Character Depth
I've been thinking about what makes characters deep. I've noticed that certain stories have very lame characters, like most anime, especially Shogo (girls comics). They have no depth of character. In other stories the characters have lots of depth, I noticed that In King Kong, Kyle almost had minds of his own.
I've puttered it down to a small list.
1.) Deus ex Machina does not effect them.
The writer for the chatacters does what he thinks the characters would do in a situation, and changing the subelties to make ends mete.
2.) The characters can make mistakes.
This is especially underused in Anime. The characters are almost infallible, to make the moments as romantic or dramatic as possible.
3.) They have distict personality twirks.
This is especially overused in Anime. All characters everywhere can almost allways be put into about four different categories of personality. This is so common that it gets undepthful. When it's underused people all act the same, and it's boring.
4.) The characters have continuity.
Basically they keep up the things above, they keep not doing things solely for plot development, they make the same mistakes and they keep their distinct personality.
This is what I've found makes characters most interesting. Thoughts, comments?
I've puttered it down to a small list.
1.) Deus ex Machina does not effect them.
The writer for the chatacters does what he thinks the characters would do in a situation, and changing the subelties to make ends mete.
2.) The characters can make mistakes.
This is especially underused in Anime. The characters are almost infallible, to make the moments as romantic or dramatic as possible.
3.) They have distict personality twirks.
This is especially overused in Anime. All characters everywhere can almost allways be put into about four different categories of personality. This is so common that it gets undepthful. When it's underused people all act the same, and it's boring.
4.) The characters have continuity.
Basically they keep up the things above, they keep not doing things solely for plot development, they make the same mistakes and they keep their distinct personality.
This is what I've found makes characters most interesting. Thoughts, comments?
posted by Paul @ 12:31 PM
3 Comments:
At 2:31 PM,
AgentPixy007 said…
ahh...the wonderful Achetypes of Characters...the memories that brings back. Anyways, I totally agree with you on all your points. One of the things that makes a movie or book great is how indepth their characters are. The more you know about them, the more important they are for you, and the more trajic their heroing events are or, in some cases, their deaths. Also, the fact that we, as naturally sinful creatures, can relate to a character is just another part of what makes them so great. The point of having a well developed character is so that we, the reader, can identify and live their lives along with them. Now, for anime...I'd probably strangle myself before the end of one of those comics...wow, how can you read those things? ;-)
At 11:34 PM,
Ethan said…
One thing that's interesting is the most realistic characters often get bad reputations, basically for being so real. For example, Thomas Covenant (of the series of the same name) is perhaps one of the most well-drawn characters in all of fantasy, maybe even in all of recent literature. Yet alot of people claim they cannot continue to read that book beacuse 'They hated Thomas.' Not that he was a bad character, but he was TOO REAL and they didn't like him.
(The other common excuse I've heard is that it was slow, but never mind that for now.)
So it seems there's a fine line to walk between real and TOO real. At least if you're worried about being popular. Which I'm not. ;-)
Anyway, just my long-winded thoughts. :-)
At 3:30 PM,
Nat said…
(Finally I found your blog again :P)
1. This is a situation that is often weirdly dissimilar between writers. Some writers have a lot of *control* over their characters, and others don't. I once read an artictle by Diane Duane where she stated that if a character of hers started going out of line and was in danger of derailing the plot, she would have to kill that character. In contrast, other writers will define their characters by how the story begins and how the story ends, and then let flesh them out from there, so to speak - without any danger of them messing up the plot, because they are already defined by the plot itself.
2. This one is often worse than people realize, because there are some shows or books that have so much action in them that you have to really examine them to realize that certain characters are somehow perfect.
3. I agree completely, and would like to point out to Anime writers that holding your sword in a backwards grip, having a long thing sword instead of a short thick sword and never changing your expression during heated battle do not count as personality quirks.
4. Would I be correct in saying that you implied that non-deep characters tend to change too easily? (I.e., far more easily than real people, who often never change)
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