Keeping Characters Dynamic

One of the more frustrating things I encounter in television are characters who don’t learn from their mistakes, who don’t grow and change. There’s a reason for it, of course. Up until the 1990’s, there was no such thing as a story arc on television (with the exception of soap operas, and that’s another issue entirely). The creators of a program had no control over what episode was aired when, and as a result, if they had tried to change the characters from their experience, there would have been many episodes where these changes seemed random or unsupported. There is more opportunity with the modern story arc to make changes in characters, it’s true. But even today, one gets pieces of a story in short bursts. As the characters are part of the concept of the story, keeping emotional changes to a minimum even when changing the circumstances of the world around them suits the serial nature of television. I’m not saying TV characters never change; just that they don’t change as much as real people would under the same circumstances.

Movies and books have more flexibility. It’s quite possible to create changes in characters when you’re writing a single story, and not multiple small ones that need to keep to a single formula. The exception to this, of course, is a series of books or movies that require the concept and characters to remain static, a requirement that does the same thing as television shows. But there is a lot more leeway for characters to learn from experience, to grow, and to change.

If one is trying to write characters that are very much like real people, they need to write characters that change. Real people have things about them that don’t change, but many things that do; their changes may be small in a given period, but over time they add up to truly significant differences. Very few people act the same way as they did five or ten years ago. Even a single year or two can serve to make dramatic changes in people with dramatic circumstances, and such circumstances are the heart of drama.

I was taught in college that in order for a piece of writing to be a story and not simply a sketch or scenario, that some change is required. The change isn’t always in the character; in a short story it’s usually the case that the writer chooses one or two things to change, rather than every possible iteration of the characters and plot. In a longer piece of writing, from novella to novel, one simply has more words to work with, and can take the time make the changes greater and the plot more complex. A short story is a punch; a novel is a slowly growing revelation. But in a short story, a writer can create an unchanging character, if the change occurs in some other aspect of the narrative. In a novel it doesn’t work so well.

One thing I have seen some writers do is to become so wedded to their character concept that they cannot allow the character to learn, grow, and change. This tends to put me off as a reader, because what I want is for characters to acknowledge what is going on in the plot, and to react to it appropriately (and that includes respond “inappropriately” if that is the direction it makes most sense for the character to go). I don’t enjoy reading stupid characters, and characters who cannot learn tend to strike me as stupid, or at best stubborn and petulant. I’m not saying that I will not read a character with those traits, but if they don’t learn better, I’m likely to chuck the book away as too frustrating to continue.

I’m sure that not everyone agrees with this viewpoint. I know that there’s a comfort in the familiarity of characters who are always who you expect them to be. In lighter works, or in plot-heavy stories, this may not be as important. Not everyone has the same reading needs. But I read for characters, and I want to see how they integrate experiences, how they learn and understand. I want to see through their eyes how they endure, triumph, even how they fail. I want to view the world through a lens that is not my own.

The way I go about doing this is to first decide what traits of my characters are inextricable parts of their personalities, and what sorts of things can be changed through experience. Sometimes I change my own mind about which things I want to be static and which dynamic. Sometimes I see a piece of a character’s personality which I had been certain was immutable in a new light as I progress through writing a story. Then I have to psyche myself up for allowing my beautiful, perfect character trait to alter. It can be a wrenching process, because I have a need to trust and be familiar with those characters myself.

The things I have earmarked as mutable from the beginning are easier to work with; those are things I am already expecting to alter. They slide into my plot neatly. I do have to make sure, however, that they are strong enough reactions for the situations I have placed my character into. That doesn’t mean that subtlety is off the table. Subtle reactions can be fun to play with, and even though the risk that some readers won’t understand what I am doing is always there, there are also those readers who will appreciate a lighter touch. And then, sometimes a heavy hand is called for, in terms of drastic and obvious change. It all depends on what I’m trying to do at any given time.

As a writer, what I put in my own work is what I want to read myself; characters that in many ways become more real because of their real, human (or human-equivalent) reactions, feelings, and development. It’s a challenge, and one I have to remind myself to keep working for. But then, like characters, change is a constant in a real human life. If I ever stop working to achieve the best writing I can deliver, it will be the day to examine what sorts of changes I need to make for myself.