forum Which Stereotype Is Your Character?

Started April 04, 2021 by Frances Earnshaw

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Which Literary Stereotype does your character fit into and why? Did you do this intentionally? Is your character similar to any existing character in another novel? Did you do this intentionally?

In the Thorne family, I think the widow Thorne is a very "wicked evil stepmother" fairy tale stereotype, even though she's my main character's birth mother. She's abuses him (my main character, Ash) because she wanted a daughter but got a son, and then when she actually got a daughter (Ember, Ash's younger sister) she abused her daughter too. Without the successful grooming of a "favorite child", and without the habit of financial predation, I think the widow still fits the type. I'm also thinking that she's very charismatic, more like Angelica Huston's stepmother character in the Ever After movie, or Glenn Close's wicked stepmother character in the Cinderella movie—we can't relate to her motives, and we can't condone her cruelty, but we must admit that she's got style and does not suffer fools. She knows exactly what she wants in her life, and she'll throw a beast of a tempest to get it.

As for Ash and Ember, I like to think there's a bit of a "Fitzwilliam Darcy and Georgina Darcy" vibe to them, but I didn't set out to write them that way. It's usually Ember rescuing Ash from the Wickhams of the world rather than the other way around, though.

Speaking of…Ash's main love interest, uhh…I don't know, Ash falls for him because he (the love interest) does kind things and right things even when the rules say you shouldn't bother or will be punished for helping people who need help—and this love interest isn't selfish exactly or even evil/cruel…but he is kind of a huge jerk who seduces people and then ghosts them when he's bored. He's averse to intimacy, and not above presenting as more vulnerable or sincere than he is to get his "fix" of admiration and get people thinking and doing what he wants them to…so this makes it very difficult to appreciate the personal risks he actually does takes to do something kind. Is this a type? A sort of "Lothario" type? A sort of Venus Barbata type (an epithet of the Roman goddess Venus in the form of a man)? I don't know. The Scarlet Pimpernel? Zorro? Every stereotypical "gentleman gone rogue" that is a charming yet ruthless pirate, or thief/bandit, trickster with the heart of gold?