Part 5.2 Types of character
1 hr
- Learn how to turn stereotypes into rounded characters
Round and Flat characters
Novokovich distinguishes between “round” and “flat” characters, according to their level of development.
Round characters have several traits, which may be contradictory. Flat characters are often clichés; although clichés might generally be true, they do not take you further into the particular person you’re reading about.
Rounded characters may be a type – e.g. a miser – but they are also themselves, unique – not a stereotype. That fits with rounded characters having contradictory traits.
However, in his model, there is a place for flat characters. I love the way that he explains this:
“It’s all right to have flat characters as part of a setting but not as part of an interactive community, the cast of your story.”
We are invited to think of ways that stereotypes could be “rounded” by adding contradictory traits, and sharing these with our course-mates.
There were some funny examples, such as “a philosopher who doesn’t ask why”, and others which are moving and thought-provoking.
Mine are:
- a racist who marries someone from “another race”
- a sports gambler who thinks that short-term investments are too risky
- a traffic warden who hates authority figures
- a doctor who is a calligrapher
These three examples seem plausible to me. Humans beings are odd; to me it’s more notable when someone isn’t conflicted, than when they are. We make exceptions for ourselves and loved ones which we don’t for strangers; we think that rules apply differently to us; we often ignore rationale in favour of our biases. (I mean, apart from me, obviously.)
Exercise
Take a stereotype (one of your own, or those offered by the course) and write up 3-500 words about them, portraying them in a complex way.
I chose to write about the traffic warden who hates authority figures.
Reflection
There have been interesting discussions in the comments of this section, about i) which characters should receive detail; ii) how much detail to give them; iii) whether this is dependant on personal style, or story genre, or publishing era, or market forces.
It seems that our answers are i) it depends; ii) it depends; and iii) all of them.
Which seem like the only sensible answers, in a discipline as value and vast as fiction writing.
So then — how about the type of detail with which to bless or curse our characters?
The course explains that details which steer the character away from tropes, help us to believe in the character as a person. Which is good, because credibility is important. And realism is useful in any type of story, when the writer wants to reader to believe that what they’re reading is real.
A little peccadillo here, a fond hobby there… Before you know it, you’ve created your very own violin-playing, cocaine-dependant, esoteric investigator.
And I think, at this stage, that it’s fine for the course to stop there. Its stated aim, after all, is to make characters more “life like”.
[But I do have a query about whether another important point, related to the conflict mentioned in section 5.1, could have been usefully included here . . . but I will hold off until I’ve done the next section, to see if they raise it there.]