How to write a petty character.
Are you struggling with writing a petty character, be it a villain, a hero, or a side character who is stupid? You have come to the right place.
Human beings are petty creatures by nature. You’ll notice that by looking at every kid ever who wants that expensive new toy but don’t justify the need to buy it and would rather blame the parents for being meanies. Great people are those who overcame their pettiness and learnt to look at the larger world.
By the definition I have provided, one can say that every immature person is petty. If only it were that simple. In my experience with dealing so many people, immaturity is only a part of petty behaviour.
Let’s take an example from the internet today. Cause the internet is the epitome of pettiness. And since I mostly dwell inside the Genshin community, I present you a petty Kazuha main from Genshin Impact.
For those who don’t know, Genshin Impact is a gacha game which periodically releases new characters to play with. At the present moment we got 40+ characters, so it should come as no surprise that there might be two characters with similar gameplay design. Kazuha was such a character, who was similar to a previous unit called Sucrose. So, many players skipped his banner to save up for future characters who actually seemed more interesting.
As it is with many things in life, one can’t assess the value of something until much later. And after Kazuha’s banner was gone, people realized he is one of the best units released into the game.
Now let’s look at a free-to-play Kazuha main who pulled on his banner because they liked their character rather than their gameplay. And now they feel lucky while the rest of the player base cries over their blunder of skipping him.
If it were a humble person, they would have thought they were lucky with their choices and just moved on.
Sadly, petty people aren’t built that way. A petty Kazuha main will first feel that they have a much better account than the rest of the player base. They’ll feel so good about it, they will start to think since they have a better account than the rest of the player base, they themselves are better than the rest of the player base. Up until now, these thoughts are just immature and eccentric.
The pettiness comes in when they feel the need to let the whole world how they and their Kazuha account is better than the rest of the world. To let the world know that, they will build their Kazuha to the best of their abilities. Then they’ll do a showcase of their Kazuha build and people will say that is cool. But after cashing in the compliments, then they’ll say , “You were stupid to skip Kazuha. Sucks to be you.”
As I said, the internet, especially Twitter, is a perfect place to find petty people to study.
Sure people used to call Kazuha an expensive Sucrose but that was a long time ago. Their pettiness doesn’t allow them to let go of age old grudges and the people around the these petty people will just abandon them.
Pettiness is a way to defend one’s ego. Ego is the driver behind human actions. And it is perfectly fine to defend one’s ego. Until that ego starts hurting other people’s ego and you don’t acknowledge or intentionally don’t care about the hurt you are causing.
Judging from this example, we can say that there are 6 stages to a person becoming petty.
Stage 1 – Doing or having something positive.
Stage 2 - Feeling better about themselves about the positive thing.
Stage 3 - Believing they are better than the whole world for doing something positive.
Stage 4 - Letting every know that they are better than the whole world and they work hard to prove that.
Stage 5 - Insulting everyone in an annoying way, making people avoid them.
Stage 6(Cycle Stage) - Another person not liking the petty remarks and fires back at the first person with more petty remarks, thus creating a never ending cycle.
As for how to write a petty character, it is pretty simple. Remember, a person truly becomes petty when they are already in stage 4. Thus, when first introducing a character in your story, show off their behaviour in stage 4 and stage 5.
Stage 6 is how other characters choose to interact with the petty person, creating a conflict.
Of course, a character not choosing to stoop to the level of the petty person can also be a great interaction. Like I said, the internet is the best place to find petty people. You can find people dealing with petty people in various way. Also, the internet doesn’t have to be the only place you can reference. Look around you. Interact with various people. You’ll find many references to help you write.
Stage 1, 2 and 3 of the character would come under the back story part of the character, where we can find the explanation as for why the character is petty. This could be because their family is rich, or they are extremely talented or they are beautiful, etc. It doesn’t just have to be good luck that makes them feel better than the rest of the world. It can be anything.
Pettiness is great way to write minor conflicts without disrupting the main plot. Petty actions are an excellent way to show off an arrogant or an immature character while keeping the minor conflict interesting.
Like it or not, people like petty characters better compared to vanilla characters like shounen protagonists. It’s just that writing petty characters who are likable at the same time is super hard. That’s why most petty characters are semi-popular. However, if a writer hits the mark, petty characters can become super popular.
There are two ways a petty character can go.
1. A Redemption arc, where the character realizes the gravity of their actions and seize their pettiness. Usually this is how a side character or even a protagonist redemption arc is written. The character doesn’t necessarily have to apologize. Stopping the pettiness on their part is enough. Ritsu Kageyama is a perfect example of this.
2. The point of no return, where the character doubles down on their pettiness, so much so that people flat out tell them to disappear. When a characters petty actions have lasting consequence and the character still chooses to be petty, that’s when the character becomes irredeemable. That’s when a character becomes a villain.
Some examples of popular petty characters are Dazai from Bungou Stray Dogs, Sonic Ninja from One Punch man, Ritsu Kageyama from Mob Psycho 100, Izaya Orihara and Shizua Heiwajima from Durarara, and so on.
That’s all I have to say about petty characters. Hopefully this post helped you out.
Until next time.