Characters who live in isolation are difficult's to connect with. A key recommendation for people writing monologues is to imagine who the character is speaking to. Tom Hanks’s Cast Away character (Chuck) needed Wilson in his movie. Without that soccerball, important dimensions of the character could not be explored. In fact, storytelling has long been dependent upon community.
Many legends and myths depend upon familiar human traits that are embodied by characters and illuminated through contrasts. Think in terms of polytheistic religions. The pantheons allow(ed) for people to see the individual gods through their interactions with communities of gods. In "real" life, we continue this very human tradition in other ways. For example, Hollywood always has a strong man (The Rock, e.g., Hercules) and a sex goddess (Charlize Theron, e.g., Venus). In addition, I’d argue that it's possible to connect current actors with actors claim similar roles in the past. How different is Harrison Ford from Humphrey Bogart? Or Tom Hanks from Jimmy Stewart? (These contemporary actors have literally played the same roles in movies that amount to be remakes, Sabrina and The Shop Around the Corner/You've Got Mail.)
So, while my last post in this series emphasized finding specific and original characters, it's valuable to explore archetypes, as well. My recommendation would be to do this after a fast draft, during revision, but many accomplished writers I know design their characters with reference to making sure a collection of "types" are included. It makes me uneasy to think about doing this with the main characters, but it's probably safe to build secondary characters from the beginning with the right kind of pantheon in mind.
For instance, comedy, especially in the case of sitcoms, draws again and again from a familiar set of character types. As a great article on Sitcom Character Archetypes elucidates these, drawing from the Commedia dell'Arte, a form of theater that dates back to the Renaissance. The article translates these to characters like The Wisecracker, The Square, and The Bully and provides examples (from The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murray, Lou Grant, and Mary, respectively).
While it's all too easy to have this become formulaic (something that spoofed in one of my favorite movies, Network), there is a wonderful benefit to ensuring characters have distinct and recognizable differences built in early on, especially for a series. Different perspectives and the conflicts that arise from these allow for varied and deep explorations of premises. For story, there is nothing more deadly than characters who see the world the same way and agree.
There are great benefits for those writing series to look at the characters in their favorites and see how they might be similar across shows. This can reveal both the kinds of characters that are personally the most engaging and intriguing, as well as how the characters connect to create conflicts in scenes, sequences, and stories. Chances are, what resonates with you in the series you appreciate most will point to what your are best prepared to explore in your own works.
This does not mean direct copying or finding an escape from the serious work of infusing characters with their authenticity, but it may help to provide a check on leaving out elements that truly belong in your stories that aren't appearing spontaneously.
The same kind of research can be done for work that is not serial, but it tends to work more on the level of genre. Looking at character types and the communities of characters for, say, a romantic comedy may be less of a task that creates a story engine and more a way to recognize reader or audience expectations.
The ensemble of characters in your story will become invaluable once you have identified a pivot scene that can be used to bring somatic unity and story logic to your work. Each character who needs to be in your story will have a relationship with that scene, even if he or she is not present for that scene. In my work, I found that such reflection on characters — including how they need to contribute to turning points and how those scenes create consequences for them — suggests new dimensions to stories that are difficult to recognize otherwise.
I've also found that a deeper understanding of the work (whether it's a standalone feature or novel or it's for a series) can connect me with small and significant moments that can create empathy for the characters. That will be the subject of my next post in this series.
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