I have broken this up in two parts because there is so much to write on this chapter that it is getting real lengthy.
We will discuss the cliches of male characters in this part and then the ways to improve writing them in the next one.
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Writing from a guy's perspective can create problems because most authors nowadays are female and obviously it is difficult for a female writer to have a clear insight on what goes on in a male person's head and how to portray a male character.
First let us look at the stereotypes you will easily find in most books, and as a lot of books / novels being written these days are YA (Young Adult) reads, so the stereotypes are mostly the same throughout.
The Bad Boy:
One Sentence definition: There's a touch of violence to him, but his effortless aura of cool makes him irresistible to the ladies; but according to me, the Bad boy is a face that needs a fist in it.
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Well, this male character can be either the antagonist or the protagonist but mostly he is the main female character's crush or love interest. You will find approximately 282K of similar stories when you simply type Bad Boy in the Search tab.
Now let us view the main characteristics a typical bad boy has:
1. Is always very handsome with the perfect muscles, chiseled jawline, messy just-got-out-of-bed hair and blah blah blah.
2. Careless about his appearance but looks good in almost anything.
[Nobody looks hot or handsome when he just woke up, okay? People do not look like Greek Gods that early in the morning. And especially not after they wake up from a hangover / wake up in the morning after being absolutely wasted last night].
3. Has a lot of tattoos. I guess this thing for bad boys having tattoos acquired fame after Cassandra Clare's Jace Herondale from The Mortal Instruments.
[The one thing I like about Damon Salvatore is that he thankfully doesn't have any tattoos].
4. Drinks, smokes, does drugs occasionally, will break into houses just for the fun of it, most have broken into McDonald's (really, I'm not kidding, when they need a snack they just go and barge in on the poor McDonald's crew by crashing in through windows)... The list could go on forever.
5. Either a soccer player, a volleyball player, a rugby player, baseball player or basically any sports player. The jock stereotype fits in here.
6. Captain of the sports team plus leads a gang of boys that are miniature gangsters.
7. Dates the hot cheerleader.
[If the cheerleader is the main character then she is very much like Caroline in the TVD books, if she's not the main character she is a bitchy, mean, batshit crazy and possessive girlfriend who will kill any one who tries to even look at her boyfriend for more than a second].
8. The bad boy nearly always has some abusive or sad past so that readers can sympathize with him and overlook his other humongous faults.
9. The reason to him being a psycho is his bad past.
[Really, please, stop making every bad person like Tom Marvolo Riddle. Not every bad person should be assigned a past as such because their past isn't always responsible for them being like that].
10. If he does anything worse or potentially harmful, he can easily get out of it just because he has a freaking bad past.
[Honestly, I'm so tired of seeing this].
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