Create Deep Characters
Or how character depth comes from showing two different behaviours that the audience use to judge that character.
‘Good characters are complex characters’ is one of the almost universally agreed truths of story telling. Similarly, everyone agrees that one-dimensional characters are the worst types of character, fit only for the most mindless entertainment, and two-dimensional characters are barely better. Audiences want – demand even – characters with multiple dimensions. They want to love or hate them, to know that there is more to them than surface impressions. They want depth.
But…
What is character depth? And if it is so important, how do we as writers create it? The answer is not about creating a sprawling fictional biography, but creating a clear impression of who the character is in the reader’s mind, and then showing them something completely different so that they have to re-evaluate their first impression.
Give the Audience Something to Judge
We tend to make broad judgements about characters and to make them fast. If a character enters the story snarling at everyone, or being pedantically obstructive, we are likely to make judgements about them. Big, broad judgements like ‘nasty’, ‘angry’, ‘uncaring’, ‘a**-hole’ and so on. We are looking for the signs and actions that tell us what a character is like so we can decide how we feel about them. We like doing this – we want to make our judgement about characters. So, when introducing a character, the first thing to do is to give the audience clear signs that they can use to make that judgement. This is the first reveal of character.
The First Reveal
The first reveal shows the surface of a character, the single phrase that most easily sums them up: funny, clever, pompous, arrogant, shy, and so on. Notice that these are not about their profession, family status, gender, class, age or anything else – they are about how the character behaves, about actions not attributes.
Make the signs of these qualities strong and impossible to miss, metaphorically written in bold. We meet an angry character when they are shouting, or starting a fight, a quiet character carefully not saying anything to anyone in a busy office, a lazy character complaining about having to get off the couch. Have them embody the phrase that sums them up. Big, bold, and clear.
The Second Reveal
The second reveal can be thought of as you as the writer saying to the audience ‘ah, you think you know them, but you didn’t know this.’ The rude and angry character can be shown to be loyal, the sarcastic freewheeler to be calculating. You’ve seen one face, now here is another.
It is important to have a gap between the first and the second reveal so that the audience has time to form their judgement, and then be forced to re-evaluate it. It’s that revision that lets the audience feel that there is more to a character than just the surface they first saw, and this gives a sense of the character having depth.
One note of warning: be careful about using a fact as the second reveal. It can work but its not as powerful and won’t necessarily prompt the audience to revise their judgement. Observable behaviour is much stronger in this respect. For example: if we find out that our angry character was once trapped with their brother in a burning building when they were kids, then we might be moved, we might even wonder at the contrast between the anger we have seen and this reported act. But if we see them staying with their brother in a burning building when they could get out, it becomes more than a reported fact – it becomes evidence we have experienced.
An aside… Turning over two cards
I like to think of this method of creating character depth as a bit like turning over cards in a game like poker, or in a tarot reading. Turn over one card and it might seem good or bad, favourable or not, but then you reveal the card that sits beside it and it changes the value or meaning the first card.
No Need for Opposites
It is also important not to simply make the second reveal the opposite to the first reveal. If the character is angry and aggressive, it can be tempting to show that they have a quiet, peaceful side. This can be fine, but it’s not the only way. You can show that they are studious, or grief stricken, or anything else, and it will deepen their character just as much. Similarly, you don’t need to balance out positive and negative. A cheerful character does not need to have a morose and melancholic side, for example. They could be serious and thoughtful. We are looking for contrast, and that doesn’t need to be reversal. Not every thief needs to be honourable, not every Saint to have secret sins. That way cliché lies, and that is not the way to encourage your audience to think of a character as deep.
Why are they this way?
Once you have played the two card trick, the other details of the character now become important. That biography work that I dismissed earlier, is now useful, because the audience will now want to know why the character is the way they are. If you don’t give reasons, then the character may come over as just inconsistent. Knowing the causes of the character’s behaviour grounds the audience’s judgements and make the characters feel and appear deep and fully realised.
Just Two Reveals?
An audience experiences character depth when they see behaviour and form a strong judgement about it and then see more behaviour that forces them to change their first judgement. That reversal creates questions and the answers to those questions makes a character feel multidimensional and deep.
But do you need to stop with just two reveals of character? No, you can perform the same trick again, showing behaviour that makes the audience revise its understanding again and ask more questions. There is a limit, but that limit is where the audience cannot believe or understand the character. Until you find that point, keep turning over cards.
Written by John French
Edited by Greg Smith
Written without AI
