I think every author has their go-to archetypes, and mine happens to be the outsider.

Most of my characters are misfits, oddballs, or just displaced from the rest of society for one reason or another. That’s true of my most recently published book, Marked, which has Dana, who’s socially isolated because of the mark on her body that she’s kept hidden from childhood. It’s also true for my first book, Forests of the Night, which has Nohar navigating between human and non-human worlds.

Then there’s Jack Paris, my protagonist in my current WIP. He’s a bi-racial Louisiana native who was transplanted to Cleveland as a teenager. That marks him as an outsider even before you take into account his psychic ability and his family roots in Louisiana Voodoo.

I like outsider characters, in part, because I identify with them. I’ve been weird and socially awkward my entire life, and I tend to feel like an outsider even in groups I’m a part of. So I deeply empathize with these characters inability to fit in. The other nice thing about an outsider, is it gives an outside perspective to whatever’s going on in a story. It allows you to explore interactions that would be invisible or unconscious to somebody who’s fully embedded in a social group. It also gives a reason to explain things to a protagonist who’s outside the group/society/civilization that we’re exploring.

But, in the end, it seems to be the POV I’m most comfortable writing from.

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash