WRITING CONVINCING CHARACTERS - THE TEMPTATIONS OF PERSONALITY
PERSONALITY SELLS CÁRACTER BUT ONLY CÁRACTER IS CÁRACTER
I’m always searching for signs of Character. When I’m writing, when I’m reading, when I’m journaling, when I’m watching TV/movies, when I’m noticing or interacting with people out in the wild, strangers, friends, family — I’m always trying to make sense of this narrative technology we call Character. How best to understand Character. How best to write them.
Because I’m a writer, because I’m from a big family, because like most folks I often find people fascinatingly incomprehensible.
On Saturday I was in my favorite museum in Tokyo, the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, checking out one of my favorite art shows: the annual Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions. Fameme had a Durian piece, and appended to it was a profile written by Yi-Hsun Florence Huang. At the bottom of one of those pages I found these words:
“...to write characters three-dimensionally, one must look at the shadows behind them.”
Because of course. This tracks with my belief that organizing a character around their Silences is a powerful method for creating consistency, depth, and meaning beyond what’s readily available on the page. Though perhaps one should take care to insure that your Character’s Silences contain within them that which haunts the Character.
On my daily walk the next day — taking a long lazy curve through Nakameguro to Gakugei — I stopped at Streamers which was in full gaijin mode. While waiting for my coffee I overheard someone talking in English to a friend about the difference between personality and character. I ear-hustled for a few seconds, and then catching myself, got back to my amble.
The Personality / Cáracter dialectic is one of those dichotomies I’ve always loved thinking about, and a dichotomy I’ve found super-useful for understanding and, more instrumentally, for constructing Characters.
