Question on Writing a Good Audience Surrogate

As the title says, I was just wondering... is it possible to devise a good Audience Surrogate that the audience identifies with - e.g. along the veins of Bella Swan - while still being a proactive, developed character with a distinct personality and agency.

Or, are the two goals antithetical to one another?

Thoughts.

I think it is antithetical, because a distinct personality narrows down how many people can think 'this could happen to me'.

A hugely sarcastic character can't be an audience surrogate for readers who think sarcasm is 'the lowest form of wit. An extremely blunt, plain-speaking character can't be an audience surrogate for readers who enjoy dry, understated irony or Stealth Insult. And the more proactive a character is, the more frequently they will do things many readers would not.

That had been my initial thoughts too. However, the more I thought about it, the less it made sense. If it were true, that would mean that women would not be able to identify with male characters, gays and lesbians would not be able to identify with heterosexual characters, Hispanic would not be able to identify with Caucasian characters, etc; which we know isn't the case.

Going back to Twilight as an example, even Bella - the so-called poster child of the "blank slate" character - has a number of distinct traits such as being a Caucasian, teenaged girl from a broken family in America. Yet, many of her fans don't fall perfectly into this category and differ from her at certain points - and for some, at all points - and yet are still able to identify with her. This, to me, suggests that at the very least, an Audience Surrogate need not perfectly match its audience's background to appeal to them and can instead have some unique traits while still fulfilling this role. The question then becomes where that tipping point is to achieve a happy medium.

On the other hand, I have a theory that it isn't so much "what" the audience identifies with but "why" the audience is able to identify with a certain character. Meaning, the reason a Black audience member identifies with a Black character not simply because they are both of the same race but because their shared heritage causes them to have a similar outlook to life. However, it could also mean that when writing for a teenaged audience, they would still be able to identify with a character who angsts over feeling unloved, uncared for and being misunderstood (which are feelings they experience) even if the circumstances are unique/fantastical and not something they have personally experienced themselves.

edited 28th Jul '13 5:31:46 PM by peasant

I make an effort to avert the audience surrogate. My entire first chapter is devoted to trying to get the readers jealous of the protagonist's lot in life, so that once the inciting incident happens and bad shit starts happening to the protagonist, their subconscious first reaction is "good", and it takes a while of bad shit happening to the protagonist before they realize how extreme it is and that the protagonist hasn't actually done anything bad to merit it happening to them.

No, you are mixing up two different things. An audience surrogate is someone the reader can slip into like a shirt, as if they ARE the character. Identifying with a character is like identifying with a personal problem someone tells you in real life - it doesn't make the character or person an audience surrogate, it just means you can sympathise and empathise with their situation. If you can't identify with a character you probably won't care about their story.

I have never, ever seen or read about a gay or lesbian audience surrogate, or a Hispanic one, etc. We have a trope that relates to this.

There are really simple and obvious differences between a minority protagonist and an 'average' one, for example someone with even mild homophobia will likely have difficulty imagining they are a gay man - a gay man wouldn't work as an audience surrogate for them. However a gay man will likely have been raised on straight romances from childhood, like Cinderella, which they are likely to have been brought up to be able to associate with.

These traits are all very common in the West, they don't make her unusually distinct.

err. what about on stories that explicitly occur outside the west? plenty of non-white Audience Surrogate in japanese media... homo characters as main characters are pretty niche/experimental. so don't really see any reason why they'd be common as a main character or AS.

@ peasant. If you MUST have an audience surrogate. make him/her a Deutragonist (or make the actual MC the Deutragonist). best of both worlds.


also, wouldn't agree with your "same heritage = relatable" theory. I can't relate with many characters of my own race or background. but that's mostly because they're written pretty cliche from where i came from.

for example of what i find relatable though, the black dood (forgot his name) from Cradle 2 The Grave (a Jet Li movie). i found him pertty relateable despite me neither coming from america or having to resort to crime to feed my family. the reason is because of how he was presented. first we see him robbing some safe then we learn that he's not just some stereotypical black man who lives a life of a gangsta hanging out in da club pimping bitches wearing back pain inducing Bling-blings. he has a life, an generically ordinary one (pretty close to the so called "american dream" i think).

edited 29th Jul '13 3:53:04 AM by ShanghaiSlave

How does that contradict what I said? Of course audience surrogates in Japanese media are Japanese, because their main audience is in Japan. The main audience of Western works is Westerners, so the surrogate audience character will be a Westerner rather than a Saudi Arabian diplomat.

That's not my theory. I'm not saying a character being a minority race or sexual orientation will make the reader go "holy shit I can't relate to that guy", I'm saying it reduces significantly the number of people who'll go "wow, that guy is the same as me" and who'll feel as if they are the protagonist and this stuff may as well be happening to them.

I guess my view is that if you want a character who, like Bella Swan, can pretty much be seen as 'me' by everyone in the target audience who reads it, then this works best when you make them a tennis ball who is bounced wherever the plot hits them and has completely average/majoritarian characteristics.

If you want a character who is more proactive and can be from a minority background then you guys are probably right that it could work, if you write it very well, but you will have less readers/viewers who think 'that could be me'. It'll work for less people.

1. there was no contradiction. it's a joke.


2. that was for peasant. but since you already went at some length. well, it really kinda doesn't. just watch the Bollywood film Film/{{3Idiots}}. if you can't relate to ANY of the characters then i concur that you are right about this part. appearance shouldn't really matter for most part, rather, it's the way she is presented, or "characterized" with what little personality the Audience Surrogate has. look over to twilight's Fridge Logic section and see why she's a bad Audience Surrogate as well. no such thing there but i'm sure i read it somewhere. or maybe i imagined it.

edited 29th Jul '13 6:00:05 AM by ShanghaiSlave

Yeah I miss those kinds of jokes on the internet, I take everything literally. Also I am not white, so if I gave the impression of being a white dude who doesn't think that non-white characters are relatable then that was a mistake.

Sorry, when I reread the last two paragraphs of your post I missed the @peasant ontop of it. My bad.

I think it is probably best to just make a proactive, developed character with a distinct personality and forget audience surrogacy tbh. I see an Audience Surrogate as being the opposite - non-distinct, average and passive - but that's just me.

This is on my mind as a counterexample because I recently discussed it in a different thread, but one Audience Surrogate with plenty of personality is Caim, of Drakengard.

The world of Drakengard is entertaining almost entirely because of how grandiosely messed-up it is in every possible way. Caim is a gleefully homicidal maniac, but makes a good audience surrogate and narrowly avoids Darkness-Induced Audience Apathy because he reacts to the setting in the same way the audience does - by wanting to pull the in-universe equivalent of flinging it across the room and stomping on it.

So I think I don't agree that an Audience Surrogate has to be flat, empty, and passive.

edited 29th Jul '13 7:34:20 AM by Noaqiyeum

That I agree with, even though I've never read the book in question - the principle is sound.

Whether the character is "black", "gay", "disabled", "master thief", "werewolf" or whatever other arbitrary label you could conceivably apply to him/her/it/them/none-of-the-above, if their reaction to the world/situation is the same reaction that 'anyone' would have, then the character is an audience surrogate.

If the reader finds themselves "jarred out of the story" by the "black" protag being grossed out by someone brutalising a child instead of gleefully joining in, then the problem lies with the reader (or the reader's parents - they had him...)

But if the protag, whoever it is, reacts the way anyone would, then it's a suitable audience surrogate.

It's not like women or gays or blacks or Muslims react differently to danger than white heterosexual Christian males.

Exactly.

@ editorguy: It depends on how you define Audience Surrogate. I think that defining the Audience Surrogate as a character that the audience is supposed to imagine themselves as is detrimental. Such thinking is probably the reason why we end up with White Male Leads and characters like Bella Swan in the first place. An Audience Surrogate is a character who is unfamiliar to the setting and, like the audience, has to be informed on it and like Wolf 1066 said, thus reacts in much the same way that the audience would. The audience is does not need to project themselves onto the character, such attempts often fail, and any audience would be so diverse that such a thing would be nearly impossible for everyone in the audience to do anyway. They are supposed to project their (re)actions onto the character's (re)actions.

edited 29th Jul '13 3:59:27 PM by shiro_okami

I agree with both of you.

Do we have a separate term for a character who is deliberately flat in order to allow the readers to imagine themselves in its place? Like the reverse of an Author Avatar? That does seem like quite a common subtype, especially in escapism, romances, and RPGs.

No, we don't. Editorguy's definition is listed as #3 on the Audience Surrogate page, while Wolf 1066 and my definition are listed as #2. It might be a good idea to split off the third definition into its own trope.

edited 29th Jul '13 6:00:07 PM by shiro_okami

It does say in bold on the Audience Surrogate page that out of the three types, "This trope is about the third one".

I agree with the thrust of what you are saying, that it is not good storytelling to try too hard to have a character that everyone can project themselves onto.

The Everyman is also described this way.

Actually now that I think of it, maybe the trope would make more sense if The Everyman was type three, and we just left Audience Surrogate as an index of different types.

edited 29th Jul '13 8:49:04 PM by editerguy

That's possible. I know a number of the examples of Type 2 don't fit under The Watson or Meta Guy.

Maybe Designated Protagonist Syndrome for a deliberately boring character? Anyway, a character does not have to be the same as the reader to be an audience surrogate. Think of Frodo; not even human, raised in a very different society to anyone on earth, yet he is so 'human' that you can empathise with him well, making him an audience surrogate. It doesn't have to be 100% blank slate, that's both impossible and boring, but work in some traits that anyone human can relate to, and it won't matter if the character is an Afro-Asian gay person with magical powers and lives in a castle. It's the person inside that people empathise with.

So what I think of as an "Audience Surrogate" is the "The Watson cum Meta Guy" subtype.

I prefer Audience Surrogate characters that feel what the audience would most likely feel - not in every situation but in the ones that count, the visceral bits... shit gets nasty, character's appalled and horrified, probably sickened; shit gets dangerous, character's scared, unsure, out of depth (but rallies and does stuff anyway as the majority of the audience would like to believe that if this sort of shit went down, they'd somehow find the balls to do the same despite being as shit-scared as they and the character are).

I can relate to them regardless of sex, culture, sexuality, religion, skin colour, even background.

I could understand why a gay male character might find another male character attractive, but not relate to it - but could still relate to that same gay character as an Audience Surrogate in a situation that has nothing to do with sexual attraction or romance - such as his anger at being treated unfairly, or his fear of a situation beyond his control or any number of other things.

I don't have to relate to him 100% of the time for him to be an effective surrogate for me.

And the fact that he is a complex character that differs from me in sexuality, possibly culture (the majority of the Audience Surrogate characters I've encountered have been Americans, and I'm not American), maybe even race or skin colour makes him a far more interesting character than any two-dimensional sketchy Type 3 Audience Surrogate.

Just so long as I can relate to the character at the parts that really matter, I'm fine.

If he giggles maniacally at the bits where I'm simultaneously focussing on holding down my lunch and trying to smooth down the hairs on the back of my neck, he's not going to be a good Audience Surrogate, I feel...

YMMV, of course...

edited 30th Jul '13 1:59:52 AM by Wolf1066

I dunno, Okami... I don't think such a blanket statement is true. After all, isn't that not what characters like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn were; especially in the era when they first came out? Yet, they are lauded today as classics and works of art.

Say what you will about Bella Swan as a character from an artistic standpoint, however she and Twilight did - at the end of the day - get a whole generation of people interested in reading, who probably wouldn't have started if not for the book. And much of this has been attributed to the easy accessibility of Bella.

In that way, an Audience Surrogate in the sense of a character who the audience is supposed/able to imagine themselves as is a fantastic tool when it comes to immersion and getting the audience invested in a story. Which is important as a key challenge for any storyteller is to get the audience interested in his/her story long enough to stick around. The trick is of course not to let them be nothing but that and devoid of anything distinctive themselves. One solution, I guess, is to have an Escapist Character; who possesses all the things that the audience wished they had.

Actually, now that I've examined it more closely, an example of such an achievement can be found in Harry Potter. In spite of the tragic back story, Harry Potter was pretty much a blank slate that most audience - especially young children, which was its target audience - could easily project themselves into; especially once Rowling added a dash of Changeling Fantasy, thereby giving them all the more reason to WANT to project themselves into the character. Then, once Harry Potter's role as an Audience Surrogate had served its purpose by hooking in the audience, Rowling was clever to then develop the character with more distinctive qualities; and more importantly, flaws.

edited 30th Jul '13 8:04:30 AM by peasant

Unless I'm misunderstanding this whole conversation, I think peasant is talking about maximising the overall number of people in the prospective audience who can envisage themselves as the character in question.

This is why Bella is a relevant example, the idea that "she and Twilight did - at the end of the day - get a whole generation of people interested in reading" reflects a quantitative literary purpose (maximising readership) rather than a qualitative purpose (giving the readers a unique and compelling character). In my view, whether you can combine both approaches effectively can perhaps be answered with a "no". While Harry Potter is a good example of both, I think this is only because he shifts from relatively bland to more nuanced later on.

I think that self-consciously focusing on creating a character that the audience is able to imagine themselves as (type 3) is a marketing tool rather than a writing tool, and therefore may be counterproductive to good writing.

edited 1st Aug '13 1:24:45 AM by editerguy

While i don't really think Pottah was ever meant as an audience surrogate ^note \\which in that case, Ordinary Highschool Student and Escapist Character types are all audience surrogates, even if they don't react typically, Insane Troll Logic, i know.\\ what she did with Pottah is a very good example of "making a good Audience Surrogate". guess you've got yourself a "Eureka!" Moment here.

I doubt that many children in this day and age are orphaned as a baby and find themselves living in a house with abusive relatives that make them live under the stairs - but none of that prevented HP being an exceptionally good Audience Surrogate for a large number of kids.

i think it's potter's "situation" (can't go out with friends, can't mail friends, favoritism, etc.) rather than his situation as an orphan and stuff itself that makes him that. so i guess that means Audience Surrogate don't have to be that flat and generic too. just with experiences the target audience can relate with.

yeah, exactly like that.

edited 2nd Aug '13 3:36:02 AM by ShanghaiSlave

I'm positive that most kids have felt like they've been abandoned with abusive relatives at some stage though. I don't think this is a situation for a kid which is even slightly hard to imagine as your own because it reflects normal, generic feelings that probably all children have.

But I concede that being distinct may be compatible with being a type 3 Audience Surrogate.

I totally did not see that until you pointed it out to me.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

@ peasant: I forgot about the Escapist Character trope. That is the exception and when making a character for audience projection is appropriate.

Oddly enough, you might have hit on a bit of Fridge Brilliance regarding Bella Swan. Maybe Twilight fans were drawn to the book not despite her being a "blank" Mary Sue, but rather BECAUSE she was a "blank" Mary Sue made her a more effective and appealing Escapist Character.

edited 2nd Aug '13 5:44:17 PM by shiro_okami