: Re: How best to avoid the appearance of stereotype? I am seriously considering adding a character based on a man I know. This man is very irksome, rather pretentious and refers to himself in the

@Steve161

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There is nothing wrong with having a person who is a member of a minority, and extremely annoying. 'Minority' can be sexual orientation, it can be disability, it can be religion or skin colour - whatever.

However, if the annoying character is extremely annoying and the only representative of their minority in your work, there is an implication that you consider all members of that minority to be like this. Especially if the annoying trait ties to the minority trait (e.g. a gay man ranting about his orientation).

The reason you don't see a lot of annoying minority characters in modern media is that as often as not, there's only one minority member to "represent" their minority, and, often enough, their minority status is their only character trait.

The way forwards is therefore to have more than one member of the same minority, and give them different character traits. One is annoying, another is really nice, a third has his rough edges in ways that have nothing to do with their minority status. In that way, the negative-stereotype character is just one of many, he cannot be taken to represent the group as a whole.

That said, I must question whether your story needs a character with all those traits you've described? Or only some of them? Don't let your story get sidetracked by your need to blow off steam. Write the characters that advance your story, don't shoehorn characters that don't belong, just because you know a person like that.

For example, J.K. Rowling has based Umbridge on a person she once knew. She disliked that person, for reasons undisclosed, and the person had a love for twee. There the commonalities ended - the real person did not look like a toad, nor was she an unapologetic Nazi supporter. Rowling took one colourful trait from a person she knew, and used it to make the character she needed in the story come alive. Umbridge was there because the story needed her, not because Rowling wanted to write an annoying acquaintance into the story.

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