Writing

One of the most important things a writer can develop is a healthy skepticism about their own assumptions and worldview. We’re all living in bubbles, in a sense, and people naturally assume their successes are the result of their own virtues—that luck, privilege, and circumstance have nothing or very little to do with it. Realizing where your own assumptions come from doesn’t mean you change your mind about everything, but it does mean you can analyze yourself—which means you’ll be better able to analyze your characters.

Oddly, this sort of awareness and analysis can be paralyzing when it comes to writing characters in your fiction, because the more you realize how much of your worldview is the product of upbringing, environment, and experiences, the more you realize how little you understand your fellow human beings. In other words, the more you understand yourself, the less you understand other people.

The Other

Now, this is healthy, because assuming everyone else thinks and experiences life exactly the way you do is what gives us the gift of our Drunk Uncles telling us that Donald Trump is our political savior. You should have a healthy sense of doubt and terror when writing about characters that are drawn from walks of life other than your own. But it’s a mistake to go too far and assume that just because someone is a different gender, race, or culture they’re so completely unknowable that you can’t write them. It’s a mistake for two reasons: One, you’re wrong about that, and two, it leads you to write characters who are just you in different clothes, which is kind of boring.

This isn’t to say that you can sit down and write about someone utterly different from yourself without doing some work to get it right. But people all over the world have similar concerns, so it’s a mistake to assume that, for example, women are alien creatures with incomprehensible motivations. All humans share some basics, and humans within a specific culture share even more basics. Writing the Other isn’t always easy, and there are plenty of ways to go wrong, but the easiest way to go wrong is to assume that people who don’t look like you or live where you live might as well come from Jupiter and eat like Brundlefly.

Back in my college days, of course, a surfeit of lite beer meant I did sometimes eat like Brundlefly. Let’s not discuss it, ever.

My brother and I were once discussing movies we love and turned to the subject of Raiders of the Lost Ark, casually getting into why Indiana Jones was so appealing (aside from the innate charisma of Harrison Ford, of course), and I suggested one reason was the fact that Ford played Jones as a plausibly human hero who actually got hurt. Action films often have the hero surviving things that would kill real people—not only survive them, but walk away unscathed. You see thing like people being shot and still being able to fight on. I referred to Indiana Jones as Johnny Take-a-Beating, and that’s become shorthand between us for a protagonist who actually suffers when the plot hurts them.

I’m currently reading a sci-fi novel whose main character is basically indestructible. There are plot reasons for this having to do with their nature and the technology surrounding them, but just because you can come up with a reason to make your main character a tiny god in your fictional universe doesn’t make that a good writing decision. It’s always lazy writing.

Lazy, Lazy for Loving You

It’s always tempting to make your protagonist indestructible. One reason is it streamlines your storytelling, because no matter what kind of pickle you place them in, they can break free. Another reason is the simple fact that having your main character kick ass all over the place is thrilling, for a time; you can set them up against all sorts of strawmen and comically evil characters and it’s kind of fun as a reader to imagine having the power to instantly master any situation through insane violence that would kill any normal person.

The trick is, if you set your character up as indestructible, it should be leading to a fall. Strip them of their power, remove their technological crutches, and have a plot reason for it all. Not only is having a previously super-powered character suddenly vulnerable kind of thrilling, it can turn all the dumb tractionless violence of the early story into set up for the real payoff.

Otherwise, all you have is a boring character who can’t be harmed. If you can’t be harmed, nothing means anything. It’s like revealing that the entire book has been a dream, so joke’s on you if you thought any of it had consequences.

Plus, I hate reading about people who can run and jump and fight without having to sit down and rest all the time. It’s kind of virtually exhausting.