Basics: Characters (Type)

Basics: Characters (Types)

So now that you’ve learned how not to make a character (in my series on Mary Sues) we are going to address how to make characters. In this post I’m going to cover the different types of characters that exist in your story, introducing useful character terms beyond Mary Sue. In the following post I’ll write about how to build a characters from scratch. This is just a generally introduction to character, I have more in-depth post written about heroes and villains, likely more will follow.

First there are the obvious terms, namely the protagonist and the antagonist. These two characters often get assigned the roles of being good and evil respectively, however that just is not the case. Properly a protagonist is the nothing more then the central character of the story. The antagonist, in contrast, is the character (or even force) that is in conflict with or working against the protagonist. The protagonist could be a rival ballerina, who despite being perfect nice, is just a better dancer then the main character. Of course there is more drama in making the antagonist a negative character and as such it is commonly done.

Another thing of note is the point of view (POV) character. Again this position is often assigned to the main character, but that is not always the case. A story can completely lack a POV character or there can be many. A POV character is nothing more then a character used by the writer to explore the story. By that I mean, the character whose point of view is being used to experience a scene, chapter or book. There can be twenty POV characters or just one.

Next there is another pair of character types, Static and Dynamic. Static characters experience no significant change throughout the course of the story. They are the same at the beginning as they are at the end and there is nothing wrong with that. If their interesting enough they work just find as main characters. Sherlock Holmes is largely a static character and any changes that have been found are slow developments over the course of the many short stories and books. Dynamic characters on the other hand change, and often quite a lot. Keep in mind the change doesn’t have to be for the betterment of a character, it just has to occur for the character to fit the definition.

Again, in contrast, there are cardboard/flat characters and round characters. Cardboard characters can be thought of as cardboard cutouts. They are defined and identified by only one real feature. It could, in theory, be nothing more then their hair color or a limp or their constant weeping. Flat characters on the other hand often have a few noticeable features. Obviously neither one of these types would work well in a long piece as protagonist, they often aren’t interesting enough to hold up a book. However they could work in short stories quite well. Similarly there are stock characters. Stock characters are basically flat characters; the main difference is that their few traits are so familiar that the audience will recognize them. They often show up in similar worlds and situations across books or even media. Examples include the mean librarian or jerk jock. Often times a stock character can be used as a starting point to develop an interesting fully developed character. Round characters, on the other hand, are fully developed, possessing back-story, flaws and strengths.

Lastly there are the extras. They often are cardboard characters and are mainly there to add to the realism of the scene or mood (i.e. set the scene). They might be guardsmen, farmers, shoppers or schoolchildren. These characters might have a couple of lines, but generally they’re the same as movie extras.

In the next post I’ll go over how to build characters. I’ll mainly focus on generally building characters, but I will address a few specific issues to creating the different types of characters.