Copyright © 2023 Jerry Dunne
Stereotypes are not real people, as real people are multi-dimensional. All the same, with only a few simple but poignant attributes, a stereotype offers an immediate, energetic and powerful impression. By using the stereotype as a template, it is easy to build on these strong features. With the addition of just a few more relevant and interesting attributes to the template, the stereotype shifts into a more rounded and multi-dimensional shape, but without losing those original traits which give it that immediate, energetic and powerful impression.
The purpose of using the stereotype as a template for creating more rounded character has two main advantages. The most important is of use in the play or short story. With their limited word length – as with other aspects of the narrative –character must be built up deftly, and the stereotype template is very handy as an aid for achieving this. The stereotype shows us just how few attributes are needed to create poignant character, and, so, when we build some complexity on top of our template we see that it is quality and not quantity of attribute that is necessary. Also, if we use the stereotype as a template then we are fully aware of this fact, and, so, we will certainly not end up with further clichéd character.
Let’s have an example of how to create rounded character quickly and easily from our stereotype template. Here we will use the young male writer/artist/sculptor/actor who is pretty much housekeeping and work shy, often broody, difficult, self-indulgent and on and off in his relationship with his girlfriend. Not only that, but if he’s a playwright, for example, he’s never even finished a full-length play, but certainly has a list of excuses as to why not, that could in themselves fill out a play’s word length. Many young middle-class women will have dated this type at one time or another and so will know him well. Yes, of course, each one of these young men is an individual in his own right but in other ways he readily fits this stereotype. The point is that he’s easily identifiable within a particular context from a handful of poignant attributes.
These days his girlfriend views him as the stereotype. Maybe once he (as a potential playwright) seemed interesting, but now she struggles to remember what she ever saw in him. However, one day, not having read any of his creative writing for a long while, she picks up some of it by chance and sees he has attempted to write some ‘sayings’. She’s unexpectedly taken by several of them and one in particular sticks out for her.
Of course you are not a stereotype. It’s just that an awful lot of people see you as one.
His saying jolts her into realising that as the months have passed and she has become more disappointed and critical of him, that she has actually turned him from the individual she once liked and admired into an object of her scorn. Another way of saying this is that the more she distanced herself from him emotionally, the more she reduced him to a stereotype in her own mind.
Now she asks herself some questions: Is the saying about her? Nowadays, how does he see her? Is the saying suggesting that her cynicism has widened the distance between them? Has her critical attitude toward him turned her into a stereotype in his eyes? Has she become the sniping, critical girlfriend type?
You see what’s happened here. We get nineteen words from the boyfriend’s pen and already the stereotype has been fractured. These nineteen words of creative writing give us a witty and interesting take on the nature of stereotypes. In other words, the boyfriend has offered us an interesting perspectiveabout something. It is almost always the case that an interesting perspective makes for an interesting person in some ways; and, if a perspective is not banal then the person holding it can hardly be a stereotype. The saying also offers us a take on the writer’s emotional depth; namely, that he can interpret aspects of life through the use of wit. The boyfriend’s perspective, through the saying, has pulled his girlfriend up short and got her seeing him in a new light (moving away from the stereotype) and thinking deeply about their relationship. His nineteen words have awakened her curiosity and now given him an air of mystery. It is like she is discovering him anew.
The girlfriend starts thinking back, recalling what attracted her to him in the first place. She had first seen him surrounded by a circle of people, all laughing at his banter. She’d got talking to him alone and told him that she’d recently broken up with her actor boyfriend because he was always putting on airs and graces and it had really annoyed her in the end. She recalls the specific thing he (the playwright) then said to her which had made her laugh out loud, and which had been the start of her attraction to him.
He had said, “An actor only puts on airs and graces to hide the fact that he is almost always out of work.”
Here is individual character backgroundand once we have this, the stereotype is completely shattered, as these elements deepen and enrich character. And look how little we have done to destroy the stereotype. Of course, we can go on deepening his character with attributes related to appearance, mannerisms and so on, and will certainly do so with the use of further dialogue, action and possibly inner monologue (in fiction), but in a play or a short story, especially, we must look for the most poignant details to help bring our character speedily into a multi-dimensional life.
If we were developing our characters for a play or short story, we might start with her present thoughts (spoken out loud, of course, in the play) on the boyfriend, where she has turned him into a stereotype, before we are presented with the first saying and then the backstory. If we do it like this, if we juxtapose the stereotype against the original wit of the non-stereotype in this simple way and yet we are shown they are both the same person, this then creates a potentially powerful character out of very little; out of almost nothing so far, really. So, in other words, take a stereotype, with its few simple but poignant attributes then add a little subtle complexity to it and we have the strong makings of a three-dimensional and very possibly original character. And yet we are always taught to avoid stereotypes at all costs.
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By the way, this specific set-up with the girlfriend also happens to create a sense of mystery. What has happened in between her first laughing at his wit and her present point of view of him? She has come to realise the fact that having turned him into a stereotype and maybe treated him as such, she has to an extent become a stereotype herself in his eyes, and, so, either she or both of them together have in the end created a stereotypical relationship with one another. What a tragedy! You could use this as a theme for a play, for example called How to Find your Way Back from a Stereotype (looking at is optimistically). The theme might consider how people distance themselves from each other by the use of the stereotype and its consequences – for any kind of a relationship. So, once again, thinking about stereotypes might possibly lead us on to something fresh and original. Personally, I would write this up as a comedy.
LInks:
Sparking up character for the short story
Exercises for sparking up character for the short story
Sparking up Character for the Play
Individuality in the Characters (for the play)
Character is Dramatic Action
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