Characters are essential to story. Their desires are the driving impulse to the plot as well as the primary source of conflict. Too often, though, characters remain just that: a technical construct, designed and implemented specifically to evoke certain reactions from the audience. When we refer to an actor being "typecast," what we are actually bemoaning is the delimiting of a person to a set of constrained boundaries, i.e. characteristics.
On one level, this is enjoyable. Most folks I know relish seeing Christopher Walken in the "yet-another-creepy-guy" role. But it can also become highly problematic, as Leonard Nimoy discovered when attending Trekker conventions (Trekkie, as my devoted friends have informed me, is considered derogatory).
In the most extreme instances, personhood can be reduced to a singular idea. These are almost invariably cliches, i.e. the jock. the nerd, the action hero, the heroine, the tech wiz, the minority muscle, the femme fatale, as is the common methodology for escaping them--the "with a twist" approach (although such permutations can be a bountiful source of amusement).
The fallacy, as it were, stems from a pernicious notion that characters emerge as a result of ideation, a process that tends to bog down in compound adjectives and intricate contrivances--e.g. the sexy Midwestern nymphomaniac botanist who a) invents sentient plants with a penchant for commitment, b) derives the ideal aphrodisiac from lichen, or c) fashions herself as a modern day Rappachini's Daugther and lures men to their death (it's not actually a multiple choice test, she can, in fact, do all three and be considered more "complex").
Yet such characters will never attain personhood. At best, they will be entertaining, which, while noteworthy, is not of supremely lasting value. The real characters, the ones we love and adore and remember as people, not only entertain us but remain with us for the rest of our lives. I will never forget the day Irma Kalish told my screenwriting class about an encounter with an old school friend:
The woman, who had undergone a terrible bout of breast cancer, said that she found the strength to go on by watching Edith undergo similar duress in the All in the Family episode entitled "Edith's Christmas Story." Irma, who wrote the episode, told us that it was one of the most rewarding moments in her life.
Although we, as storytellers, can never fully anticipate the impact of our works, we can prime them to have a profound effect on generation after generation. To accomplish this, we much create characters that move beyond ideas and are instead, grounded in realities. Such characters are people in their own right, with hopes and fears and beliefs. We do not read or watch such individuals, we encounter them.
It is my hope that in future Building Character posts, you will encounter some of the people to whom I have given life. In each subsequent entry, I will allow them to riff at leisure on whatever they feel is important. By all means, please converse with them as you would any other fascinating and complicated person. They are a quarrelsome bunch, I assure you, and will delight in your interest.
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