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Fictional Narrative Basics - Character
Unit Completion Date: End of Week 5
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Yet another way of thinking about characters comes from Seymour Chatman's Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film, in which he says that character traits are developed by showing characters acting in similar ways during different periods of their lives. This allows the reader to understand the importance of a change in the character's behavior at a critical moment in the story. I would go a step further than Chatman and say that characters are developed not just by the accumulation of traits over time but by the changes in those traits and how they affect the action of the story.
This model of characterization reminds me of those plastic sheet overlays in anatomy books, where by turning each page you add another layer of anatomy to the human skeleton--nervous system, circulatory system, digestive system, musculature--and through the all the sheets of plastic, you get the whole picture together. With fictional characters, though, you are getting the complete texture of their emotional lives.
No other model, I think, highlights the importance of chronology in characterization, the importance of seeing how a character acted as a child, or what events they lived through and decisions they made, as keys to understanding their choices in present circumstances. Events in a plot may happen in a sequence, but people live their lives continuously bringing forth the past into their present world, understanding their present circumstances within the framework of memory, and fictional characters can be powerfully developed by doing the same.
For the story you are developing to submit to workshop, go back into your character's past by five, ten, even twenty years if you can and write a one or two page scene that provides some insight into your character's actions in the story you are writing. You are not required to include this in the final draft, but you may do so if you choose. This exercise will not be posted to the class site but should be placed in the "Character" section of your craftbook.
Character Exercise 5 (Opt.) - Submit Response
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