Developing Story Ideas, 3rd Edition

7 Characters, Their Problems and Conflicts

Ask your friends who is special in their lives, and they will probably tell you about someone kind, patient, loyal, or funny. But if that person were to become functional in a narrative, you would need more than typifying adjectives, because those would trap him or her in the kind of single, functional pose you see in illustrations.

Figure 7–1, from a 19th-century American travelogue, typifies each of its four characters from the perspective of the artist: there are the two loyal, dutiful captors; their shifty Indian prisoner; and Major Downing, who “surveyed [Spotted Horse] for a while in meditative serenity” before proposing to roast him alive.¹ Notice how the storyteller’s prejudices are implicit ...