4 Common Problems With An Everyman

1.  No personality

     One of the top issues with an everyman is that they have no real personality; their entire personality is "I'm an average Joe just like everyone else," but that's not enough.  There has to be something to them, flesh to add to bone.

     Having a character that's average is fine.  In fact, in literature, that's practically an act of rebellion against the status quo.  But you can't allow that character to become boring.  Average doesn't have to be boring--some very interesting people are perfectly average, just in ways you wouldn't expect.

     Maybe they have an eclectic interest, they're just not very good at it, or they know a little bit about a lot of things, or a lot about a very few things; maybe they have skills which were never top notch, but they still love to practice.  Whatever it is, just don't make them a boring bland personalityless nobody.

     Make them into someone we'd want to travel with (or someone we'd hate to travel with), not just someone we tolerate.

2.  Mouthpiece

     An everyman, being that they're our touchstone to reality in this journey through the cosmos or elven lands or what have you, can sometimes serve as an author stand-in, revealing to us all their thoughts about the new places, people, events, and the old people, places, events that we're used to.

     This is all well and good, but be careful you don't go running away with it and turn the character into just another mouthpiece trying to spread an agenda; commentary is great!  We love commentary!  But commentary is sometimes just a hair's breadth away from preaching, and once you get to preaching it's a steep descent down into moralizing bluffs, and no one likes being moralized.

     TL;DR:  Speak, don't preach.  Comment, don't vomit.  We're not here for a sermon, we're here to have fun.

3.  No purpose in the plot

     Other than providing us with information about our new environment and giving us a running commentary on how the nature of whatever's going on relates to the nature of whatever's going on in real life, does your character have a purpose in the plot?

     And I mean a real purpose; look at what's happening in your story.  If you took your everyman out of it, would any of the action change?  If not, you either need to scrap that character, or give them a reason to be on the scene.  Give them something to do, something important, don't just let them laze around observing things; that's how they get flat and boring, and boring is the enemy here!  Boring is the reason people hate everymen!

     Don't subject your everyman to everyman hell; let him have agency.

4.  Stock Personality

     Often, when an everyman does have a personality, it's one of the stock personalities that three hundred other everymen are loaded with.  They're flat cardboard characters with no real backstory that just show up to drive home the author's point or reveal information to us.

     Don't fall into that trap; make your everyman a well-rounded person, with interests, talents, flaws!  If I wanted a stock character, I'd read comedia del'arte.

Writing Marginalized Characters: A Ramble

     I grew up afraid to write minority characters.  For me this came from two primary places; the first was the idea pervasive to our culture that people who aren't white, cis, heterosexual, middle-class/wealthy, able-bodied, neurotypical males are "other" to such an extent that they're often seen as not fully human, or maybe human but in a different way.  Society insists that those who don't fit inside the rigid little sector it's blocked off as "normal" aren't really people in the same sense that those who do fit into the sector are.

     Obviously, I'm not all of the above; however, society's belittling of marginalized groups is so pervasive that it's not uncommon for marginalized people to marginalize themselves (see: internalized sexism, racism, ableism, classism, homophobia, transphobia, intra ableism, intra racism, biracialism, etc.).

     Growing up a tomboy in a primarily masculine household, I came to see women as lesser, and later fell prey to the many ailments inherited by young girls--the conflicting standards, the fear of being seen as inferior, the apologies, the feeling of being a burden, etc, etc, etc.  Unlearning these things was (is) a long process I won't talk about now, but I guess my point is that when I started writing novels at the ripe old age of nine, the only reason I felt comfortable writing girl characters was because I was a girl, and even still I had a lot of trouble at first with writing female characters that weren't either based off of real people or stereotypes.

     The other thing that caused this fear was my limited experiential resources.

     I grew up in two towns, one of them full of rich white people and the other full of not-rich white people.  In the town I usually say I'm "from," I had exactly one black classmate, and the only black classmate I had in the town I "grew up in" moved away after first grade.

     I never thought of people who were different than me as really different.  They were people just the same as I was, and I recognized them as such, as I'm sure many people do when they meet "othered" people face to face, especially in their youth.  Even with my internalized sexism, I still judged every girl on her own merits once I met her--I generalized groups, not individuals.

     But when writing, and trying to be socially conscious in our writing, we all have groups that we feel ishy writing about, not necessarily because we don't want to write them, but because we're scared to get it wrong.

     As a kid I was afraid to write people of color--a pretty common fear among white kids, because after they teach you about slavery and genocide and Jim Crow laws in first grade the last thing you want to do is exacerbate that White Guilt everybody's always talking about, and you certainly don't want anyone to think you're racist or, even worse, to find out that you are, in fact, a racist.

     The only way to keep yourself safe and cozy is not to bother, and say things like "I'll leave it to them to write themselves into a story."  As a little kid that feels very valid, especially when you grow up in an environment where racism isn't something you notice in your day-to-day life, and is instead subliminally flashed into your brain as you watch your all-white-with-maybe-a-token-PoC cartoons.

     Sadly, leaving it to a marginalized group doesn't always work--how often do you see black authors being lauded?  For a book that isn't exclusively about white people?  When was the last time a female author got big in something that wasn't YA or Romance?  Do you even know of any books written by someone with a disability?  I guarantee you it's not from lack of talent or trying--unfortunately, the system is still heavily weighted in such a way that it's exponentially more difficult for a marginalized individual to make it big--or make it at all--than for a white abled cishetero male of the same or lesser talents, and the exponent tends to multiply if the author-of-marginalized-origins writes about characters who are also not white cishetero males.

     Sometimes, when you're at a party and things are loud and crowded, the only way to get people to listen to the guest of honor is for the host to jump out with a microphone and shut 'em up.

     I didn't know all that when I was little.  I just knew I wanted to write about superheroes and dragons and magic and weird science.

     The funny thing is though, unlike a lot of people I've spoken to over the years, I wrote about people with higher melanin counts before I became afraid.  In part it was actually because I wrote about them that I became afraid.

     I should probably explain:  My uncle is very, very racist.  I hate him.  I don't just hate him because he's racist, I have a lot of reasons to hate him, but this has certainly always been a point of contention between us.  I didn't always hate him of course, because when I was younger I was small and naive and thought that shared blood meant shared love.  Probably should've realized sooner how bullshit that was.

     I was a creative little kid, and after finishing my second novel at age eleven, I wanted to tell everyone about it.  As I was going through the first edit, I stumbled upon something that didn't make sense and asked his opinion--in order to do this I had to explain the concept to him--four types of shape-shifters live on an island and fight amongst themselves, sort of Animorphs meets Warriors meets gorn-tastic political intrigue/adventure-fantasy.

     Instead of helping, my uncle, being as uncouth as he is, decided to ask me which group were the "n" words--I was repulsed by the language, but was all at once struck by the realization that not only could the division between the shifter-types be construed allegorically as a division between the races, but that I had written people of color into my story--I hadn't thought about it as I wrote, I just sort of correlated fur color to human skin color, so shapeshifters with darker fur ended up with darker skin, and shapeshifters with lighter fur had lighter skin; it wasn't like any group was composed all of one human race or another, they were completely mixed-color societies, but I was still afraid.

     I didn't go back and white-wash my draft, what was done was done, but I wouldn't write people of color into my drafts for a long time afterward because I was afraid of doing it wrong.  I don't exactly know now what I thought the "right" way was, but that was the only way I wanted it done; I was a conscientious child and didn't want to offend anyone, and since I was only just getting the hang of the internet I had no idea that there were places where writers gathered in bulk to discuss such things.

     My resolve to write only about white cishetero abled rich men and women--or, even better, aliens and robots and monsters, oh my!--lasted until I discovered Tumblr as a thirteen-year-old.

     I know, I know, Tumblr has a mixed bag of a reputation among the liberal crowd, but for a white girl in a town of 1,000 people, 98% of whom are white, and most of whom are also hetero and cissexual, middle-ish class, able-bodied, and neurotypical, Tumblr was the best place for me to break into a world that was, up to then, largely unavailable to me.  Today it's known as a toxic wasteland, and some parts are, but it was an important part of my development as both a writer and a liberal (in case you couldn't already tell which way I lean).

     Within a year I was writing stories with "othered" individuals again--people of color, people with disabilities, people of a multitude of genders, sexualities, religions, you name it.  Through Tumblr, and the many websites it introduced me to, I'd found out there were tons of resources on how to write this group and that group and the other group, and I learned that it was okay to trust my own real-life experiences and those of my family and friends; every experience was valid.  And though there are going to be different characterizations and complications with each new type of character you create, it was freeing to find out that everything truly boiled down to something I'd known all along--people are people.  Nothing more, nothing less.

     That's what it all comes down to.  People are people--we all have wants, needs, feelings, we all have things we care about, we are all our own.  What makes me different from someone of a different race has less to do with race itself than with upbringing and societal pressure and our personal likes and dislikes.

     Fear can be good--I think, in my case, fear was good, because it drove (and still drives) me to seek out the information I need to avoid creating a caricature or a stereotype in place of a human being; fear led me to ask questions and make sure that I did (and do) everything in my power to not just keep from offending people, but to keep myself from harming myself and others with poor portrayals of certain out-groups, and to make sure that I use my privilege as a white person not for accolades and the like but to assist and teach, to encourage others to hear the voices of those whose voices aren't being heard, and to normalize what should already be, but is not yet seen as, normal.

     Fear can also stop us in our tracks--and if you write marginalized characters, you're going to end up being criticized for it, even if you are yourself part of the group you're writing about!  But you can't please everyone; every time I write a sensitive male character, someone tells me he's not realistic even though I know for a fact that everything the character does is nothing I haven't seen my brothers and my male friends do, and every time I write a female character I risk being called out on her promiscuity or her aloofness or her hatred of babies because no matter how hard you work to go against a stereotype or humanize someone, even yourself, someone is always going to get pissy about it; that's how life works.

     So yes, it's important for people without privilege to speak up and have their stories heard, and their voices are going to ring the most true and should hold more weight.

     A story written by someone with absolutely every privilege there is probably won't be authentic, of course, but it's important for people with privilege to speak up as well--not to drown out the voices of your downtrodden kin (as some are, unfortunately, wont to do), but to help raise awareness and compassion and facilitate love and understanding and conversation in ways that some, through the horrors of a discriminatory society, are unable to do.

   So write.  Whoever you are, whatever you want to write, write it; try to include marginalized characters when you can, because the sad truth is that there's not a lot out there, and even less of it is well-written.  Be careful, don't be too afraid--just don't be a dick, either.

     And when you think you're finished with that manuscript; stop, wait a minute, fill that cup put some liquor in it--now pour it out, take a deep breath, and go look for some critique partners and beta readers that know what's what in whatever subject you've chosen, because no matter how well you think you know something, if you're writing from a place of privilege you're bound to make mistakes

     The fewer mistakes make it out into the real world, the better it'll be for everybody.

     And even if you're writing from a point of diminished privilege yourself, it never hurts to have extra eyes on the ground.  No two experiences are ever exactly alike, and you may not be as enlightened as you think--I like to think of myself as having cleansed myself of my internalized sexism, but on occasion I still catch myself mentally criticizing a woman for doing something I wouldn't think twice about a man doing, or using the phrase "like a little girl" in a derogatory fashion.

     When we write only from our own experiences, we're also at risk of making every character's experience practically the same, which serves to homogenize the group and sometimes creates a new stereotype.  I don't think we need any more stereotypes than we already have.
   

TL;DR:  Don't be afraid to write marginalized characters, no matter how privileged you are; just remember to treat everyone as human beings, do your research, ask questions, and seek out the opinions of people with first hand experience before you go tell the world about how great you are (for writing something that may actually be offensive).

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).

#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!

Discussion: Are Your Characters Your Children?

     You'll hear a lot of writers say that they hate it when people refer to/think of their characters as their "children."  This is because they feel that the authors who act this way favor some of their characters above others and make things too easy for them--which makes for a boring (or, sometimes, masturbatory) story.  They're not wrong--your protagonist should not have it easy, people--but I think it's unfair to push all thought of the parenthood of our characters into one umbrella group and call it "bad."  See, it's not seeing the characters as your offspring that's bad--it's seeing them as babies.
 
     Here's the main distinction; children can grow up and take care of themselves but babies, confined to your care, cannot.

     Our characters are, for all intents and purposes, our children.  We create them by thought and pen them by hand--sometimes we adopt them, and I'll be the first to admit that I've done it more than once, but we care for them in a way that only we can do, raising them up from a carbon copy of their birth parent(s) into something all their own, something we can call ours.  And there's no shame in favoring our own characters over the characters of others--that's one of the finest rights of the parent, you know.  Otherwise who would you root for come time for school competitions?

     The problem comes in two forms: not allowing your children to grow up, and favoring some of your young over the others.

     A parent might keep favorites--they aren't supposed to, but they're only human.  However, a good parent will not let on.  They will treat all of their children fairly, with equal degrees of love, and react to them as individuals.  Even with twins, good parents will differentiate between the two and encourage the separate interests they may cultivate, and while some children, usually the frailer ones, will need more attention, it doesn't mean that their parents love them any more or less, and it doesn't mean that their parents stop trying to challenge them and help them grow.  Other children, self-reliant and resilient, may need less and give more, but a parent will still try to spend time with them, comfort them, help them through in difficult times.  How does this translate from offspring to character?  Like so:

     You need to love and encourage all of your characters equally.  Some will not need equal time--minor characters, cameos, walk-ons, one-liners, and the various background characters which people your world can be considered mostly grown, independent younglings.  They are off to college, so to speak, and while yes, every once in a while you may need to call them up to get in touch, make sure they're okay, see that they're happy and haven't burned down their apartment yet, for the most part you can leave them be; they can take care of themselves.

     Then there are the supporting characters, who may be somewhere between the ages of ten and seventeen (metaphorically speaking), old enough to stay home alone, feed themselves, maybe walk around town and hang out with friends, but they'll need a much closer eye kept on them to keep them out of trouble.  You need to watch and make sure they face the consequence of action, but that they retain their individuality.  You're cultivating a future adult here, remember!  They need to be able to function in the real world.

     And then there's the protagonist(s) and antagonist(s).  For the sake of our extended metaphor, these are the children that give you the toughest time.  Somewhere between the ages of twelve and fifteen, these characters are probably born of the same stuff, or similar stuff--possibly twins themselves, they could be extremely similar or as different as night and day.  They're probably both likely to be misunderstood, bullied, or generally dissatisfied with life, and somehow their interests are extremely conflicted.  As a parent, you are not technically allowed to take sides.  You have to let these two sort it out on their own terms, or the end result will be unsatisfactory.

     But as a parent, it is your job to make sure your characters--especially the protagonist--reap what they've sown.  You may love them, you may care, you may want what's best for them, you may even give them trinkets along the way (though it's wise to deal these out to other characters as well--antagonists can always use something convenient to help them out), but if your protagonist burns down the house he better get the shit beat out of him for it, because shit like that can't fly.  And if the antagonist manages to destroy the protagonist's favorite toy while he's bent over your knee.... Well, you didn't see it happen, did you?  It was probably just destroyed in the fire anyway.

     If you are going to favor any of the characters, it should actually be the antagonist--all interesting things will come from your protagonist's pain, frustration, and fight against opposition, and it can be easy for loud, whiney, or manipulative children to sway their parents in their favor; your antagonist is likely to be at least one of these things.

     And then there's the age-old problem of coddling--this ties into the favoring of some characters over others, but some writers can actually be afraid to let their characters so much as breathe without their permission.  Here's a little secret; as a writer, the best thing you can do is to let your characters live.  Sure, at the start you have to help them along, tell them to do things, move them hither and thither and yon, but they grow a lot quicker than actual babies, and pretty soon you'll find them doing things you didn't tell them to, maybe things that might conflict with what's in your head.  And that's what you want.

     When characters start to live, to breathe, to wonder and run and travel on their own, you have successfully raised your child to sentience--and instead of clamping down on their attempts at independence, you need to nurture it.  Follow where they lead!  They may be on to something--and if worse should come to worst, you can always trace back your path to find where things went wrong.

     If you keep your characters too far under your thumb, they'll forget there's a sky, and eventually, stop breathing--at which point you may have to decide whether to keep them on life support or pull the plug.  So don't be afraid to let go, and don't be afraid to hurt them--it's for their own good, and it will benefit everyone.

     So yes, I believe that my characters are something like children to me--but I maintain a healthy distance, and let them be themselves.  This mindset only works if you make sure not to coddle your characters or treat them as saints.  Sometimes they will do good things, and you might reward them--sometimes they will do awful things, and even if they meant well, they need to learn that meaning well and doing well are not the same thing.

     Now what do you think?  Should people consider their characters offspring, or detach themselves completely?  How do you feel about your own characters?  Are they friends, siblings, cousins, neighbors, those loud assholes who live down the street with the aggressive dog that's always going after your kids?  Let me know! I'm eager to hear your responses. :)