Comic Writing: Cliché Characters

Wednesday Writing Weekly #67

I love reading comics, manga, and webtoons. I am thrilled I get to continue that love in my current work as an editor and advisor for comics and scripts. Because of this, over the years as a reader, I’ve seen several characters that seem to repeat across every series I ever experience. While this points to a successful trope, I often see it misused or relied upon to create interesting characters. But, when you have a series of unhinged, loud, and crazy cliché characters and a not so strong story that struggles to balance them all out… something needs to change!

Comics, just like any media, have classic clichés. Let’s look at some and I’ll share recommendations not to obliterate these clichés, but how to look back at your characters and increase their depth and impact on the reader to make them a successful part of your story.

What is a Cliché?

Before we get started: what is a cliché? A cliché is two things. It is a popular phrase, idea, or theme. When these ideas become so popular, they are overused! These cliché ideas can become tiring, boring, and unexciting if you have seen them a hundred times. You do not want to use these because it will only hurt your work.

But hasn’t everything already been said? Yes, but that doesn’t mean you can rely on clichés. As a writer and creator, it is your job to make your work unique to your readers. That’s why I am here to help!

Cliché Characters in Comics

Comics and manga are full of clichés we are all guilty of loving. If you are writing or creating characters like this, that’s alright! Let’s work together to see how we can make them even better.

The Overly Powered Heroes and Villains:

I’ve read too many stories to count where the main hero is the most powerful in the world and is unstoppable. Of course, the stakes always go up and up and up but what if we approached it differently? Stories are all about pacing. What if you lengthen the learning stages or the growth of power? Once someone becomes all powerful, the stakes do not feel as high anymore if the character continues to win one ridiculous fight after the other. Shake things up a little bit with conflicts where there is more struggle (realistic to their abilities) or have more skills to learn so their growing power is more visible than their powers being absolute. Simply, if the world is always in danger and the hero/ heroine is always fighting against the most powerful being in the world… it gets repetitive fast.

Signed, someone who loves Shonen manga.

The Hot, Silent, Lead:

While I know y’all will destroy me if I go after the boob-culture in anime and comics, I think there is something more interesting about characters who have personalities. Whether a character is created for the male gaze or if you are following the trope of a mysterious, quiet, yet beautiful love interest who doesn’t have much to say, you can do a lot more with that character if you remember to give them a personality. A good tip I would like to share is if you can remove a character in a story and it has little to no impact on the plot, then that character shouldn’t be there to begin with. They are kind of a waste of space… Characters should make an impact! Also, they can still serve their purpose of eye-candy but if you level them up to an active role, it can only benefit and strengthen the depth of your work.

The Super Loud, Energetic Character:

This right here is another staple. You can’t watch an anime without one (as well as all the above…) but do you know what is even louder and crazier than this? Variety! When someone is at level 100 in noise and energy every moment they are on the page, it becomes normal for them. You might be thinking, that’s great because maybe you are getting used to this level of energy. That may be true, but I think that is a result of the writer not pacing out their character. If you are loud all the time, that becomes normal, and as a result is not as loud or energetic as you actually want the character to be. In all cases of repetition, overdoing something can weaken what you are trying to accomplish. I recommend pacing this energy. Let the character speak and interact normally and have the occasional outburst. These can be huge and energetic but if they are spaced out, even just a little bit, they will be more noticeable to your reader, rather than them blocking it out because it is on 24/7.

Conclusion

There is a reason we see these generic kinds of characters again and again. We like our powerful heroes, we live for the eye-candy, and we laugh at the unhinged energetic characters. I understand this and I am by no means saying we should annihilate them from our stories. I am instead challenging you to recognize these characters in your own work and level them up into more interesting, dynamic, and complex characters.

You can do this!