Dispelling a Few Myths on "Character Identification" -- Excerpt from Screenwriting & The Unified Theory of Narrative, Part II

Hello all. I was recently reviewing my book Screenwriting & The Unified Theory of Narrative, Part II for the first time since it was printed and came upon a section on character development which I had completely forgotten about. I have decided to repost it here, as it provides some excellent information on the concept of “character identification.” In particular, it dispels some of the common myths about the purpose and function of character identification and the means by which viewers relate to a character’s thoughts or behavior. Contrary to popular opinion, viewers find personal meaning in a character’s words and deeds not so much through the perceived similarities between the character and themselves, but far more through the stark contrasts and differences. Detailed psychological development is thus a prerequisite for meaningful communication through character, as this allows viewers to comprehend the causes of a character’s attitudes and behaviors and thus compare the character’s example of humanity to their own—virtues, flaws, idiosyncrasies and all.

The protagonist is more than a character. It is the audience’s guide. The cinematic story creates a vicarious experience that allows viewers to evaluate its events not from an impartial distance, but through the wants, needs, hopes, and fears of a specific individual. Because of this, a story’s choice of protagonist has a crucial impact upon its ultimate meaning. How the audience thinks and feels about the story will differ depending on whose eyes they experience it through.

On its most basic level, the use of a protagonist gives narratives a practical means to express their messages more clearly. While the genre or mode presents a broad social dilemma, and the plot pattern forwards a possible solution, the message provided by these layers remains in the abstract. The story is only a philosophical argument on how things “should” be or how persons “ought to” behave. To grasp the physical significance of this message, the audience must observe how such issues may directly impact a person like themselves. This makes the message relateable. By focusing its issues onto the struggle of a single individual, the story moves its message from the abstract to the concrete. The audience can understand the ideas by observing their effect on a flesh-and-blood human being...

With this, ideological communication takes a clearer shape, turning an idea into a lesson. Lessons show how abstract ideas can be brought into reality through physical action. To put this another way, lessons teach people how to behave in order to achieve a desired result. For the most part, cinematic stories provide their lessons through the structure of the protagonist’s Character Arc. The protagonist begins the story exhibiting certain fatally-flawed attitudes or behaviors (qualities that oppose the plot pattern’s suggested balance). These traits are proven harmful or ineffective when they create, aggravate, or fail to resolve the story’s problems (demonstrating how these qualities cause or worsen social imbalances). In Celebratory or Cynical narratives, the protagonist eventually abandons these flaws in favor of more appropriate attitudes or behaviors (qualities that support the suggested balance). The ensuing actions resolve the story conflict and put the world back in proper order (proving the worth of that quality). In Cautionary or Tragic narratives, the protagonist maintains the flawed attitudes and behaviors, leaving him or her unable to correct the story’s problems, leading to failure (thereby condemning these qualities and proving the worth of their opposite). Thus, with its opposition between a single beneficial quality and a single detrimental quality, the Character Arc provides a simple lesson on one of the many ways we must think or behave to resolve our social problems.

With this, it should be made obvious that the more distinctive and sharply-defined a protagonist’s behaviors, the clearer and more effective the story’s lesson will be. Ambiguity is the enemy of effective communication. Like an out-of-focus image, poorly-defined characters give no details for viewers to grasp onto, leaving any lesson vague or ambiguous. In contrast, characters with fully developed backgrounds and psychologies think and act in clearly-defined ways, making it much easier for viewers to identify what thoughts, attitudes, or behaviors lead to the character’s success or failure. 

 

Yet detailed character psychologies aid a story on more than a didactic level. They also help the audience identify with the protagonist and find personal significance in his or her behaviors. This, in turn, improves the story’s ability to communicate. Lessons are most effective when one can sense a connection between the lesson and one’s own life. As such, the cinematic story’s lessons on human behavior are most effective when viewers can understand the character’s thoughts and actions and relate them to their own. However, such connections are difficult when characters do not seem sufficiently “real.” If characters should lack the depth and authenticity found in the behavior of real-life human beings, they will be as impossible to relate to as an inanimate object. In contrast, the more detailed a character’s psychology, the more real his or her attitudes and behaviors will appear, and the easier they become for viewers to comprehend. Such understanding leads to empathy. Empathy leads the viewer to relate the character’s thoughts and behaviors to his or her own. As a result, any lesson gained from observing the character’s behaviors may be found personally applicable to the viewer’s own life.

To make this point through contrast, many old-fashioned morality tales make use of an “everyman” character—an intentionally nondescript individual meant to represent every person on earth. Yet ironically, this attempt to represent everyone results in a character personally identifiable to no one. By lacking unique details of thought and behavior, these characters present empty shells with nothing for audiences to grasp onto or understand. Thus, the audience feels no connection. As a result, such stories usually feel flat, shallow, and childishly simplistic. The audience cannot find any deep significance in the story’s events because they are unable to inhabit the character’s mind and understand what the events might actually mean to an individual experiencing them.

Yet despite the obvious inadequacy of the everyman character, similar characters remain rampant in modern attempts at screenwriting due to a common misconception about the nature of a cinematic protagonist. Beginners are routinely told a protagonist should be “identifiable” and assume this means viewers must be presented with a person who seems just like themselves. Yet aside from the most universal principles of human behavior, it should be obvious that it is impossible for one character to mirror an entire audience. Every person is different from the next, and thus any given character will be similar to only the tiniest fraction of viewers. To counter this, some screenwriters try to cast the widest net by making their protagonists as “average” as possible. Yet with a less distinct character, these stories achieve the same poor results as the everyman tales described above.

The idea that audiences can only identify with a character similar to themselves is possibly the most amateur assumption in screencraft. Audiences are able to identify with any character through the same process that we come to identify with our family or friends. Personal knowledge of an individual allows us to understand their thoughts and actions. This creates empathy, permitting us to see things from their point of view. In the same way, if a viewer is allowed to understand the way a character thinks and feels, he or she may identify with that character, no matter how different from the viewer the character may be. In other words, audience identification is not a matter of conforming the character to the position of the viewer, but of leading the viewer into the position of the character by providing the information the viewer needs to understand the character’s thoughts, words, and deeds.

However, just because a viewer can understand a character’s behavior, this does not necessarily mean he or she must support or agree with it. To the contrary, the lessons found in character are often most effective when the viewer finds reason to question, criticize, or object to behavior. For when we observe a character, we gain only little insight through the ways we and the character are similar. Instead, far more is learned by observing the ways we and the character are different.

Part I of this book stated that cinematic stories do not contain worlds meant to be identical to our own. Rather, they present alternate worlds for us to compare our world to.* By observing the ways the story world is similar to or different from our own, we receive a message on how our world might change for the better or worse. A similar relationship exists between a story’s protagonist and the individual viewer. The protagonist is a person different from the viewer—sometimes drastically so. Yet no matter how extreme these differences may be, the viewer may potentially learn a personal lesson from the character’s behavior—one specifically tailored to the viewer’s own attitudes or beliefs. Just as the story world presents a fictional model of reality for us to compare to our own, the protagonist presents a model of human behavior for us to compare to ourselves. As we observe the protagonist’s actions, we recognize the many ways the character is similar to or different from ourselves. We then see how these similar or dissimilar qualities each lead to punishment or reward. With this, we reach certain conclusions regarding not only the character’s behaviors, but our own, depending upon whether we share or lack the same qualities.

* See Part I, Chapter 1-5.

To explain, if the viewer observes a character exhibiting a quality similar to his or her own, and then sees that quality punished, the viewer is led to realize the quality is harmful and may feel compelled to stop thinking or acting in such ways. Likewise, if a character demonstrates a quality the viewer lacks, and is then rewarded for that quality, the viewer feels encouraged to adopt the missing quality so he or she may also find reward. In the same way, if a viewer sees a character rewarded for a quality he or she already possesses, or punished for a quality he or she already avoids, the story validates the viewer’s current attitudes and reinforces his or her beliefs. 

 

This leads to two conclusions: First, a viewer may potentially find personal meaning in any kind of character, no matter how similar or dissimilar to the viewer the character may be. Second, such lessons are found more clearly in the contrasts between viewer and character than the similarities. To conclude, the protagonist is not meant to “be like” the viewer. The protagonist is a behavioral model the viewer is encouraged to become more or less like. It then bears repeating that the more sharply-defined a protagonist’s psychology, the greater the story’s potential for individual meaning, as distinctive characters give the viewer far more material for personal comparison and contrast.