Writing Essentials: Character

Laying the Foundation

Out of our three core elements of Character/Plot/World, the most stabile foundation for our narrative is character.

When the character journey is our thick red thread, guiding our structuring, both plot progression and world building flourishes organically.

If you think of the narrative as a mirror for the character journey, you’ll begin to see why this is.

Everything within the narrative—from the physical spaces our character occupies, to the situations they come up against—exists for one reason only: to move our character journey from beginning to end.

This movement is also known as narrative momentum.

Narrative momentum doesn’t mean the character/s must be in constant movement but rather that there is a string of events that tie together into a satisfying chain, linking beginning with ending.

A story set in one room where no events occur will be difficult to find meaning in, but if the opening event is that the character/s find themselves trapped, and this in turn leads to another event of trying to break free, there you have the basis of a plot.

While a plot driven story may engage, a character driven narrative hooks into a reader’s own experiences and makes the narrative relatable at a deeper level.

In a character driven narrative, meaning is found in our character reaction to each event, anchored in the character journey.

When our character’s actions and reactions reflect the purpose of them choosing to engage with the journey at all, the narrative becomes engaging for the reader.

Where do we begin to create this character journey?

We begin with our character’s core elements into which the basics of human psychology offer an anchor. 

Behavior is what makes a character go from lines of description to someone human.

This means that understanding human behavior, even if it’s at the most basic level, assists us in creating compelling characters.

A character’s core elements are:

·       Ego

·       Shadow

·       Self

The Ego is their conscious self, home to the persona. The persona is how they present themselves to the outside world and how they perceive themselves, heavily influenced by the Shadow.

The Shadow is their subconscious self, home to their flaws. Their flaws inform their self-perception as well as their reactions, especially to anything outside of their control.

The Self is their true self, home to their identity. Their identity sits at their center and strives for them to attain self-awareness. Self-awareness will lead to inner balance between Ego and Shadow, known as integration.

Integration is endgame for most character journeys.

Look at it this way:

·       A character begins flawed, learns lessons along their journey, and evolves into a more self-aware person.

·       The lessons challenge their self-perception and push them out of their performative persona into a more authentic version of themselves, reflective of their true self.

·       Accepting the journey and learning the lessons typically results in the character being rewarded, not with what they consciously wanted at the beginning of their journey, but with what they needed deep-down all along.

Is this the only way to approach the writing process.

Of course not!

But a character driven approach focuses the process on one starting point—our character—and allows us to build the narrative from there, rather than try to work with many moving parts that simply do not seem to want to fit together. Usually they won’t fit because the character journey is too undefined, leaving the narrative meaning with little to no resonance.

In the next post we’ll take a closer look at the Ego/Shadow/Self dynamic and effective ways to play around with it in our writing.