Character Types
Antagonist: a.k.a. "the bad guy" but better thought of as the opponent of the protagonist or central character. The action of a story arises from conflict between the antagonist and protagonist, as in Baum's The Wizard of Oz with its struggle between the Wicked Witch of the West and Dorothy. The antagonist need not be a person at all but may be an animal, an inanimate object or even nature itself. For example, the antagonist of Tom Godwin's story "The Cold Equations" is outer space.
Cardboard character: A stereotype, mannequin, drone or otherwise uninteresting simulacrum passing for a real character. Cardboard is what you use when — for whatever reason — you fail to put yourself into your characters. It is the only pejorative I've included in this list. The utopia of Edward Bellamy's didactic "idea" novel Looking Backward is entirely populated with right-thinking men and women of cardboard.
Confidante: someone in whom the central character confides, thus revealing her personality. Once again, that someone need not be a person. In Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer the central character, Dan Davis, continually confides his plans and feelings to his cat, Pete.
Developing character: a character who changes over the course of the story. The central character is often but not always a developing character. However, it's crucial that the action of the story causes some character to change. When I was at Clarion, Damon Knight used to write "Who cares?" at the end of stories in which no one develops — a characteristically terse criticism which I found devastating. A tour de force of developing characterization is Louis Sacchetti, the protagonist of Thomas Disch's Camp Concentration, who is infected with a disease that makes him a genius.
Flat character: Someone who is characterized by one or two traits. "Flat" and "round" were terms first proposed by E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel and they are often misapplied by modern critics. Flat is especially corrupted when used as a synonym for cardboard; in Forster's usage, flat is not a derogatory term. Rather, it describes a character who can be summed up in a sentence. Gollum from The Lord of the Rings is a wonderful character who is absolutely flat in that his character is determined by his obsession with the recovery of the ring, "his precious." Every story needs some flat characters and many successful stories, for instance Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, have nothing but flat characters.
Foil: someone whose character contrasts to that of the protagonist, thus throwing it into sharp relief. In Connie Willis's "The Last of the Winnebagos," Katie Powell serves as a foil to the protagonist David McCombe. Katie chases after David to expiate her guilt over killing one of the last surviving dogs on Earth, while David runs away from Katie and from admitting to himself that he, too, is responsible for the dog's death.
Narrator: the fictional storyteller. When the narrator is involved in the action of the story she's called a first person narrator. The sentence "I watched the triceratops eat my purse," is narrated in first person. When the narrator stands outside the story, she is usually taken to be the implied author. "Persephone watched as the triceratops ate her purse," is narrated in third person, presumably by the writer. Narrators can either be reliable or unreliable. For example, in Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver narrates his own story: "I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table, and to answer (but with the utmost brevity) the few questions I ask her." However, he is so credulous at the start and misanthropic at the end that we know enough not to take everything he tells us seriously. Since he is unreliable we must read between his lines to discover Jonathan Swift's intent. On the other hand, we have every reason to trust the third person narration in "Nightfall"; the implied storyteller, Isaac Asimov, means exactly what he says. The vast majority of author-as-narrator stories are told reliably. Indeed, a story in which the implied writer appears to be unreliable is usually scorned as a "readercheater." However, there have been interesting experiments in unreliable third person narration. The implied Bruce Sterling in "Dori Bangs" makes clear that he is unreliable in pursuit of higher truth. This is all very complicated, I know. We'll more talk about narrators when we get to viewpoint characters.
Protagonist: The central character, or the one whose name comes to mind when you ask the question, "Whose story is this?" A story ought to have just one protagonist but a novel can have several, as in Kate Wilhelm's multigenerational novel of the Sumner family, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.
Round character: one who is complex and perhaps even contradictory. E. M. Forster (see Flat Characters) put it succinctly, "The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way." If a flat character can be summed up in a sentence or two, a round character would probably take an essay. For example, Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the of Ursula Le Guin's many round characters.
Spear-carriers: minor characters who provide verisimilitude. They must necessarily be flat since they are rarely named or described in any detail. They tend to run in crowds; in movies these are the folks who made up the "cast of thousands." The dim-witted population of Earth in C. M. Kornbluth "The Marching Morons" are spear-carriers.
Static character: a character who does not develop. Most characters in a story should be static, so as not to distract from the significant changes you will be depicting in the central character. Static, however, most certainly does not mean boring. In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," all of the characters except for the scapegoat, Tessie Hutchinson, are static.
Stock character: a.k.a. stereotype, but actually a special kind of flat character who is instantly recognizable to most readers, as in the Brave Starship Captain or the Troubled Teen or the Ruthless Businessperson. In the hands of a clumsy writer, the stock character never rises above the cardboard stereotype, which is unfortunate. Even as cliches encapsulate a kernel of truth, so do stock characters reflect aspects of real people. Courage is required of military personnel; people in business act ruthlessly at times in order to survive in the Darwinian world of business. In his collection of short stories, Fancies and Goodnights, John Collier demonstrates how to bring stock characters to life — he's particularly good with devils.
Sympathetic character: One whose motivations readers can understand and whose feelings they can comfortably share. This is the kind of character of whom naive readers will say "I could identify with her." The protagonist is often, but not always, sympathetic. Note that a sympathetic character need not be a good person. In George Orwell's 1984, despite the fact that he betrays Julia and his own values by embracing Big Brother, Winston Smith remains a sympathetic character.
Unsympathetic character: One whose motivations are suspect and whose feelings make us uncomfortable. The boundary between sympathetic and unsympathetic characterization is necessarily ill-defined. The protagonist of Lucius Shepard's "Black Coral," an Ugly American named Prince, is definitely not sympathetic, nor is he intended to be. However once he brings destruction down on himself, we feel sorry for him. The central irony of this story is that the punishment Prince receives is to become a sympathetic character.
Viewpoint character: the focus of narration, the person or persons through whom we experience the story. One kind of viewpoint character is the first person narrator. Here's Mitchell Courtenay, the first person viewpoint character of Pohl and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants: "As I dressed that morning I ran over in my mind the long list of statistics, evasions and exaggerations that they would expect in my report." When author herself acts as narrator, she usually chooses to tell the story in the third person, limiting herself to the perspective of one character. While she is in his point of view, she has access to his thoughts and memories but not to those of any one else, as in "The View From Venus" by Karen Joy Fowler:
Antagonist: a.k.a. "the bad guy" but better thought of as the opponent of the protagonist or central character. The action of a story arises from conflict between the antagonist and protagonist, as in Baum's The Wizard of Oz with its struggle between the Wicked Witch of the West and Dorothy. The antagonist need not be a person at all but may be an animal, an inanimate object or even nature itself. For example, the antagonist of Tom Godwin's story "The Cold Equations" is outer space.
Cardboard character: A stereotype, mannequin, drone or otherwise uninteresting simulacrum passing for a real character. Cardboard is what you use when — for whatever reason — you fail to put yourself into your characters. It is the only pejorative I've included in this list. The utopia of Edward Bellamy's didactic "idea" novel Looking Backward is entirely populated with right-thinking men and women of cardboard.
Confidante: someone in whom the central character confides, thus revealing her personality. Once again, that someone need not be a person. In Robert Heinlein's The Door Into Summer the central character, Dan Davis, continually confides his plans and feelings to his cat, Pete.
Developing character: a character who changes over the course of the story. The central character is often but not always a developing character. However, it's crucial that the action of the story causes some character to change. When I was at Clarion, Damon Knight used to write "Who cares?" at the end of stories in which no one develops — a characteristically terse criticism which I found devastating. A tour de force of developing characterization is Louis Sacchetti, the protagonist of Thomas Disch's Camp Concentration, who is infected with a disease that makes him a genius.
Flat character: Someone who is characterized by one or two traits. "Flat" and "round" were terms first proposed by E.M. Forster in his Aspects of the Novel and they are often misapplied by modern critics. Flat is especially corrupted when used as a synonym for cardboard; in Forster's usage, flat is not a derogatory term. Rather, it describes a character who can be summed up in a sentence. Gollum from The Lord of the Rings is a wonderful character who is absolutely flat in that his character is determined by his obsession with the recovery of the ring, "his precious." Every story needs some flat characters and many successful stories, for instance Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol, have nothing but flat characters.
Foil: someone whose character contrasts to that of the protagonist, thus throwing it into sharp relief. In Connie Willis's "The Last of the Winnebagos," Katie Powell serves as a foil to the protagonist David McCombe. Katie chases after David to expiate her guilt over killing one of the last surviving dogs on Earth, while David runs away from Katie and from admitting to himself that he, too, is responsible for the dog's death.
Narrator: the fictional storyteller. When the narrator is involved in the action of the story she's called a first person narrator. The sentence "I watched the triceratops eat my purse," is narrated in first person. When the narrator stands outside the story, she is usually taken to be the implied author. "Persephone watched as the triceratops ate her purse," is narrated in third person, presumably by the writer. Narrators can either be reliable or unreliable. For example, in Gulliver's Travels, Gulliver narrates his own story: "I began last week to permit my wife to sit at dinner with me, at the farthest end of a long table, and to answer (but with the utmost brevity) the few questions I ask her." However, he is so credulous at the start and misanthropic at the end that we know enough not to take everything he tells us seriously. Since he is unreliable we must read between his lines to discover Jonathan Swift's intent. On the other hand, we have every reason to trust the third person narration in "Nightfall"; the implied storyteller, Isaac Asimov, means exactly what he says. The vast majority of author-as-narrator stories are told reliably. Indeed, a story in which the implied writer appears to be unreliable is usually scorned as a "readercheater." However, there have been interesting experiments in unreliable third person narration. The implied Bruce Sterling in "Dori Bangs" makes clear that he is unreliable in pursuit of higher truth. This is all very complicated, I know. We'll more talk about narrators when we get to viewpoint characters.
Protagonist: The central character, or the one whose name comes to mind when you ask the question, "Whose story is this?" A story ought to have just one protagonist but a novel can have several, as in Kate Wilhelm's multigenerational novel of the Sumner family, Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang.
Round character: one who is complex and perhaps even contradictory. E. M. Forster (see Flat Characters) put it succinctly, "The test of a round character is whether it is capable of surprising in a convincing way." If a flat character can be summed up in a sentence or two, a round character would probably take an essay. For example, Genly Ai in The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the of Ursula Le Guin's many round characters.
Spear-carriers: minor characters who provide verisimilitude. They must necessarily be flat since they are rarely named or described in any detail. They tend to run in crowds; in movies these are the folks who made up the "cast of thousands." The dim-witted population of Earth in C. M. Kornbluth "The Marching Morons" are spear-carriers.
Static character: a character who does not develop. Most characters in a story should be static, so as not to distract from the significant changes you will be depicting in the central character. Static, however, most certainly does not mean boring. In Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery," all of the characters except for the scapegoat, Tessie Hutchinson, are static.
Stock character: a.k.a. stereotype, but actually a special kind of flat character who is instantly recognizable to most readers, as in the Brave Starship Captain or the Troubled Teen or the Ruthless Businessperson. In the hands of a clumsy writer, the stock character never rises above the cardboard stereotype, which is unfortunate. Even as cliches encapsulate a kernel of truth, so do stock characters reflect aspects of real people. Courage is required of military personnel; people in business act ruthlessly at times in order to survive in the Darwinian world of business. In his collection of short stories, Fancies and Goodnights, John Collier demonstrates how to bring stock characters to life — he's particularly good with devils.
Sympathetic character: One whose motivations readers can understand and whose feelings they can comfortably share. This is the kind of character of whom naive readers will say "I could identify with her." The protagonist is often, but not always, sympathetic. Note that a sympathetic character need not be a good person. In George Orwell's 1984, despite the fact that he betrays Julia and his own values by embracing Big Brother, Winston Smith remains a sympathetic character.
Unsympathetic character: One whose motivations are suspect and whose feelings make us uncomfortable. The boundary between sympathetic and unsympathetic characterization is necessarily ill-defined. The protagonist of Lucius Shepard's "Black Coral," an Ugly American named Prince, is definitely not sympathetic, nor is he intended to be. However once he brings destruction down on himself, we feel sorry for him. The central irony of this story is that the punishment Prince receives is to become a sympathetic character.
Viewpoint character: the focus of narration, the person or persons through whom we experience the story. One kind of viewpoint character is the first person narrator. Here's Mitchell Courtenay, the first person viewpoint character of Pohl and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants: "As I dressed that morning I ran over in my mind the long list of statistics, evasions and exaggerations that they would expect in my report." When author herself acts as narrator, she usually chooses to tell the story in the third person, limiting herself to the perspective of one character. While she is in his point of view, she has access to his thoughts and memories but not to those of any one else, as in "The View From Venus" by Karen Joy Fowler:
"Linda knows, of course, that the gorgeous male waiting for her, holding the elevator door with his left hand, cannot be moving into apartment 201."
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