Stereotyping as a stereotype

I joined an interesting conversation at my usual hangout on-line. As it turned out we were chatting, quite literally so, about character creation, and one of the participants had problems with female characters. The troubleshooting soon turned into a topic of stereotypes.

Even though this particular article is about gender it could be used for any labelling of a common occurrence. We even touched slightly upon the matter of culture possibly being a case of stereotyping. Now, be aware that I'm pushing forward my own thoughts and reasoning here. What makes sense to me could be an utter lie to someone else. Also bear in mind that this is a article about stereotyping, not about the stereotypes mentioned.

Back to the topic in question. Problems with creating female characters. There is a stereotype, or at least an archetype, to begin with. No matter how much we would like to argue that each person is a unique individual there was never much of a problem accepting the concept of a female character. From there goes that it should be equally easy to grasp the concept of a male character. That, in turn, should have us accepting that we do indeed play around with stereotypes far more easily than many of us believe.

The interesting here isn't if there is an implicit femaleness or not. What is worth taking note of is that there is an expectation of an expectation. What I mean with this is that we tend to expect others to be prejudiced, or at least to simplify reality by attaching labels to it. We, you and me, are of course far too tolerant, knowledgeable, understanding or intellectually advanced to fall into that trap. Or maybe not, even if it hurts to apply the negative to ourselves. Anyway, as a writer we cater for a reader. An average reader at that. At least if we aim at commercial writing. We write for a stereotypical reader of the stereotypical kind of writing we produce, and for that very reason we adapt our writing to handle expectations. Those expectations are in itself models of the real expectations. We simplify and use templates, no matter if we are aware of them or not.

I believe that this simplifying can be put to good use for a writer. In order to create the unique we need to be aware of the template. We don't have to agree with it, but we ought to recognize it and respect that the reason for the template is that it makes people comfortable because the familiar is comfortable. At the other hand, if we want a character to make a short appearance then it makes sense to stick to the stereotype unless we want to place ourselves in a situation where we need to explain the deviation from a stereotype. Mind you, the stereotype doesn't have to be true. This is not a matter of truth or right. It is only a matter of accepting a stereotype for what it is -- an oversimplification that has its grounds in an overall truth, a partial truth, a false prejudice or a mix of them all.

Now for the header. Falling back to stereotypes whenever a character has a very minor role in the story is, of course, a stereotype in itself. The less we see of a character the more we expect him or her to lack original individuality. There you have a useful stereotype if any.