Stereotypes

I have noticed a disturbing trend among the younger male screenwriters I read. When they write of love, sex and romance they consistently – and I mean consistently – feature two kinds of girls. The hot girl, with big breasts or long legs, blonde hair or brunette, depending on the taste of the writer, and the nice girl – similar physical attributes but just a little more ordinary looking. The hot girl puts out and this is the source of the sex scenes early on in the script. The nice girl does not put out but more than that, she is “sweet”, she often cooks, she is definitely maternal and she is the one our main character will choose to either marry or fall in love with in the end. If I had a quarter for every time I have seen this dynamic in scripts written by younger males, I would be very rich. This disturbing, archaic, binary view of women is, well, disturbing and archaic. Largely this is the result of inexperienced writers being simply too youthful to understand that real women are too complex to pigeon hole and so they fall back on stereotype.

Falling back on stereotype is not only lazy writing it can even be offensive. All readers have seen cringe-inducing scripts in which ethnic characters are portrayed in a deeply offensive light. Other likely victims of stereotype are women, cops, priests, bratty children or just generally any character that the writer just couldn’t wrap his or her mind around. I think we all remember with a collective shudder the Mickey Rooney character in BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S.

Stereotype can be a beautiful thing - if it is a conscious choice. For example, teens are famously myopic and self-centered, yes? Naturally, the teen comedy is from the teenaged point of view - so even if you are a thirty-seven year old writer who knows better, the best choice for the parents in your teen comedy would be the repressed work-a-holic dad and the horny and bored mom. Is it true to life? Not really. But it is true to life for a teenager. And that’s the genre you’re writing.

The young male screenwriter who winds up with Jezebel the horny cheerleader versus Jenny the fresh-faced home ec sweetheart who also does his homework and bakes cookies is most definitely simply lacking in life experience and perspective. (See blog about distance). But for any other writer, stereotype is inexcusable – unless you are making a conscious choice that is in service to your story.

Check in with yourself and your story. What is the functionality of each character relative to each other and relative to the story, genre and tone? Are you maximizing each character? Do you need that character to make a larger thematic point? In other words, if the character is a stereotype, are you aware of it? Can you justify it?

Good character and dialogue work is considered one of the crown jewels in the toolkit of sought-after screenwriters. Stereotypes have a place and serve a function – sometimes the cop really should just eat a donut. Just make sure that as a writer, you are making a conscious choice that works within the world of your story because nothing says PASS writer faster than unfunny, unromantic or unscary stereotypes.

If you enjoyed this post, follow me on Twitter or subscribe via RSS.