When seeking to understand and replicate the human body, artists — especially traditional artists — make use of anatomical figure models. You see one particular type used a lot, simplified and stylized like:
What’s valuable about this construct is that you can physically pose it. Trying to actually draw a human freehand in 3d space — respecting both proportion and perspective — is fiendishly difficult without years of experience. So a figure model helps hugely if you want a draw some action pose more complex than a three quarters T-pose.
But I digress. You aren’t reading a drawing blog, so why mention beginner artist tools? The point here is to set up an analogy, that much you’ve probably already guessed. In this post, I’m here to ask an in retrospect obvious question, I curiously couldn’t immediate answer: what could serve as a poseable figure model for literary characters?
Well, what is a character, really? What exactly are we posing? The way stories are conceptually cut, by convention, dissevers character from plot or setting or theme. Boil it down enough, and an easy conclusion to come to is that characters are actions.
Now, one blind alley you could leap logically down is to think that any such model would help you write actions. Figure models help you draw action poses, so wouldn’t a literally figure model help you write action descriptions? In implementation, then, literary figure model would be some way to generatively express emotions. We immediately run into problems.
Given that the prevailing theory of how to write emotions is sensory reification, we are faced with a dilemma: any model that approximates this task must be so complex and intractable to create or explain, it amounts to procedural description of how to write well; conversely, a model that’s simple and tractable enough to create would be almost useless given the specificity and creativity which sensory reification requires.
And framed this way, this isn’t actually an underexplored design space; there are no shortage of articles in the vein of “37 ways to write about anger”. I’ve always avoided that sort of listicle, and have never talked with a writer who admits to using them or finding them helpful. To me, they have a deep tinge of amateur writer, seeming to be the exact sort of noob trap as tier lists are for complex strategy games. Put simply, they have limited utility for advanced play, and this is, arrogant as it sounds, a blog for advanced writers.
I called this a blind alley, and let me explain why. Viewing a literary figure model as tool for writing specific actions, I say, is equivalent to viewing a figure model as a tool for rendering. It’s deeply unsuited: real people will have so much more texture and form than a simple figure model, let alone concerns of (say) lighting.
No, the core of character modeling isn’t the reified description of actions, and literary figure model shouldn’t help you reify. The core is the progression, development, even.
But I’ve tipped my head there, haven’t I? I pulled this same schtick in [Wheels Within Wheels]. Is this my snake oil — the only tool I offer for thinking about writing is twisting things into a “this but that so thus” scheme?
I don’t think that horse quite dead yet, but no, I have a few other tricks to share here. Let’s get on with the actual article.
What is a character?
In “Actions are Louder”, I called it an illusion. An author strings together actions and the reader imagines a hidden shape casting the shadows. I put emphasis on those actions, urged you to make them interesting, and dismissed refining the underlying form as a mistake.
That was hasty. I was on a months long streak of plotty outlining when I wrote that post, so let’s remedy with a proper focus on character writing.
The usual way to dissever plot from character is, on reflection, an external vs internal distinction. In my posts about plotting, examples of “developments” are all the obvious, plotty turnings of gears. Yet nothing about the idea of fruitful juxtaposition requires plot progression. It wouldn’t even be hard to frame a character maturing in terms of development.
So, do characters require any special attention? A whole article to themselves?
If you want to write a story about heroic hackers stopping a bomb from going off, much of your plot is a matter of simple causality. How long do they have before the bomb goes off? What does it take to hack into the enemies bomb-controlling computers? What tactics can the enemy employ to foil them? Scenes can turn on easily evaluated matters of what effect the describe actions would logically have. It’s a matter of research and analytical thinking; the craft of plotting is only a part of it.
If you wanted to write, say, a love story or some other drama, those matters of cause and effect happen inside of squishy brains. What cause is sufficient for a character to fall in love, to blow up at another character, to have a breakdown? There is empirical, statistical data you could gather for this sort of thing — research and rational thinking still has its place — but the any sort of model requires a description of a character and recounting of their thought process. I can think no medium more suitable for rendering a character than prose itself. For a story about traveling, maps can simplify things; for a story about causing or averting some process, you can draw flowcharts; but for a character?
Character writing requires its own article because its an extension of writing in a way specific plots are not — and when they are, it’s because those locations, mechanisms, and impersonal abstractions grow to resemble characters in their own right.
I once said a character is merely series of actions, but that’s not really it. They’re quite a bit richer than that. Every character is a story. Let’s talk about how to tell it.
Snowmen, Spiderwebs and Essential Souls
Let’s get one thing out of the way. This isn’t Wheels Within Wheels, I’m not going to reskin the ur-development to apply to characters. Similar notions may crop up when discussing the dynamics of characters, but the ur-development doesn’t apply to characters, because it is a complete, closed form: a development resolves, but the nature of a character mid-plot is that, while each one is a story, each one is a unfinished story; a character cannot be resolved. There must remain threads to pull on. Perhaps they approach equilibrium, perhaps they evolve from an unstable chemical mix to something less volatile, but the right catalyst will see them react anew with the world. Until they die.
Even an unfinished story has structure. Maybe there’s no “beginning, middle and end”, but there is a “beginning, middle and to be continued”.
Wildbow calls this to snowman methods (explained in his words most recently here, though I first encountered it here).
// wildbow calls this the snowman method. When i drafted there was no source for this, but he has since written an article elaborating on it
// a meme that amuses me goes “don’t tell me your pronouns, what are your adjectives?”
// while i’ve disagreed with my old blogpost, i think there’s something to salvage in the ideology of actions are loud — character is a verb.
// how should you outline a character? Give them verbs
// powered by the apocalypse games are an excellent case study. What custom moves does your character have?
// template mapping
// at most four dimensional. Motivation, goal, approach, philosophy. A tetraplex
// character hierarchy, pyramid principle
// relationships
It’s common to give characters traits: say that they’re angry, mischievous, driven, whatever. If you’re reading this, you probably agree with my taste that, while they get the job done, these traits feel shallow. Is this really how a good character is constructed?
I think they can be a starting point, certainly. But where do we go from here?
I think there’s two chief ways to make a trait into a respectable fragment of a good character. The obvious way is by being more specific, reifying them. But another is by making them characteristics, and yet another is by making them dynamics.
Reification is what you expect: okay, your character is angry, but what does that mean? How do they express their anger? Is it shouting, is it smoldering? Is it quick to flare or a rare sight? What makes their anger their anger? If you do this right, you’ll also do the other two things i’m gonna talk about, by let me be explicit.
So, what I mean by ‘characteristic’ is a trait expanded out into the four dimensions which characters operate in: motivation, approach, purpose, and philosophy.
The simple way to do this expansion is to ask three questions: Why are they like this? Why do they do this? And why are they still like this?
Every trait, we’ll assume, describes what a character does. An angry character gets angry and lashes out. In other words, it’s an approach.
The general scheme here is that a character has a motivation, so they take an approach, towards a certain purpose, governed by a certain philosophy.
Why is this character angry? Is it because they’ve lived a lifetime of no one listening to them, of their agency ignored and overruled, and they’re tired of it? That’s their motivation.
What does their anger accomplish? Do they scream so that people listen to them, swing their fists to keep people out of their face? What’s the effect of this trait? That’s its purpose.
Here’s the subtle one. First, notice how independent these factors are. Two characters can have the same motivation, the same wound in their past, and cope with them differently. Two characters can take the same approach for very different reasons. And two characters can, famously, try to achieve the same goal by two very different paths.
Philosophy ties these three dimensions together, makes the reasoning explicit. It’s the meta-trait. Philosophy evaluates the character’s situation, and judges it. Say a character is lonely, has no romantic partner. This is a pit of endless angst for one character, while another [aro css]might not care at all[/css]. One character has the philosophy that they should be romantically involved, and that dissonance is the killer.
It’s not just judging what the problem. How does a character decide that they’ve accomplished their goals? Two different characters vent their anger so violently so often that eventually everyone around them leaves, and anyone remaining cowers in fear. Is this success? You can imagine one character evaluates this as a mission successful and another thinks something’s gone wrong, they’ve made a mistake. That’s a difference of philosophy.
Most directly, philosophy is a hint at character arcs. A character’s philosophy traits lay bare the joints on which their figure model bends. If their other traits are going to change, it’s because there’s a contradiction in philosophy, somewhere — the approach they thought would satisfy their motivation doesn’t.
Of course, this isn’t the only route for changing a character. There’s more to conflict than what lies within a single characteristic.
The third tool for iterating on traits is to turn them into dynamics. This adding a condition, a caveat, or putting them in conflict with another trait. The general form of a dynamic is “X but Y”. Angry, but rational. Angry, but powerless. Anger, but with a veneer of humor.
Still, slapping a “but” after it is only the tip of the iceberg. Other conjunctions illustrate a world of possibilities. Angry, never at people. Angry, until a breakdown. Angry, once stoic.
The condition can be subtler still. Say a character is “angry and driven”. Does their anger get in the way of their goals? Say a character is sometimes “angry, sometimes forgiving.” Which are they and when?
And how do we develop traits? If you’ve got a dynamic characteristic, suddenly there’s a lot of variables to put a delta on.
The easiest thing to change is the purpose. This means just shifting when the trait is expressed. Instead of raging indiscriminately, the angry characters learns not to blow up at their friends. Next easiest is the approach, changing how the trait expresses itself. The angry character learns to restrain themself from attacking people. Last would be motivation, addressing the underlying cause of the trait. The angry character gains a sense of being understood and in control that lets them cope without having to explode in fury. A philosophy is difficult to challenge. But it could be demonstrated that a character’s approach to addressing their motivation won’t work. A character might shift from caring about the means to caring about the ends.
Part of why I organized these dimensions by the “difficulty” of changing them, to whatever extent that makes sense, is to give a rough sense of what it takes to write a plausible arc of character undergoing that change. I can imagine a character arguing with their friend for one scene and by the end of it realizing they need to be more careful about who they get mad at. I can’t imagine one scene being enough for a defined-as-angry character to realize their whole psychological complex of using anger to cope with their unmet needs is maladaptive.
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There’s a style of character writing advice that constructs characters around Wounds or Ghosts. Needs and Goals. Even [high concept // link to AlicornPriest]. A main idea behind the character. I think this is a useful scheme, but not all encompassing, and it has its limitations.
My preferred way to think about it is in terms of nucleation sites. Like a snowflake forming around a crystal, there’s an idea which everything else about a character is added to support, enable and otherwise flesh out.
This often lines up with the common advice. One can imagine nucleating some sasuke-like character, say a warrior who vows to take revenge on their former teacher who committed some horrible act. The Wound and Goal is built in.
But imagine nucleating a mad scientist mercenary, and the defining image you have in your head is them blowing down the door to a hospitable to raid it for bodies or medical supplies. That might be enough for a chapter, perhaps even an arc if it’s set up like a heist, but there’s a lot of stories you might want to tell with this mad scientist mercenary and they need something to do after they raid the hospital. Maybe it’s standard evil scientist stuff — I’ll Show Them All! — or maybe it’s just mercenary work.
And this is where things diverge, because I think if we’re talking about what makes this character worth writing about it, it’s not their ultimate goal or primordial trauma, it’s the fucking cool thing they do in the moment. So I don’t agree with any writing advice that would tell you to start working out the mad scientist mercenary with anything other than the obvious most interesting thing about them.
// philosophy → contradiction → purpose → approach → action