Proud Male Student - Insight?

[Velvet D'Coolette]

Hi all,

I'm writing a story and need some help with how to write a certain character. Broadly speaking I've got enough of an idea how to write him, but a situation has come up in the story and I could really use some help. To rephrease, I am not an egotistical/insecure male teen swimming in my own testosterone but I am trying to write one. Can anyone give me some insight?

The scenario in my story is this: a fatherless 18 year old is one of the students of a 1-year school and one of the tutors has just introduced a martial arts class. This is to give a sense of discipline to the overconfident members of the group (like the young male I'm asking for help with) and to bring up the confidence of the more worrisome members. The teacher has decided to start by throwing each member of the class so that they can learn how to fall but also learn that sometimes you just have to lose because the situation demands it (perhaps something my male student will have problems with?) or that if you do lose it doesn't mean life is over (right now he's got a female student quaking in her boots over this).

If it's any help, the culture is broadly Western so I'm not writing a group of Chinese, Japanese or similar students, here.

A little further backstory on the male student in question: he turned up at the school, realised that all his teachers (4 of them) are male and vied with one of them for dominance. That one is physically small, pristine and posh so the student thought he'd be an easy target. Trouble is, posh-teacher keeps managing to best him with use of authority and peer pressure. A couple of days before this martial arts class he physically attacked this teacher only to find that the teacher (having a martial arts-trained colleague and friend) was able to defend himself. The posh teacher relayed all of this to the martial arts teacher which is why the class has gone ahead at this point, not that any of the students have actually been told that.

He's been in a relationship with another student, who sometimes works as a model and is very proud and spiteful, but she's going off him and he's noticed, and he's a bit angry about this - not least because she's showing interest in one of the teachers (neither the posh one or the martial one).

But how will our proud young student take this? Is he likely to just quietly take the throw and get up afterwards and go back to his spot in the classroom, or is he likely to try and fight his teacher, or is he likely to go a bit 'this is gay!' (He's either straight or nowhere near coming out, I don't think I'm going to end up exploring his orientation in this story), or something else?

And finally, is this likely to have any effects after the class has ended? Please provide insight to this horribly middle-class, body-shy 30-year-old female. *courtseys*

[jebodiah8]

The way you have this character so far, it would appear that he would take the martial arts class as a direct challenge to his masculinity. So it wouldn't be any stretch of the imagination to see him responding to being thrown by attempting to continue the physical exchange. The question then becomes should this be the incident that forces the character to re-evaluate his values, or does it just push him to push back harder against those who he sees as the ones responsible for his public humiliation? How "thick" do you want this character to be? Would you want him to learn from the upcoming episode in the martial arts class or a later exchange with his girlfriend's newest attraction?

[Velvet D'Coolette]

Ah, thanks for the tips!

[Hakuzo NightFox]

It really depends on his personality. To me he sounds like someone that's trying to prove how much of a 'man' he is, and taking a 'fall' will hurt his ego in so many ways. Even though he lost to the one teacher he still thinks 'he can never lose'.

At this rate it seems to me he will continue to push his weight around. So far this guy sounds like a prick. I don't know if that is what is intended but if you use that you can have him hit some life changing event causing him to become a better person all-around.

[Velvet D'Coolette]

That's more or less my intention, but I don't want it not to be realistic, or as near to realistic as possible. I know that a lot of people in life simply do not grow past a certain point, that if he can't find the gratification of 'I'm the big man' he craves in this place he can move on to somewhere else.

Except that just at the moment, he'd struggle to do that. It would cost him quite dear to stop going to the Academy. So I'm now trying to work out a way to bring him around to questioning this stuff when he's already so dependant on this self-image.

[Hakuzo NightFox]

Well all this can happen then you can play off of something dramatic happening to his 'girl friend' that causes him to get a slap of reality to his face. Something deep and impactful that will change his life in one strong hammer blow.

Think along the lines of "Don't take the girl - Tim McGraw" (just as an example.)

[32ChiliDogs]

Character growth should evolve throughout the story, unless the change happens after the first chapter and pushes it into a new direction. ( I mean you would need something big in order to completely change his character overnight, heavily dramatic or personal decision after deep refelection.)
Perfect examples are actually many shonen fighting mangas. Seriously, check them out.