Finchbearer
Istar
I want to just say discuss and watch said discussion take place but I suppose I need to give some context;
When I started thinking up characters for my first few stories, in my mind they were physically attractive whilst also benefiting from youth and inexperience and so I felt like the story was almost set up in a way where I could go ahead and write the coming of age story with a potential love interest, akin to a blank page…but since writing something slightly different with characters that in my mind are not known for their beauty, or at least that is not in any way mentioned or focused on, it’s made me consider the role of having a beautiful protagonist for the stories we tell.
I also frequently see it in fantasy settings where the ‘good looking people’ get to go around doing cool things, and I’m not talking just the female characters.
However I wanted to open up the discussion about the role of beauty in fantasy writing and how it changes the narrative for the better or worse, and how important is it. How can we serve the story with a character that is not explicitly described as beautiful, or conversely how does a beautiful character serve a story without becoming a boring trope such as the manic pixie dream girl?
How many of you out there can admit to writing beautiful characters, and how many of you write not so beautiful ones?
When I started thinking up characters for my first few stories, in my mind they were physically attractive whilst also benefiting from youth and inexperience and so I felt like the story was almost set up in a way where I could go ahead and write the coming of age story with a potential love interest, akin to a blank page…but since writing something slightly different with characters that in my mind are not known for their beauty, or at least that is not in any way mentioned or focused on, it’s made me consider the role of having a beautiful protagonist for the stories we tell.
I also frequently see it in fantasy settings where the ‘good looking people’ get to go around doing cool things, and I’m not talking just the female characters.
However I wanted to open up the discussion about the role of beauty in fantasy writing and how it changes the narrative for the better or worse, and how important is it. How can we serve the story with a character that is not explicitly described as beautiful, or conversely how does a beautiful character serve a story without becoming a boring trope such as the manic pixie dream girl?
How many of you out there can admit to writing beautiful characters, and how many of you write not so beautiful ones?
Last edited: