There Are Never "Two Kinds Of People"

I love dichotomies. Separating things into groups gives a semblance of order in our chaotic world, and having only two categories makes things extremely simple to organize. The only downside to this is that I cannot think of a single dichotomy that isn't false.

Some of the simplest things on earth are not black and white, including the idea of things being only black or white. There are countless other colors that things can be, as are their shades within that spectrum. Things like race, nationality, gender, even things like being alive are not always one or the other. Certainly, with strict enough definitions, you could definitively sort things, but your sorting is only definitive if everybody agrees to your definitions (hence the whole Terri Schiavo debacle way back, and countless other debacles before and since).

The spectrum of possibilities makes it incredibly difficult to talk in absolutes. And in fact, any character that talks in absolutes is pretty much guaranteed to be evil, mentally unstable, and wrong. It makes it really hard to write simple stories, but maybe that's ok. Maybe it's worth it to explore the spectrum of possibilities in any category.

Think of any situation where you could say "there are two kinds of people". Now go and write a story about a person who is neither of those kinds of people (or a person who is both).