Character (arts)

Creation

In fiction writing, authors create dynamic characters using various methods. Sometimes characters are conjured up from imagination; in other instances, they are created by amplifying the character trait of a real person into a new fictional creation.

Real people, in part or in full

An author or creator basing a character on a real person can use a person they know, a historical figure, a current figure whom they have not met, or themselves, with the latter being either an author-surrogate or an example of self-insertion. The use of a famous person easily identifiable with certain character traits as the base for a principal character is a feature of allegorical works, such as Animal Farm by George Orwell, which portrays Soviet revolutionaries as pigs. Other authors, especially for historical fiction, make use of real people and create fictional stories revolving around their lives, as with The Paris Wife which revolves around Ernest Hemingway.

Archetypes and stock characters

An author can create a character using the basic character archetypes which are common to many cultural traditions: the father figure, mother figure, hero, and so on. Some writers make use of archetypes as presented by Carl Jung as the basis for character traits. Generally, when an archetype from some system (such as Jung's) is used, elements of the story also follow the system's expectations in terms of storyline.

An author can also create a fictional character using generic stock characters, which are generally flat. They tend to be used for supporting or minor characters. However, some authors have used stock characters as the starting point for building richly detailed characters, such as William Shakespeare's use of the boastful soldier character as the basis for John Falstaff.

Some authors create charactonyms for their characters. A charactonym is a name that implies the psychological makeup of the person, makes an allegorical allusion, or makes reference to their appearance. For example, Shakespeare has an emotional young male character named Mercutio, John Steinbeck has a kind, sweet character named Candy in Of Mice and Men, and Mervyn Peake has a Machiavellian, manipulative, and murderous villain in Gormenghast named Steerpike. The charactonym can also indicate appearance. For example, François Rabelais gave the name Gargantua to a giant, and the huge whale in Pinocchio (1940) is named Monstro.

Types

Round vs. flat===

In his book Aspects of the Novel, E. M. Forster defined two basic types of characters, their qualities, functions, and importance for the development of the novel: flat characters and round characters. Flat characters are two-dimensional, in that they are relatively uncomplicated. By contrast, round characters are complex figures with many different characteristics, that undergo development, sometimes sufficiently to surprise the reader.

In psychological terms, round or complex characters may be considered to have five personality dimensions under the Big Five model of personality. The five factors are:

• extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved)
• agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. critical/rational)
• openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious)
• conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. extravagant/careless)
• neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. resilient/confident)

Stock characters are usually one-dimensional and thin. Mary Sues are characters that usually appear in fan fiction which are virtually devoid of flaws, and are therefore considered flat characters.

Another type of flat character is a "walk-on", a term used by Seymour Chatman for characters that are not fully delineated and individualized; rather they are part of the background or the setting of the narrative.

Dynamic vs. static

Dynamic characters are those that change over the course of the story, while static characters remain the same throughout. An example of a popular dynamic character in literature is Ebenezer Scrooge, the protagonist of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. At the start of the story, he is a bitter miser, but by the end of the tale, he transforms into a kindhearted, generous man.

Regular, recurring and guest characters

In television, a regular, main or ongoing character is a character who appears in all or a majority of episodes, or in a significant chain of episodes of the series. Regular characters may be both core and secondary ones.

A recurring character or supporting character often and frequently appears from time to time during the series' run. Recurring characters often play major roles in more than one episode, sometimes being the main focus.

A guest or minor character is one who acts only in a few episodes or scenes. Unlike regular characters, the guest ones do not need to be carefully incorporated into the storyline with all its ramifications: they create a piece of drama and then disappear without consequences to the narrative structure, unlike core characters, for which any significant conflict must be traced during a considerable time, which is often seen as an unjustified waste of resources. There may also be a continuing or recurring guest character. this is known as a breakout character.

Classical analysis

In the earliest surviving work of dramatic theory, Poetics (), the Classical Greek philosopher Aristotle states that character (ethos) is one of six qualitative parts of Athenian tragedy and one of the three objects that it represents (1450a12). He understands character not to denote a fictional person, but the quality of the person acting in the story and reacting to its situations (1450a5). He defines character as "that which reveals decision, of whatever sort" (1450b8). If, in speeches, the speaker "decides or avoids nothing at all", then those speeches "do not have character" (1450b9—11). Aristotle argues for the primacy of plot (mythos) over character (ethos). He writes: Aristotle suggests that works were distinguished in the first instance according to the nature of the person who created them: "the grander people represented fine actions, i.e. those of fine persons" by producing "hymns and praise-poems", while "ordinary people represented those of inferior ones" by "composing invectives" (1448b20–1449a5). On this basis, a distinction between the individuals represented in tragedy and in comedy arose: tragedy, along with epic poetry, is "a representation of serious people" (1449b9–10), while comedy is "a representation of people who are rather inferior" (1449a32—33).

In the Tractatus coislinianus (which may or may not be by Aristotle), Ancient Greek comedy is defined as involving three types of characters: the buffoon (bômolochus), the ironist (eirōn), and the imposter or boaster (alazṓn). All three are central to Aristophanes' Old Comedy.

By the time the Roman comic playwright Plautus wrote his plays two centuries later, the use of characters to define dramatic genres was well established. His Amphitryon begins with a prologue in which Mercury claims that since the play contains kings and gods, it cannot be a comedy and must be a tragicomedy.

Notes

References

• Aston, Elaine, and George Savona. 1991. Theatre as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance. London and New York: Routledge. .
• Baldick, Chris. 2001. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford UP. .
• Burke, Kenneth. 1945. A Grammar of Motives. California edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. .
• Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the Theatre: A Historical and Critical Survey from the Greeks to the Present. Expanded ed. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. .
• Childs, Peter, and Roger Fowler. 2006. The Routledge Dictionary of Literary Terms. London and New York: Routledge. .
• Eco, Umberto. 2009. On the ontology of fictional characters: A semiotic approach. Sign Systems Studies 37(1/2): 82–98.
• Eder, Jens. 2025. Characters in Film and Other Media: Theory, Analysis, Interpretation. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers (Open Access). .
• Elam, Keir. 2002. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. 2nd edition. New Accents Ser. London and New York: Routledge. . Originally published in 1980.
• Goring, Rosemary, ed. 1994. Larousse Dictionary of Literary Characters. Edinburgh and New York: Larousse. .
• Harrison, Martin. 1998. The Language of Theatre. London: Routledge. .
• Hodgson, Terry. 1988. The Batsford Dictionary of Drama. London: Batsford. .
• Janko, Richard, trans. 1987. Poetics with Tractatus Coislinianus, Reconstruction of Poetics II and the Fragments of the On Poets. By Aristotle. Cambridge: Hackett. .
• McGovern, Una, ed. 2004. Dictionary of Literary Characters. Edinburgh: Chambers. .
• Pavis, Patrice. 1998. Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis. Trans. Christine Shantz. Toronto and Buffalo: U of Toronto P. .
• Pringle, David. 1987. Imaginary People: A Who's Who of Modern Fictional Characters. London: Grafton. .
• Rayner, Alice. 1994. To Act, To Do, To Perform: Drama and the Phenomenology of Action. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Ser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. .
• Trumble, William R, and Angus Stevenson, ed. 2002. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford UP. ..

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3. Baldick (2001, 37) and Childs and Fowler (2006, 23). See also "character, 10b" in Trumble and Stevenson (2003, 381): "A person portrayed in a novel, a drama, etc; a part played by an actor".
4. ''OED'' "character" sense 17.a citing, ''inter alia'', [[John Dryden. Dryden's]] 1679 preface to ''[[Troilus and Cressida]]'': "The chief character or Hero in a Tragedy ... ought in prudence to be such a man, who has so much more in him of Virtue than of Vice... If Creon had been the chief character in ''Œdipus''..."
5. Aston and Savona (1991, 34), quotation: {{quotation. [...] is first used in English to denote 'a personality in a novel or a play' in 1749 (''The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary'', s.v.).
6. Its use as 'the sum of the qualities which constitute an individual' is a mC17 development. The modern literary and theatrical sense of 'an individual created in a fictitious work' is not attested in OED until mC18: 'Whatever characters any... have for the jestsake personated... are now thrown off' (1749, Fielding, ''Tom Jones'').
7. Pavis (1998, 47).
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9. Baldick (2001, 265).
10. The characters in [[Henrik Ibsen]]'s {{Lang. no. [[Hedda Gabler]] (1891) and [[August Strindberg]]'s ''[[Miss Julie]]'' (1888), for example, are representative of specific positions in the [[social relation]]s of class and [[gender]], such that the [[Conflict (narrative). conflicts]] between the characters reveal [[Ideology. ideological]] conflicts.Aston and Savona (1991, 35).
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28. Janko (1987, 8). Aristotle defines the six qualitative elements of tragedy as "plot, character, diction, reasoning, spectacle and song" (1450a10); the three objects are plot (''[[Mythos (Aristotle). mythos]]''), character (''[[ethos]]''), and reasoning (''[[dianoia]]'').
29. Janko (1987, 9, 84).
30. It is possible, therefore, to have stories that do not contain "characters" in Aristotle's sense of the word, since character necessarily involves making the [[Ethics. ethical]] dispositions of those performing the action clear.Aristotle writes: "Again, without action, a tragedy cannot exist, but without characters, it may. For the tragedies of most recent [poets] lack character, and in general, there are many such poets" (1450a24–25); see Janko (1987, 9, 86).
31. Janko (1987, 9).
32. Aston and Savona (1991, 34) and Janko (1987, 8).
33. Janko (1987, 8).
34. Janko (1987, 5). This distinction, Aristotle argues, arises from two causes that are natural and common to all humans—the delight taken in experiencing representations and the way in which we learn through imitation (1448b4–19); see Janko (1987, 4–5).
35. Janko (1987, 6–7). Aristotle specifies that comedy does not represent all kinds of ugliness and vice, but only that which is laughable (1449a32–1449a37).
36. Carlson (1993, 23) and Janko (1987, 45, 170).
37. Janko (1987, 170).
38. Carlson (1993, 22).
39. ''Amphritruo'', line 59.