Assumed audience
- Reading level: comfortable reading fiction; has completed “Scene Construction” and “Point of View.”
- Background: understands scene structure and POV choices.
- Goal: learn to create characters who feel real and to generate conflict from character rather than from external imposition.
Character is what character does
Consider two introductions of the same character:
Description: “Maria was a generous person who cared deeply about her community.”
Action: “Maria left the meeting twenty minutes early, drove to the hardware store, and bought six bags of salt for the elderly couple’s walkway. She didn’t mention it when she came back.”
The first tells the reader about Maria. The second shows Maria — and the reader draws their own conclusion about her generosity, which makes the impression stronger. The detail she “didn’t mention it” reveals more than “cared deeply” ever could.
A character in fiction is not a description. A character is a pattern of action — what this person does when faced with choices, pressure, desire, and limitation. Physical description, biographical background, and personality traits are raw material, but they become character only when they produce behavior.
E. M. Forster distinguished flat characters from round characters [@forster1927]. A flat character embodies a single quality — the miser, the ingenue, the mentor — and behaves consistently with that quality. A round character is capable of surprising the reader convincingly. The key word is convincingly: the surprise must feel like it belongs to the character, not to the author’s desire for novelty.
Round characters are not required in every role. Minor characters often work better flat — their predictability provides a stable background against which the focal character’s complexity shows. The question is whether the story’s central characters are round enough to sustain the reader’s engagement across the length of the work.
Desire and obstacle
Conflict in fiction is not violence, argument, or dramatic confrontation — though it can include these. Conflict is the gap between what a character wants and what prevents them from having it.
The character’s desire can be conscious or unconscious, large or small, noble or selfish. A character who wants to protect their child, a character who wants to be left alone, a character who wants to understand why their friend stopped speaking to them — all of these desires can generate conflict, because in each case something stands in the way.
The obstacle can be external (another character, the environment, social structures) or internal (fear, self-deception, conflicting desires). The most compelling fiction often combines both: an external obstacle that forces the character to confront an internal one.
Revealing character
Characters are revealed through four channels:
- Action — what characters do, especially under pressure. A character who says they value honesty but lies to avoid discomfort is revealed by the contradiction between speech and action. What a character does when the cost is high tells the reader who they are.
- Dialogue — what characters say and how they say it. Dialogue reveals character through diction (word choice), syntax (sentence structure), and subtext (what is meant but not said). A character who speaks in short, clipped sentences communicates something different from one who qualifies everything.
- Choice — decisions with consequences. The decisions that reveal character most fully are those where there is no good option — where every choice costs something. These dilemmas are where theme and character intersect: what the character chooses tells the reader what the story values.
- Interiority — thoughts, perceptions, feelings. Available only through certain point of view choices, interiority gives the reader access to the character’s inner life. But interiority alone doesn’t create character — a character who thinks one thing and does another is more interesting than one whose actions and thoughts align perfectly.
Internal and external conflict
External conflict puts a character against something outside themselves — another person, an institution, the natural world, social expectations. External conflict provides the plot’s structure: events happen, situations change, the character must respond.
Internal conflict puts a character against themselves — against their own fear, desire, self-deception, or contradictory needs. Internal conflict provides the plot’s depth: the character’s external situation forces them to confront something they’ve been avoiding.
The interaction between internal and external conflict is where fiction generates meaning. A character facing an external threat (a hostile environment, an unjust system) who must also confront an internal limitation (cowardice, pride, self-deception) faces a conflict that is both personal and structural. The resolution — or failure to resolve — both levels of conflict is what gives the story its significance.
Backstory and the iceberg
Backstory is what happened before the story begins. It shapes who the character is — their habits, fears, assumptions, desires — but it is not itself the story. The common mistake is delivering too much backstory too early, displacing the present-tense action that gives the reader something to follow.
Ernest Hemingway’s iceberg theory applies: the writer should know everything about the character, but the story should show only what’s necessary. The reader senses the mass beneath the surface — the character’s history, the reasons behind their behavior — without needing it all explained. When backstory surfaces, it should arrive because the present-tense action demands it, not because the writer wants to share what they know.
Flashback is the most common technique for delivering backstory within scenes, but it carries risks — it interrupts narrative momentum and can feel like the story is stalling. Use flashback when the past event is dramatic enough to sustain a scene of its own and when the reader needs to witness it rather than hear about it.
Guidance
- For every major character, answer: what do they want? What prevents them from having it? What will they do about it? If you can’t answer these questions, the character isn’t ready.
- Write a scene where two characters want incompatible things. Neither is wrong. Notice how conflict generates revelation — what each character does in pursuit of their desire tells the reader who they are.
- Resist the urge to explain your characters. Let their actions, dialogue, and choices do the work. If you find yourself writing “She was the kind of person who…” you’re telling when you could be showing.
- Test your protagonist’s roundness: can they surprise you? If you know exactly what they’ll do in every situation, they may be flat. Put them in a situation where their usual response fails and see what they do instead.