In going along the same lines as my last post, I have another musing about character personalities. The dominant/submissive character personalities seem to be overused as well. I'm not just talking about in professional works but I mean works in general (I can't tell you how many fan fictions I've read...). Even though it works well in some character relationships, I think it's sort of an easy way out.
It's so much simpler for one character to assert something and just have the other one go along with it. However, that's not necessarily realistic. Most people aren't completely submissive and will put up a bit of protest. On the other side of the spectrum, dominant personalities aren't suddenly going to be submissive. They're going to try to gain the upper hand and will probably be a little irked that they are being confronted. This is on an extreme level, of course. Personalities are complex and very difficult to express.
But like my last musing, I don't think this dominant/submissive thing is a bad thing. It moves a plot along at a quick rate and will probably keep a reader interested. It also saves a writer time of incessant fighting between the two (or more) characters. And maybe the characters are actually that dominant and that submissive and so it's realistic to have them react to each other that way.
Perhaps I just pick on these things because I wrote a book and now I pay extra attention to character interaction and development. It could just be me.
