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June 2007
The Writer's Quest, sidebar (or was that salad bar?)
While I continue to await the return of Cardan's Pod from the editor, I thought I would take a little side trip here and discuss something hopefully of interest to both writers and gamers - "Fringe Characters."
"Fringe Characters" in this sense are those people that exist on the "fringe" of any given group. They're the ones that those in the mainstream of the group cringe at whenever they get mentioned; the ones who seem determined to represent the group in the worst possible manner.
An example for gamers would be the person who shows up at the local gaming session, looking and smelling worse than an Orc Zombie, whining that he (or she) was kicked out of the last gaming group because they just couldn't keep up with his omnipotent half-windling/half-ogre cleric, boasting that his character doesn't need any help from any party to clear out any dungeon, and convinced that any demonstration of basic friendliness on behalf of anyone else in the group constitutes an overt sexual attraction to them that they either wish to foster or get angry about. Oh, and of course, they loudly and proudly proclaim to any and all who might see and hear that they are a GAMER!
You fear the day when you say to someone that you're a gamer, and their first response is "Oh? You mean like Orc Zombie?"
Fringe characters exist in pretty much any demographic you wish to name. They're a reality of life that we cannot escape, or for that matter, that we cannot ignore. Political parties have them. Most every local church has at least one. Racial and ethnic groups have them. Workplaces have them. Schools have them. Gaming groups have them, as do writer's groups. Incorporating fringe characters into our stories or games adds a dimension of reality to the fictitious, because we all KNOW someone like that.
The difficult part comes when we're writing or gaming about a group that is near and dear to us. If you're a Libertarian, and you're writing a story about Libertarians, it can be tough to include the fringe characters. It could be seen by your fellow Libertarians as "slamming" the party, because they'd all rather ignore THAT guy. We don't talk about THAT guy; we don't invite THAT guy to party functions. We keep sending invitations to join the Republican or Democratic parties to THAT guy - let THEM deal with the stain on their image that he brings.
If we ignore them, though, we ignore the foibles of our own groups. We "whitewash" reality and throw our story or our game a bit out of balance. It's like painting a picture and refusing to use a certain color classification - no blues, or yellows, or reds. The picture might still be attractive, but if you're going for realism, the viewer is going to know something is missing.
Fringe characters add color and contrast to our narratives. They can provide humor to otherwise serious situations, without allowing our main characters to fall out of character. If a fringe character says something completely inappropriate to the situation, it doesn't destroy the image of the other characters. In fact, fringe characters help our main characters appear more reasonable and identifiable, both in that they are NOT acting like the fringe character, and in how they react to him or her.
Add those fringe characters to your stories and games. Have fun with them. Embrace them. Just make sure if you do, you have a clothespin for your nose in case they smell like an Orc Zombie.
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