#chimparzan

[warm-cider]

Browsing Spotify when suddenly...

NO.

[ofhouseadama]

"people spend too much time on strong female character and nowhere near enough on strong character, female" Do you have any thoughts on what separates strong female characters from strong character, female? Writing a comic with a female lead, and would rather she be strong character, female.

How the character is conceived. I think it's generally wrongheaded to conceive a character based on "I want them to be strong." Because no one's strong all the time. And what is your definition of strong? How does that fit within your story? Compared to other characters? 

Generally when creating a character I keep two things in mind:

Everything has a cost

God tier characters have god tier flaws*

Which basically means that even something that is a strength is also somehow a weakness. If you character can internalize her emotions to be levelheaded in a crisis, what does that cost her? Does that mean when she shoves down her emotions to survive she can become cruel? Does that mean she has problems decompressing later? Why does she internalize her emotions? Is it out of guilt? Shame? How did she learn this behavior? 

I tend to create characters from a middling point (unless they're a foil to another character**), by which I mean I first create their place in the narrative. Like say... Molly. Molly is a devoted assistant, loyal to her boss to a fault, and mistrusting of outsiders. Her job is to bolster her (female) boss, and to try to protect her. She can be callous and cruel while trying to do her job. Molly is in her early twenties. 

Now you ask why is she like this? 

Molly has a lot of untapped potential, but seems to rely on other people to define herself because she grew up in foster care, and learned to mirror people to get them to like her and to care for her. She has very little sense of self. She's a devoted assistant to her boss because her boss cares for her, and because Molly is looking for a woman to try and model herself after. She's loyal to her boss because no one has stuck with her for this amount of time, which makes her trusting (to a fault) of her boss, and mistrustful (to a fault) of people whose agendas may be in opposition to her boss'. This may be a strength in some ways, but also a weakness. This leaves Molly open to being taken advantage of (even inadvertently) by her boss, or keep Molly from advancing in the workplace, or simply not asking for what she needs, or hiding what she needs. Her loyalty may keep her from forming relationships outside work. How can she develop from here? 

*This just means that if you have a character who is in a position of immense power, has immense powers, or otherwise is in a "god like" position, they need the flaws to match. Hubris, hamartia, and the like. 

**Foils, on the other hand, I do tend to develop from the ground up, just by the nature of their narrative function.

Hope this helped!