More Than Just Comic Relief

Think about your favorite stories for a second. Does it seem like a lot of them have the same sort of vibe character-wise? You know what I mean. Like, here we have the obvious hero, the love interest, the best friend that’s pretty much there just for comic relief, the bully, the preppy girl everyone’s obsessed with…you’ve seen these characters a thousand times within your favorite stories, haven’t you? So much so, that they’re almost borderline stereotypes. Is it just because these are people we know and relate to in our everyday lives or can we as writers try to utilize these familiar character types in new and unique ways so they’re not stereotypical?

This was one thing Kristin and I tried to utilize as much as possible when we first started writing our manuscript, The Visionary. Because the story primarily takes place in a high school setting, we noticed a lot of these same characters popping up within our story, but instead of getting worried about being stereotypical or unoriginal, we ended up purposefully running with the characters the way they were coming out in the first few chapters. In fact, this actually ended up being a strategy that helps as the mystery begins to unfold: because the main character (and by extension, the reader) immediately begins by stereotyping the ensemble cast, it ends up leaving a lot of room for us as authors to play around with assumptions and unexpected twists. (Sound familiar? Check out my last blog on playing to your reader’s assumptions here.)

Now you do have to be cautious that your characters don’t come off the wrong way, even if you do want the reader to operate on certain assumptions about them.

For example, even though Kristin and I wanted to play somewhat into the typical high school stereotypes to help hide certain elements of our story, that also made us try to be very aware of how those same characters might be received. Meaning, we wanted some stereotyping, but not enough that the characters were boring, unoriginal, or whatever.

In Chapter 3 of our manuscript, we introduce our- for lack of a better way of putting it- comic relief character, Henry. Or at least that’s how our main character Jade (and the reader) immediately come to think of him. Henry is a goofball, the best friend of the potential love interest Jade’s already met, and maybe a little too talkative for most people. Pretty much the kind of character that typically rounds out the Core Three in a story, right?

This is a pretty good start, but how do you make sure a character like Henry is there for more than just comic relief?

Yeah, he’s a funny guy, but think about this character outside of the context we’ve immediately stereotyped him into. In Henry’s world, there is no “This person is the main character” or “This character is written here for this specific purpose”- think about the things that make him real. (If you want advice on this, try Kristin’s blog on making character’s seem real here.)

To Jade, Henry is goofy and bombastic and maybe even a little annoying. But remember that the narrator might not be that trustworthy to take information from. Jade, in this introductory scene, doesn’t know Henry- she hasn’t met him before, she knows nothing of his backstory, or what he’s going through on a daily basis. Your readers don’t either until you purposefully give them information about him. So, even though Henry might be an extremely complex character with loads of potential for development later on in the story, the reader is immediately taking him at face value, if not a little less than face value because Jade’s stereotyping tints what you think of him.

Henry, in particular, was the character we were most concerned about when we first started letting people beta-read our manuscript, which is some of why we wanted to do a blog about him. As I’ve said, Henry initially tends to come off pretty ridiculous, so we were actually worried he was TOO much and that readers would find him annoying. Maybe the funny guy was trying too hard or, worse yet, wasn’t actually that funny. If the readers reacted in either of those ways, they would never read on further into the book to see that goofy, ridiculous Henry actually has one of the deeper character arcs emotionally throughout Visionary and comes from one of the sadder backgrounds. We were worried no one would get past the “Comic Relief” stereotype.

Weirdly enough though, the opposite happened. Yeah, Henry’s written in a way that makes him very over-the-top, but that seemed to give him a kind of endearing quality with our beta-readers. They really enjoyed him- not only as the funny best friend, but also as a deeper character as the story unfolded. Henry is part of a loving family, but doesn’t always feel like he fits in. Henry is goofy, but also extremely driven and full of ingenuity. Henry loves and is always looking out for a girl even though it’s not super clear how she feels about him.

So, that’s the mission. Even if you want to play to stereotypes as a writer, you have to be really careful not to present characters in a way that makes your readers disinterested. Yes, this character is familiar, but why are they not like everyone else? Be aware of what you’re writing and what your readers might be thinking, as well as how your narrators are shaping that view. Remember to think of each character as a fully-fledged person, not just somebody there to make the main character laugh or blush or mad.

Do you writers out there have any experience playing off character stereotypes or stories about how you weren’t sure if your characters would be well received? Any tips or good book recommendations for this topic in particular? Let us know!

Thanks for reading. Write on.

-Kamryn