Will an unrealistic character be out of place among other realistic ones?
Most of the characters in my story are well thought out and have realistic motivations and backstories, as I think most people agree that believable characters are important in writing (if you’re going for that sort of thing.) There is, however, one character which isn’t realistic and I think he reads as a caricature or just plain weird. I don’t really have an excuse for this, other than maybe saying “he’s insane”. Really I just need him to get in the way of my protagonist in minor situations.
I’m wondering if the character will stand out glaringly against my other characters. Am I being lazy to not delve into his psychology, or is it fine to put in varying levels of effort into different characters?
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2 answers
You need a motivation, insanity is not a motivation. What you are proposing will break the suspension of disbelief.
Does the character think it is funny? Do they have a grudge and just want to passively aggressively satisfy it? Are they in love and trying to tease her to get her attention or make her engage with them?
What motivation does the MC have for putting up with it? Why doesn't she anticipate it, and prevent it, or guard against it?
What you are writing just doesn't sound realistic, not even the "insanity" excuse, which is no excuse at all. Stories have to seem plausible. You can introduce magic, and pretend "scientific" objects and discoveries, but the behavior of humans in the story needs to seem plausible and have reasons, and in your story it does not.
For all the magic in The Lord of the Rings, and for all the scientific mumbo jumbo in Star Wars or Star Trek, the characters in these stories (even the intelligent Trees) still seem like human beings with plausible emotions and thinking.
Readers relate to humans and your guy is unrelatable.
If you want a suggestion, I'd turn them into a pet the MC loves like a child, or baby. I have dogs. A pet dog can want to play, and they are forgiven for not understanding what their master is doing, and can knock things over with their tail or by bumping into them without caring. They can jump up on you, and make you spill coffee on yourself. I had a dog once accidentally step into a tray of paint on the floor, spill it then walk across a carpet trailing paint.
Pet accidents aren't malicious. They are just clumsy, and you might be upset but it doesn't mean you are getting rid of the dog, or even staying mad at him for very long, because the dog loves you. He's going to make sad eyes at you, and you're going to forgive him. And they'll be another dog accident in the future.
You can sell that better by making some early accidents that are inconsequential, thus establishing the accident prone nature of the dog character.
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It's generally fine for minor characters to be shallow, especially if their impact on a scene is minimal, and putting more effort into your main characters than your side characters is perfectly normal.
However, when you say:
Really I just need him to get in the way of my protagonist in minor situations.
...that's a bit more worrying. If you don't have a reason apart from 'the plot requires it' for this character's behaviour, it's not unreasonable to expect the readers to pick up on that.
He doesn't need a great deal of depth, but at bare minimum I'd say what he should have is a motivation. 'He's insane' isn't really sufficient; even insane people generally have an internal logic that makes sense to them—they don't simply stop thinking. It doesn't need to ever be made explicit in the text, but as long as you know why he keeps getting in your protagonist's way, and write him accordingly, his actions are much more likely to be internally consistent—and thus, much less likely to break the reader's suspension of disbelief.
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