Hello everyone! I was just wondering if anyone has broached the subject of stereotypical high school archetypes and if so, has anyone written one about the "mean girl"? My MC has many enemies, including her own self-doubt, but someone that constantly berates her is one of her classmates who is a senior high school student and is jealous of the MC, and her success. I'm currently struggling with how to develop this already very typical character and was looking for tips on how to write her without sounding as if I am repeating all of the many stories about high school already out there. Any help would be greatly appreciated! - Q
I live with an old archetype heroine. When she was little and clever and pretty, [and she still is] these twelve giant girls used to bully her and beat her and call her 'flat-chested'and 'nobody fancied her' and a 'swat.' And meanwhile they all looked like horses and the evidence is in the school photograph. And sometimes we like to talk about her time at that school, and the way she used to whizz around these 'girls' at school hockey. I suppose the fashion now is to approach from one of those other girls' perspectives. But they were all stupid - and they were provincial, and Shropshire new money, y'know the type? She doesn't have to mix with people like that any longer. Today she's like my princess. my 'Petite Pois.' That's what I call her at the bedtime and making my breakfast. ... Senor Heinz Shrek
Depends what you want from this character - do you want the reader to feel for her or purely hate her? The best villains either gain a level of sympathy from the reader or absolutely no common ground at all. This goes for massive fantasy stories or down-to-earth high school dramas - in my opinion, anyway. We as a reader either want to connect with the villain just as much as the protagonist, or really really hate them. So it depends which you'd rather. If you want us to feel for this "mean girl" character? Make her real. Developing a character like that is theoretically easy enough, because bullies exist in the real world and there's a lot to draw from. Hopefully you won't have had too much experience of bullying but whatever you have, or whatever you know of, use it. Don't be afraid to bring elements of real life into this. One obvious way of developing this character and making her more real is backstory. You know what they say about bullies projecting their anger or frustration onto other people as a way of coping with their own suffering? Like, maybe your mean girl has a shitty home life. Maybe she's not confident in herself, maybe she's suffered some kind of personal trauma. If you want her to feel real to the reader, make her suffer, and make her take that suffering and project it. Another thing to consider is motivation. You've already said it's done out of jealousy for your main character's success, which is fair enough. Jealousy is an incredible motivator. But remember that bullies pick on the weak, not the successful. Obviously the jealousy thing works excellently, and I don't know what kind of success your main character has had - but remember that your bully will find flaws in the main character and use them. This is great, because it shows a cleverness and a slyness to your mean girl, and it shows that your main character is flawed (nobody likes a Mary Sue). Therefore you've added some layers to both your antagonist and protagonist. Layers, like an onion. I hope this helps you, obviously just some stuff to think about! Not actually sure I really answered the question but good luck! Piper
I think about the mean girls i've encountered in middle school and high school, then exaggerate it. They'd call me ugly, laugh whn i had a crush on someone, tell me no one would ever like me. tell me i have no friends. when i would talk to a guy friend they'd tease him for hanging out with me to the point where he didn't want to hang out with me and join them in the teasing. They'd say my clothes were too childish, i "looked like a man" (i wasnt girly and played sports). needless to say, the "mean girl/s" show up in a few pieces, as does self-doubt and characters dealing with self esteem
Mean comes in many flavors from backstabbing to bullying. Some mean girls have clique and make sure girls not in the clique know they aren't one of the in-crowd. A combination might be the mean girl clique playing mean/embarrassing tricks on the bullied girl. If you don't want it to be too blatantly tropey, you can have the clique mostly ignore the bullied girl, the mean girls are more like 'too good for you' girls. Or you can make the mean girl really mean. It's the same for boys by the way, but we call them bullies instead of mean boys. A lot of the time most kids are bystanders but don't do much to stop the bullying or help the targeted kids. I always told my son to stand up for kids being picked on.
The relative intelligence of the mean girl can also come into play. She can be the sort who just likes being mean, but isn't very creative about it. Name calling, physical contact, wrecking possessions, etc. However, if she's fiendishly clever, she can mask what she's doing by pretending to be 'nice.' I think this manipulative kind of bullying may be the worst kind, because it's more likely the victim may believe the bully in some ways. Saying things to the victim like, "Are you okay?" which implies that the victim looks 'off' in some way is one technique. 'Constructive' criticism can also mask bullying ...because they are only trying to 'help,' aren't they? It can even sink to setting up the victim for something unpleasant. Like inviting them to some event where the victim definitely won't fit in. Then standing back, when confronted, and saying, "Oh, is THAT what you think? Oh, no, I would never do THAT!" Which of course garners sympathy from clueless bystanders, and makes the victim feel even worse. Think catty. Think manipulative.
I don't know how contemporary your work is but I'm aware of a girl who makes nasty powerpoint presentations about other girls, and of course there's the whole cess pit of social media to swim in as well.
or pretending to be nice so everyone else thinks they are gods gift from heaven, and you are being crazy of not liking them too. I've had those. High school and college. they'd mess with me, throw things at me.... then when I retaliate, my peers say i'm being mean and why dont i like them, and i should be nicer to those people because they are really nice. and the "you're just being sensitive" to "wow, you're really being a bitch right now." Bullied person feels alone because no one believes her....
Exactly. The good thing is, if you allow them to carry on like that, sooner or later they will inadvertently reveal their hand. I can't tell you how many times I've had that sort of thing happen (usually with work colleagues.) I try to warn folks, but they think I'm way off base. Then, some time later, they come back to me and say "oh, I see what you mean." Yep. This sort nearly always goes too far, eventually.
Thank you for all of your help! Unfortunately, I have personal experience to take from, but I haven't considered the angle in which the bully is intelligent and manipulative. I agree that sometimes the worst treatment is when their true opinion about you is behind your back and to your face, they obviously are lying. It is easier to deflect and ignore them if they are immature and have nothing to say, but basic insults. In order to create a more "layered" story do you think it would be better to make her relatable, or so horrible that not even the nicest can sympathize for her?
Bullies are a very easy character type to do, and a very hard character type to do well. They hate the MC because they're jealous or just inherently a bad person, and they're a two-dimensional enemy until they get defeated, and then shake their fist in impotent fury. Often, it just comes across as "what the author wished had happened when they were at school". It might be good therapy, but it's often not an interesting character or conflict, because the antagonist doesn't have an interesting motive, and the only thing the victim wants out of the conflict it for it to stop. As was mentioned above, giving the bully an interesting personality and a reason (doesn't need to be a sympathetic reason) for being that way is the best way to give the conflict some more depth, or have it be resolved a different way from "bullied gets payback". Draco in the Harry Potter series springs to mind--while he is always an unsympathetic antagonist (outside of fanfic, at any rate), he has an arc of his own, and a life beyond making Harry's life miserable. He isn't a serious threat to the protagonists beyond the first book, but as the stakes rise, he gets forced into a position where he's expected to move beyond petty nastiness and embrace real evil, and he isn't up to it. By the end of the series, he's more pitiful than threatening, and someone whom Harry has "beaten" by leaving him behind.
Also, for another angle, there's a bit in the book Nerdy, Shy and Socially Inappropriate by Cynthia Kim, where she's talking about her experience of growing up with autism, and describes how she became a bully herself without quite realising what she was doing--she wanted to be popular, and she didn't want to be a victim of bullying herself, so she essentially threw other people into the line of fire to deflect attention from herself.
I really like both of @Azuresun's points. I've been working with kids for almost two decades and in that time I really don't think I've ever come across one who's just "evil". There have definitely been some who did cruel things and would definitely be classified as bullies, but they were always suffering themselves, somehow. Their suffering doesn't make it okay that they caused suffering for others, but I think if you want to create a really evocative "mean girl" it's probably best to see her as "insecure girl" or "damaged girl" or "socially unskilled girl" or "non-neurotypical girl" or whatever. Why does your bully do what she does? What has gone wrong in her development to bring her to this place? Her actions are still totally unacceptable, but her motivations may be sympathetic.
Watch some videos on Narcissists and Covert Narcissists. A lot of Mean Girls fall into those two categories. There are whole series of them by several YouTubers, and they're usually done with a romantic relationship in mind but Dr. Les Carter describes many facets of it very well and touches on a variety of relationship situations from romantic to boss to friendships. In this one he describes one of the characteristics I've observed in Mean Girls: ETA: There's also one of his called "Can A Narrcissist Change?" which would be helpful if you want the character to experience change. In the video, Dr. Carter explains what has to happen for change to occur, which could help in writing a believable change. edit to remove redundancy
...and then the utter fool in her/his white hat steps in and defends this moron, befriended for life. It does happen.
I think writing to a 'type' is a mistake a lot of new writers make and I've always tried to avoid it because I don't think people want to constantly read about re-hashed characters like 'the mean girl' or 'the best friend'. There is so much more to humans than a title and I think writers sell their characters short when they label them. Plus, I don't like labelling people in our society as it can be damaging. I did write something once where the character had a label and so I played to that - labelling someone, especially at a young age as remain with them for life. They see themselves as that label. So my advice to you would be to think outside the box and look at labelling people and how it affects them. Maybe she's mean because people tell her she is. Maybe the mean title started off as a misunderstanding with a friend so now she's 'the bitch'. That is what I would do but of course it's your work and you'll put your spin on it.
You could start with researching narcissistic spectrum like @Shenanigator said. Overt, covert, malignant, adaptive... You could start by listening what Hauge tells about roles of identity and self/essence in stories. When you understand that, you have a good starting point which you can use in both developing your narcissistic character and your plot. That poin is this: Narcs are all identity and no essence. That is why they play identity plays all the time. If they see anyone with very much essence and little identity they get mean and mad. They can't stand it. For them everything is about control. Identity plays are effective way to control others. A person with a lot of self and not much identities can't be controlled by a narc if she can't unstable him/her. Bullying + gaslighting + flying monkeys + persuasion +... are ways to unstable + control. Motives? Narcs motives are pathological. They don't rise from backstory. Everything is about her. She must be the best. She must be in control. Reality is her underling. She is cunning - even when she is not intelligent. If you want to make her really, really evil, try projective identification + narcissistic psychopathy. And her emotional development is in the level of 3 years old kid.
If you are writing a narcissistic character to your story and if you want to do it well, you can't write it in a similar way you write other characters. The mind of a narc is not similar as a mind of a human being. It is not humane. (I had a miss spelling here. I corrected it from human to humane.) Narc objectifies herself and everybody else. People are things, assets, tools, recourses... but not human to a narc. And assets don't have a Self. They have identities. They have labels, connections, ways they work... but not Selfs. And when she is the center of a universe, it means that there are no boundaries that limit her. In her mind she is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, omni... Every boundary that threats to limit her in any way is a reminder that she is not God. She can't accept that. When she notices that she has flaws she denies it. She sees that there is a flaw. She is unable to admit that it is in her, in her behaviour... So she sees it in some other person or group. That is called projection. She projects her own flaws, misbehaving, evilness... to some other person or group and attacks. When she is egomaniac... "Oh, YOU are so full of yourself..." When she is jealous.... "SHE can't stand that I am...." When she is dishonest.... "I don't think you should trust HIM...." When she is toxic... "Our culture is poisoned by this toxic group..." And a counter way to do it... Very often she builds her public identities by virtue signalling. She is all the time signalling virtuous she does not have. If we think about social power structures in human societies, there are some thresholds: - Bonderies. - Identities. - Precognition. - Group formation/tribalism. - Moral orders... Narcissistic person takes a hold of these social thresholds. If (and when) she can control them, she can control everything and everybody - even in a very secretive way. It is a play. Narcissistic person is a puppet master. Flying monkeys are her useful idiots (and later scapegoats). In her head everybody that is not under her and under her power is an antagonist. In her head she is always protagonist. It's a play played upside down and inside out. If you want to read about it, you could start from Dr. Robert Hare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Hare And a warning with Tubelandia... Many narcs have noticed that they can get attention and followers by making youtube videos about narcism. Don't buy everything. Stick to pro's. Be careful if you see peacocking and shallowness. If it looks like being sexually attractive and/or "being your buddy" is important to the speaker, you should be very careful. Go deeper. Do some research. If you are a normal human being, it is very hard to understand the mind of a narc. But you can understand the social dynamics and the logic of that mind even if not the mind itself. The typical high school bully is presented as shallow, mean and selfish - and that's it. That is a card board character. Adding a backstory does not make much difference. Her motives are fear based. She fears that someone might see through her masks, through identities and identity plays. She knows or guesses that persons without identity plays, some narc victims/survivors and some professionals can see what is going on. And she is bloody afraid of that. That makes her attack. And the goal is to marginalise or kill the target of that attack. Only that proves that "she has all the time been right about the victim" of her bullying.
Given your screen name, I'd have expected you to be more careful about de-humanising people who have a certain mental condition.
English is not my first language. I tried to say that narcissistic mind is not humane. And that is widely accepted. I'll go and correct it. But still... Given that narcs don't treat other people as humans but as objects, I think it is partly acceptable to take the same attitude towards them. And they can stop toxic behaving any day if they want to. Then they don't fit diagnostic criteria any more. That is not possible among most mental conditions. There is also another great difference between narcism and other mental conditions: Almost all mental conditions are diagnosed and treated in order to help the patient. Narcism is almost every time diagnosed and treated in order to help victims and society.
But you've left in "The mind of a narc is not similar as a mind of a human being." Would you accept "The mind of a person with Aspergers is not similar to the mind of a human being"? ETA: Also, "narc" means something else in English - it's a bit confusing for you to be using it as a short form here.
If we're talking about non-pathological narcisstic behaviour (where it's being used as a synonym for vanity or wanting to be the centre of attention), then maybe. If we're talking about narcisstic personality disorder, then no. From an outside perspective, it might be superficially "better" to have than other psychological conditions, but it still impairs the ability of a person to function in society and form healthy relationships, and is also associated with other conditions such as bipolar disorder, paranoia, depression or substance abuse, not to mention a tendency to have endeavours fail because you can't realistically assess your own capabilities. It's not a barrel of laughs, nor is it a synonym for "evil". And in any case, not every bully / mean girl will be motivated by narcissm.
To me it looks like the literature was quite unanimous. If narcissistic persons really want to chance they behaviour, they can do it. It does happen. It is rare but not extremely rare. Two maybe most common types of that. Strong outer motivator and strong inner motivator: 1. Narc can't outsource the price of her behaviour. She must pay it herself. So she chooses to stop it. (Very common thing among criminals. You throw shit to the direction of a bigger dog - you eat it. So they can change they behaviour in a second. And they can keep it changed. If you was right, this would be impossible.) 2. It is often linked to big religious and/or value changes. (Here is also becoming unable to outsource the costs - but in a different way. And in this number 2 there is often finding that inner persona, self, essence... And finding it makes identity plays a little ridiculous. They become useless. This shift of personal exostence helps leaving toxic manners.) It is rare only because most narcissistic persons don't want to change they behaviour. They could chance their actions and behaving if they wanted. In pathological and/or otherwise serious narcism the structure of mind is pathological. Actions and behaving are partly chosen and partly pathological. They can be changed and it does happen. And if it starts happening, it gets easier and easier. Narcs can and do change how they act and what they do. Edit: It is very much like in addictions: As we choose, so we become. Even when craving is in pathological level, the actions and behaving is under our own consciousness and will.
If I did a bit of digging, I'm sure I could find accounts / random Youtube vids of people who "just shook off" a disorder such as depression through one of those means, and then claim that all people with depression could shake it off if they just tried hard enough. Heck, there are people out there who claim to have "cured" autism.
