People don’t change. People may grow, and entertain different aspects of existence, but base nature of a human’s experience is unchangeable.
This is an uncomfortable prospect for the human mind – we want reasons, we want rationality, we want logical development. We want things to make sense in order to better understand, but things just are.
So we like our characters to learn a lesson, we like to see them have character development where they go through a character arc. Why? Because we desperately want it for ourselves. We want to have it for ourselves so we force our stories to follow the myth.
Me? I don’t want it in my characters, it makes me curse because it’s so transparently false to me. I suppose this is why I love Brian Kinney from the US QAF, why I love Spike from Buffy, why I love Greg House from House. They don’t change (Spike always conforms to the wills of his love, etc.) They may act differently from time to time, but they don’t develop just as we don’t develop. We don’t change.
Writers who understand this aspect of reality and can still make intriguing characters in the modern expectations of a character’s role have my admiration and respect.
Unlock this for me? I want to see what my writer friends think about it.
feel free to copy/paste into a discussion in your own journal if you like – My journal has become friends-only (though I have decided not to announce it as such.)
Also, I don’t care what writers think about it, Actually, I don’t care what anyone thinks about it – why did I even enable comments? 😀 heh.
We have a matchbook from the Tiki Lounge in Pittsburgh for you and Heather next time we see you…
I disagree from personal experience and growth. I’ll say people don’t change or develop unless they want to and put the effort into it.
I’m not the person I was five years ago by any stretch of the imagination. All you have to do is look at my old journal entries to see that.
The character development you are referring to can be more described as a vertical (or two-dimensional) development. That is one where the character(s) start somewhere and begin to change some serious aspect of themselves. This is the kind of character development we see in cartoons like He-Man and the Archies. the type where a character arc ends completely the opposite from where it began.
A more realistic and mature way of writing is three-dimensional. This is where the character development is less about a change in the persona, but more so, the reader or watcher understands more of the aspects of a character. This is why Spike is so interesting. His psyche is pretty much set in stone, but one learns more about Spike from the choices he makes within whatever situation he needs to deal with and his reasoning behind it. I prefer this kind of development because it is more realistic.
Another example of good character development is found in Natural Born Killers. (I know, Tarantino again, but his work is a good example of believable character development). There is no change in the persona of any of the characters. There is not one redeemable person in the film, but as you go along the story, one gets a clearer understanding of why they act this way, why are the couple are so “Bonnie and Clyde” Good development is like adding color to black and white. here is where the characters become three-dimensional.
I think the type of character development that you dislike was more of the first kind. In a good story, character development does exist. It just has to exist believably.
You’d agree that Paris is the capitol of France, right?
A million blessings for grokking and responding in a concrete and clear way of the silly little point I was trying to illustrate. 🙂
The capital? Yes. 😉
Unless there are suddenly a bunch of Parisians in the White House. 😉
MY GRAMMER IS FINE!
I would have also accepted “F” is the Capital of France.
*pet pet*
*laughs* Nice!
And the joke is ruined by my erroneous letter and embarrassing mistake.
The response would have been “Good. Then we’re back in agreement.”
I’ll agree that you’re generally kickass. How’s that?
Well, I certainly
cannotwill not argue with that logic.Dude, I totally got what you were saying. See, you didn’t have to comment-lock it.
Hmmmmmm. I think the whole problem is the concept of “development” or “growth.” This suggests a change which is inherently adding to or “improving” something. I think that people may change to a certain extent based on events that happen, or at least their behaviors and attitudes will.
Maybe people are like plants – they can adapt/change/thrive/etc in their environment, making surface changed in leaf color, etc., but at heart they are always the same plant. I dunno.
As far as characters go, I wish more writers would use a more organic (if you will) arc when showing a character changing.
It follows the brain chemistry that you make the reasons for your choices post-choice, your brain will come up for a “reason” why you chose an option, and you will “think” that you chose for that reason. It isn’t “reasoning->choice,” but “choice->ad-hoc reason.”
I’m afraid there is no free will; sorry world!
Because your character has developed a need for social interaction via the internet! 😉
We call this the “His Girl Friday” theory of character development.