Category Archives: Characters

Main Character Growth – Start or Stop?

The 12 Essential QuestionsEvery Writer Should Answer

2. Main Character Growth: Stop or Start?

Over the course of your story, the Main Character will either grow out of something or grow into something. Authors show their audiences how to view this development of a Main Character by indicating the direction of Growth by the Main Character.

If the story concerns a Main Character who Changes, he will come to believe he is the cause of his own problems (that’s why he eventually changes). If he grows out of an old attitude or approach (e.g. loses the chip on his shoulder), then he is a Stop character. If he grows into a new way of being (e.g. fills a hole in his heart), then he is a Start character.

If the story concerns a Main Character who Remains Steadfast, something in the world around him will appear to be the cause of his troubles. If he tries to hold out long enough for something to stop bothering him, then he is a Stop character. If he tries to hold out long enough for something to begin, then he is a Start character. If you want the emphasis in your story to be on the source of the troubles which has to stop, choose “Stop.”

If you want to emphasize that the remedy to the problems has to begin, choose “Start.”
Whether a Main Character eventually changes his nature or remains steadfast, he will still grow over the course of the story. This growth has a direction. Either he will grow into something (Start) or grow out of something (Stop).

As an example we can look to Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. Does Scrooge need to change because he is excessively miserly (Stop), or because he lacks generosity (Start)? In the Dickens’ story it is clear that Scrooge’s problems stem from his passive lack of compassion, not from his active greed. It is not that he is on the attack, but that he does not actively seek to help others. So, according to the way Charles Dickens told the story, Scrooge needs to Start being generous, rather than Stop being miserly.

A Change Main Character grows by adding a characteristic he lacks (Start) or by dropping a characteristic he already has (Stop). Either way, his make up is changed in nature.

A Steadfast Main Character’s make up, in contrast, does not change in nature. He grows in his resolve to remain unchanged. He can grow by holding out against something that is increasingly bad while waiting for it to Stop. He can also grow by holding out for something in his environment to Start. Either way, the change appears somewhere in his environment instead of in him.

Examples of Stop and Start

Main Character Resolve – Change or Steadfast?

The 12 Essential QuestionsEvery Writer Should Answer

1. Main Character Resolve: Change or Steadfast?

The Main Character represents the audience’s position in the story. Therefore, whether he changes or not has a huge impact on the audience’s story experience and the message you are sending to it. Some Main Characters grow to the point of changing their nature or attitude regarding a central personal issue like Scrooge in A Christmas Carol. Others grow in their resolve, holding onto their nature or attitude against all obstacles like Dr. Richard Kimble in The Fugitive.

Change can be good if the character is on the wrong track to begin with. It can also be bad if the character was on the right track. Similarly, remaining Steadfast is good if the character is on the right track, but bad if he is misguided or mistaken.

Think about the message you want to send to your audience, and whether the Main Character’s path should represent the proper or improper way of dealing with the story’s central issue. Then select a changing or steadfast Main Character accordingly.

Do you want your story to bring your audience to a point of change or to reinforce its current view? Oddly enough, choosing a steadfast Main Character may bring an audience to change and choosing a change character may influence the audience to remain steadfast. Why? It depends upon whether or not your audience shares the Main Character’s point of view to begin with.
Suppose your audience and your Main Character do NOT agree in attitudes about the central issue of the story. Even so, the audience will still identify with the Main Character because he represents the audience’s position in the story. So, if the Main Character grows in resolve to remain steadfast and succeeds, then the message to your audience is, “Change and adopt the Main Character’s view if you wish to succeed in similar situations.”

Clearly, since either change or steadfast can lead to either success or failure in a story, when you factor in where the audience stands a great number of different kinds of audience impact can be created by your choice. In answering this question, therefore, consider not only what you want your Main Character to do as an individual, but also how that influences your story’s message and where your audience stands in regard to that issue to begin with.

Examples of Change & Steadfast Main Characters:

Characters in the Middle of Act Three

In baseball, they call it the “seventh inning stretch.” In stories, it is called the middle of act 3.

Up to this point, your characters and your reader/audience have been on a roller coaster that’s been going higher and higher, in fits and starts. In the last part of the third act, the tension will rise up that final highest climb, and then plunge all the way to the bottom as the outcome of the story is determined.

As with a roller coaster, there is more of a thrill if you see that hill coming. So the middle of act 3 serves two purposes. First, to give your reader/audience a little breathing room, and second, to set them up for the emotional upheaval to come.

If two characters had argued or fought at the beginning of the act, a third character might tell them they can settle their differences later, but if they keep fighting now, everyone will lose the bigger fight. Realizing the truth of this, the two characters would calm down, let the adrenaline clear out of their systems, and then focus on the job at hand with the other party as reluctant allies.

In Volleyball, there is the set-up and the spike. The end of act three is the spike, but the middle is the set-up. No matter how much of a slam-bang finish you have planned for your story, it will mean nothing without the right set-up.

So, consider what you have coming, consider where you’ve been, then use the middle of act 3 to refocus your characters on the overall goal, rather than on each other.

Introducing Characters in Act One

Some stories introduce characters as people and then let the reader/audience discover their roles and relationships afterward. This tends to help an audience identify with the characters.

Other stories put roles first, so that we know about the person by their function and/or job, then get closer to them as the act progresses. This tends to make the reader/audience pigeon-hole the characters by stereotype, and then draw them into learning more about the actual people behind the masks.

Finally, there are stories that introduce character relationships, either situational, structural, or emotional, at the beginning. This causes the audience to see the problems among the characters but not take sides as strongly until they can learn about the people on each side of the relationship, and the roles that constrain them.

Of course, you do not have to treat these introductions equally for all characters and relationships. For example, you might introduce on character as a person, then introduce their relationship with another character, then divulge the constraints the other character is under due to role, then revel the other character as a person.

This approach would initially cast sympathy (or derision) at the first character, temper it by showing a relationship with which he or she must contend, then temper that relationship by showing the constraints of the other character, and finally humanize that other character so a true objective balance can be formed by the reader/audience.

Don’t forget that first impressions stick in our minds, and it is much easier to judge someone initially than to change that judgment later. Use this trait of audiences to quickly identify important characters up front, or to put their complete situations later, thereby forcing the reader/audience to reconsider its attitudes, and thereby learn and grow.

No matter what approach you take, you have the opportunity to weave a complex experience for your reader/audience, blending factual, logistic information about your characters with the reader/audience emotional experience in discovering this information.

Character Dismissals

By Melanie Anne Phillips

Over the course of the story, your reader/audience has come to know your characters and to feel for them. The story doesn’t end when your characters and their relationships reach a climax. Rather, the reader/audience will want to know the aftermath – how it turned out for each character and each relationship. In addition, the audience needs a little time to say goodbye – to let the character walk off into the sunset or to mourn for them before the story ends.

This is in effect the conclusion, the wrap-up. After everything has happened to your characters, after the final showdown with their respective demons, what are they like? How have they changed? If a character began the story as a skeptic, does it now have faith? If they began the story full of hatred for a mother that abandoned them, have they now made revelations to the effect that she was forced to do this, and now they no longer hate? This is what you have to tell the audience, how their journeys changed them, have the resolved their problems, or not?

And in the end, this constitutes a large part of your story’s message. It is not enough to know if a story ends in success or failure, but also if the characters are better off emotionally or plagued with even greater demons, regardless of whether or not the goal was achieved.

You can show what happens to your characters directly, through a conversation by others about them, or even in a post-script on each that appears after the story is over or in the ending credits of a movie.

How you do this is limited only by your creative inspiration, but make sure you review each character and each relationship and provide at least a minimal dismissal for each.

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For complete story development help, consider trying my
StoryWeaver Step By Step Story Development Software risk-free for 90 days.

And for even more personalized help,
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Rising Tension in Character Relationships

Character relationships should come under strain over the course of your novel or screenplay so that tension in the relationship rises. To accomplish this, you need to create dramatic moments in which outside pressures put each relationship in an increasing vice-grip.

Conversely, overemphasizing tension might be detrimental, especially in particular genres. For example, in light comedy, action stories, and so on, relationship issues are not likely to be all that crucial or central. Nonetheless, relationship stress should still rise, just not to the same depth and degree. In short, keep an eye toward the overall mood you want for your story, and within that scope, bring tension to its maximum by the end of the third act.

Tension does not have to rise smoothly, but can lurch forward in fits and starts. ! The key is to mimic real life and the naturally uneven nature of the stress in our lives. Tension can rise slowly, then drop quickly in a momentary release, only to begin to rise again. Or, it can snap into place precipitously, only to gradually fade away. In fact, a single relationship might employ both of these techniques.

No matter how you get there, you will want to eventually arrive at a set of dramatic circumstances that brings each relationship to the maximum stress level. That is the point at which the relationship will stand or snap – the character climax of your story.

Characters’ Changing Emotional Relationships

Perhaps the most complex relationships among characters are the emotional ones because they can grow to any degree in any direction AND because both characters don’t have to feel the same way about each other!

For example, how many stories are written about “unrequited love” where one character is infatuated with the other, but the other is repulsed by them, yet in the end both may love each other, both hate each other, or they may have swapped positions, emotionally.

Another example is the younger brother who tags along with the older brother. To the younger, the older brother is his hero. To the older, the younger brother is a pest. Now, suppose the younger brother is attacked by a bully. The older brother may come to the rescue and defend his tag-along. But the moment the threat is gone and the younger brother looks up at his protector with glowing eyes, the older brother say, “Okay, get out of here and leave me alone.” Emotional relationships change with the slightest breeze and change back with the least provocation.

Consider the emotional relationships among the characters in your novel or screenplay. Now, consider your plot and also changes in situational relationships, such as who is second in command or married to whom. Go over the emotional journey of each of your characters as individuals. Then, imagine how each emotional relationships might shift, change, and grow for each of the characters due to changes in their situational relationships with others.

It is a fair amount of work, but you will find that this development more than any other will enrich your characters and the passionate experience of your story.

Introducing Characters: First Impressions

By Melanie Anne Phillips

When your reader/audience first meets your characters in a story, it has the same effects as when you are introduced to someone in real life. First impressions have a tremendous impact that you can use either to establish or mislead your reader/audience as to the true nature of each character.

You might tell your reader/audience all there is to know about a particular character right up front. But for another character, you may drop little bits of information over the whole course of the story. And, of course, you want to note how a character’s outlook and feelings change as the story unfolds.

Then there is the question of who shows up first? Joe, Tom, Sally, or the Monster? Characters introduced early on become more important to the reader/audience at a personal level, even though their roles may not be as significant in the story at large.

To elevate an interesting character who is not a major player, you may wish to introduce and follow him or until he or she latches up with a major character down the line. Or, you might reveal several characters together in a group activity to give them equal footing at that point in the story.

Who is your Main Character? Do you want to involve your audience immediately by bringing that character in first, or would you rather have them look more objectively at the characters and plot, introducing the Main Character later?

You know all about your characters while your audience knows nothing. It’s okay to reveal more about your characters later in the story, but you must lay the groundwork and reveal personality so that your audience can sympathize with them and feel for them as the story progresses. For complex characters, it may take the entire story before all their subtleties are revealed.

Sometimes an author may want to have a character with a dark side, or a hidden side that will be revealed only later in the story.  Try to introduce such a character’s facade as a complete persona, making it that much more shocking when you finally reveal their other face.

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For complete story development help, consider trying my
StoryWeaver Step By Step Story Development Software risk-free for 90 days.

And for even more personalized help,
contact me about my story consultation services.

Character Relationships Baselines

Relationships begin with a “baseline” and then evolve. You will need to establish how your characters feel about one another at the beginning of your story. Later, in as things unfold, you’ll describe the growth of these emotional relationships over the course of the story.

Both characters need not be present to establish a relationship between them. You might your readers a look at one character’s room where he keeps a score of framed pictures of the second character, his female co-worker, in a little shrine. Then, you describe the second character’s room where there is but a single picture of the first character which has been made into a dart board. It is obviously well-used due to the great quantity of dart holes. There are three darts in it as another slams in to join it, thrown by the second character.

One character might write a story about the other for a newspaper or a school report. A photo album might show two people in a series of pictures over the years. In Citizen Kane, the relationship between Kane and his wife is established by a series of vignettes over the years in which the size of their dinner table grows, moving them farther and farther away from each other.

Of course, in real life most emotional relationships are not a single melody but a rich and complex symphony. You may want to develop a different specific means of revealing each aspect of a complex emotional relationship, or you might prefer to have a single illustration that reveals the complexity all at once.