The Connection of Scars

As a senior English instructor, I spend most of my time discussing and analyzing stereotypes. Many of my lessons discuss the human conditions in which stereotypes are created; bias, race, and gender to name a few. However, I also teach my students that stereotyping in creative writing class is to be avoided if you want to create memorable characters.

What I like best about stereotyping is that we, as a collective society, constantly judge one another. It's an odd like, but as a writer it makes my job interesting.

No one wants to read or write about the perfect girl who nabs the perfect guy and they live happily ever after without conflict. This is a dream.

We want to read and write about the soul-crushing defeat a girl feels after a guy denigrates her, and then how she brings her character to the light and finds love again. On her own terms. With a man who loves her for who she is, not what he wants her to be. This is real life.

Conflict is life.

Love is life.

Anger, tears, smiles; those are life.

So, how do you create a memorable character? What I like to do is create a stereotype character, and then put them in precarious situations that test the stereotype.

For example, take the straight-A student who is forced to make a decision: cheat on the test with her friends, or be a goody two-shoes and turn her classmates in for cheating. In either situation you can create disharmony in her life. The avenues she can go down are endless, and will create disarray.

And the travels she pursues to regain her old life, which she will try and fail to do, leave scars. Mental or physical, or both.

We all have scars.

This is how we learn, and live, and succeed.

Connecting to characters is connecting to their scars.