How To Write Non-Binary Gender Characters

It became patently obvious to me that I was taking this business of non-binary gender characters in Science Fiction completely wrong. And I thank the delightful Sarah Hoyt for this insight.

In simple easy to understand terms the answer is: Don't write Cardboard Characters.

Now, if you are unable to understand what it is to be a human being, and what it is to reflect the multiple internal tensions at play in the typical human heart, then you cannot depict the manly man who has a soft spot in his heart for his mother's knitted hat.

If you can't depict a character as humans are in real life, then you have to create some mash-up of all the stereotypes associated with the victim group you're trying to bean count. Oh, i need more gays in my story, so I'll make one of the women a softball player, and make one of the guys a hairdresser. I've railed against this sort of insulting stereotyping earlier.

While writers I follow were having too-much fun writing about non-binary gender characters in Science Fiction, I was writing a story wherein the POV character has to deal with an astrophysicist named A. Dankhopf. As you can probably guess, this sets up the POV character who expects to meet a German man, when the character later proves to be an Indian woman.

The mistaken identity trick has been done by writers since well before Shakespeare, probably the Ancient Greeks.

Then it occurred to me how Schrodinger's cat can help the Science Fiction writer in search of a non-binary gender character.

If you nodded off during Quantum Mechanics class, you may have missed a gedanken experiment wherein a sealed box is populated with a cat, a vial of poison gas, a hammer, and a radioactive source. Then some fiddly bits are added to cause the hammer to break the vial when the radioactive source emits a particle. The magic of Quantum Mechanics is something called "superposition" wherein the cat is both alive and dead until you open the box and look in.

Now, you'd think that, nine-lives notwithstanding, a cat is in a binary state of being either all alive or all dead. But in this experiment the cat is half-living and half-dead until you observe the system. I used this gimmick in my anthology Finding Time.

In this same Quantum Mechanical sense I was writing a non-binary gender character because until the hero observes A. Dankhopf, s/he is half-boy and half-girl. I feel so Politically Correct.

You can, too, just put your manly man in a girly hat, maybe name him Jayne, and until that character is actually observed, you can rely upon quantum superposition to maintain that you have a non-binary gender character.

Strange Love

A friend recently remarked that she really loved old-time songs she termed "hellfire and brimstone," but she felt the old-time songs didn't love her back.

She was right, but she was wrong.

The Westboro Baptist crowd is an exception I'll describe in hopes of making my point by contrast. I once watched one of their YouTube videos where the girl spent five minutes repeatedly saying, "You're going to Hell," in a perky voice with a smile on her face. One cannot say this with a smile on your face and have an infinitesimal of love in your heart.

I think there is a sort of sadistic personality type who enjoys inflicting emotional pain on others. Such people are beneath contempt.

Such people are NOT the folks who were writing and performing the old-time "hellfire and brimstone" songs.

What were they thinking?

My earliest memories of church involve crying. "Hellfire and brimstone" sermons are not as common as they once were, but if you read any of the old-timers' books about soul winning, they say there ought not be a dry eye in the place. The fellow who wrote the book on "Hellfire and brimstone" just happened to be a Christian philosopher named Jonathan Edwards. He reasoned that a sinner doesn't love God, but he may love his own skin enough to seek a way of escape and thereby acquaint himself with the good news parts of the Gospel. Upon learning what God has done for the sinner, the sinner may think it fitting to love God back.

If you really believe those around you are at risk of destruction, the compassionate thing to do is warn them and share what you know about how to escape.

This line of reasoning makes the "hellfire and brimstone" warnings an expression of love. So, my friend is indeed loved back. But it's a strange love. The only way you can distinguish this love from Westboro's hate is whether the person saying it is crying or smiling when s/he says it.

Now, when writing a plausible villain. The conventional motives are money, jealousy, hatred and revenge--Plus whatever other negative emotions I've overlooked. Better motives are unconventional, positive emotions.

Provided you can make them plausible.

You see, it's because I love that young girl that I inflicted all those tortures upon her and eventually burned her at the stake, because God would judge her witchcraft more harshly and perhaps my efforts turned her to repentance and the joys of Heaven. 

Right.

Religious fanaticism is a dangerous thing when writing villainy department because a) it's overdone, and b) most writers doing it are functionally illiterate of religion. Their villains come off as off-key and get all the trust-cues wrong. And I hate when they do that.

So, I suggest something different.

My favorite villain is the Operative in Serenity. He's perfect because he's not motivated by the stale and trite things. He says he's motivated by Faith. Not the concrete Faith in God that J. Gresham Machen wrote about, or the vague objectless Faith in Faith that Soren Kierkegaard wrote about. His faith in the government who empowers him and sends him on his killing spree.

In a post-Christian, or post-Theist society, there are some folks who will still need to find something bigger than themselves to put meaning and purpose in their life. If they are Atheist, then the government is the second-best thing. Thus, I see a government fanatic is a better villain than a religious fanatic.

Mindful of this, consider this quote by C. S. Lewis:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

So, next time you're wondering about your next villain, perhaps you'll consider some sort of overbearing altruist.

A Few Bad Men

I've griped about how I think Dr. Who and BBC Sherlock failed when it came time to depict their protagonists' nemesis. In the case of Dr. Who, it is another Time Lord called "The Master," and in Sherlock Holmes's case it is Professor Moriarty. Every Batman needs his Joker and every Superman needs his Lex Luthor.

Thinking through your antagonist is as important as your protagonist and his/her love interest.

My complaint with BBC Sherlock is that Professor Moriarty seemed exactly like The Master who seemed like a nasty schoolboy. True, nasty schoolboys personify evil, but they needn't be taken that seriously. (Unless putting one over your knee and spanking him is not an option.) I guess that's my complaint: If the villain is just like someone you've spanked, s/he falls short of being taken seriously.

Likewise, fellas with monocles and long-haired cats don't work for me. But instead of enumerating what's wrong with other villains, I'd like to say what I think is right with one. I seek a Specification for Antagonist Design.

In one sense, anything that's to your hero's advantage should have a corresponding advantage in your villain. The Doctor is special because he's a Time Lord. Then the Master is a Time Lord, too. Sherlock has mad deductive skillz. So does Moriarty. But they needn't be the same sorts of advantages. They can be formidable, but different. Maybe your villain cannot shoot webs from his wrists, but he has robotic arms coming out of his back instead.

In World War II, the Japanese Zero was a superior aircraft in several key aspects. Nevertheless, the Americans learned how to avoid its strengths and exploit its weaknesses. Avoid a turning fight against a Zero, and if you can't, get outta Dodge. That's how conflicts work in real life and that's how your stories should work.

Stories without conflict suck. And where conflict is concerned, it takes two to Tango. Thus you want to think carefully about your protagonist's dance partner(s). The best villains have several admirable qualities about them. Sure, Gabbar Singh is evil, but he's got a sense of humor and irony and he loves to laugh--before he shoots them. Darth Vader was a sensitive soul easily disturbed by his co-workers' lack of faith--before he choked the life out of them. The Operative was motivated by his faith.

Most Westerners share a cultural heritage of the Greek/Persian conflicts of antiquity. We relate to the independent-minded Greek hoplites who are vastly outnumbered by a host of Persian slaves, but win because they are free men who can seize the initiative on the battlefield while their opponents await the commands of their masters. Thus your story will resonate better with Western audiences if you have a feisty band of Rebels outmaneuvering the giant Empire.

The circumstances needn't be martial. You can write the same conflict between Preston Tucker versus the Big Three automakers with the same asymmetry.

Because companies are generally larger than readers, it's common to make some Corporate Type the villain. Given the amorality of common corporate governance, this is not a stretch. But Big Labor and Big Government work just as well in the role of Persians waging a war of attrition. And since the only good politicians in Washington are Whigs (and long dead) you can show bipartisan villainy. If you want to make Big Religion the villain, choose one that is not in the habit of chopping people's heads off.

That's where I'm at right now. I'm putting together a villain who's motivation is money. He won't blow up the world, because that would destroy all the shops where he spends money. He won't kill everyone, because then there would be no one left to be minions. He doesn't feed his minions to sharks, because it reduces minion-morale. However, his minions are well paid, they have full health insurance with dental, and a generous 401k matching plan.

In other words, he's exactly like me, but with a few billion dollars.

Well, he's different from me in one regard: I'd waste time in the third act gloating about the details of how my nefarious plan works. This villain would just kill the hero and move on to the next item on his Things To Do Today list.

Solzhenitsyn said the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. This means you should show the stuff on the good side of the line in the villain's character. Once upon a time, that might have meant being a pious, church-going man, but the Hollywood stupid tax has made religion a telltale of villainy.  In choosing the good you put into a villain, you risk making him more sympathetic than your hero.

So, what good attributes do you think should inhere within the character of a villain?