Do you have an MC type?

Kallithrix said:

Hahaha! No, definitely not hubba hubba

Obviously you're not familiar with GoT, but there is a plotline concerned with the fact that all Robert Baratheon's bastards have black hair and blue eyes. I meant that he has obviously been busy populating your world, lol

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Well, it made me laugh.


It's not necessarily my MC, but I tend to have at least one major character with a tortured past, who is usually also incredibly powerful. And he's usually a genius, but not always.

Mine are usually tortured souls searching for redemption. Except in my YA stuff - then the MC has usually been abandoned in some way and is searching for a family.

Broken teen boys looking for redemption and saving.

About the only thing my MC have in common is that they're almost always women.

My cast is pretty diverse overall, but they all have certain qualities which I know are things that I personally prize: courage, indomitable personalities, attention to details, the ability to notice small, important things of great significance.

Grumpy people who turn into puppies for food and unrepentant liars.

I like using married couples as MCs. I can get a huge range of emotions and interplay through them and the outside world.

Problem solvers with good imaginations, but I'm not sure all of my MCs quite fit that.

Kallithrix said:

Alpha males with long hair and bulging biceps, preferably in a profession that requires armour and weaponry.

*skips off into fantasy land*

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so....biologists, basically



I don't have a type except they're all fucked up in some way...but that's hardly a type.

People with very low insight wrt their own faults. The stereotypical tragic hero/heroine.

So far all of my MCs are young women with varying sarcastic/to hell with authority streaks. One of my newer projects has an MC who turns rather abrasive and blunt after losing her family in a car accident. I'm also realising that I'm using my characters to say things I would never dare.

Both my first and third books feature teens who kill their teachers. But they're verrah different, really! Other than that, I don't know if I do have a character type. Fwiw, the character I most enjoyed writing is someone very, very different from me. Different gender, different age, different socioeconomic position...he was supposed to be a side character but quickly became the MC in my second book.

ETA:

quicklime said:

I don't have a type except they're all fucked up in some way...but that's hardly a type.

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Are you sure you're not confusing your books with your diary?

My MCs, though they all come from very different backgrounds, all contend with their innate desires for perfectionism.

My MCs all seem to be young, heavily invested in their families, and queer. They all seem to have different temperments, though.

Most of my MCs have been antihero(ines) lol that's probably the only thing most of them have in common.

My type seems to be young people who feel overwhelmed by circumstances out of their control, with feelings of inadequacy and fears of failure that appear completely groundless. Not that that, you know, describes me, or anything.....

I honestly don't know if, at this point in my life (both as a person and writer), I could convincingly write a main character who is a totally different type. I feel, even though none of my characters are actually me, and superficially are often really different, I'm still writing myself and my own story through them.

Not so much an MC type, but a type of thing I tend to explore in stories. Most of my MCs are female, and most of them have a sister-relationship, whether it's through a blood relation or a close friend, that gets delved into. I have sister-issues instead of daddy-issues.

Though, now that I think of it, I really enjoy killing off fathers in gruesome, neglectful, abandonment ways.

My characters vary in age, gender, social background, and temperament. But all have at least a modicum of intelligence. They don't wander into an old, unlit house where the killer has openly slaughtered all his victims, decide now is the time to have some spontaneous sex away from the rest of the group, and get so involved making out they can't hear the panzer mark VI rumpling toward them from the closet.

My heroes are heroes, not crass sociopaths with a huge seredipity factor. My villains have all read the The Top 100 Things I'd Do If I Ever Become An Evil Overlord

My main characters are always female, but that's where the resemblance ends. I have fairies, Latina werewolves, a smart and kind princess, and even witches who make magical tea and pastries.

None of them really share physical features and they all have vastly different personalities.

I haven't written a male MC in anything longer than a short story in forever! And I haven't written a male MC in a short story in forever either!

Kallithrix said:

Alpha males with long hair and bulging biceps, preferably in a profession that requires armour and weaponry.

*skips off into fantasy land*

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I'm with you on that one, and can someone tell me how to put a smiley face in my message LOL

i write about flawed, fucked-up people. Which of course means my type is "everyone."

Some of my protagonists are quiet, introspective, indecisive, and anxious. I'm trying to branch out, haha. Then again, most of the people they interact with also happen to be killers or morally dubious....

I used to have a type: young, innocent girls under the age of 20 who would rather have fun than obey the rules. But lately I've branched out a lot. I still have the innocent girls, but there's also the old man who can't wait to die, the orphaned soldier who channels his emotions into fighting, the hot-headed fairy, the gifted and creative matriarch, the king with PTSD… and so on.

One thing that many of my characters have in common, not in personality but in experience, is a painful loss. It might be the loss of a loved one, or of power, or of possessions, but 95% of my characters lose something important over the course of the story.

Many of my characters think too much and have a tendency to make snide remarks. That and/or characters who are kind of stony and silent. Combine the two, and you have a quiet character who occasionally says something snarky, then shuts up again. Even my Appalachian country Civil War veteran is always thinking and scheming!

My male MC's tend to be wounded, either psychologically and/or physically, and driven by a sense of loss. They tend to have a thing for older, sexually accomplished, women.