Cat Fight In The Kitchen-Wattpad Rant

Weak Characters and Character Weaknesses

I think I'm going to go through this little rant book and condense a bunch of chapters. Update the advice, organize it a bit more. Combine where I can. See what still needs addressed or what needs elaborated on. I won't be uploading them as new chapters. I'm literally just going to go back and rewrite some as I have time, so I'll let you guys know when I do that, in case you're interested.

Any advice/requests/complaints/etc for me on this whole rant book revision process would be greatly appreciated. Leave it in the comments, on my message board, in a PM. Whatever. You guys know I love opinions.

Today, let's discuss something I see get a lot of hate, but for all the wrong reasons: Weak Characters and Character Weaknesses

With the intense push for "strong" female characters, I think we're starting to lose the integrity of what it means to be a fictional character and I think, even worse, we're starting to lose individuality among characters.

Let me say something that will shock and awe you: I'm tired of "strong" characters. They're all arrogant and flawless and downright boring. Just because you cuss, wear leather jackets, and get in fights, it doesn't make you strong and it doesn't make you a hero.

Weak characters aren't bad. Characters having weaknesses isn't a bad thing. To explain what I mean, let's break this down and discuss what I think is important about having weak characters and/or giving character's weaknesses.

1. Consider the character's backstory

Everyone always wants their characters to have these horribly tragic backstories. Homelessness. Abuse. Loss of parents. Depression. And you guys know how I feel about these backstories. I don't think they're necessary most of the time, and a lot of the time, I think they should vaguely be alluded to, but here's my point.

I'm an incredibly shy person. I really am. When people from online meet me in person they're shocked that I'm not as outspoken as I appear to be in rants and advice and whatnot. It takes me a loooooong time to warm up to people. And even though it's part of my personality, a lot of it stemmed from what happened when I was a kid.

After that whole mess was more or less a part of the past and I started having to move on from it, I stopped talking to people for a while. From about second grade until sixth grade I rarely spoke to anyone by my dad, my brother, and my best friend. Any time we were out in public, my brother would speak for me. At school, my best friend spoke for me. (More or less, I just didn't speak to adults. I spoke to kids my age).

It's not that I was completely mute or anything. If they addressed me directly I would answer, but I would stare at my feet or my hands. I rarely made eye contact. But if they did not state my name and look directly at me, I wouldn't answer. I'd look at my brother or my best friend and they would answer for me. So when people said the generic "how are you", someone would say "we're good" for me.

And that's a weakness. That, more or less, is being weak. Because I'll admit, from the time I was seven until I was eleven, I hardly made my own decisions or communicated in public. I didn't have a voice in the community. But that's something that often comes with having a dark spot in your past like that. It's just natural, and for us to call that weak is kind of ignorant. Obstacle, yes. Weakness, maybe not.

And here's the best part about all of it: it gave me an obvious goal for improvement and created tremendous room for growth. I remember I cried myself to sleep every night for the first four weeks of sixth grade because my best friend and I didn't have the exact same schedule and I knew I was going to have to start communicating and speaking for myself and that terrified me. My best friend started casually practicing social norms with me and trying to teach me to make small talk (and he thought he was being subtle about it, but I knew what he was doing the whole time) and it was legitimately something I had to work at.