More on Characters: Types and Stereotypes

Books on writing often tout that all good writing is character-driven and that all good characters are complex. Complex characters have names and backgrounds and hobbies and tics. If they are angsty/"realistic" characters, they have dark pasts and foibles and unrelenting grief. 

But stories can be told in many different ways.

(1) Good writing can rely on types

(2) Types and stereotypes are not the same. 

(3) Good writing can also rely on stereotypes. 

(1) Tolkien relied on types. Agatha Christie relied on types. Shakespeare relied on types. Tolkien created types. So did Whedon when he invented Buffy (who is actually a deliberate reversal of a "type").

(2) Types are not the same as stereotypes. The difference is the universal quality. Types can move between cultures. Miss Marple is very English, but her type is still recognizable in her descendants, Mme Ramotswe and Mrs. Pollifax (Gilman).

Malahide gives Alleyn nuance.

A stereotype, on the other hand, is a cliche specific to time and place. Ngaio Marsh claimed she was using characters (unlike Christie), not types in her mysteries when actually she was using stereotypes. Don't get me wrong--I enjoy Marsh, but I don't think her characters are transferable beyond a very specific time and place. Alleyn belongs specifically to his upperclass English milieu and there is little of him that survives beyond it. He is a collection of time/place-based cliches: the reticient, fastidious, upperclass British detective working amongst worshipping subordinates in the 1940s to 1950s. 

In 1937 Lost Horizon, Howard

is the Terry character.

(3) Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses stereotypes in Herland. Van is the questioning (good) and progressive intellectual of his day. Jeff is the soft-spoken idealizer of women. Terry is the brash, domineering he-man. They are specific to a utopian polemic and don't need to function much beyond that.

More importantly than types versus stereotypes, Gilman is consistent. She could be more critical of Van (as my Terry is) but once she establishes their characters, she doesn't suddenly change mid-way through the story, forcing them to behave a certain way, so she can achieve an end. Terry's obnoxiousness is grounded in a particular perspective that doesn't vary and isn't inherently conspiring. Terry never lies, and he isn't deliberately scheming. In fact, Van feels some sympathy for Terry, trapped in a world that is outside his comfort level.

I believe that being fair with the reader is 90% of what keeps a story a story, rather than a lecture. I generally dislike "character remembers an important clue from years earlier" moments. But IF the story establishes that such memory retrieval is possible, then having the memory resurface doesn't bother me as much. 

Stereotypes can not only be fair, they can be very funny. In the Monk episode "Employee of the Month," almost all of the characters are stereotypes: the inept stock boys, the weedy manager, the disgruntled retail worker. The stereotypes are so accurate, so right-on, they are hilarious, but they are hilarious within a very specific time, culture, and place. A type, like Monk himself, has more universal qualities. Monk IS the Sherlock Holmes of his time and place and therefore, carries within him the universal qualities that made Sherlock Holmes universal. 

So stereotypes have their place. However, to truly invest in a story, types are more useful in long-run than stereotypes. In my critique/tribute to Herland, I give Terry not only more background but stronger arguments. He doesn't merely stand in for something; he considers what he wants and thinks. 

A human being faced with a new world potentially provides a universal experience.