The first thinkers in the arts, literature, drama and poetry were the Greeks. They generated the first analysis of art performed, and elaborated the first qualitative distinctions for it. The two greatest thinkers of the arts in the Greek world were Aristotle and Socrates.
Aristotle said that art is mimesis, i.e. a copy of reality. Making words, drawings, paintings and others are simply means of the imitation of reality, and that the beauty in art lies in the mimesis of nature.
In contrast, we find Socrates, who argues that the beauty of art lies not in mimesis, but the ability to make us think and meditate. As the arts must submit a thesis and reflect a problem appealing to our reality.
We might understand the thesis of Socrates as opposed to Aristotle, but on the contrary, both must be understood as complementary. Aristotle gives us the way we produce art, and Socrates gives us a sense in which we produce art.
Today we do not speak of mimesis, but subtraction, subtract and rearrange elements of our paradigm for the creation of the arts. We cannot create anything new, and what we create as artists is simply what we know. Making a story of an unknown emotion is impossible for our minds, for we can only subtract and dissect the emotion. But, if we align it too, the emotion ends up being misunderstood, so it would have failed according to the thesis of Socrates.
In drama, our work is similar. We operate around the abduction and seek the nomination of thesis, but unlike a painting or a sculpture, our narrative approach is the action of characters and the conflict against them. That is why the characters are one of the most important elements in the drama, they are the vehicles of history and those who defend our thesis.
We understand that the character of every fictional being from a story, fable, tale, or novel has a conscious and personality inside the story. Even if they come from reality, there are still fictional characters because they mimic the real character. The author has to make the character independent from his or her ideas, to refrain from sharing information that may mistakenly change the character’s identity.
Classifications of the Character
The characters are divided into different types, which we will see three classifications: classification according to role, development, and objective.
Classification According to Roles
The classic typology of characters that we were taught in school, are the characters by role. Among these are:
“It represents one of the forces in the play, and that is in conflict.”<1>
“It represents the force opposing the protagonist.”<1>
“They do not represent any conflicting forces, but if they support one of the two.”<1>
“Individual characters that represent a collective.”<1>
“Incarnation of abstractions.”<1>
The protagonist and antagonist, originally called Hero and Villain, are the most important characters in the story, the protagonist being the action force of the play and who struggle against the opposing forces. And the antagonist, who uses Machiavellian mean of moving the opposing forces against the protagonist. An antagonist may not be a character, and there can only be one antagonistic force in the story.
Classification by Development
Inside the classification of character development we can see there are two types, the linear characters and the circular characters.
The linear characters are those described by a basic feature and that behave the same way throughout the story.<2> The linear characters only have a few personality traits and are simpler and less credible.<3> A linear character is Rorschach, who never sacrificed his principles, as he says, even at Armageddon day.
Who say`s that only circular characters are interesting?
The circular characters are those that are characterized as the action takes place, evolving naturally throughout the story.<2> The former are designed with many features of personality and tend to be complex, more realistic and credible.<3> A circular character would be Scott Pilgrim, who is oblivious against his own evil and bad deeds, only to face the true and acknowledge his evil as his good, changing his way of thinking and doing, so he can achieve his goal.
Classification According to Objective/Goal
When it comes to objectives or needs, characters are divided into two sections: those with objectives and those with no purpose. The characters with objectives are those who want something; they are the classic heroes who face adversity with a specific goal or the anti-heroes who are bent by circumstance. While aimless characters are more complex, since they have no goals and should use other characters or action that over come the character to maintain interest and the end approach of the thesis. A character that falls into this more complex classification is Gustav Klimt played by John Malkovich in the film Klimt, where the character has no goal or purpose and the events over come his own actions.
We will focus on the characters with goals, as they are focusing on the central conflict of action, which is the classic spinal of comics and video games. If you want to write a story for a video game I recommend you to focus on the characters with goals, because video games are based on action and reaction according to reasons, so a story with a character with no goal runs counter to that concept. There are games like Minecraft, that have been able to clear the objective of the character, but not the objective of the player.
So far, we have seen how the characters are classified into the narration and our minds. However, a big question remains in the air about the characters: how do we create a character? So now we will go into different authors and visions of how to make a character.
The explorations around the problem of building the character are oriented around two poles:
Essentialist view of the character: created in a container of attributes or quality, being completed by a set of essences and data. By analog, it is like a character role, in which he/she fills a set of attributes to understand who he/she is.<4>
Dynamic view of character: understood as a set of activities, changes in a unified representation that makes sense and provides meaning to the extent that it represents an action. That is, the character is what the character does.<4>
Some authors suggest that a character must have the following features:
The character’s name.
A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline.
The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)
The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)
The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?).
The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?
A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline.<5>
Some of those are extremely important, as the goal, conflict and motivation, but others might not be important for you, like the epiphany, and others you might want to go deeper, like the character’s storyline.
A leading author those who are interested in writing should read is Lajos Egri. In his book The Art of Dramatic Writing, he writes about the theoretical and methodological foundations of how we writers create drama and create stories in a deep and educational way. Lajos Egri shows that because things have 3-dimensions, so must a character, which in the case of the characters they are: physiology, sociology and psychology. But these dimensions need a “why”; an atheist character is nothing without a reason for his position.
Lajos Egri sit us in the first vision, the essentialist vision, where before we can write, first we must know who our characters are. For when the story is told, the actions of the characters will be the reaffirmation of its principles and so it’s an idea planted by the author in the middle of the action.<6>
But the character does not come to body and life in a prior space to writing, as this has a life only within the narrative. Thus the question arises, how do we go from this fictional individual to a narrative individual? That is why we now go into the art of storytelling.
An important and timeless writer is Miguel de Cervantes, who made his mark in history with Don Quixote, a work that has been brought to life not only on paper but also in theater and in film with a failed attempt (Man of La Mancha was about trying to make film adaptation that failed). Cervantes built his characters through how they are defined (archetypes), their acts, and by how other characters define and judge them. Moreover, the narrator provides descriptions of physical and moral qualities of these characters and tells their actions.<3>
When we work on comics, our storytelling system is not as different as the one in which M. de Cervantes used. The display in each panel is equal to telling the actions or describing features, moments, dialogues and the thoughts of the characters. They are judgments that work in building the narration of who the character is. So every time we write a script, we need to think like Cervantes, giving an image of the moment and characters supported by dialogues and thoughts.
6. The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri
The Art of Dramatic Writing by Lajos Egri
The Poetics by Aristotle