While bingeing the latest series in my “slow burn, visually stunning, foreign crime drama” obsession “Trapped” on Amazon Prime I noticed something interesting, an 8 year old girl that plays with Lego and dinosaurs. There are multiple scenes that highlight her favorite toys: correcting her sister on the correct pronunciation of Tyrannosaurus Rex, the toy dinosaur on the dash of her father’s car, bullying a younger boy “Don’t you know how to play with blocks?”, and the scene from the picture below where she is playing with dinosaurs and Lego and her mother joins her. A girl that plays with blocks and dinosaurs, she must be a tomboy right? Nope, just a regular girl. Her parents must try to discourage her and give her “gender appropriate” toys right? Nope, they support her choices. Notice that last example, the mother joins her on the living room floor and participates in her play – a bonding moment between an absent mother and her daughter.

Individually these small moments are easy to miss. Each one is from a different episode, they usually short and part of other scenes, only one is a scene by itself, only one drives the narrative of the story. But collectively they paint a well rounded, non-stereotypical 8 year old girl. Small moments matter. These moments could have been easily replaced with her playing with dolls and bullying the boy from any number of other reasons. They weren’t and now we have a character that can grow up to be an architect or a scientist or anything else she wants to be.

When writing we often focus on large, project defining ways to break stereotypes and build diverse characters. Don’t forget that small moments matter. It is just as important and impactful to build strong supporting and background characters as it is to have barrier breaking main characters.

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