Distinguishing Character
What is character? How is it possible to get to the heart of who a character is, such that, not only can we write about a character with depth, but also to perhaps write from that character?
In his book Story, Robert McKee defines character as that which is "revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure--the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character's essential nature" (101). What this definition presupposes is that a character's deepest concerns are concealed until the appropriate occasion arises that calls or solicits a choice to be made to cope with the pressure present within an immediate crisis--where things might go one way or another.
And so we might begin to consider a kind of bifurcation of character. At one level, the public level, a given character acts generically, inauthentically (in ways given by culture, social norms, etc.), but once an individual comes face to face with a choice that lacks any recourse to social guidance, the action taken within that moment "stamps" the character. Choices made in moments of crisis filled with risk cannot be undone. The character forevermore will be responsible and accountable for the consequences of that act.
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These notes are meant to supplement Francine Prose's chapter "Character" from her book Reading Like a Writer. |
What is the nature of the inauthentic, generic character, that is, what the generic anybody would do, or think, or choose? I suggest that one useful way to think about character is to imagine any character as enacting a controlling value, and most controlling values are given to us by our cultural codes and so are by default, generic.
At the most generic level, any character might appear to be responding to a perceived problem (whether or not the problem is "really" there). Essentially, for any given character there is something wrong. Consequently, all the concerns of the character are structured around mitigating, correcting, compensating for, avoiding, mastering, overcoming, forgetting, seducing, destroying, flattering, competing with, helping, etc., whatever is wrong. All the concerns of a character are employed to make whatever is wrong go away, except that no matter what the character does to reduce the perceived wrongness, the wrongness only reasserts itself once again, perhaps bigger and badder than it was the last time.
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Any given narrative then involves the revelation or disclosure of all the actions a given character takes to deal with something wrong. And often in an ascending scale of intensity that stretches the generic nature of the controlling value until the character "breaks" out into an individuated relationship to the controlling value. If the character's actions are generic, that is, stereotypical, then the character is essentially programmed to respond according to what "they" (the generic "anybody") would expect. However, the more complex and individuated the "wrongness" gets, the more complex and individuated--and authentic--the character will need to become to "resolve" the problem.
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