ISWG September 2026

It’s already September. Oi.

This month’s question: Do you have a favorite character archetype you tend to gravitate toward in your writing?

I think we all do. It’s easier to explore yourself or the things you wish you were than anything else. Essentially, you write a fan-fiction mash-up about yourself in unrealistic conditions. “What would I do with awesome magical powers and a fire breathing platypus addicted to snack cakes as a familiar, while Cthulhu threatens the world?”

I mean,. if we’re going to make a hero believable, we have to put a little bit of ourselves into them, right?

It’s much harder to explore those types of characters that you just don’t understand. I’ve got a racist character in my fantasy world I’m struggling with right now. I just don’t get that kind of hate. I hate a lot of people, but it’s specific people for specific reasons. I don’t hate an entire ethnic group and preach genocide like I’m talking about tomorrow’s lunch menu. (Unless you’re a mosquito. I sometimes do consider wholesale eradication of the mosquito; but then I remember they’re a food source for dragonflies, and I really like dragonflies, so I just go back to complaining, slapping and spraying myself with unhealthy chemicals.)

Watching a lot of WWII documentaries about Hitler’s inner circle and Stalin’s rise to power isn’t nearly as helpful as I thought it would be. You circle around WHY person X was a twat, but you don’t get into it. Which I suppose is because it’s really hard to do a post-mortem psychoanalysis on somebody who doesn’t leave behind painfully cringey journal, but it’s still irritating. (Yes, Mein Kampf is cringey and gross, but I can’t bring myself to read it. It took me 2 decades before I was ready to spend six months pushing through the Malleus Maleficarum without throwing it across the room.)

I just can’t bridge that mental gap, and I’m struggling to make that character plausible, from rise through to fall.

Which I suppose says I’m actually an okay kinda person (even though I kill off characters people like, which I suppose could label me as a serial killer….

(Series. Serial Killer. Get it?)

I really need to write a character whose jokes no one gets.