Writerly Ways

[cornerofmadness]

I've been thinking about writing hard to write emotional states, beyond say the actual words we can find in the emotional thesaurus (which is a great resource) How do we carry forward these states. I'm not sure I know the answer but I do have some examples.

One of the harder ones to write is naivety. So often naive ends up reading as stupid. That's not the same thing. two examples Mrs. de Winter from Rebecca and Charlie Morningstar from Hazbin Hotel. Both of these ladies I believe are meant to be naive (especially Charlie)

They are similar in how this naivety is shown. They make mistakes but they don't learn from them. The nameless Mrs de Winter is a passive twit without a brain in her head (which is a different problem) She is meant to be young and naive and caught up in the manipulations of older, vicious people but at what point do you learn from this and move on. 250 pages is almost it for her (which she immediately turns around and nearly ends up dead but that's another story as well) Without a character learning and moving on, becoming less naive you end up with a character who comes off dumb.

I see this again with Charlie. She is a sheltered princess of hell. In S1 she is naive but she seems to learn. Instead of continuing that, in S2 she digresses. She doesn't learn, worse she is so naively convinced she's right she listens to no one and then lashes out at them when it blows up in her face. This bad naive representation and it has had a high cost. The character is getting tons of hate and many fans left over how bad she came across.

Conversely, Luz from The Owl House is naive. I mean it's portal fic and she has a whole world she has no knowledge of. Like the other two ladies, she makes mistakes. But she learns from them. She apologizes when people get inadvertently hurt because of her lack of knowledge. And maybe this is the difference. Luz uses her naivety as a place to start learning. She's not a passive nitwit. She's not a wellmeaning person who refuses to own her mistakes.

I don't know. What about you? What would make/break a naive character for you? How do you handle one?


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Comments

[falkner]

> So often naive ends up reading as stupid. That's not the same thing.
For me, this is exactly the crux of the problem. Someone who is naive can also be competent, learn lessons and grow as a character, but will still take things at face value and generally read situations in a simplistic way, affecting the way they act. But it's rarely done well... I've lost count of videogames where the narrative will tell me a party member is naive but what I'm being shown just makes me think maybe this person shouldn't be allowed to fight monsters and be in charge of saving the world...

[cornerofmadness]

but what I'm being shown just makes me think maybe this person shouldn't be allowed to fight monsters and be in charge of saving the world...

This made me laugh...a lot.

Also this is who I'm feeling about several characters

[kitarella_imagines]

I think what would make a naive character believable for me would be if they are starry eyed, optimistic, always seeing the best in everyone. That would override their sense of cynicism.

[cornerofmadness]

That's interesting because that IS what Charlie is in my example above and when I think about it, that is what carried her in S1. It wasn't until S2 when she refuses to listen that most of us found that formula a failure (and it was really the never listening part that was an issue)

Now that I think about it Luz is also a starry eyed optimist so you might be on to something there

[kitarella_imagines]

*bowing*

I have no idea who any of these characters are so I was just thinking of what worked for me but maybe I hit the nail on the head! 🔨

[cornerofmadness]

You're definitely on to something

[kitarella_imagines]

Thanks!