: Re: How to write a 'fish out of water' character? Inserting a Fish out of water character could be good way to introduce the reader to the world and also great for comic relief, but there were

@Kevin153

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If the character is just in the story solely to solve writing problems for you, that is usually pretty clear. If, on the other hand, she is a fully realized character, who happens to be an outsider to the culture she is embedded in, and that happens to solve a few writing problems for you along the way, that's a very different situation.

In other words, if you focus on making this a strong character in her own right, and you don't lean too heavily on her ignorance to help you dramatize your info dumps, you should be completely OK. It isn't the fish-out-of-water aspect that makes a character seem thin or underwritten, it's the fact that the character is thin and underwritten that highlights the fish-out-of-water aspect.

This actually goes for any character role or stock type. If your villain is just there to make life hard on the protagonist, if your main character is just a cookie-cutter hero, if your readers can fill in your sassy sidekick's dialog for him, then you probably haven't put enough independent life into your characters. They need to have some spark about them outside of the work they are doing for you.

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