# Proud Male Student - Insight Please?



## Palantean Writer (Sep 5, 2012)

Hi all,

I'm writing a story (not posted up) 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*


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## Contrast (Sep 5, 2012)

Most events in a well written story (if not all of them) should have some kind of effect on the big picture. Nobody knows your characters as well as you do, so only you can truly know what your characters are thinking.
But here's my suggestion. If he just gets thrown and goes back to his spot, then nothing really happened. Chances are the whole scene will just get deleted if it ever goes through a professional editor. I like stories full of action, so maybe a confrontation is in order? He could try to block the throw, but fails. He becomes enraged, gets up and attacks the teacher from behind. Maybe the teacher sees this coming, maybe he doesn't. Either way all the students will be shocked by his lack of sportsmanship. It could all boil over into something much more serious later on.
But that's just one idea. Ultimately, you're the only one who can decide what happens next.


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## Palantean Writer (Sep 5, 2012)

Thanks - the only thing about that, though, is that I want to have an idea of the range of possible responses so that I can feel more confident I'm not writing something unrealistic.


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## wolfy20 (Sep 17, 2012)

If he is both proud and angry I doubt he would take it lying down but I don't think he would do anything in front of the other students. He might try something after class but that would depend on what kind of person he is. If he is more of the bully type then he would get his friends to help him beat the teacher up or humiliate him(though rich spoiled brats fit this type better). The other(I don't have a name for it) likes to get revenge by beating others at their own game and proving that they are better (though this tends to backfire if they aren't persistent).


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