Did that piss you off as much as it did me? The other day I was creating bios for my
characters and researched something to the effect of “well written characters”
and I came across this article titled “Girls can do anything boys can... except
be well-written characters.”
Well, needless to say, the title alone pissed me off and I clickety-clicked the link to find out
what this idiot had to say. There were pages and pages to this conversation,
between people who spoke from authoritative and condescending platforms, regarding
their opinions on the lack of well-written female characters… in cartoons. Mind
you, it took me a few comments into the conversation to realize they were
talking about cartoons but for a second there, my blood was boiling.
My first instinct was to disregard the conversation as crap
because it was about cartoon characters.
But who am I to dismiss it because I
think it’s flippant. There are a lot of
people who think YA or romance novels are flippant. (Apparently I like the word flippant today.)
But it got me to wondering, is that statement true for
books? Most specifically YA because that’s what I enjoy reading. Upon delving into the
great-female-cartoon-protagonist debate, I quickly found the author of the post
really didn’t have a leg to stand on. Though
they whined and complained about the quality of well-written female cartoon
characters, not once did they offer an example of what they would consider a
well-written female cartoon character should be like. When other people gave their examples contrary
to the statement, the author of the post immediately shot them down with
nonsensical replies either damning girls for being girls or damning them for
being like boys. Well what the hell else
can they be?
A well-written character is one that is true to their
nature. They are shaped by their
environment, choices, and DNA and your character should stay true to who they
are. Whether they are overly girlie,
clumsy, rough around the edges or snarky, they can’t help but be
themselves. We’ve seen it in our own
manuscripts when a character isn’t well written. They say or do something that doesn’t quite
feel right, setting off our editing alarms.
BECAUSE they were acting out of character! And the only time our characters should act
out of character, is if something is actually seriously wrong. (Yes I used two adverbs side by side, get
over it.) Just because Kim Possible is perfect and can kick ass doesn’t make
her poorly written. Even Kim’s over
confident ego gets her in trouble and Ron Stoppable ends up clumsily saving her
butt. Male or female, well-written
characters are true to themselves no matter the situation. Doesn’t mean they can’t grow, they just do it
with their own flavor of personality.
What do think makes a
well-written character?
In case you are curious, here’s the article I read. It will give you a headache reading through
the aristocracy. And also, the article
was written several years back.
