When Character Become Cliche

People are fascinated by other people. We watch reality TV, soap operas, talk shows, movies - just to see how other human beings will act in particular situations. You might have a great story, but if the characters aren't believable, it's not going to work because people are experts on other people. We are all psychologists, really. We all make observations about the world and we all tell stories about other people. If you write a character that we do not recognise as a psychologically 'real' human being, that portrait will be vastly unsatisfying.

I think a useful way to combat cliched or stereotypical characterisation is to understand why we might have created that stereotype in the first place.

We can think of a stereotype as a kind of schema. As I explained in another article, schemas are mental packages of knowledge that help us to create shortcuts for processing vast and complex information. Basically, it's a huge mental effort to process all the tiny details of everyone we interact with, let alone the people we've never interacted with, so we tend to categorise them into handy mental boxes (schemas).

In terms of movies, just as we have schemas of different genres, we also have schemas of different character types. And the writer has to both meet our expectations and surprise us with their characterisation. Freddie Krueger running a donkey sanctuary on the side might be a surprise too far, but Plucky Teen evading Psycho Killer in an Abandoned House might need a bit more work.

Writers may have absorbed some of these mental constructions - Tart with a Heart, Hero with a Tragic Past, Loveable Rogue, The Maverick Cop, etc - from their history of watching films and TV and unthinkingly applied them to their own work. This isn't bad, it's just how our minds work. But the characters will fall flat because the audience has also seen those films and watched those TV programmes and knows how to predict the characters' behaviour to a point where the story becomes uninvolving.

However, if you know you may be at risk of delving into character cliche territory, then you can take steps to avoid it. Make a list of other, similar characters from films and TV and ask yourself: What makes yours any different? If you were this character in this situation, what would you do? Do they seem like real people? Because real people can tell.