Your Character Might be Too Different

I’ve got some hobbies that are pretty unusual. I like watercolor painting, I work at a science museum, and—of course—I’ve written two novels and a bunch of short stories.

It’s great to have a character who does interesting things. In fact, it really can set your character apart from others. 

However, have you ever met a character who's a little too unique? That they’re so quirky and original and not like everyone else that they just seem like a person who could only exist in YA fiction?

I’m sure a couple of characters come to mind.

It’s totally cool if your character is into Russian folk art. But then maybe she shouldn’t be named Magnolia Wren Davidson, have violet hair and vibrant green eyes, and burst into Emerson quotes at inopportune moments. Having too many things that make your characters special can ruin the verisimilitude. 

As much as we like to believe that all of us are eccentric, it's just not true. The vast majority of us are pretty normal. Though we've got certain things about us that make us distinctive, we're not all YA characters, so why are all lot of YA characters not like us?

I have this handy little diagram that I made called the Triangle of Realism. By only picking two of the three sides, you can ensure that your character is unique while also not being a total oddball. Following are examples from real-life books.

Note: I’ll be sticking with contemporary YA for the examples because this doesn’t necessarily apply to dystopian/fantasy/sci-fi. That's another issue.

Unusual Name

• Quentin Jacobsen (Paper Towns by John Green)
• Ramona Blue (Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy)
• Richard Gansey III (Gansey for short) (The Raven Cycle series by Maggie Stiefvater)

Strange Hobbies (not necessarily strange, but uncommon)

• Olly and his parkour (Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon)
• Eliza’s online comic strip (Eliza and her Monsters by Francesca Zappia)
• Lara Jean’s chocolate chip cookie baking (To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before trilogy by Jenny Han)

General “Quirk”

• Jack’s face-blindness, or prosopagnosia (Holding Up the Universe by Jennifer Niven)
• Finch’s sticky notes (All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven)
• Akinli’s baking (The Siren by Kiera Cass)

One of the problems in YA right now is this lack of realistic characters—and the lack of understanding that a character can be memorable without making them a cactus in a field of wildflowers. 

I really tried to strike this balance with The Knowers. With the exception of Orion, my names are pretty common, which allowed me to have more leniency in quirks and hobbies. Of course, the main quirk is Knowerism, so I had to be mindful of that. It was a bit of a challenge to disregard anything I'd picked up from reading mainstream contemporary YA, but let me tell you, it was worth it. I think my characters are unique because they're not special. They're normal kids. 

If you're working on a YA piece—or any piece for that matter—then you should strive for realistic characters. A story's impact can be (and often is) mitigated by poor characters. If the time is taken to ensure that characters aren't just some conglomeration of the most unique things one can come up with, then maybe YA can shift from a host of manic pixie dream teens into an army of kids you can't believe aren't real.