My discussion to day is about xenophobia and how it can be useful for a character in your story. Xenophobia is defined as a fear of foreigners or strangers, or of that which is foreign or strange. The phychological definition is a fear of strangers, or anyone who meets any list of criteria about their origin, religion, personal beliefs, habits, language, orientations, or any other criteria. While the phobic person is aware of his aversion of a target group, they may not identify or accept it as a fear.
What kind of character can we create who has xenophobia? Would he necessarily be the antagonist, or bad guy? A typical xenophobe would be careful to target certain types of people and could actually be an excellant bad guy. But what if your xenophobe was your protagonist, or good guy? How would you write him then? Could he he helpless and needy and trying to change? But what kind of story would that be? How about if you wrote him as someone who has an epiphany about his disease and changes at the end. The bad guy gone good?
A xenophobic person has to genuinely think or believe at some level that the target (or person) is in fact a foreigner or stranger. This separates xenophobia from racism and ordinary predjudice in that someone of a different race does not necessarily have to be of a different nationality. Xenophobia can also be directed simply to anyone outside a culture, not necessarily one particular race of people.
So, if a character starts out afraid of a group or even one other person, because he thinks he is different, his fear might manifest in ways that look like hatred and predjudice. He might refuse to let his daughter date someone or refuse to shop at a certain store. All from fear that can somehow be eliminated from your character and then his epiphany and realization that these people are okay. That would be a good ending to a sad tale. How would you do it?
