On the Unrepresentative Character
May. 1st, 2005 12:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranI've been thinking a bit about Unrepresentative Characters (UCs)...
UCs are characters who are explicitly presented as not being representive of others. They are oddities and one-offs and are generally recognized as such by their peers. It could be argued that all real people are UCs.
UCs are very powerful to use because they don't have to fit in with normal expectations and can break a lot of the normal rules. Their oddness isn't a threat to the story, their oddness is the story. If you have a nomadic hunter gatherer who doesn't think and act as the reader expects a hunter gatherer would, you can get away with a lot if you can make it clear that this is a weirdo hunter gatherer who is regarded as odd by the rest of the tribe.
UCs can often have magical or speculative origins - the Idiot in Dostoyevski's _The Idiot_ is a UC. Most characters with "special" powers and abilities are also, maybe by definition, UCs - Sherlock Holmes, MacGyver, etc. Often they will have something in their backstory that sets them out from the flock. The stories they are in will often by "what if" stories - "what if there was ... a character who was completely honest?", or "... a hunter gatherer who thought like Sherlock Holmes". They let you explore extremes of character that normal characters wouldn't be able to reach.
UCs are also useful because their unrepresentativeness acts as a sort of insulator against stereotyping. You can have an evil Asian drug lord without implying that all Asians are drug lords or all drug lords are Asian as long as you make it clear that your drug lord is a UC.
There are a number of different ways you can present characters as UCs. The most obvious is probably the way they are treated by their peers. Otherwise, you could highlight any special origin they may have, or present them alongside a more "normal" set of characters for contrast. I suspect it's a little harder to present minor characters as UCs than it is to present protagonists.
I think the big thing you need to avoid though, is any confusion over whether a character is a UC or not. If you have a UC who's inadequately signalled as such, the reader's SOD might suffer integrity failure. If you have a character who's _meant_ to be representative (for whatever reason), but who stands out as a UC, then you might not get the effect you intended. (i.e. Why exactly are we wiping out the Dagons just because ONE of their pilots was a blood-thirsty lunatic? Isn't that overreacting a little?)
UCs are characters who are explicitly presented as not being representive of others. They are oddities and one-offs and are generally recognized as such by their peers. It could be argued that all real people are UCs.
UCs are very powerful to use because they don't have to fit in with normal expectations and can break a lot of the normal rules. Their oddness isn't a threat to the story, their oddness is the story. If you have a nomadic hunter gatherer who doesn't think and act as the reader expects a hunter gatherer would, you can get away with a lot if you can make it clear that this is a weirdo hunter gatherer who is regarded as odd by the rest of the tribe.
UCs can often have magical or speculative origins - the Idiot in Dostoyevski's _The Idiot_ is a UC. Most characters with "special" powers and abilities are also, maybe by definition, UCs - Sherlock Holmes, MacGyver, etc. Often they will have something in their backstory that sets them out from the flock. The stories they are in will often by "what if" stories - "what if there was ... a character who was completely honest?", or "... a hunter gatherer who thought like Sherlock Holmes". They let you explore extremes of character that normal characters wouldn't be able to reach.
UCs are also useful because their unrepresentativeness acts as a sort of insulator against stereotyping. You can have an evil Asian drug lord without implying that all Asians are drug lords or all drug lords are Asian as long as you make it clear that your drug lord is a UC.
There are a number of different ways you can present characters as UCs. The most obvious is probably the way they are treated by their peers. Otherwise, you could highlight any special origin they may have, or present them alongside a more "normal" set of characters for contrast. I suspect it's a little harder to present minor characters as UCs than it is to present protagonists.
I think the big thing you need to avoid though, is any confusion over whether a character is a UC or not. If you have a UC who's inadequately signalled as such, the reader's SOD might suffer integrity failure. If you have a character who's _meant_ to be representative (for whatever reason), but who stands out as a UC, then you might not get the effect you intended. (i.e. Why exactly are we wiping out the Dagons just because ONE of their pilots was a blood-thirsty lunatic? Isn't that overreacting a little?)
