Homogenous Characters

[GoldenCojones]

Do you find that a subset of your characters are fairly homogenous? As I look at my stories I see that a good number of my male second line characters are similar. Not exactly the same, but close enough that it made me take notice. My leading male characters also tend to share traits. This isn't just in my erotic writing, but across all my stories and it makes me wonder.

My female lead characters have a lot of variety in personality and motivations (At least I think they do.) Why are my male characters so shallow and cardboard?

Is that really how I see the world or does it just fit the stories I tell?

Am I maybe injecting too much of myself into my male characters?

When I discussed this with my wife, she suggested it was because I don't really give a shit about my male characters and to not worry about it. It is "cute." I don't know about you guys, but "cute" is the last thing I EVER want to hear from a woman.

Do ya'll find yourself doing the same thing? If so, how do you fix it?

 

[NOIRTRASH]

HOLY SHIT! Its everywhere! The GODFATHER is larded with wop mafia. WAR AND PEACE is fulla Russian counts.

WHAT A REVELATION!

WHO KNEW!

 

[MLClifton]

Do you find that you relate easily to your male characters? Maybe writing female characters presents more of a challenge to you, or you find it more enjoyable, so you make more of an effort with them. Maybe it would help to write a male character you have absolutely nothing in common with. Try to get in his head and see the world from his perspective.

 

[OliviaM]

Do you find that a subset of your characters are fairly homogenous? As I look at my stories I see that a good number of my male second line characters are similar. Not exactly the same, but close enough that it made me take notice. My leading male characters also tend to share traits. This isn't just in my erotic writing, but across all my stories and it makes me wonder.

My female lead characters have a lot of variety in personality and motivations (At least I think they do.) Why are my male characters so shallow and cardboard?

Is that really how I see the world or does it just fit the stories I tell?

Am I maybe injecting too much of myself into my male characters?

When I discussed this with my wife, she suggested it was because I don't really give a shit about my male characters and to not worry about it. It is "cute." I don't know about you guys, but "cute" is the last thing I EVER want to hear from a woman.

Do ya'll find yourself doing the same thing? If so, how do you fix it?

Well, first of all, men are allowed to be cute. My husband is. Masculinity and cuteness aren't incompatible. In fact, I think they pair together quite nicely.

I do notice myself trending toward certain character types. I try to be aware of it and mix things up but I'm not always successful at it. Sometimes the character demands to be represented in a certain way.

Are you noticing this because the male characters are a POV character for you? It's very common for writers to put fewer defining traits into the characters they want the reader to slip into. If it's less defined, readers can imagine the character however they like. Take the Twilight books, for instance (not a favorite of mine, it's just an example from a popular work). People criticized these books for making Bella kind of generic and cardboard. The author spends lots of time describing Edward in minute, worshipful detail and Bella is offhandedly described with something like: "she had brown hair and was human shaped". But by not describing Bella, I think it really helped the popularity of the books. Girls were just inserting themselves into the narrative without some other protagonist in the way of the fantasy.

I just stopped to search for a study that had people following the story of a little triangle or square on a screen. I wish I could find it. Apparently people got really involved in this poor little triangle struggling to get up a hill. (I hope I'm remembering this right.) Humans are just really good at assigning traits to objects. It's why cartoon characters are so simply drawn. They appeal to us at a very basic level.

Having simple male protagonists isn't good or bad. It's just whatever serves the story. You could try randomly generating character traits if you want to branch out?

 

[OliviaM]

Do you find that you relate easily to your male characters? Maybe writing female characters presents more of a challenge to you, or you find it more enjoyable, so you make more of an effort with them. Maybe it would help to write a male character you have absolutely nothing in common with. Try to get in his head and see the world from his perspective.

I like this idea.

 

[Kantarii]

I try to make the "villains" in my stories vile in nature, anything but "cardboard". Now, the T-girl characters I have in my stories draw heavily of my characteristic traits and personality. The female characters I create are different in every story to various degrees.


Note to self.... Create a villainous female character or an evil T-girl and mix things up.Kant

 

[GoldenCojones]

...
Are you noticing this because the male characters are a POV character for you? It's very common for writers to put fewer defining traits into the characters they want the reader to slip into. If it's less defined, readers can imagine the character however they like.
...

Having simple male protagonists isn't good or bad. It's just whatever serves the story. You could try randomly generating character traits if you want to branch out?

Actually my POV characters are usually stronger than my second-line and the more I write the stronger they get. But yes even my male POV characters seem a little shallow to me. I'd love to claim I was doing it on purpose to allow the readers to identify, but I honestly don't think that is the case.

Do you find that you relate easily to your male characters? Maybe writing female characters presents more of a challenge to you, or you find it more enjoyable, so you make more of an effort with them. Maybe it would help to write a male character you have absolutely nothing in common with. Try to get in his head and see the world from his perspective.

MLClifton, your comment made me think, so I went and looked at my character write-ups. Okay I should have done that first, but I never said I was the freshest turnip in the cart. It's funny, my female characters usually cover two or more pages and my male characters get three sentences if that.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I like developing the female characters. (Of course I do ) Now, I just gotta get to know the dudes as well as I know the ladies. That should help them flesh out and be better. I'll see if this works and helps my male characters become less shallow.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I find that my male leads are what I see myself as in most cases. As for the other men in my stories, a lot are based on guys I knew throughout my life. If a male lead is evil, then he's not a clone of what I would like to think of myself being. Most of my female characters get their traits from females I have known in my life.

To date, I don't think I have written an evil female as I really haven't known any evil women. Evil men, yeah, I've known a few. Evil women, not so much.

And yes, from story to story the women are basically similar, I leave a lot to the reader to imagine about the women. After all, everyone has a fantasy girl or two. Same with the males, barely a mention of what they look like, but I do give them traits I would like to think I have.

 

[GoldenCojones]

Well, first of all, men are allowed to be cute. My husband is. Masculinity and cuteness aren't incompatible. In fact, I think they pair together quite nicely.

Glad that works for you. My wife knows that calling me cute is the same as saying "Hey I need some alone time. Why don't you go blow $500.00 at a titty bar."

 

[GoldenCojones]

I find that my male leads are what I see myself as in most cases. As for the other men in my stories, a lot are based on guys I knew throughout my life. If a male lead is evil, then he's not a clone of what I would like to think of myself being. Most of my female characters get their traits from females I have known in my life.

To date, I don't think I have written an evil female as I really haven't known any evil women. Evil men, yeah, I've known a few. Evil women, not so much.

And yes, from story to story the women are basically similar, I leave a lot to the reader to imagine about the women. After all, everyone has a fantasy girl or two. Same with the males, barely a mention of what they look like, but I do give them traits I would like to think I have.

That is interesting. I don't have a lot of villains in my erotica, but some of my female characters are really not very nice. I've known several seriously bitchy women as well as many, many more wonderful women. I've known a lot of bastards too, but again many, many more good guys.

I really was talking about personality, though. Looks span the gamut but my second-line dudes are all just kinda there. I think I have my answer though. I never took the time to get to know them the way I get to know my female characters. That's a real shame. I wish I'd figured this one out ten years ago. It's going to slow me down (even more) but I bet my writing improves to nearly literate in a year or two

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Lawrence Block says all characters are the writer, even the dog.

But looks like this pool of distinguished scribblers lacks the awareness that most fiction is about, guess what, very similar characters.

 

[MLClifton]

I try to make the "villains" in my stories vile in nature, anything but "cardboard". Now, the T-girl characters I have in my stories draw heavily of my characteristic traits and personality. The female characters I create are different in every story to various degrees.


Note to self.... Create a villainous female character or an evil T-girl and mix things up.Kant

There you go.

 

[MLClifton]

Actually my POV characters are usually stronger than my second-line and the more I write the stronger they get. But yes even my male POV characters seem a little shallow to me. I'd love to claim I was doing it on purpose to allow the readers to identify, but I honestly don't think that is the case.



MLClifton, your comment made me think, so I went and looked at my character write-ups. Okay I should have done that first, but I never said I was the freshest turnip in the cart. It's funny, my female characters usually cover two or more pages and my male characters get three sentences if that.

I think you hit the nail on the head. I like developing the female characters. (Of course I do ) Now, I just gotta get to know the dudes as well as I know the ladies. That should help them flesh out and be better. I'll see if this works and helps my male characters become less shallow.

I glanced at your story list and noticed that you tend to write more from a female POV. So maybe the trick is to imagine a male character you find fascinating. If you're not interested in the male characters you write, it's going to come through in your work. When you give this a go, I'd be interested to read what you come up with.

 

[GoldenCojones]

I glanced at your story list and noticed that you tend to write more from a female POV. So maybe the trick is to imagine a male character you find fascinating. If you're not interested in the male characters you write, it's going to come through in your work. When you give this a go, I'd be interested to read what you come up with.

Honestly, I never even consciously realized I write more from the female POV. I guess that also comes from caring about the female characters more.

My next story, if I ever get it posted, is from a male POV. I took one of the male second line characters from "Lilly Wants A Baby" and did a new story from his POV. I'm going to go back and flesh out his bio and then re-edit the story to inflate him from the cardboard cutout and see what I can do. There is some of me in him already. Some of the things he has gone through prior to the story are similar to things I went through in real life, twenty-two years ago. Damn I'm getting old. But there are a lot of differences too.

The name of the story is "Chad's Choice" It will be in Romance, if you follow that category you might see it pop up.

 

[GoldenCojones]

Lawrence Block says all characters are the writer, even the dog.

But looks like this pool of distinguished scribblers lacks the awareness that most fiction is about, guess what, very similar characters.

If you mean, most of them have 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 legs, and 2 arms, then I agree. If you mean personality wise, I respectfully disagree. Hannibal Lector is quite dis-similar to Little orphan Annie. In my story "June and Barb" June is very distinct from Barb. I could go on, but I doubt it matters.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

That is interesting. I don't have a lot of villains in my erotica, but some of my female characters are really not very nice. I've known several seriously bitchy women as well as many, many more wonderful women. I've known a lot of bastards too, but again many, many more good guys.

I really was talking about personality, though. Looks span the gamut but my second-line dudes are all just kinda there. I think I have my answer though. I never took the time to get to know them the way I get to know my female characters. That's a real shame. I wish I'd figured this one out ten years ago. It's going to slow me down (even more) but I bet my writing improves to nearly literate in a year or two

Personality wise, they are exactly like the people I knew in RL. Most were honest, trustworthy, with minor flaws and extremely likable. Very few were assholes or bad. I didn't run into those types until latter in life. I try to use RL people as the model, then give them traits, personality wise, that will make them even more interesting.

The women too.

For the most part, I don't remember too many bad type. There was this kid that lived on the corner who became the local drug dealer. Got his mother hooked on heroine, his father left both of them. I left the neighborhood and never heard what happened to him. He wasn't a bad guy, not evil to the rest of us. Never tried to sell or give any of the kids on the block a taste. But he did quit hangin' with the rest of us after awhile.

 

[Hypoxia]

I don't think my players are homogeneous at all -- a bit cartoonish sometimes, if I haven't based them on real people, and I know I tend to make my younger characters too mature and many players too bisexual. Call it fictive license. But I hear different personalities sing in my head and that's how I write them.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

If you mean, most of them have 2 eyes, 2 ears, 2 legs, and 2 arms, then I agree. If you mean personality wise, I respectfully disagree. Hannibal Lector is quite dis-similar to Little orphan Annie. In my story "June and Barb" June is very distinct from Barb. I could go on, but I doubt it matters.

Do you pay attention to what you say? Your point is all your characters are alike, and you wonder why. Lawrence Block argues our characters all come from the same factory, and are designed-assembled by the same person, YOU. Our real children prolly come with greater diversity.

PS: You don't write Hannibal and Annie, you write June and Barb.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Hannibal Lector is quite dis-similar to Little orphan Annie.

They both have creepy eyes though ;-)

 

[oggbashan]

Georgette Heyer was accused of having a very short list of male and female characters - about three of each for the main protagonists in all her Regency novels.

But it is what she did with those characters over and over again that made her books popular.

 

[NaokoSmith]

I think my characters are all different. I mean, yes, they are all swashbuckling lace-cuff-tossing aristocrats, but they sometimes have different hair colours ...

No, seriously, they are all different. Partly because the genres are different: the werewolf is different to the lace-cuff-tossing aristocrat, and to Hades, God of the underworld, and to the Real Life characters: the old man in the old people's home, the senior academic, the Victorian hysterical young woman. Maybe write in a different genre now and then, to stretch your ... range

Also, I started with a novel that had multiple PoVs. Then the characters had to be different because otherwise the reader muddles them up. Sometimes, for a private joke, I made some characters who are actually similar. They start out in the first novel not particularly well sketched in, then in the second novel maybe their son appears and you get to know him much better, and in the third novel his son appears ... actually when I think about it, even those characters are very different from each other.

Good luck, dahlink! if I didn't suddenly have so much paid work on my plate I would offer to edit for you.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

The sense I get of most LIT posters is, they toiled and struggled to acquire the pitiful little information they have, like Newton walking along the beach collecting shells and shiny stuff, while an ocean lies beside them, ignored and unmolested.

You people are a joke.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Would it be possible to trick or influence Naoko to dip her big toe into the Great Ocean of Truth?

 

[HandsInTheDark]

To date, I don't think I have written an evil female as I really haven't known any evil women. Evil men, yeah, I've known a few. Evil women, not so much.

Huh. In my experience, there are many fewer evil women than men, but when you get a bad woman she's off the charts in callousness. The best con artist I ever knew was female; a distant second place goes to a guy that was the CEO of a small tech startup, and lied to survive. Jezebels aren't at all common, but they're real.

I don't think any two of my characters are the same, and I try not to let any cardboard into my stories. But I think my males, when I write from a female POV, tend to be a little more Perfect Ideal Male sorts. (When I write from a male POV, they never are.)

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Huh. In my experience, there are many fewer evil women than men, but when you get a bad woman she's off the charts in callousness. The best con artist I ever knew was female; a distant second place goes to a guy that was the CEO of a small tech startup, and lied to survive. Jezebels aren't at all common, but they're real.

I don't think any two of my characters are the same, and I try not to let any cardboard into my stories. But I think my males, when I write from a female POV, tend to be a little more Perfect Ideal Male sorts. (When I write from a male POV, they never are.)

I did admissions at our district psychiatric receiving hospital for several years. Our job was to take all the tired, the poor, and wretched refuse of you teeming shore, and do something with them.

Most often they were drunk and violent. Many belonged at the medical ER cause black lung and alzheimers and pregnancy aren't psychiatric or addictions, but cops and EMS don't know unless an MD told them where to go. I sorted them out because my training was psychiatric, addictions, and brain/spinal cord problems.

During those years I participated in prolly a 1000 brawls, often disarming patients the cops didn't check well. Females lead the parade with violence. They love to escalate and get their asses kicked. The research confirms it.