Characters and Story

by Bill Johnson

Dynamic characters promise to take a story's audience on a journey. The key issue to understand is that it is because characters in stories act out to resolution and fulfillment issues of human need that they engage the attention of an audience. When introducing a story's characters, then, writers need to suggest in some way that their characters are "ripe." By that I mean a character has issues that arise from a story's promise.

For example, if courage is the main issue in a story, the storyteller can set a character into an environment designed to compel them to act. That's how a story's promise is made visible. It establishes both why characters act and why a story's audience should care.

Viewers want to care, to believe in the possibility of what a story's characters can accomplish. In that way they experience that belief in themselves. That's why a storyteller often arranges a story's elements to deliberately beat down and place characters in great danger, so the story's readers can more powerfully experience their rising up unconquered. Just as we secretly imagine ourselves, standing in their shoes, doing as well.

For example, in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo and Juliet are designed to be strong- willed characters in love with the idea of love. They are characters who refuse to allow anything, even death, to be obstacles to their love proving itself. By their actions, they bring this story about love to life in a way readers have enjoyed for centuries. Because their actions arise from the story's dramatic purpose, they manifest the story's movement to fulfillment.

Once the storyteller understands the role their characters serve for an audience, they can better perceive why such characters should be introduced in a particular manner:

In a way an audience can understand and identify with a particular character and their goals.

In a way that the audience is led to care about the outcome of a character's goals and issues while also perceiving how they advance the story toward its resolution and fulfillment.

That's why it's important a storyteller introduce characters in a way that allows an audience the time to take in who the characters are and what issues they have to resolve. Often this can be done simply by limiting the number of characters introduced in a scene. Many popular movies, for example, have only one or two main characters in a scene. Large group scenes are the exception, not the rule. The purpose of this is so the audience can clearly identify with an understand a character's issues.

Second, the actions of a story's characters should advance a story toward its resolution and fulfillment along its story and plot lines in a discernible way. If characters serve no dramatic purpose in a scene -- if their actions don't serve to advance the story -- save their introduction for a later time.

Characters in a story should be designed by the storyteller to have emotions that suggest how they will react to a story's events. In a story about courage, characters might confront their feelings about lacking courage. That's the internal side of the equation. The storyteller then puts them into an environment that compels them to react. By how they react, they set out the story's dramatic purpose and give voice to their feelings and concerns as the action of the story exerts pressure on them. By resolving questions based on the inner conflicts of characters, a story has meaning to those in the audience with similar feelings and issues.

Story events that have no real effect on a character's inner feelings -- a character's sense of mattering -- serve no purpose in a story. Worse, they can confuse an audience. They see characters with certain issues reacting to events that don't clearly elicit those responses. Or that elicit responses that seem out of sync with what they know about a character. Or a character's issues have been kept hidden in a way the audience has no way to feel engaged over how or why characters are responding to a story's events.

The deeper issue here is that the storyteller have a sense of how the types of characters that populate a story arise from a story's dramatic purpose. That their emotions arise from setting out that purpose. That the events of the story clearly compel those characters to respond based on a sense of who they are. That all of these are blended together to recreate a story's journey along its story line from its introduction to its fulfillment.

Well-told stories populated with dynamic, dramatic characters with larger than life passions and needs act out issues those in the audience might struggle with. Such characters battling with other determined characters to shape a story's course and outcome bring a story's dramatic purpose to life in a fulfilling way.

Creating such characters is another art in the craft of storytelling.

The Villain Breaks Down

So what is it, then, that defines the story Villain? No matter what other elements you may wish to include in that definition, there are four key elements that absolutely must be present. The dramatic Villain must be:

1. The Antagonist
2. The Influence Character
3. The Second Most Central Character
4. A "Bad Guy"

You are likely familiar with three of these four terms, but the concept of the Influence Characters may be new to you. In fact, though the other character types are commonly recognized by name, their qualities presented here might surprise you.

The Antagonist

The Antagonist has but one function - to prevent the Protagonist from achieving the goal. This might be accomplished by defeating the Protagonist, or just by beating him or her to the prize. There doesn't necessarily have to be any hatred involved, or even any emotion at all. The Antagonist might have the greatest respect for the Protagonist, but just not agree with what he is trying to achieve.

The Influence Character

The Villainous counterpart to the Hero's quality of being the Main Character is the Influence Character. While the audience or reader sees things from the Main Character's point of view, the Influence Character represents the opposing moral outlook, alternative view, or contrasting paradigm. In short, the crux of the message is argued between the Main Character and the Influence Character.

It is the function of the Influence Character to provide the strongest temptation for the Hero to change his point of view. Now, with stereotypical Heroes and Villains, the Main Character point of view held by the Hero will be the correct one, and the Influence Character point of view held by the Villain will be wrong. But this doesn't have to be the case and, in fact, it is often swapped around the other way.

For example, in Part One we looked at how the Protagonist and Main Character functions had been split into two characters in To Kill a Mockingbird. Similarly, in that same story the Villain's functions as Antagonist and Influence Character are split.

To recap, Mockingbird's Atticus is the Protagonist, attempting to defend a black man wrongly accused of raping a white girl. The Main Character, however, is Scout - Atticus' young daughter. The father of the white girl, Bob Ewell, is the Antagonist, doing everything he can to prevent Atticus from achieving the goal. But the Influence Character is Boo Radley, the mysterious Boogey Man who lives in a basement down the street.

Scout is prejudiced against Boo without ever meeting him because all the neighborhood legends cast him as a monster. But Boo is actually the children's protector. And in the end, it is through his actions that her prejudiced point of view is changed.

The Second Most Central Character

Sounds like a mouthful, but the Second Most Central Character is the star of the show, save for the Hero. Just as people rubber-neck at auto-accidents, their attention is often drawn to the potential for disaster interjected by the Villain. As a result, it is sometimes difficult to keep a particularly charismatic Villain from stealing the show from the Hero!

As with the Hero, the nature of being Central is partially created by the amount of Media Real Estate vested in that character, and the intensity with which it is drawn or portrayed.

A Bad Guy

Once again, being a Bad Guy doesn't necessarily mean the Villain wallows in the thrill, but simply that it is his or her intent to cause trouble for others or to benefit oneself at the expense of others. There can be an infinite number of reasons, motivations, or excuses for being bad, but the bottom line is not why the Villain does it, or even how he or she feels about it, but simply that this character is bad.

The Classic Villain

The classic story Villain, then, attempts to thwart the Protagonist, represents an alternative point of view and forces the Main Character to grapple with a moral dilemma. He or she is the second most memorable character and does damage to others, often for personal gain. This combination of qualities makes the Villain a formidable foe for the Hero. It also makes him or her truly melodramatic. That is because everything that opposes the Hero centers on this character, and all important counter-dynamics flow from it.