Playing With Types For Fun and Profit
Among writers of fiction, it is usually considered bad or poor writing to employ "types" in one's stories. Avoid stereotypes; they represent bad or lazy craft. Yet, as with so many so-called rules of writing, this is a misleading generalization.
Fact is, "typing" other people is something we all do. Enter a room full of strangers, and we immediately begin scanning and sorting those strangers into "types" that we might feel comfortable associating with. The ability to successfully "type" others can be a useful social tool, a sort of social survival-mechanism, which means that our readers will employ this mechanism whenever they meet new people, including our characters.
That's correct. Readers will "type" your characters without even being aware that they are doing so. What's more, they will bring certain expectations to their encounter with your characters.
Suppose, in an effort to go against "type," the mortician in your story wears plaid sports jackets and loud ties, and greets clients with the bluff heartiness of a used-car salesman. Based on unconscious expectations, readers will either conclude you are attempting humor, or they will decide your character is unbelievable" and be jolted out of your carefully crafted fictional reality.
Thus, experienced authors deliberately play on "types" and reader's expectations, striving to strike an individualistic balance between typical and atypical qualities in their characters. Perhaps they will opt to create a mortician who is an older female that deliberately dresses and behaves like everyone's favorite grandmother. She is intentionally playing a "type" because it works with her clients, but when she leaves her work, her dress and demeanor change dramatically. Her favorite pastime is doing stand-up comedy at the local Comedy Club, where some of her best routines are about morticians.
To play with "types," one first needs to decide what "type" your character may be, and then, you need to consider qualities readers will expect in that character. Next, tinker with those qualities, individualizing some of them, perhaps exaggerating some or eliminating others. The goal is to make your character easily recognizable as a "type," yet make that character individualized enough to avoid the dreaded label, "stereotypical."
Do this well, and you may create characters that are easily recognizable yet memorable. You may even end up creating characters with universal appeal, and if you doubt this, consider JK Rowling's "Harry Potter" series.
Most of Rowling's characters, including Harry, are recognizable "types." In the first book, Harry is introduced as your "typical foundling," the fourth-class member of a family that neither wants nor appreciates him, and Rowling plays off the experienced reader's expectations by transforming Harry from a typical foundling into the inheritor of magical talents. Harry is a universal type who has been imbued with individual characteristics that make him appealing to readers of all ages.
So, when crafting your next bit of fiction, take a bit of time to consider what "types" your characters may be. Tinker with the qualities of that "type" and with luck, you may produce a character with the universal appeal of a Harry Potter. Tinkering with "types" can be fun, and it could even be profitable.
1 comment:
Good stuff here, Dave. Stereotypes have their place in writing and are stronger that the "unque" character that isn't believable. I hadn't thought of that, writing mostly nonfiction as I do.
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