Level 10.4: Writing Good Characters

Writing Good Characters

Some characters in stories are “round” – they have many facets to them, a deep character with many layers, and are highly detailed and developed over the course of the story.

Other characters are “flat” (or “shallow”) – they are very simple, don’t have a very deep personality (at least, not that the audience can see), and do not develop or change much (if at all).

Normally if we say a character is “flat” it sounds a bit derogatory. Are flat characters always bad in stories? I don’t think so; not all characters need to be complicated, deep, or well-defined. Even in Shakespearean plays, some minor characters are flat (I’m looking at you, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern), but the main protagonist and villain at least should be round.

A rule of thumb is that a character should develop over time as we seen them through the story. As a corollary, minor characters with very little “screen time” can be flat since they don’t have much time to develop anyway; the characters who we see the most often (generally the main characters) should develop a great deal. A flat protagonist is probably not a good idea if you are trying to make a strong character.

Archetypes versus Stereotypes

Here’s a question I was once asked in a job interview: describe the terms “archetype” and “stereotype” and the difference between them.

McKee says that story is about forms, not formulas. Archetypes are forms; stereotypes are formulas.

“Villain” is an archetype. The Snidely Whiplash-esque, mustache-twirling, top-hat-and-black-cape-wearing, purely-mean-for-its-own-sake bad guy is a stereotype.

Archetypes are useful. They allow us to tell a story with believable characters that fit familiar forms. Stereotypes are overused, and typically make a story less believable because the audience has seen these same characters before from other stories, so they do not seem unique. Generally, avoid stereotypes, unless there is very good reason (such as if your story is a parody that is making fun of a particular character stereotype).

Freytag’s Triangle

You might have seen this before Links to an external site. in a grade school literature class. The idea is that stories start with a small amount of exposition to set the tone, then they have rising action where things get more intense, then they reach some kind of climax (a final battle or confrontation, etc.), then there is falling action and resolution at the end as the story reaches its conclusion.

Note that this is not just true for story, but for gameplay as well. Games have exposition (we call it the “opening cinematic” and “tutorial level”), rising action (most of the game), climax (final boss fight), falling action (occasionally some post-fight sequence like a timed escape from the building before it blows up), and resolution (end cinematic).

You get a more dramatic experience if the dramatic arcs of story and gameplay are aligned and in synch with each other. This is a lot harder than it first appears; in many games, the most difficult part of gameplay occurs somewhere in the middle of the game, when the enemies and challenges are getting harder but you haven’t yet found new weapons and abilities to power yourself up to compensate. As the player gets more powerful and better at playing, the challenge of a game often decreases over time, even as the intensity of the story isincreasing. You can tell these games when the final boss fight is introduced with this high amount of drama and foreboding, and then the player wins after swinging their sword around for a few seconds – it feels anticlimactic and not very believable.

In short, as you balance your game, pay attention to the story and whether the story drama is proportional to the dramatic moments in gameplay.