 |
| Photo credit: catherinetodd2 on Flickr |
In a world, where a
beautiful woman falls in love with a Greek-God-of-a-man, the future for their
offspring looks freaking gorgeous.
You’d think the whole world was made up of Bradgelinas in
these books.
I’ll admit I’m guilty of having physically attractive
protagonists and love interests—which isn’t a bad thing (to a point). Readers like to imagine gorgeous
protagonists just as much as writers like to write them—it just becomes noticeable
when either a) everyone in your book is gorgeous or b) everyone good in your
book is gorgeous and all of the bad guys (or less important people) are meh.
Let me clarify—I’m not saying you’re doing something wrong
if your book falls into either one of those categories (I’ll readily admit more
than a few of my WIPs certainly do), it’s just something I’ve started to think
about lately and I’m going to address it in my future WIPs.
Because it turns out, just like in real life, what makes a
character beautiful isn’t always a symmetrical face or toned body—it’s their
personalities, their actions that make the readers fall in love with them.
What I find especially interesting is that books with
characters that aren’t described as gorgeous often end up with readers who fall
in love with them anyway and think the characters are hot. (Beth Revis talked
about this in a very interesting blog post you should all check out).
Why does that happen?
Books allow us to do something that movies don’t—while
movies show us what everyone looks
like and paint a picture that we can’t ignore, books allow us to create our own
images. Maybe the future love interest isn’t gorgeous…but as he does things
that show his inner beauty, readers start to amend their mental image of him
(or her, for that matter). A character that started off as ok physically, may end up looking straight-out beautiful by the end
of the book in a reader’s mind.
Inner beauty trumps a less-than-perfect physical
description.
I’m not saying you should stop writing beautiful
characters—I just think we need to consider more about what makes a character
beautiful. What does that word “beauty” mean anyway? I don’t think it always
has to apply to something physical, in fact, I think it’s even more powerful
when it doesn’t.
We live in a world where physical beauty is coveted—but to
create a world in our books where there are no imperfections is unrealistic and
shallow. Most of us agree, I think, that inner beauty is the more important of
the two, so why not show our readers that it’s possible to fall in love with
someone who isn’t physically perfect?
That kind of love story may be the greatest of them all.
So that’s my opinion, but what do you think? Am I underplaying the
importance of physical beauty, or does inner beauty really trump all?
34 comments:
I dislike this too. My favorite deconstruction of this attitude came from Suck.com, which did a cutting one-sentence send-up of Good Will Hunting: "Things always work out okay for beautiful geniuses."
I think a lot of readers tend to self-insert, and so naturally want an attractive protagonist, but a world of supermodels, for me, is too far removed from reality to be interesting. It also leads to really unfortunate constructs like beautiful people always being good and ugly people being evil.
My favorite character in the book I'm currently writing is a pretty ugly dude, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
I don't think most writers do it on purpose, but it's certainly something that happens more frequently than we'd often like to admit. The bit about good people always being beautiful and evil people being ugly is something I've seen a lot especially.
It's pretty culturally ingrained, really. It's everywhere in movies, tv, comics etc. I have to make a conscious effort to get away from it in my own work.
That's very true--we're surrounded by it everywhere. It's something that I'm definitely going to pay more attention to from now on.
Okay. I just LOLed at your subplot summary. I'm tired of beautiful people in books.
I enjoyed writing the subplot summary, I must admit. ^_^ And I agree, which is why I'm making a point to pay more attention to it now.
I think you have brought a great point. I have noticed this too and I am also guilty of it. My upcoming book has my protagonist really good-looking! But then, it struck me odd when I started writing my WIP. In my mind, my heroine is not a beauty queen but she is brave and lively. When I started writing, I inadvertently started to describe her as beautiful. More of telling vs showing. So, I am editing that piece now.
Your post captured the issue perfectly. Great post! This needs to be shared and it goes as my tweet! :)
Thanks for sharing the post! We often want to make our characters beautiful for obvious reasons, but if we break the cliche gorgeous character world, I think we can really add some depth to the characterization.
I've fallen into this myself when I started, but have made it a point to bring up more physical issues for characters in future projects. I've seen this topic spreading throughout the blogosphere. Thanks for pitching in your thoughts on the matter.
I have a novel that revolves around a character who is not physically beautiful. My writing and story were strong enough for an agent to pick up, but selling it was another matter. The feedback was pretty much about how, because of the characters weight, they had a hard time with the love story. Beauty sells, as awful as that may be.
Sure thing! It's certainly something I've been paying more attention to recently.
That's...really terrible. :/
I specifically remember one thing I loved about Mara: Daughter of the Nile (one of my favorite historical novels as a teen) ... the main guy character wasn't handsome. The book made a point of saying so. He was downright average, almost ugly. But yet there was something about him that was attractive, his way of moving and speaking. Plus he was very cunning and smart. I found the "not handsome" thing fascinating and as a result he was one of the hottest characters ever IMO. But he wasn't HANDSOME.
I generally make my prettiest people my villains. What that says about my personal worldview, I don't know :)
This is actually a peeve of mine. I know the perfectly beautiful character is an offshoot of the vampire/angel genres that are so popular, but it disturbs me that this is so common. In a culture where self-esteem and image problems are at epidemic proportions, dangling this carrot, especially for our daughters, really bothers me. None of my characters will be classically beautiful for this reason.
I tend to have a lot of handsome villains, too. Something about not looking like a stereotypical bad guy is pretty fantastic to me. :)
Also, love interests who are a little less than attractive are great--they force us to dig deeper to figure out why we like them.
I think the rise of image problems is what clued me in to this trend to begin with. Kids get enough of that influence from movies, television and advertising. Why not start to change it in print?
The only example of this I'm tired of is in the recent crop of rom-coms where a stunningly beautiful female lead falls for some uncharismatic shmuck. And yet we rarely seem to see the reverse.
I tend to underplay all my physical descriptions, so this isn't so much a challenge. I also think it depends on genre, what the readers' expectations are going to be. Not that you can't run counter to that, but it should factor in somewhere. Great post! :)
That's true! I think I've seen maybe one or two where the reverse happened, but it's not nearly as common.
That's probably true--I read a lot of YA where readers pretty much expect a gorgeous guy to end up with a gorgeous girl (even if the girl doesn't think she's gorgeous, she almost always ends up being on the prettier side).
Recently I've started to see a slight backlash where the guy isn't always described as drop-dead gorgeous, which, quite frankly, is an encouraging trend.
My protag is ugly. I did this because her inner life is so rich (and so important to the novel) that her physical beauty became totally irrelevant.
OH I was GONNA say that I'm not the best person at describing people/places/objects (I'm working on it), so I tend to leave a lot to the imagination.
And it works really well, from what I've read. :)
Sounds like you're varying it up, as far as physical beauty goes. Would you consider the most beautiful characters in your WIPs to be the ones with the most physical beauty? Or is there something else?
I think all my characters are gorgeous, of course. But that's my right 'cause it's fun to have hot guys in your head.
*cough* Anyways, serious time now? XD
In one WIP, my MC is pretty, but she has physical scars that seriously mess up her confidence. One of the most gorgeous characters in that book is completely and utterly bonkers (in the criminally insane way).
In my second WIP, my MC was good-looking and still is, but she's depressed so that's been hard on her looks, so... she's a bit worn around the edges.
In my third WIP, (I have no life so I've written three books in the last year or so), I think my MC is adorable, but she's a size sixteen, so she doesn't think she's pretty. In that book, there are a lot of beautiful people who are not exactly good people.
I forget where I'm going with this...
Good points, but I don't like it when the stereotypes are 1) a hot snob and 2) an ugly but oh-so-good protag. It seems like discrimination against physically beautiful people. And, I've actually met a lot of good people who are also far more "beautiful" than everybody else. That's OK... Someone can be utterly gorgeous inside and out (what's the matter about it). The great thing about life sometimes is that it's not fair.
Oh! I agree entirely--I'm not making broad generalizations here that it's impossible for a person to be beautiful on the inside and out (I know more than one person who could fit into this category). My point is more that in books and media in general right now, there are a *lot* of protagonists and love interests who are gorgeous simply for the sake of being gorgeous. I'm not saying you shouldn't have beautiful protagonists...just that you be aware when they're attractive just because.
I rarely date for looks in real life, so I definitely don't write model-gorgeous people in my books either, but they're sexy to me for other reasons :)
That's really fantastic--finding inner beauty both in fiction and real life is a wonderful thing. The best relationships, after all, aren't skin-deep.
There are good looking people just as there are utterly frightful looking people, ie: a hag (to look at). If everyone is beautiful on the outside, you have Mary Sue-ism or something similar to it. If someone is physically beautiful in fiction, they need to be flawed - and not the cliche 'feels invisible (when everyone's attention is on them)/deaf composer syndrome' etc. The heorine, sure, she can be insecure about her image - that's realistic, and probably sympathetic, though I speak of this as a guy. I know it's easy to fall into the trap of having the opposite sex character's in an author's work to look amazing... especially if the same-sex characters aren't. I don't suspect gay writers would find the reverse true - that their same-sex-as-author characters are visions of gods/goddesses, at least in the first draft/when the writing is wish fullfillment.
If, on the flip side, beautiful people don't exist, then you're reading Literary fiction :p (maybe).
People who are beautiful outside but mean, rotten EVIL on the inside, well, that there is your attractive antagonist. If they're hideous on the outisde but beatiful on the inside, that's your misunderstood anti-hero. If they're beautiful inside and out, that's your classic hero, which is seriously outdated and in our society as it is, seen as a typical a detractor.
Exactly. I tend to have friends who are usually: b) not very attractive, inside or out (I tend to get rid of them); or attractive both inside and out (I'm not shallow but damn do I have a weakness for what I perceive as attractive; I keep them as long as they're happy to keep me on their list).
Very interesting analysis! Falling into the trap of writing attractive characters just because they're the main character or the love interest is one I'm sure most writers have slipped into at one time or another, and it's important to be conscious about who we decide to make physically attractive (or unattractive) and why.
This was a great post. When I think about it, I do tend to imagine my characters as actors/actresses, but I don't describe them all as attractive. Those who are beautiful/gorgeous are described as so to a point, the others have different traits to be admired, unless there's a level of infatuation where a person finds them beautiful through their own eyes. Although, there are times where I've found authors saying their main character was unattractive but all the guys/girls seemed to be all over them, which I found unbelievable if their personality at least wasn't likeable or they hadn't done something to be liked. I think you're right, it's our job as writers to make our characters beautiful inside, no matter what they're like in our imagination.
Thank you, Margaret! I think it's only natural to at least initially imagine our characters as beautiful--we're their creators and quite frankly, a little bit biased. :)
Despite that, it's something I think we should be careful with. Inner beauty is so much more powerful than physical beauty, and it's something certainly worth portraying.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
Post a Comment