, take the blue pill, pretend it never happened.  I think we can all agree that watching a blue-pill Neo would have been a really boring movie, which brings me to my next point--your character has to take the right pills--which are often actually the wrong pills.
     This is getting confusing and way too meta metaphorical, so I'm going to take a step back and stop talking about pills for a minute.
     The point is:  An active protagonist will, ninety nine percent of the time, make a much more interesting protagonist.  The actions they take may be the ones that destroy them, or the ones that eventually lift them up, but the active pursuit of something is far more interesting than passive acceptance.  If a character makes no decisions, or makes decisions only because they have literally no other choice ("I am the only person in the entire world that can stop the bad guy from killing literally everyone"), it's going to be much harder to make them sympathetic.
     Remember the friend you had in high school that always complained about their life, but never took steps to make things better, never took your advice, and did only what they had to to just barely skirt by?  You may have loved the hell out of them, but I bet they weren't a ton of fun to be around for any length of time; a passive protagonist is a lot like that friend, and unfortunately, a novel necessitates that a LOT of time be spent with them.
     We, as an audience, care more about the character that self-medicates with drugs or shrinks themselves down to microscopic size to murder their own parasites or goes on a murder spree when they find out their pharmaceutical company is screwing over people with cancer than we do about the one that finds out they're dying and just accepts it, rolls over, and waits for death or a savior.
     We like protagonists that, for good or ill, for better or worse, in intellect and stupidity and both sickness and health, have a goal in mind, even if it's a vague or reactive one, and take risks to try to accomplish that goal.
     Your audience, whether they know it or not, wants pill-poppers, and gosh darn it, they want those pills to be as red as a baboon's ass.

The Coates Curriculum for Creating Characters (And Five Other Ways To Do It Too)

     Recently I had a conversation with one of my friends about our shelved drafts and past WIPs, and she admitted that she has a really hard time writing anything but fanfiction.  She seems to have a good handle on world-building and plot, but she has difficulty creating her own characters, and I know for a fact that she's not the only one.
     Now everyone creates characters differently; everyone has their own process, their own methods for getting under those characters' skins, and character building can be difficult, especially if you're new to writing, or if you've been in the fanfiction trenches for a long time.
     Bu never fear!  TheSpiderWriter is here to help!
     Ultimately, only you can do you, but here are a few methods that I use to get my characters breathing.


1.  Borrow Someone Else's

A)  The Technique

     Notice I said borrow.  Borrow, not steal.  What's the difference?
     The difference is, stealing someone's character is stealing someone's character--you take a vivacious figure, like, Megamind from Megamind, as a random, nonspecific example, and you plop them in your story, change a few details--maybe he's a human instead of an alien!  But he's still got a big head, and mispronounces lots of words, and his parents died saving his life, and he has a crush on that reporter girl, and....yeah.  That's stealing.  You stole Megamind and gave him a different name and some cosmetic surgery; he's still not yours.
     Borrowing is more like taking someone else's character and tracing the outline, then filling it in with different stuff.  You're not trying to put Megamind in your story, just pieces of him--his childish naiveté, perhaps, with a smidgen of angst and a dollop of arrogance.  Then you take these broad strokes and refine them, using the characters around them and the history you make for them to make them new and different and completely your own--Megamind, evil mastermind alien supervillain-turned-hero becomes, I don't know, *vague hand gesture indicating the application of the Fuck It Adjustment* Don Cheezley, a sensitive high schooler hiding the pain of being orphaned beneath a front of arrogance, who, until his parents' death, was homeschooled, and kept largely away from the rest of the world because of his parents' religious beliefs.
     Now that he's in a foster home, and public school, his inner world is dark, labyrinthine, and tumultuous, but the outer world is bright and new and strange.  As he explores the outside world for the first time, he makes friends, enemies, tries his best to survive high school, and makes a few new friends who are out of place in the grand scheme of things, but have a handle on this whole "irl" thing.  With their help he starts learning how to blend in, but also slowly comes to the realization that his parents were cultists, and while they loved him very much, the damage from the things they taught him--and the things they didn't--will be difficult to reverse.
     (That character you can steal.  I have no use for him.  ... yet.)

B)  The Work

     To keep yourself from plagiarizing, and to make sure that this character is breathing (it can be hard to tell with borrowed souls), you have to work hard.  Developing the backstory and making this character stand out on their own is crucial--and it's important that the characters they'll be interacting with aren't all from the same cast this one was taken from, or else you'll just end up with a bland echo chamber of someone else's work.  If this is how you create all your characters, you first of all have a lot of work to do, and second of all, should be taking them from variegated sources.
     You may have to do a lot of writing before you really start writing--when I started the first draft of what would come to be called Captive Stars, I borrowed a couple characters that I had trouble writing as anything but the same characters in an AU--I had to write five or six drafts of the story's start before the character's started to really live their own lives, no longer beholden to the source material from which they'd sprung.  It was only once the sweet baby was snarking at the protagonist and the practical sidekick was romantisizing the world around him that I could call them real, and it was at that point that they really took on a life of their own.
     Ultimately I ended up scrapping those characters completely because the story took a very different turn and they were no longer necessary (such things happen, unfortunately--you may have to do a lot of scrapping along the way to your final draft, my fine friends), but I keep them in my back pocket for a prospective future project--you never know when something you scrap could become useful in the future, after all.
     My point (however much work it's taken to get to it) is that, while this is arguably the easiest route to take, there's still a lot of work you'll need to do, because these characters still need to be yours--no one else's.
   

2.  Frankenstein It

     Another method is to take pieces from multiple characters--whether they are yours or someone else's--and MacGyver them into something useful.  This one is a little bit more difficult to figure out, but so long as you don't let any one character donate too many limbs, it's easier to make this creature your own--when done well, it becomes one of those perfect blends where no one reading the novel can tell where any one trait came from.
     Sticking with the Don Cheezeley example, maybe you want Don's love interest/good friend to be wacky but in touch with reality, and also snarky, so you take the giggly madman do-as-you-like parts of Spongebob Squarepants, the logician parts of Spock, and the sardonic wit of Severus Snape, super glue 'em together, and grin at your monstrosity before it starts speaking in tongues and tries to devour you.
     When you do this, there's a lot of sanding down that needs to happen--you can't have Snape's wit AND his moody demeanor if you're trying to make him do the Spongebob laugh, and the Spongebob's Cloudcuckoolander activities will be greatly reeled in by Spock's logical approach to life--you pick the parts you want, then the rest you discard.  The holes between, or the parts where conflicting traits would ordinarily overlap?  Those you have to fill in for yourself--and again, your backstory and the world around your character will play a vital role in this; no human being develops in a vacuum, and as such characters cannot be completely disconnected from the world they live in.

3.  Base It Off Someone From Real Life

     Basing a character off of someone you know IRL can be tricky--if you make them too similar, you risk offending the person they're built after, and a possible suit for defamation of character or whatever the kids get sued for these days.  When basing a character off of someone from real life, unless the figure in question is a public one, you'll want to be subtle about it being an actual person.  Keep it loose--take what you need and make up the rest, and try not to let the character resemble the person too much--and whatever you do, never, absolutely not once ever, use their real name, or anything close to it.  You don't want to get into that.
     Combining more than one person can help, or you could combine the person with one or more fictional characters--you could Frankenstein from a little bit of everything, if you wanted!
     Again, remember your backstory and supporting cast; they. are. vital.

     The first three all come down to; borrow all you like (borrowing is, ultimately, what we're doing every time we're inspired by something--there's no shame in it) but never take any too much from any one source.
     Now we come to the more difficult parts--the parts where you try to conjure something out of nothing.
     *Cue dramatic music*

4.  From Scratch--Planned

     There are a lot of ways to set about making your own completely "original" character, but it comes down to this:  This is where she is, what she's doing there, where she's been, and what she looks like.  These are the things she likes to do, this is what she wants, why she wants it, and these are the things in her way.
     That's pretty much it.  You can fill out character questionnaires to get a better idea of who your character is, or use random generators to pin it down (I recommend Springhole.net), or just jot stuff down on paper until you feel that your character is fleshed out.  As long as you have the basic questions written out, you have a character,  Making them breathe is a matter of finding their voice, their habits, their manner of speaking--keep a character bible, write down everything you can, search out lists online, watch people as you go about your day.  Think about your character's quirks and habits, the way they walk, talk, dress--write it all down, maybe draw your character, and hope for the best.
     In the end, hoping for the best is all we can do.  Sometimes, a character you create will fall flat.  That's okay, though!  That's why we edit, after all.

5.  From Scratch--Spur Of The Moment

     Sometimes you just need to wing it.  Start out with a name, a general purpose, a smidgen of an idea, and just go.  It's the Improv Method for character creation, basically--you just need to let the information flow, and allow this character to reveal itself over time.
     It seems like a nothing method, but honestly?  It works.  These can sometimes be your best characters; they have the most potential to surprise you, and just like with Improv (can you tell that I just got back from my Improv class?), some of the best things come from surprising yourself.  Hell, a lot of my favorite characters are ones I got to know by going in blind--basically the whole cast of (my shelved WIP) Silhouette were sparse sketches that came alive when I turned them out on their journey, and when I wrote The Snake With Amber Eyes, a little girl named Shelby snuck in from the sidelines and basically stole the story.
      These little guys can be a handful, and the con to this method is that it can leave you stymied in the middle of a scene because you don't have all the information you need for them, or the character can come out inconsistent or not-fully-formed, which is a valid issue.  They can also take the story completely off the rails and leave you reeling, but, as always, it can--and should--be fixed in post.

6.  How I Make My Characters

     >Stares at screen
     >Makes guttural noise
     >Throws up arms
     >Makes pterodactyl noise
 
      The truth is, my methodology for creating characters is wildly inconsistent.  I mix and match from the list above--for some projects, I base characters off of books and movies I've seen, for some I plan them all out beforehand and fill out a million questionnaires, sometimes I sit for hours using random generators to develop a human being, for some I slam real people onto the pages and change their names and give them super powers, and for some, I just straight up wing it.
     Consistencies exist, though--I almost always draw my characters, at least the important ones, so I can get a feel for what they look like, and use their facial features and posing, etc. to reveal aspects of their personalities.  I do a lot of characterizing in my head on the fly--I listen to music that reminds me of the character, connecting it to their life and choices, I fill in the blank spaces of their backstories and envision scenes with them as I go for walks or try to sleep at night.
     Sometimes I tie characters into the zodiac to better pin down their personalities--this character is really emotional and all-or-nothing, so maybe he's a Scorpio, which would also indicate blah blah blah, etc. etc.
     But a lot of the time, I'm making it up as I write, or else sitting up in bed at three in the morning to scribble down notes before I fall asleep and forget them.

     The Coates Curriculum for Creating Characters essentially comes down to this:

1.  Make them breathe.
2.  Keep thinking about them.

     It doesn't matter, ultimately, how it's done, as long as it works for you and produces a character that seems like more than just a puppet on a string or a thinly veiled clone of someone else.  Just keep working at them, pushing them, trying to figure out their insides, and once you think you have it down pat, let them surprise you--even if you've planned everything out perfectly beforehand, if they ask you to deviate from the path, let them do so--you can always scrap it later.
     But you might be pleasantly surprised at how well the character knows themselves--which is to say, probably better than you do.

Dynamic vs. Static Protagonists

     In case you forgot about that one English class where your teacher prattled on about the difference between a Static and Dynamic character, a Dynamic character is one who changes throughout the course of the novel, while a Static character is one that doesn't.
     It's a common misconception that a character has to change throughout the course of a novel in order to be the protagonist of said novel.  While it's always nice to see a character growing or devolving, sometimes it isn't necessary; there's a time and a place for everything, and this is no exception.
     So how do you know which approach is best for your book?

1.  What's your genre?

     Obviously, if your genre is bildungsroman, your protagonist is going to have to change throughout the course of the novel (that's essentially the entire point of a bildungsroman--from the Wikipedia page, "In a Bildungsroman, the goal is maturity, and the protagonist achieves it gradually and with difficulty."), but in an action or thriller, a change in your protagonist is anything but required--sometimes having your character change along the way would get in the way of the storyline, or use up too much time we could be using to see anti-heroes wailing on bad guys.  
     Take a look at anything starring Liam Neeson, or any long-standing, episodic or mostly episodic book series (Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Encyclopedia Brown, Sherlock Holmes, The Boxcar--Um.  Huh.  Maybe this is a Mystery Thing, too)--not only does having a static protagonist work, but one could argue that having these characters become dynamic could harm the storyline--Taken is successful because Liam Neeson kills human traffickers, not because his character is interesting or particularly compelling (he's not, he's just JustifiableMurderer!Liam Neeson), and the rest are popular because the same person, or group of people, solve mysteries in a manner which always re-establishes the status quo, meaning that, much like most television shows, they can be read in almost any order with very little background in order to be understood.  
     If you can somehow find a way to go against convention when deciding on whether to make your character dynamic or static, by all means, try--just keep in mind that it can be difficult to pull off, especially when the genre hinges upon change.

2.  As they are at the beginning of your story, can your character overcome what's been placed before them?

     Take a look at your protagonist; who are they at the beginning of your novel?  Now take a look at where you plan to have them end up.  Can they, as they are at the inciting incident, tackle the book's climax and come out with the same result that you intend them to achieve?  Are they strong enough, fast enough, smart enough?  Do they lack dedication or willpower?  Or do they possess too much?  Do they need to crash and burn before they can crawl to the finish line you have devised?
     Take a look at two recent icons of the twenty-first century, Harry Potter and Liam  Neeson's Taken character; at the inciting incident of Taken, when the daughter is stolen, Liam Neeson has everything he needs to destroy the bad guys, namely his ass-kicking skills.  However, upon first receiving his admissions letter Harry Potter, young and ignorant to the ways of magic, has none of the skills necessary to win against Voldemort--or even Quirrel.  Thus, Liam Neeson works as a static protagonist, but Harry Potter, unless he was designed to lose, does not.
     If you don't yet know what the outcome of your ending will be, think of what you do know--
what are their goals and obstacles?  What will they need to overcome them?  Who are their friends?  Do their friends change, and must they change in order to keep up?  Or must they fall behind, and allow their friends to leave?
     What about the antagonist?  Can they beat the antagonist as they are?  Does the antagonist change?  Are they meant to defeat or be defeated?  Is nature one of the antagonists?  Usually when a character goes up against nature, the character is forced to change, since it would take an enormous feat of strength to bend nature to one's whims--strength which few protagonists possess.  However, if nature is controlled by a God with which the protagonist might, as they are, be able to strike a deal with, character change may still be unnecessary.

          Whatever suits your novel best, literature has long been littered with protagonists of both the dynamic and static varieties--whatever is best for your novel is ultimately what should be done.  If you're not sure what that best thing is, you can always ask for advice.  If you absolutely cannot find one way or the other, eenie-meenie-mihnie-moe it and seek the advice of your critique partners once it's finished.  Just don't let anyone tell you that either method is inherently wrong.
     Unless you're trying to turn a bildungsroman protagonist into a static character.  I don't think that can be done (but please correct me if im wrong id love to see how that would work).

Catching and Killing the God-Mod

     Mary Sues, as I have previously discussed, started out as characters that changed the behavior of the universe and characters around them to fit the whim of the author--usually because they're author inserts in the first place.  But since those early days of Star Trek fanfiction, the term Mary Sue has come to represent any character (usually female) who happens to be too perfect, with too few flaws.  Really, the term Mary Sue has evolved to mean a confusing number of things, too numerous to pin down--it now means so much that it means nothing.

     Ignoring for now the original definition of a Mary Sue, I'm going to fixate on "too perfect" characters--Our Aylas, our Supermans, our Eragons, we know the type; over-powered and under-flawed, these are characters who always know what's best, always do what's right, always win, and never have any substantial problems that need more than a few chapters of angst to fix.

     While nothing in writing is inherently bad, these characters are definitely not on the "inherently good" side of the bell curve.  They're not harmful, they don't hurt people--but they're boring.  They bore you absolutely to death.  When your character is overpowered and underflawed, every battle they ever face is going to feel contrived, so nothing is ever going to feel satisfying.

     When I was coming up in the (*shudder* Warriors) role playing ranks, waaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy back in 2009, we had a specific name for these characters--we called them "God Mods."  As in, "This character has been modified to assume a God-like status."  Creating or playing a God-Modded character was the act of God-Modding, and made you a God-Modder.

     In role play, this was seen as an unfair advantage, and many site homepages had this among their top three on the list of rules, right up there with no Power Playing.  It could result in penalties as severe as suspension or even banishment.  In writing God-Mods can't get you banned, but they can severely damage the quality of your story.

     While a God-Mod can be an author insert, and can be a Mary Sue as originally described, it may only be an author's favorite character (an "author's baby" gone wrong).  God-Mods tend to be super smart, super attractive, and super important (for no obvious or even tangible reason), and they also tend to have talents and sometimes literal superpowers far surpassing that of other characters within.  Essentially, the God-Mod is the very epitome of in-world perfection.  If they have any flaws at all, they're either informed flaws (flaws which the narrator tells us about, but which we never bear witness to) or "cute"/useful flaws--he's so clumsy it's adorable, teehee, or he has a terrible temper, but only when he's talking to bad guys.

     Just being amazing isn't enough--amazing characters can be plenty overpowered and still manage to register as non-God-Mods, because fully realized characters, super or not, have flaws and limits of both mind and body.  They may be unjustifiably cruel at times, their powers may only work for a small ten-minute window each day, they may not really be able to hear out of their left ear at all, and only have normal (i.e. NOT SUPER) hearing in the right, etc.

     Whatever your character's limits and flaws, abilities and disabilities, they need to be meaningful--your character should be truly, honestly challenged in their endeavors.  The villain should be strong enough to pose a real threat to your hero, and your hero should be flawed enough to make it conceivable that she might fail.  You can't worry about a character if they don't have the capacity to fail, and without worry there's no staying power--no matter how interesting the plot, people won't want to read about how Mister Perfect saved the day as he yawned into his palm just by flicking his perfectly-manicured nails in the villain's general direction.

     Don't let the God Mods win, folks; seek them out and wrangle them in, murder them that they may be reborn into a more imperfect form.  Only then will they truly shine.

#SueQuest: Questioning The Validity of Mary Sue

     The other day, trying to find a control to use for The Mary Sue Litmus Test (for the sake of a blog post, you see), I asked my friend Rebekah if I could use her, thinking that she, a real person, couldn't possibly test positive for Mary Sue.  I started asking questions, and Rebekah and I ended up turning it into something of a game, then into a livetweet session, which we lovingly entitled #SueQuest. 

     But the more questions we answered, the more it seemed like my friend truly was a Mary Sue--something straight out of a bad high school drama, almost.  Even with a metric fuckload of desuifers, she ended up scoring a forty-five--five points away from "BURN IT AND RUN!" territory!

     It seemed hilarious, of course, but it really got me thinking.  Thus, I tested myself--and I also came out a Mary Sue, with 43 points of Sueness!   And this is without answering any of the "Is this character named after you?" type questions.  In fact, the only person I tested who didn't end up a Mary Sue was my dog, Amy--and she still had 27 points, placing her in the "be very careful" range.
 

She is little more than a very tiny bug.

     I'm not about to say that this means anything--certainly not anything concerning Syera Miktayee, whose website I enjoy and frequent quite...um....frequent...ly.  Shut up.  It's not like it's just this one test--Rebekah and I came up a Mary Sue on every test I could find.

     But it does remind me of a few posts by the women down at Rewriting Mary Sue, and some points that have been made--how the term Mary Sue began as a term for bad fanfiction author inserts who bent the entire fabric of the universe to their whim so that things would turn out well for them; for whom there was never any question of winning, for whom the best always occurred, the worst flitting through only briefly, trivially, and with great contrivance; but how it has now come to mean any character who happens to have too much power or be too good at too many things--and the fact that the term is disproportionately leveled against females.

     As Jenn Lyons pointed out in one of the above links, male characters have to be so Mary Sue that they're freaking SUPERMAN before anyone will call them a Mary Sue--or Gary Stu, if you prefer the more masculine term.  When a man is Batman, he's Batman; when a woman is Batman, she tends to get slapped with a citation.

     One of our goals as writers is to create realistic, three dimensional characters that still manage to be out-of-this-world fantastic--most of us don't read superhero stories to see how regular "normal" people are processing the events.  We read superhero stories to watch people with amazing abilities overcome impossible odds using their incredible talents!

     But how can we ever expect to see realistic, three-dimensional characters if two American teenagers from the real world (without superpowers, I might add) register as Mary Sue right off the bat?  I definitely agree that characters who bend the world to their whims are a problem, as are overpowered, unflawed characters (though the term for this, I was originally taught, is God-Modded), but I think this is something definitely worth considering the next time you decide to trash a Mary Sue.  Do you have a problem with this character because she doesn't have realistic flaws, because she makes things stop making sense?  Or do you dislike her because you think she's too smart and too beautiful and too talented all at the same time?  There's an expectation in society that women are to be only one or two of these, never three, and never, ever any more than that.

     If you're ever in doubt, play the sex-swap game; if you make this character a man, do you have the same reaction?  If you compared her to a male superhero, how does she rank?  Is she really as bad as Superman?  Or are you just upset that this portrayal of a woman is going against the grain of the stereotypes you've been taught to separate them into?

     I encourage you all to play the #SueQuest game; test yourself, your friends, your family--just don't forget to tag it if you do, so I can see what your outcomes are!  What are your thoughts on Mary Sues?  Feel free to discuss your Sue Views or deconstruct some characters in the comments section!

How To Write Tourette's, Part Two: Character Basics

     Characters with Tourette's Syndrome are uncommon, but as our understanding of the disorder increases and awareness spreads, we're finding that it's more commonplace in real life than previously thought.  As I mentioned in this post, there the numbers were once as low as one in every thousand children, some think that the statistics might actually be one in every hundred.  As the prevalence rises irl, why shouldn't it rise in the media?

     So let's talk shop.

     How do you design a character with Tourette's?  Start with a character without Tourette's.  The disorder has a typical onset of age 7-12, but the full range extends further, and there is no "typical" case of Tourette's.  Regardless of the age, your character existed before the Tourette's, even if only in an infantile stage.  They had likes, dislikes, interests, hobbies, skills, a personality--before the Tourette's, your character was a whole person.

     Take a minute to think about how old your character was when their tics started, and what they were like before the onset.  Make a list of the things they enjoyed, the things they hated, and what they felt--their relationships, their background, their passions and opinions and lifestyle.

     Miribeth Cumberbatch, a girl in my current WIP, is an athletic teenager with a passion for body-building.  She loves to read and does fairly well in school.  She's always had trouble making meaningful connections with kids her age and tends to spend a lot of time with her mothers.  Until moving to Niloh, Miribeth never really questioned the state of the world--like many teens, she took things as they were and dealt with what problems she needed to on a day-to-day basis.  She has very few strong opinions and always tries to find the path of least resistance and lessened conflict when she can; her muscles are just for show.  Her family is poor, so she likes to do for others (in a non-monetary fashion) and she feels particularly protective of her mothers, feeling that they work hard enough to provide her with what they can.  Thus, when she senses that something would inhibit plans they're excited about or limit the options available to them, Miribeth tends to omit, stretch the truth, or outright lie.
     And she also has Tourette's.

     Reading that passage isn't terribly important, so don't feel bad if you tl;dr-ed it; the important part lies in the fact that there's a lot of shit up there, and her disorder takes up the line at the end.  Am I saying it's not a part of who she is?  FUCK no!  It colors every part of who she is, but people have a tendency to start with a disorder (or a phobia/sexuality/etc. etc.) and do the rest later, which often ends in disaster.  Maybe you already have a firm handle on CREATING the characters and you just need help doing the actual nitty-gritty shit, in which case just skip down a bit, no one told you you had to read the whole article.  But please don't just ASSUME you're one of those people, either.  If you have trouble writing/have never written a character with something "different" about them before, at least try it this way once.

     "Okay Maggie, I have my character.  Now what?"  Now you start to "filter in" the disorder.  How old was your character when they began experiencing tics?  What about when they were diagnosed?  The younger your character is when they start experiencing tics, the more used to them they're likely to become--but the less accepting their classmates are likely to be.  Depending on the child and the parents, it can also be much harder for the parents to understand that what's happening to their child isn't voluntary; young children aren't as capable of explaining to their parents that they're not in control of what their body is doing, and since many young children will lie about anything they think they can get away with, it can be hard for parents to believe it even if the child manages to express the sentiment coherently.

     When children begin onset at older ages, however, it can be seen as a purposeful attempt at being contrary, particularly if the children have contrary personalities.  Some parents don't believe in Tourette's, or will never be able to admit that something is happening to their child, but I'll touch on parental impacts later.

     The larger the gap between onset and diagnosis, the more emotional damage the child is likely to suffer at the hands of the disorder and those around them.  Without a diagnosis the child might be scared (or even terrified!), uncertain, and try to repress their tics, which rarely works and is extremely painful to do.  The child may be afraid that other people might notice, and when people do notice they're not likely to immediately react with understanding--most people don't know anything about Tourette's.

     In the time between my onset and diagnosis, I remember being terrified every time I went to play practice, afraid that someone would notice the way my neck twitched and that I'd be thrown out of the play and never allowed to act again.  I was afraid that the people I considered stage friends would think I was a freak and never talk to me again, or worse, ridicule me for something I had no control over.  I still remember crying in the bathroom of the church basement one day during a water break because we were trying to dance and I couldn't keep my head still, and I was one hundred percent convinced that I'd be found out.

     If your story involves your character at a young age, these may be experiences you'll want to touch on, but you'll want to consider them even if the character is older.  The things that other children (and parents!) do and say when you're in such a fragile state can be more adhesive than hot glue, and they can affect the future behaviors and decisions of your characters.  For instance, Miribeth's onset was at the age of seven, and her diagnosis at the age of nine.  Her tics were mostly mild, but her teachers were convinced that she was a defiant little shit, so her classmates teased her and made fun of the noises and the faces she made.  This is part of the reason that Miribeth has trouble forming deep bonds with kids her age--she can't forget that some of her classmates would call her the Grinch or ask her where her owner was when she barked, and teachers make her nervous because she had too many of them say the wrong things and ask the wrong questions.

     After diagnosis, things are different depending on the school, the parents, the teachers, the student--just as in all things, the variables make a difference.  I've also found that emotions concerning Tourette's are often in flux; the child may come to terms with their affliction following diagnosis, but they'll have days when all they can do is cry, days when they want to hit people and scream at the world, days when all they want is to be left alone or else held close--it can be an isolating experience, and it can make a child feel like a monster, or like they're broken.  Children can learn to accept their disorder and to love themselves, Tourette's and all, but it is an uphill climb, and even once it evens out, the occasion rainstorm can send you sliding right back down to your last campground, especially if the terrain (ie, the variables mentioned earlier) is unforgiving.

     In the next post on the subject I'll either dive deeper into Tourette's personal impact, or talk about parent, teacher, and comrade feelings and reactions.  I'm probably forgetting things and therefore may need to revisit this later, but the best way to figure out the personal impact of Tourette's in any given situation is to consider your character's personality and/or ask someone who has it--my inbox (or the comments section!) is always open if you have any questions, and if you have friends with Tourette's they may be quite pleased to share their experiences.  If anyone has anything they'd like to add, let me know!  The comments section is always open!

How To Write Tourette's Part One: Neurology

Neurology:

     Tourette's is a neurological disorder in which one experiences both motor and verbal tics.  There are a myriad of tic disorders, but the defining aspect of Tourette's is the presence of at least one motor and one vocal tic each.  These are caused, it's believed, by malfunctions in the dopamine system, dopamine being a neurotransmitter.  What happens, essentially, is that excess dopamine rushes through the system at uneven intervals, causing parts of the body to move on their own, and on occasion a scarcity of dopamine can cause body parts to become stiff and immobile.  This dis-regulation is the heart of the disorder.

     Cases vary greatly in severity.  Tics can be as small as a grimace and a cough, or as wild as full-body thrashing and ear-splitting screams.  Sometimes tics can be immobilizing, or they can look like seizures or seem purposeful, though they are most certainly not.  I'll provide a thorough list of tics at a later date for your perusal (though to call any list of tics "complete" would be utter hokum), but for now keep these generalities in mind.

     Interestingly enough, the nervous system is not all that's affected by Tourette's Syndrome.  In the brain, we have four motor cortices, and in a typical human being, only two are active at a time.  However, in an individual with Tourette's all four cortices are active at once, which can make it more difficult to multi-task, but can also cause the individual to feel a need to multitask; in my case, I need to always have something to do with my hands.  If I don't have anything to do with my hands, I end up ticking more frequently, and I'll wind up chewing my nails and fingers.

     The four cortices being active at once mean that the individual is trying to both watch and do, listen and speak.  Overactive mirror neurons in the supplementary motor cortex are believed to be partially to blame for some tics, echolalic and echopraxic tics in particular, and are likely the reason that it can be so easy to set someone off.

Research and Statistics:

     Now you may have noticed that I've been speaking in uncertainties.  The reason for this is simple:  there aren't many certainties.  Tourette's being a relatively rare disorder, which isn't deadly or, in and of itself, harmful, it's pretty low on the radar of the public.  There isn't much research being done, and what is being done isn't getting big-money funding or huge pushes from a large and concerned populous.  "Tourette's" isn't in the common vocabulary as anything other than a joke; most people don't believe it's real, even if they've heard of it at all, and most kids who have it don't realize that they do.

     The statistics are about one in every three-to-eight hundred children, but as our understanding of the disorder becomes more prevalent and parents become a little more understanding of the honesty of their children, we find that the disorder may be more common still--perhaps as many as one in every hundred children afflicted, the ration male: female being 3:1.  Most children have only small tics--coughs, trills, finger-snapping, grimaces, blinks, etc.--which can be seen as nothing more than annoying habits by adults and lead to the absence of diagnosis.

     Children typically begin to show signs of tics between the ages of seven and twelve, but I've heard of children showing their first signs as young as two and as old as thirteen.  A childhood disorder, the onset cannot begin in adulthood, as that would be an entirely different type of tic disorder.  It's commonly said that tics start to decline around the age of eighteen and may disappear altogether in adulthood, likely due to the adult's ability to control their own environment, craft their own schedule, and better regulate their moods.  However, Tourette's does not stop when you get older; even if symptoms decrease, in times of stress tics are likely to return, no matter how infrequent, and the more research I do, the less true the myth of "never after eighteen" seems to be.

Diagnosis:

     Diagnosis is a very simple process.  Once my tics became more violent and noticeable, we went to our family doctor.  He knew nothing about Tourette's, but tested my blood, found nothing, gave us a tentative diagnosis and sent us to a neurologist.  Our neurologist interviewed me, performed a series of tests to check for a brain tumor, and handed me a slip to give to the school nurse.  It's a simple process because, like I said, there hasn't been too much research done.

Medications and Co-Morbid Disorders:

     Now when the family doctor first saw me, he prescribed fifty mg Clonidine twice a day, which did nothing and may have worsened the symptoms.  When I saw the neurologist, he upped the dosage and told me that if after a certain amount of time it continued to be ineffective, I should wean myself off the meds.   That's what I wound up doing, and come to find out, Clonidine is a drug used to treat ADHD and high blood pressure, which doesn't actually surprise me.  Due to history of heart problems and a desire to keep my mental functions intact, we chose not to medicate further and simply deal with the severe case I was dealt.

     The truth is, there are no medications for Tourette's Syndrome, due again to rarity and poor amounts of research.  There are seizure medications, which can either help to plug up parts of the brain that might cause tics, or can do absolutely nothing for the syndrome.  The drugs can be very harmful to the heart and can cause your mind to become foggy and dull; to some people, it's worth it, but personally I couldn't stand feeling like I was running at only sixty percent just to keep myself from spasming.  Tourette's can have my body, but it sure as fuck can't have my mind.

     Since you can't treat the Tourette's itself (not effectively, at least), what most people do is treat the co-morbid disorders.  Very rarely does Tourette's occur all on its lonesome--probably due to the neurological nature of the disorder, most people have something co-morbid, usually OCD or ADHD, but it can also be anxiety disorders, poor impulse control, neurological disorders, mood disorders, behavioral disorders, developmental disorders, etc..  Recently, DD officials have been opening their eyes to the possibility of certain "behaviors" in their populations being not "behaviors" at all, but tics.  Often we find that if you treat the co-morbid disorder, the tics decrease, largely because stress is a huge source and instigator of tics.  The less stress a child feels, the less apt they are to tic, and the more likely their tics are to be harmless.

Pet Peeve:  People who call it Tourette or Tourettes Syndrome.  It's called Tourette's Syndrome because it's named for  Georges Albert Édouard Brutus Gilles de la Tourette, a French physician and neurologist who documented nine cases in his lifetime.

     Part Two will be about the more personal aspects of Tourette's Syndrome, so be on the lookout!  If anyone out there has anything to add about the neurology of Tourette's, feel free to comment!

Character Development: Idiosyncrasies

     People are weird.
 
     We all do weird things now and then, with or without reason, and when you get to know someone well enough, repetitions of the behavioral pattern can result in head-shaking and laughter, maybe a few, "Oh, Donald"s thrown in (unless of course their name isn't Donald, but whose isn't, amirite?).  Humans have idiosyncrasies, and they add a new layer of depth to the people around us--they can be revealing or puzzling, amusing or disgusting, frustrating or embarrassing....

     We all have them, so why shouldn't our characters?

     As I see it, there are three main types of idiosyncrasies--Reasoned, Reasonable, and Weird.

1. Reasoned:  These are the types of traits that make complete sense once you know someone's history or inner self.  Maybe someone flinches when someone tries to touch them, and once you know that the character was abused, it makes perfect sense!  Or someone is boxed in by people on all sides and runs away to cower by themselves.  Maybe they have claustrophobia, or, if they're comfortable in tight spaces, they could have social anxiety.  Reasoned Idiosyncrasies just make sense--but not until you know the person. 
2. Reasonable:  Reasonable Idiosyncrasies make sense... kinda....  These are the idiosyncrasies that don't seem to have a root cause.  They just kind of exist, yet no one really questions it too much because the behavior is within our sphere of understanding.  Maybe the character collects rocks, not because they like geology, but because they just think rocks are pretty, or they laugh when they're nervous--a pretty common "nervous tic," at least in fiction.  Many nervous tics fall under this category.  You can't explain them, but you really don't have to.  They're just there.
3. Weird:  This is the interesting one.  These are the things people do that just make no sense whatsoever, things they might not be able to explain.  Sometimes it's situational--when the guy who hit Stephen King with his van told King that his leg was probably broken in five or six places, King's response was "I'm sorry."                                                                                                                           It doesn't make sense, but it's so human, something a number of us can imagine ourselves doing.  Show of hands, how many of you apologize to people on a daily basis for things you had no control over?  Things other people did to you?  ((You can't see them, but there are so many hands up right now, I promise, just trust me.))  And have you ever just gotten up in the middle of the night to sort through your bookshelf and rearrange everything by author?  I have.                                                           Other times, it's just a person being themselves.  Maybe they suck on their middle finger as opposed to their thumb, or they always feel like they have to have exactly the right pair of pants to wear, or the day will be horrible.  Maybe they always carry around a water bottle full of mud, and they might not be able to tell you why, just that they think it could come in handy, or they mutter ancient incantations under their breath instead of curse words, or they repeat every thirtieth word two times.                                                                                                                                                        Sometimes these things can overlap with the other two--the character could be recalling that mud helps draw out bee poison, or their parents were wizards, or they might have palilalia, or any number of things.  But weird is weird, and if no one can understand it, this might be the category it fits in best.

     If your character has at least one of each of these, they're on their way toward roundedness.  Multiples of some or all of these can flesh your character out further still.  Just make sure that your character doesn't become one big walking idiosyncrasy themselves.  If your character is too weird, they might not be taken seriously.

     On the other hand, if you're writing a comedy, go for it!  Try to find a balance that works with your story and characters.  Straight-laced heroes may only have one or two of each, where the less held-together heroes (or villains) might be riddled with them.  The more you have, the more potential for silliness, or for drama, depending on what kind of idiosyncrasies you use.

     Are there any idiosyncrasies you'd like to see more in fiction?  Any you'd like to see less?  Send it my way and I'll compile a list!