On Negative Characterisation

Today I want to talk a little bit about negative characterisation, by which I mean creating a character who is defined mostly by what he or she is not. Put that way, it sounds like something every writer would go out of their way to avoid, but it’s more common than you might think.

I most recently encountered this with Julia Karr’s XVI, which features a fairly typical YA setup: Nina Oberon, our main character, is feeling increasingly distant from Sandy, her longtime best friend. They’re still fairly close when the story begins, but there are signs that that won’t last for long. Nina is terrified of turning sixteen (or ‘sex-teen’, to use the book’s occasionally-irritating slang) while Sandy can’t wait. Nina has no interest in fashion or pop culture or boys, while Sandy is interested in almost nothing else. Nina is artistic and mature for her age, Sandy is essentially a stereotypical airhead.

I’m sure you can see where this is going. Sandy is the negative half of the dichotomy, the character who the reader isn’t supposed to be entirely sympathetic towards. Nina is her opposite, thus making her sympathetic and ‘good’…right? Well, not entirely.

The problem here is that Nina is defined in large part by what she isn’t: she isn’t interested in boys, she isn’t looking forward to having sex, and she isn’t shallow. There’s obviously more to her character than that, but this fairly lazy shorthand persists throughout the book. Rather than showing us that Nina is X, we’re told in a disapproving tone that Sandy is Y – instant characterisation!

You can find this kind of mechanism at work in a distressingly large number of YA female relationships. Rather than being allowed to develop into a sympathetic character in their own right, the ‘best friend’ is set up as a cheap strawman, compared to which the protagonist will supposedly shine. It ends up cheapening both characters, since they become nothing but mirror-image cardboard cutouts.

That’s bad enough on its own, but I also take exception to the idea that somebody like Sandy is a ‘typical’ teenage girl. Surely there’s a way to get across that your main character is unique (or at least unusual) without denigrating 98% of the female population? And for that matter, what exactly is so wrong about having a character who likes shopping or fashion or who wants to have sex? I’d love to see an author take a character like that and turn the stereotype on its head. Force me, the kind of person whose ideal wardrobe would consist of five identical pairs of jeans and t-shirts, to really believe that a genuine interest in clothes can make somebody a well-rounded person. I would love to read a female character who jolts the reader out of their complacency, rather than following the story of yet another ‘different’ girl whose only unusual character trait is an unexplored penchant for art. (Which is another massive cliché, while we’re on the topic.)

In short, avoid negative characterisation. It’s inevitable that readers will compare your characters to one another and significance from their differences, but try as much as possible to define them by what they are rather than what they aren’t. It will make them more sympathetic, more compelling and above all, more believable.