Problematic Character Tips

In honor of 1,000 followers, I’ve put together a brief overview/worksheet that you can use to start thinking about your traumatized character. This is meant to focus more on the trauma aspect and how they might react, but you are welcome to edit your copy to make it a full character profile.

It includes sections on basic details, PTSD symptoms, other common mental health issues, triggers, support systems, as well as gives you a space to go more in-depth about what happened and what they remember and the world they live in.

There’s also a multi-trauma character profile here. (Link)

An example of the character profile in use is here. (Link) Trigger warnings for suicide attempts, incest, and csa.  Julia, the character in question, is the MC for a piece about someone with repressed emotional issues having to confront the emotions that they didn’t even realize they were pushing back when they try the newest fad, a mood indicating hair dye. You’ll notice that in my copy, I’ve deleted sections I didn’t need or moved things around to fit this character- there’s also a few ‘To Be Decided’s there. Don’t feel like you have to be able to fill out the whole thing before sitting down to write.

Thank you to all the people who helped me look over it, and to all of my followers for sticking around and helping me create a better resource.

You are not stupid! Developing media literacy takes work and effort and mental exercise, and just knowing that it's important and wanting to improve makes you a smart person in my opinion.

I'm no teacher, and I think one of the best things you could do if you wanted to improve your media literacy seriously would be to go to your local library and ask the librarian where to find books on media analysis and/or college level literature textbooks.

But beyond that, here's some general tips.

(I am going to say "reading" and "books" here, but these tips apply to all forms of media as well, film, video game, etc.)

Read books that challenge your reading comprehension.

Read books that have words you don't recognize and have to look up. Read books that are written with dense prose that you have to read slowly to take in.

Read books that challenge you emotionally.

Read books about subjects that make you uncomfortable. Read books from the perspective of people who you disagree with.

Stop and think about what you're reading.

Think deeply about what the author is trying to say, not just on the surface but subtextually. Think about word choice, think about writing decisions. Think about the character motivations. Think about the author's motivations. 

Consider the context and metatext.

When you're reading something, think about the context it was written in. Do research about the author and their life. Do research about the time and place the book was written in, and try to link the information that you find to the material in what you're reading.

Write about what you're reading.

Stop and do a reflection after you've read something. Maybe look up a worksheet of general reading comprehension questions online and answer them. Take the time to write about what you were reading, how it made you feel and what you think it was trying to say. Taking time to write like this helps you process what you've taken in and understood it.

I just worry I’m missing things others are getting and I wanna actually be able to describe why I like certain things without sounding like a broken record.

I can’t analyze to save my life but I wanna learn

I think the place to start is with the consciousness that all media is a collection of choices. All of it. Everything that is in a piece of media is a decision that someone made, from the big themes to the individual pixels on the screen in a video game, those are only there because someone made a decision that caused them to be there.

With that as the foundation, you can start asking the needful questions.

I find a useful place to start asking questions is "why X rather than Y?"

In any given piece of media you want to analyze, pick a choice that is being made and imagine what it would be like if a different (or opposite) choice had been made.

Say, in Star Wars, what if Luke had decided to join his father and overthrow the Emperor? If the movie had made that choice, how would it have changed the film? What would it feel like is the point the movie is trying to make then? What if Vader was not Luke's father?

Or, what if the good guys' lightsabers were red and the bad guys' sabers were blue? What does that change? What are the things you instinctively associate with those colors, why would swapping them around feel wrong? (or would it actually feel really right? If so, why?)

You can do this for the very big questions, like themes and entire plots, but you can also do it in the very minute. Read a poem and ask yourself why the author picked this word rather than one of its synonyms. Maybe it's for the meter, maybe it's for the tone, maybe it's to match vocabulary. Imagining a different word or a different phrase in the poem, how would that change how it feels to read? What it feels like to hear it spoken out loud?

The answer to many questions you'll ask about a piece of media are entirely banal. Like, in 3D animation, some things look the way they do because that's just how a particular software suite handles that particular task. Light reflections, physics simulation, motion blur, etc. Plenty of video games look the way they do in no small part because they are built within the constraints of their engines. Sometimes paintings have the colors they do not because an artiste is imbuing every choice with profound meaning, but because those are the colors the painter could afford, or which were available at the time. And those banal answers are still useful, even if they don't sound deep.

But the important bit is, the more questions you ask (however banal), the more answers you'll learn, and the more you'll understand about the mediums you're interested in, and the more you'll become able to interpret the choices that are made and work towards building an understanding and constructing a reading.

If you start from the understanding that everything (everything! literally every single thing!) in a piece of media is a choice, a decision that could have been made differently, and you ask yourself why it wasn't, you'll be in a decent position to start to interrogate the art you enjoy.

Outside of that, there are lots of books on art appreciation, and tons of people doing videos on media literacy on YouTube. I think Crash Course has some high-school level courses in English and Theatre and Film on their channel, which can be another good place to start.

Also, just, generally... Media literacy is a skill, not a trait. It's a thing which you practise doing, and in practising it you inevitably become better at it. Nobody starts out good at it, literally everybody is improving with practise all the time, and literally the only way to get any better is to try to do it to the best of your ability as much as possible, working the muscle so it will start to grow.

being stuck in the past, never being able to let go and never accepting the present because you will always be there, even if 'there' is gone and will never come back. change upending their life in such a way that they refuse to acknowledge anything changed at all. trying to go back to a place and time and to people that aren't there anymore because nothing else matters. you're in a perpetual groundhog day while the universe tries to drag you forward kicking and screaming. if you prevent change you can prevent loss surely. if all the people you love are in the past how can you not live there as well etc. etc.

Reading critically, much like thinking critically, is a skill you learn and develop—not something that you’re born with. All those English classes about blue curtains and the symbolism in Shakespeare (that we made fun of) are about teaching this skill. It’s the difference between rating a book one star because you felt tense and uncomfortable over the conflict, and rating it one star because it wasn’t built with tact or intention.

The very first thing you need to know about reading critically is this:

Everything you read is written with intention.

And

Even if it wasn’t intentional, all writing contains political implications anyway and it’s the author’s job to be able to see those implications.

Which means, in turn, if you’re a writer, you are responsible for the implications of your work whether you meant it that way or not.

This is a good thing! This is how we hold people accountable for bigoted or otherwise biased work, and how we can make positive changes to our work when someone else points out something we didn’t see. The point is in the trying, and the constant improving, and the best way to improve is to start here: by learning how to read (yours and others) work critically.

Like and Dislike:

Most people, when starting out in reading and media analysis, start with this question: do I like it or not?

But in true analysis—when we’re trying to recognize what a piece of work is attempting to do—whether or not you like the work isn’t a very helpful question to answer on its own. What you really want to be asking is: why?

Why was the decision made? Why do you like/dislike it?

Our likes and dislikes are good indicators of our intuition. If something makes you feel itchy or wrong, it’s not enough in analysis to then say, “this is bad because it made me feel uncomfortable." You need to then ask, “why does this make me feel uncomfortable?” Because maybe the answer is, “because the protagonist is being treated like a stereotype. Thus, this piece of writing is biased.” There’s a basis for true critique there. If the answer is, “because my personal experiences make me uncomfortable with sibling rivalry.” Your feelings are certainly valid, but they aren’t a basis for critique of the work itself (unless the author claimed the work was perfect for people with your specific personal experience).

Do you see the difference? Likes and dislikes are important, but they are only one step in the broader question.

Consider word choice

Everything is written with intention, which means the very words the author uses are chosen with precise care to elicit a specific feeling or experience within the reader.

For example, maybe you read a passage and it makes you feel a little gross—dig into the word choices here, maybe they used a word like “moist”. Many people make the mistake of then saying: “this passage was so gross, who even says moist?” without considering that this was a very intentional decision to make you squirm—this passage was meant to illicit that feeling.

When a piece does exactly what it’s set out to do, and contains the messages it has intended to make, it has done a good job as a piece of writing. You can still critique a work like this, however, and it is very important to do so. For example, what if the author set out to create a message that was politically incorrect? Or what if they intended their word choice to bully a certain experience or person?

That’s level two analysis—it’s taking the work outside of itself and into our current and historical world. So you can say, “this work’s word choices intentionally dehumanizes women, which reflects the author’s political standpoint. A work like this is problematic for a countless number of social, historical, and political reasons.”

This is an important step, especially when we’re considering works from the past. We can acknowledge the things that these works did well, while also bringing it into the present day to analyze its political messages.

However! This is also a tricky step, because what if that work that dehumanizes women is, in itself, a critique on thinking patterns present in a patriarchal system?

We’d have to look into the time the work came out, the history and views of the author, whether it was claimed that this work was a critique or satire, and if, in that case, it achieves its job in being a critique (usually found in the theme/ending of the overall work—like if the protagonist who dehumanizes women gets speared to death at the end or something).

True analysis takes work and research like this, and there’s never really any one correct answer. Some will argue that a work knows its own message and is thus critiquing itself, whereas others may argue it doesn’t. What’s important is that you’re as informed as you can be on a work, and your stance is backed by this research and knowledge.

It’s okay to admonish a “good” work for an unclear message or intention. It’s okay to admonish a “good” work from the past that has problematic messaging. These stances are up to you.

So how does this apply to your own work?

The more analysis and critical reading you do, the more you’ll be able to pick out in all works—including your own. Being able to see how killing off a certain character at the end changes the theme of your work, or carries an implicit message about people like that character, is incredibly important to writing with intention, and making sure you’re saying what you want to say.

It takes practice, time, and knowledge about our political and social world today. Stay informed, keep analyzing old and new works, and be open to second opinions and diverse perspectives that may point out messaging in your works you hadn’t considered.

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A character who was kept alive after a humiliating defeat- the only survivor of their group- so they could see what they failed to stop.

A character who can no longer sleep peacefully because every time they try to sleep, they hear the bloodcurdling screams of their friends as they died.

A character who returned home after a long hard battle, after winning- saving everyone… but instead of being celebrated, they are shunned from the scars that now deform their face.

It sounds like a gimmick, but honestly, some of my best writing in that class came from hotspotting. Usually, the sentence you consider the "best" is the one that really gets to the heart of something you're trying to convey. In a rough draft, it tends to be that you're fumbling around a bit before you really hit on the heart of things. So with hotspotting, you're starting from a less fumbly place, which means you're able to dig into your subject in a much deeper and more precise way. It makes you feel like a surgeon, a little bit.