I'm active in several communities of interest. As many are antagonistic to each other, I use pseudonym. Despite this I see meta-issues accross all the communities. One of these is identity in a flattening society. As a quick example, read the screen play, it's free, of "My Fair Lady." http://wearcam.org/decon/myfairlady.htm.
How far did you get before you screamed "but this is not right!" We are told repeatedly that it is bad writing to show different characters speaking differently. One, no, make that two writing coaches with their books-for-sale confidently point to "Huckleberry Finn" as an example of how you never develop a character for the past one hundred years.
Why?
Part of this is likely we're lazy. Why take the mental exercise of understanding a character, right down to the downward inflections of their questions, when we can sit back and have the writer tell us all we need to know?
Part of this is discomfort of having a character act outside of the narrrow norm of memes that are currently fashionable. Heaven help the female main character who is unabashably girly. Or the eighty year old who has issues with his girlfriend, for whom he pays all the bills, nightclubbing with Basketball stars. Could a writer in this environment write sympathetically about either? And not get critiquer's drop like flies hitting a UV trap?
Did you start writing to curry favor? Then this blog is not for you. If you started writing because something clawed it's way out, then why hasn't it? Does your submissions show something other than the flattened Society norm.
As members of a limited number of formalized Critiquing communities, we need to reach beyond ourselves. If we are lazy, then how does the writer respond? How many self-assured Steinbecks grace our queues? Could you write about a "snake woman" who slurred her sippilants at every turn? Even when the first printing nearly tanked because of "Big Press" panning of the admittedly minor character?
Next time, when you are confronted with a character "acting out", slow down and appreciate that character and how their fellow characters live in the real world of the story.