[Writerpreneur] Compelling Characters 08

CASTING YOUR CHARACTERS: Characters come in three types - and you see these in all the stories you've read. But you only have space to develop a few fully - those that move the story forward.

CASTING YOUR CHARACTERS. We can classify characters as flat, in relief, or round…

Flat Characters.

By a flat character we mean one which exhibits a single trait (typical or social), one that is clear-cut, distinct and simple. This character’s behavior, motivations, mannerisms, and identifiers remain constant.

This simple characterization proves effective and vivid, especially in concise short stories. Fables, allegories, and the works of John Bunyan, Charles Dickens, Ben Jonson, and Harold Bell Wright also feature flat characters. In fact, authors often name their characters for the traits which they embody.

Developing flat characters necessitates pre-selecting a single defining trait, then consistently portraying the character acting in accordance with this trait. In order to do this you may, if you like, give your character the name suggesting the trait he expresses: Mr Busybody, Mr Benevolence, Mr Jealousy. This practice will enable you to keep the character in his groove. Later, for purposes. of publication, you may change the names to Mr Smith, Mr Brown, Mr Jones, as you like.

Authors best adapt flat characters to short fiction and brief scenes, or use them for minor novel characters who appear only a few times for a few minutes.

Giving your puppet a typical trait, such as being the obsequious butler, creates a flat character. While you can sometimes use individual and human traits, use them with care. Flat characters should be in strong contrast with each other, like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Short fiction provides insufficient room to develop characters in relief or fully round characters.

The chief advantage of the flat character lies in being immediately recognizable. If, in addition, it is vivid and representative, it may be very effective. Thus we have Punch and Judy, perhaps the best-known characters in European literature.

Using flat characters simplifies plot construction; their one-dimensional nature makes them more useful. A singular character, defined by a single trait, function, and weapon, fulfills the writer’s purpose. He is Old Faithful in person, the Loyal Retainer. But being recognizable, so definite, so limited, he lacks the element of surprise. Short, plotted stories, then, use flat characters most effectively; the plot itself provides suspense and surprise.

Flat characters appeal to the childish reader and to the one who reads for escape. One finds them everywhere in folklore.

“To bed, to bed,” said Sleepy-head;

“Tarry awhile,” said Slow;

“Put on the pot,” said Greedy-gut,

“We’ll sup before we go!”

Characters in Relief.

By a character in relief we mean one which has a larger element of surprise than a flat character can exhibit.

People sometimes call the character in relief a “half-round” character. Although incomplete, it’s multifaceted.

To create this kind of character, present it as having one dominant trait modified by a single qualifying trait or sub-trait. Flat characters remain static; those in relief evolve. Sculpting a character in relief requires preventing unbelievable surprises when a secondary trait emerges. You may achieve this through careful preparation and a sufficient understanding of psychology to reconcile the two traits to the reader’s satisfaction.

The sub-trait, which brings in the element of surprise in such a character, will manifest itself in a moment of crisis.

We have seen that the flat character is best adapted to short, well-plotted stories. The character in relief appears to best advantage in scenes, because in a scene it provides a brief surprise or brief suspense by exhibiting the sub-trait, though the primary drive of the character is clear.

Illustrating this core concept clarifies its function. Let us choose a well-known example: In Antony and Cleopatra, Shakespeare presents Cleopatra as a siren and charmer, a typical courtesan, following Plutarch’s account of the affair. But Shakespeare wishes to show us something more interesting than such a common type. He prepares for this by having other characters discuss her influence upon Antony. But of course Shakespeare knew better than to expect us to accept that without seeing her individuality displayed in action. All along she has humored Antony and flattered him.

She learns he may abandon her. The usual courtesan would have proceeded to flatter and entertain the man, in line with past behavior. But here Shakespeare departs from the pedestrian Plutarch and imagines something more interesting.

Cleopatra sends Charmian, her waiting-woman, to Antony, and these are her instructions: “If you find him sad, Say I am dancing; if in mirth, report That I am sudden sick.” This departure from the ordinary methods of holding a man alarms Charmian, who urges that the way to keep Antony’s love Is to cross him in nothing. Cleopatra retorts: “Thou teachest like a fool: the way to lose him.”

This offers a surprise, but the reader sees it is plausible and that the character is more interesting and convincing (plausible) than before. He believes in Cleopatra’s charm and power over men. She is clever as well as seductive. This adds an individual trait to the typical trait, creating a more well-rounded character. One such surprise is enough to create a character in relief.

Characters in relief are sometimes easier to create than the more vivid flat characters, and often enough the beginner creates them, through his inability to keep the outline of his flat character clear-cut. For example, Mr Busybody, the flat character, may surprise his creator by exhibiting that meddlesome trait in the guise of neighborly good counsel. He meddles benevolently, which is not appropriate to a flat character. If the reader, on observing this, after a moment of hesitation exclaims, ‘‘Of course, of course,” the author has created a character in relief. He has compelled recognition despite the element of surprise.

The character in relief properly presented is, therefore, more convincing than the flat character, if only because less theatrical and more lifelike. Though lacking full complexity, relief characters are more lifelike than flat ones.

The vast majority of characters in fiction are either flat or in relief. Numerous writers struggle with crafting believable characters and lack adequate narrative space for this.

The danger in attempting characters in relief lies in vagueness and cloudiness of outline. Be sure that your main trait is clear-cut and that your sub-trait belongs with it; that your psychology is convincing.

You will find the element of surprise making up in great measure for losing the advantages of a flat character.

Round Characters.

This third type of characterization is that used in longer works, chiefly the novel, and preferred for what is called “serious” fiction. The brevity of magazine fiction excludes the round character.

The reader of magazine fiction often prefers the flat character or the character in relief. Some magazines publish full-length novels or serials that use the methods of serious fiction to present certain characters in the round.

The difference between crafting round versus relief characters lies solely in the quantity and type of surprising personality aspects. The author attempts to show the reader the main outline of his character—or a principal facet. Having shown this, the author proceeds to different facets. If space permits, the reader may feel that the author has led him clear around the character, allowing him to view it from all sides, as he might a statue or living person.

Obviously, there is hardly room in short fiction for any such treatment. The technique is difficult, since the constant repetition of surprise makes it hard for the author to maintain plausibility.

The rounded character, of course, arouses far more lasting interest than the character in relief or the flat character, but is in danger of sacrificing plausibility.

Authors present round characters with only two or three surprises, fearing to risk more. It is difficult to present a complex character so that every reader will feel that all the traits are altogether consistent.

Authors usually create flat characters by focusing the reader’s attention on a typical or social trait.

Writers usually create a character in relief by presenting a dominant social or typical trait to the reader, modified by a human or individual trait.

Authors create round characters by multiplying and emphasizing human and individual traits and showing how these traits relate to each other and to social and typical traits.

The author’s skill in creating a well-rounded character is tested by whether the reader accepts surprising aspects that are consistent with the character’s main personality trait. When the author can make the reader repeat ‘But of course, but of course’ as the story unfolds, he has achieved his goal. His character is in the round.

No fictional character matches the complex nature of a real individual. This concealment falls upon the author. In the round character, he must solve contradictions and tie up loose ends.

Readers will remain invested in a character compelling enough to overcome any lack of suspense.

Thus the fully rounded character is most useful for the long novel, for so-called ‘‘serious” fiction, in which characters seem to approach the complexity of living persons.

Life, the biologists tell us, is a series of adjustments to circumstances. When we cannot adjust ourselves, our life ends. In fiction the flat character has only one change to make in a plotted story. A character in relief has two. But the round character must make several changes. Hence, in serious fiction, the strictly plotted story is of little use because it provides only one crisis, one change.

In serious fiction, the characters make a great number of small choices. Authors of serious fiction do not believe that a man’s true nature is likely to appear in a great crisis. Individuals in crisis tend to follow anticipated social norms instead of acting independently. A man’s choice between saving his wife or mother aboard a raft exemplifies a difficult dilemma.

Nine out of ten men will choose to save their mothers in societies that value mothers over wives. In times and countries where wives hold more importance than mothers, nine out of ten men will choose to save their wives.

Wartime sees pacifists jailed, while militarists fight. In neither case is the choice a personal one. Serious fiction writers prioritize minor choices and crises over major ones. Such minor choices he uses in displaying his character through a series of “significant trifles”.

Serious fiction using this method fails. The character, burdened by insignificant decisions, lacks vitality. Most readers prefer vital characters, readers who like to identify themselves with their heroes.

They prefer supermen, bursting with life and gusto, men with an ingrained strength and virtue or a devilish malignity. Even readers who rarely see themselves in fictional characters and enjoy watching comedy and tragedy are likely to prefer characters who are lively enough to partake in extraordinary activities and face unusual challenges.

And so the vast majority of readers prefer the vital character to the neurotic one. So “serious” fiction seldom achieves any wide, popular success.

Characterization in serious fiction starts from the assumption that, in itself, a trait is neither good nor bad, that you can no more separate a man’s strength from his weakness than you could split a sheet of paper with an ax; that people are complex creatures not comprehensible, irrational, not consistent, but real and interesting.

From this assumption arises the desire and the attempt to present characters as convincingly as possible. The problem becomes one of plausibility.

The method employed in serious fiction, then, is to show several sides of a character in sequence, so that the reader realizes the complexity of human nature in the figure as he progresses around it.

One difficulty of serious fiction and the use of round characters lies in the problem that a reader likes to take sides in a story. Many readers are incapable of impartiality. When presented with a figure who is neither good nor bad, but mixed, they are confused.

Aristotle’s suggestion provides a solution. Aristotle’s *Poetics* argues a tragic hero’s flaw is crucial; otherwise, their misfortune only startles, failing to engage the audience emotionally. But the hero must not be a hateful villain. Then he would lose the sympathy of the reader, who would rejoice at his downfall. The tragic hero, then, must be one who is neither evil nor perfect, but one who has some frailty, some weakness, some ruling passion which leads him from the path of safety. He is like a man who craves snow fights, makes a snowball on the mountains and finds he has started an avalanche; a man who loves oysters, eats a bad one and finds he has destroyed himself.

Aristotle’s point is one well worth consideration, suggestive in any kind of characterization, at any rate in serious fiction.

In such fiction, also, characters reap what they sow, it is true; but they do not all reap crops of the same proportionate magnitude. Scripture states some receive a hundredfold harvest, while others receive twenty-fold. This makes for added suspense in serious fiction and makes character of greater importance.

In melodrama, of course, everybody gets what he “deserves.” But that sort of childish rewarding will not do in fiction of a more lifelike kind. Often, in both serious fiction and life, minor details hold greater significance than major crises. The setting perfectly suits the rounded character.

The great danger of attempting the round character is that, like the historians’ King Alfred described in Mr Philip Guedalla’s essay, your hero may be “so many-sided that he is almost completely invisible from any point of view.”

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And so, we've covered a great deal about how to create and populate you story with characters the reader will identify with. Ones they'll want to find out what happens next, even after that story is complete – they'll want the next one.

There is another facet of your story that needs your attention. Many people call this the “plot”. But is it even necessary?

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(This text was based on works by Walter S. Campbell, founder of the OU Professional Writing course.)

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