"They are who we thought they were."

[Jijenji]

Flat characters.

Surest way to write a boring story is to write flat, boring characters. Of course everyone wants to have characters with depth...but which characters are round and which are flat? Many writers have a notion of what depth involves, but how can we define it for sure?

Well that's when I had this realization today. Flat characters are exactly who we thought they were. A single mother having trouble raising her kids. A policeman who's the neighborhood good guy. A tough-guy warrior out for revenge. Yes, it's not good to judge people but we all have a first impression of EVERYONE we see or read about. Throughout the course of your story your characters make choices and take actions that show what type of person they really are. If we find out they are who we thought they were....why did we read the story in the first place? Sure, we can come up with an intriguing plot, put them through pain and happiness, love and loss, and everything in between. But if they are who we thought they were, we didn't experience anything meaningful reading the script or seeing the flick up on the big screen.

Characters with depth on the other hand are NOT who we thought they were. Maybe we see a single mother struggling to raise two children because the father cheated on her and left town. Ok, we have a first impression of her...maybe we feel sorry for her. But then we find out later that she's a drug addict and selling her daughter into prostitution...now we have a story with depth. Or maybe the story takes place in a war setting. And we find out the children aren't hers but she found them abandoned as populations fled enemy advances. She took them in and has raised them despite the enormous hardship it caused her. That reveals a lot too. Or maybe the police officer we saw at the beginning of another film who we first thought was a good guy, a civil protector, turns out to be a bad cop on the take. Maybe we meet a man who is happily in love with his wife...but then we find out he's planning to have her killed. All of these scenarios and countless others create depth. We, as an audience, thought we knew everything. We were wrong...we learned something along the way. That's why we love round characters and feel blah about flat ones.

And creating depth is also one of the easiest ways to cure writer's block. Anytime you turn something on its head, you create another angle. Dozens of other possibilities spring to life in your imagination, and the story can go anywhere.

So we must all ask ourselves....are our characters who we thought they were? If so, why??

 

[MacV]

I agree, thinking about the different textures to your characters can free up writer's block getting from a to c. Good write up!

 

[knightly]

Nice little article! Thank you J.

 

[Jijenji]

No problem guys, I try to contribute if I can.

It also stands that some genres and/or stories may not need much character depth. But if your story isn't like a Bond script then character depth is pretty important. I saw Gladiator on the other day and my biggest problem with that movie, other than the deus-ex-machina ending, is the characters are exactly who we thought they were. Very early in the film Maximus is a soldier out to avenge the murder of his wife and kids. That fact never changes. The other characters...their insight and motivations never change either.

Like I said, a Bond movie or JAWS or HALLOWEEN, maybe you don't need any depth there. But in CASABLANCA we think Rick fell in love with Ilsa, a single woman. Halfway into the movie we find out that she's married and she was when they were in love a year before. Everything is very different than we first thought. In CROUCHING TIGER HIDDEN DRAGON, we first see Jen as a princess, then learn she's a warrior who doesn't want to get married, then we learn about her past love. Insight and motivation continues to evolve.

Depth and subtext really go hand in hand. When we learn something we didn't know about a character it changes the meaning of a lot of things we saw earlier in the film. It changes motivation, changes subtext. It makes for a much more powerful film, IMO. This stands as another reason why NOT to put all of your exposition at the beginning of the script.

My little mantra is this: the later in the film exposition appears, the more valuable that information becomes.

Edit: What do you guys think about subplots as it pertains to this? Do subplots add real depth? I haven't thought about it...but just off the top of my head it seems like writers use subplots to add depth. Do you think that's the case? If so, is it effective? I don't think it's as effective as evolving motivation, but it might still work. Just haven't thought about it enough.

 

[MacV]

Subplots add real depth, because we discover who characters are through their actions. So giving a character more choices to make, choices that are possibly not related to the main plot line, allows the writer to build different facets to a character.

I heard an interview with the actor Rainn Wilson who plays Dwight Schrute on The Office; He was talking about how pleased he was with the writers of the show because every season they managed to give Rainn a different layer of Dwight to explore. In the current season, they wrote in a subplot about Dwight trying to take over Michael's leadership position. Rainn characterized Dwight as a man who has, "an adolescent love for hierarchy," so how does this character become convinced he must start a mutiny to save the company? Through subplot, we discover the complexities of a character.

EDIT: Just thinking so more on the topic.. I think many other things to lead to flat characters. Take Benjamin Button, possibly one of the flattest and dullest protagonist in cinema history. This is a flat character because he is passive and he doesn't change. We discover character through the choices they make, but Button spent most of the film as a passive observer. Then, the character arch was non-existent. He didn't change one bit from the beginning to the end. He was a simpleton of the beginning and he was a simpleton in the end. He was, as J says, exactly the person you thought he was. Perhaps they wanted to make the character an everyman so that the audience could place themselves in Button's role. He doesn't change because the audience is the one who is supposed to change in how they perceive what's happening; Button is only meant to be the mediator. Great, but Button himself was still a flat flat flat character.

 

[Jijenji]

Subplots add real depth, because we discover who characters are through their actions. So giving a character more choices to make, choices that are possibly not related to the main plot line, allows the writer to build different facets to a character.

I heard an interview with the actor Rainn Wilson who plays Dwight Schrute on The Office; He was talking about how pleased he was with the writers of the show because every season they managed to give Rainn a different layer of Dwight to explore. In the current season, they wrote in a subplot about Dwight trying to take over Michael's leadership position. Rainn characterized Dwight as a man who has, "an adolescent love for hierarchy," so how does this character become convinced he must start a mutiny to save the company? Through subplot, we discover the complexities of a character.

EDIT: Just thinking so more on the topic.. I think many other things to lead to flat characters. Take Benjamin Button, possibly one of the flattest and dullest protagonist in cinema history. This is a flat character because he is passive and he doesn't change. We discover character through the choices they make, but Button spent most of the film as a passive observer. Then, the character arch was non-existent. He didn't change one bit from the beginning to the end. He was a simpleton of the beginning and he was a simpleton in the end. He was, as J says, exactly the person you thought he was. Perhaps they wanted to make the character an everyman so that the audience could place themselves in Button's role. He doesn't change because the audience is the one who is supposed to change in how they perceive what's happening; Button is only meant to be the mediator. Great, but Button himself was still a flat flat flat character.

Yeah, I haven't seen that one but, with very few exceptions, passive characters usually don't work in movies. Now that I think on it more, I think subplots can add depth but they still have to be done correctly to do so. A writer could add a sublot that merely complicates the original plot. Or a subplot that either adds to or contrasts with the main theme of the film. I think you hit it right on the head, that either way, to create round characters, a writer must show the audience that the character is not who they seem at first.

Also, I'll just add one more thing for now. I think a lot of writers make the following mistake, and I would too until now. To the protagonist, something good happens, something bad happens, something else good happens, something else bad happens, etc. etc. To make it seem more meaningful, the writer makes it so even better things happen, then even worse things happen. But if motivation always stays the same, and the character in our eyes, the audience's eyes, always stays the same, what really changed? They had some good times and some bad times and that's it? We want to know how they've changed. I think that's where a lot of writers go wrong.

 

[MacV]

Right, without character arch, you risk making your script meaningless. If the story doesn't change the character in some way, you might as well title your story, "Things that happen."

Another way to make your characters flat: make them stereotypes. These characters aren't people, but ideas of people. They will always be flat and cliched.


Recently I watched the film Doubt, which is in theaters right now. Incredible film, and a real example of good acting and round characters. It's interesting, because while father flynn is a character who doesn't turn out who you are expecting, Meryl Streep's character is. However, she is hardly a flat character. She's very absorbing to watch and your opinion does change of her... even though she does not. Perhaps she changes by becoming a more an more extreme version of what you thought? Anyways, I recommend it, seems to be an exception to your rule.