From my Recent Reads, I’ve come to realize that female characters in paranormal, sci-fi, or fantasy novels have a set niche of reactions that have been used so much that they’ve become cliches. It’s sad, really, that these fully grown women don’t have as much sense as a introvert teenager. Let’s review these types, shall we?
1] The Screamer: I am no feminist. By all means, female empowerment and all that, but the guy has to make the first move. And in all honesty, when a girl finds out that this person that she has known for a while is a supernatural being and starts screaming and running, I kind of get ticked off…. just a little bit.
2] “Are you going to kill me?“: This is quite possibly the most annoying female type out there [as well as the most annoying question]. A good case scenario is a girl who was just locked up in a closed off area with an injured person whom she knows. At some point she discovers that the person is, perchance, a vampire. More often than naught, authors have the girls initiate some tyraid about the vampire killing them or stealing their soul or what-not. Now, I know little to nothing about the supernatural outside of what books say, but if this person is injured and bleeding, they’ll need blood, correct? And as a vampire, this person could have forcibly taken it from you, si? So why, on God’s great big wide Earth, do you think this person is going to wait until the brink of death or a considerably weakened state to try to kill you for your blood? In the words of Nolan from So Random: “Use your croissant; think, THINK!”
3] The Innocents [a.k.a. the Idiots (sounds better with a Nigerian accent)]: Oh, these girls…. I’d like to be nice and say that I like them but then I’d just be lying through my teeth. They are marginal in quantity but can still make one want to bang their head on the wall. These are the girls who call for the police for safety [no offense to our law enforcers but these are fantasy books], scream for help instead of fighting back, act as if they have never watched a horror movie [you get the idea], or ignore the warnings they are given and prance into the line of danger practically wearing a “Kill Me” sign.
My blantant dislike for these personality types are what led me to create the main character for the book I’m writing. Here’s me hoping that it’s good.
Ihuoma 