Oct 22 2008
“How can I make a character with mental disorders work?”
Hello, I'm an assistant editor providing writing advice. SN specializes in superhero writing advice, obviously, but most of the advice here applies to fantasy and sci-fi as well.
- DON’T USE ANY MENTAL DISORDERS YOU HAVE. It will probably be harder for you to determine what your readers will think about the character if you’re on the inside looking out. Using your own conditions also raises severe authorial-distance problems.
- Try to keep the character’s mental condition from overwhelming his other traits. Readers tend to prefer characters that are well-rounded and have several traits that interact in interesting ways. In contrast, a character that’s dominated by a trait like “crazy” is probably just a caricature that’s hard to like.
- Please work especially hard to make a mentally ill character likable. Making the character sociable will really help readers sympathize with him. A character that’s, say, unusually concerned about his own mortality will seem much less cold if he’s friendly, empathetic and/or interacts with other characters normally. For example, Flowers for Algernon did an excellent job of softening a retarded character by making him friendly.
- Using a mentally ill character will seriously affect the tone and marketability of your work. That doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to sell your work (ahem, see Flowers for Algernon), but it’s something you will have to keep in mind. For example, if your main character has a mental disorder, you’d probably have to mention that in your synopsis and backcover blurb to make sure that you were reaching the right readers.
Talk about convenient.
I was going to do a story about a team of three anti-heroes, each of them is psychotic, One is young and hyperactive and when he has episodes he is uncontrollably hyper and has hallucinations. The next is suicidal and extremely depressed and she cuts herself ALOT. The last has anger issues and frequently goes berserk. They work together because they are forced to by an organization that makes them wear stun collars to prevent them from hurting themselves and others. The thing is in order to use their powers they have to take a drug that makes them have psychotic episodes, while in the episode they can use their powers without going so crazy that they can’t focus. When they are done with a mission they are given the antidote that turns them back to “normal” and suppresses their powers.
Their powers are: (the hyper one) Can morph his limbs and body into weird creatures that he draws and has advanced gymnastic abilities, he also has a weird super-skinny form that has the same powers but is way faster and crazier. The suicidal one, can turn her skin metal and has Magneto-esque abilities except he has to touch the metal first, she also has a form that looks similar to her metal form but is extremely sexual . The angry one, can make energy bombs and self-destruct without hurting himself, he also has a angry monster form.
It’s pretty intense, the world is dark and gritty, and the main characters live in the Auburn Pitts Asylum.
What’s your opinion, B. Mizzle?
I have a few suggestions.
1. I didn’t get the impression that these characters are very relatable or likable. I think that the one that’s heavily suicidal will be the hardest to like. For a first novel, it might be easiest to work with one crazy protagonist rather than a team of genuine psychotics. For example, Mel Gibson’s character in Lethal Weapon, our Agent Orange and maybe Jack Bauer are crazy but not psychotic. Alternately, Niki Sanders (in Heroes) was genuinely psychotic but was perfectly lucid and friendly most of the time. Another element that made her more likable was her loving relationship with her son.
2. It feels like these characters are dominated by their mental conditions. I would recommend trying to diversify them by adding traits besides how messed up they are.
3. I suspect a publisher would wonder about how to market this work. Do you have a target audience in mind? It would be easier to get a publisher on board if you could argue that a significant number of readers without mental disorders would like the book. Right now, I feel like the characters are too dysfunctional for it to have very much general appeal.
4. It’s definitely possible, but tricky, to write a book where the heroes are unwilling.
I was just throwing an idea I had out there. I’m still working with The Hellions. You didn’t realize the characters were loosely based on mine.
Well, I didn’t want to say anything, but we track IP addresses…
I have at this point two, possibly 3 characters with personality disorders.
The first two are a girl with manic-depressive disorder, and another with mild multiple personality disorder (3 different moods- cold, relaxed/normal, light and bubbly)
The third is Gravity/Levity. I’ve mentioned her before. Is this too many personality disorder characters? Keep in mind that by the time the first 2 girls show up, Gravity/Levity will be long gone.
I’d recommend limiting it to two by eliminating one of the multiple-personality victims. MPD is tricky because it creates multiple characters. Additionally, having more than one case of MPD may make it confusing (“wait, is this the same multiple-personality girl from before?”)
Ok, I’ll make her normal.
You know what I think an interesting, if not incredibly hard to write book, idea is. There are three different main characters, but get this, they’re all the same person. Each takes turn using the body and each have their own set of powers and abilities. The original personality vanished along time ago, and now three rogue personalities take control of the body.
I once had an idea to write a fantasy story about a SWAT officer possessed by a demon. I found it surprisingly difficult to narrate a mental conversation between two characters that aren’t actually conversing. (The amount of italics just got overwhelming whenever they “spoke” to each other). Please let me know if you figure out a way to solve that problem.
Alternatively, there’s no reason the personalities have to communicate. (I’m not well-versed in psychology, but I think most multiple-personality sufferers are aware they have dormant personalities but don’t communicate with them). That would probably reduce the need for italics, but then you wouldn’t really be able to develop a relationship between the three personalities. That could be tricky.
Well, possession in different from dementia. I vaguely remember my psyche teacher telling about how dissociative identity disorder patients sometimes talk to themselves outwardly. I think normal speech would be ok, if not a little weird.
I think communication between personalities would work, I think sleep is the best time for this to occur. The story could go into the person’s mind into a false reality where each personality exists together.
Off the top of my head three personalities I’d try to work are:
An Adrian-esque personality, lively and hopeful (The most personable)
A nihilist, narcissitic totally in love with himself (I think a destructive personality is too obvious)
And, maybe, a girl, expressing that the character isn’t necessarily gay, but that their gender identity may be dormantly distorted. She sees beauty in the world but not in herself.
Here’s my idea. Above.
I like the element of the personalities interacting together when the person sleeps. That sounds like a neat solution for the conversation problem. I’m still a bit concerned that major psychological disorders may disorient an audience, but I guess that’s unavoidable for a book of this sort. (Also, Flowers for Algernon succeeded despite being very disorientating).
I don’t think that having a female aspect of the personality would imply gayness. I think readers would be inclined not to leap to that conclusion because this person’s female personality seems more like a symptom of psychological trauma than gender issues. That said, if money and sales are primary considerations for you, I’d recommend keeping the female personality from getting in a gender-bender situation where she’s in a man’s body but pines for a guy. (One way you could play this, maybe comedically, is to have her be the narcissist, so full of herself that no man could interest her).
What do you think?
I think how much “mental disorder” you throw at the reader is a factor in it’s disorientation level. Not having the character in a poorly mental state at all times my help the reader’s mind stay clear. If I was bringing it up everywhere it would get annoying. DID, unlike most disorders, can have a normal side which will help its workability.
I wanted a girl personality, but I couldn’t think of how to explain it so I went with gender confusion, she won’t be into guys, I’ll consider narcissism.
I wasn’t really planning on wwriting this, but I’ll write the ideas down some where for later.
Just going to throw out that I thought “The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time” (I think by Mark Haddon) was a good portrayal of someone with a mental disorder. The main character was autistic, IIRC.
Also, RB: the girl-personality could be a lesiban (or whatever the split-personality version of that is).
Was that the one where the chapters are only prime numbers? Heh heh.
Hmm. I get the feeling that this post, especially point number one, would be highly relevant to a few conversations in the past couple of days.
On a side note, I’ve got a few characters that are most definitely mentally unstable, but only one of them has a disorder I can actually identify at this point. (Schizophrenia, to be specific.)
On the other hand, point number one is being ignored in my case because of outrage against stereotyping, and there is something to be said against maintaining full authorial distance. It doesn’t allow you to be quite as passionate about something as if you were completely detached. While you can sometimes strawman the opposition, you tend to have more of a connection to your point, so you really want to make sure that your point is the right one. While authorial distance is necessary sometimes, I don’t feel that it is necessary all the time. It’s also very hard to maintain such distance when you don’t actually find *anything* distasteful outside of a very narrow few things which would be extremely hard to give to a protagonist or hero and still be able to call them a hero. Instead, I actually find the exploration of a myriad of different viewpoints and ideas to be rather fascinating.
There are very few ideas that I can actually say that I am genuinely disgusted by. Hell, I even find most sociopathic villains to be very fascinating to get into the heads of due to how they happen to be completely alien. Startlingly dismissive of others, borderline evil, and fundamentally just broken, but strangely alluring. The Hannibal Lector effect.
I’d recommend asking a few of your professors if they know anyone on campus that has worked in the publishing industry. If you can find anyone, I’d recommend asking him in an open-ended way what he would think about publishing a novel with a protagonist that shares a mental condition with the author. I think it also would be relevant to mention that the author wants to educate readers about stereotypes and that the character is not the main character.
I’d also recommend bringing a page-long synopsis of the story. That will help the professor understand how this character fits into your book. (Your actual synopsis will be significantly longer, so I’d recommend being clear that this is an abridged version for his convenience).
Here are some other suggestions.
–Don’t make it personal. The advice will probably be more honest and useful if you let the professor talk about general cases.
–After you’ve briefly explained the setup, DO NOT TRY TO DEFEND YOURSELF OR YOUR BOOK. Just listen. It’s probably your best chance to get unfiltered advice from a publishing professional about whether your book will survive the first glance in a publisher’s office.
–If you get offended, annoyed, or upset by what he says, please calm down… that’s taking it too seriously. He is merely offering professional advice, not personal criticism. If a professional review of your work or concept or ideas is likely to upset you, I would really recommend finding a new career or self-publishing.
–If the professor sounds receptive, make sure you ask him for a few editors you could submit to.
–If the professor sounds skeptical that it could work, ask him if he could think of any ways to make it more publisher-friendly.
Good luck!
I had an idea for a superhero that has psychopathy and schizophrenia. I think he’d be very likeable because he jokes about his disorders.
I think a psychopathic hero might be an unusual sell. That said, it seems to have worked out for Deadpool and Umbrella Academy. Also, outside of comic books, it is surprisingly successful for Chuck Palahniuk.
I want to write about a mother who has mild fetal alcohol syndrome, but she’s perfectly lucid, has feelings, and is a good mother. Can that work?
It’d be sober and probably a bit depressing, but I think that it could work depending on the target audience.
I would say I do well with this. I only have one character with a mental disorder caused by demonic possession, but you’d have to ask Ragged Boy about that.
Okay, so a few of my characters are not necessarily psychopathic…or at least, they don’t think they are because their cultures accepts their actions as normal(well, sometimes). However, I think I made them more effed up than they are supposed to be. Help, please?
For example:
Domovoi: Has the ability to shapeshift in a flock of carnivorous birds, which usually tears up hostile enemies to shredded pieces of flesh. As a result, he becomes a closet cannibal. Other than that, he’s a hardcore utilitarianist(the culture he grows up in promotes this philosophical theorem strongly), selfless, and highly patient when it comes to my next character…
Kir: A parasite that has invaded the brain of a female human host. Parasite Kir is at a critical stage in learning, in which she has to adapt to the host’s environment. However, similar to how babies use their mouths to identify objects and textures, Kir follows the same route. Somewhat awkward when she tends to put bladed objects in her mouth, or lick walls, or at least anything that comes into her interest. Considering that Kir’s host is in her late teens, and yet she has the mental capability of a 2 year old. As a parasite, she has no basis for good and evil, but she is willing to learn more about the human condition. Not necessarily a retardation, just trying to learn about her surroundings.
Some feedback would be nice, I’m unsure about the ‘putting foreign objects in one’s mouth’…because if you’re just as perverted as me, you’d be thinking about that too…
It is very important to research psychological issues the same way anything else is researched. An on-line search for bipolar checklists, for example, will provide a list of symptoms but not how the symptoms affect the person. Symptom checklists often do not include different types of the condition nor the varying ways the condition can affect a person. Books on how to “view” and cope are not always best. A percentage of bipolar patients do not respond to treatment. Some bipolar patients refuse medication because it interferes with aspects of their personality such as creativity. There is one book out there that looks at being un-medicated bipolar in the same manner as a drug addict that doesn’t want treatment, telling medicated bipolar patients not to interact with them. Which brings me to point one about not using personal difficulties. I disagree. Being bipolar is a lot more then having emotional highs and lows. Its a state of being that I equate to being blond with blue eyes. Who better to write about a topic then someone who lives it?
“Who better to write about a topic than someone who lives it?” There are a few reasons you might not want something written by someone who’s living it.
–The book will probably turn into a wish-fulfillment fantasy starring the author unless the author is freakishly good at introspection and characterization. Building distance between the author and a character (and probably plot) that fall that close to home is quite difficult under the best of circumstances and I wouldn’t recommend that a first-time author try it.
–As an assistant editor, I’d be nervous about taking on such a book because I suspect that the author would identify too closely with the character to be flexible on editorial changes. “Hey, this bully character is too one-dimensional. Could you give him a bit more emotional/moral depth or make him more likable?” If that antagonist is based on real-life people that have bullied the author, that request is going to go down like a ton of bricks. The problem is that straw-men stand-ins for the author’s tormentors usually suck as far as villains go.
–If the author has a burning interest to write about his life, writing an autobiography or memoir may work better. There’d still be the pressing issue that most people aren’t interesting enough to star as a main character. But at least this would force the author to think more about “how can I make a book about myself worth reading?”
However, if you’re really confident that you can pull it off, I’d say go for it. The only thing it would cost you is your time. (Unless you’re self-publishing, which I highly do not recommend for this sort of hard-to-sell product).