round characters – Meg Dowell Writes

Do your characters go through transformations from the beginning of your story to the end? Do you find yourself, as you’re writing, discovering deeper layers of your characters’ personality even you didn’t know existed?

You may have, without even realizing it, created a round character.

Awhile ago we wrote about why a story with both flat and round characters is important, and how to create the ideal flat character. Now we’ll focus on round characters, and why a good story needs them.

What is a round character?

A round character, in comparison to a flat character, is more complex. He or she goes through some kind of development or shift from start to finish.

Usually, a round character is a main character in a story who deals directly with the plot’s major conflict and is changed because of it. Ron, Harry and Hermione are all round characters in J. K. Rowling’s book series. From the beginning of each book to its end, as well as the series as a whole, each character is, in many ways, completely different than where they began.

Why does a story need character development?

We tell stories for many reasons. We read stories for many, many more. A story exists to give its reader a cast of people, fictional or real, to relate to even in the smallest of ways. A story where someone deals with a major tragedy and doesn’t grow or learn from it isn’t a realistic story. It doesn’t give the reader any hope in handling their own personal tragedies.

As a writer, it’s essential to be able to show that any conflict and resolution will be accompanied by change. That is what we, as humans, want to see in the real world, and when we don’t, we often turn to stories to feed our desires. It’s not a bad thing. In fact, things characters do in the stories we love might even be able to motivate us to promote change in our own surroundings.

How to give a character depth

Scatter smaller conflicts underneath a story’s umbrella issue. It’s very rare we’re dealing with only one thing at a time. There are usually multiple things tugging at the back of our minds at once, which usually leads to some form of a breakdown or decision to make a change. A college student juggling too many interests might decide to completely change her major.
Compare and contrast relationship dynamics. How we act around our friends might be completely different from how we carry ourselves in front of our families. Make an effort to show how one character handles different relationships in her life and how each contributes to her personality, emotional state, etc.
Don’t forget the tipping point. A story, just like real life, will probably have a few ‘tipping points’ before the actual climax of the story unfolds. This shows your character inching closer and closer to that climax. If the turning point of your story is like a car breaking down, a tipping point leading up to that might be the engine light turning on, causing your character to snap in frustration at the Starbucks barista, leading to her questioning her sanity, etc., etc.

To show that major change in your characters throughout your stories requires a lot of time and effort and many different writers’ tools. This is why learning to write better stories as you refine your skills is a long, tough process. But the more you write, the more chances you have to develop these skills, which always leads to better writing. Always.

Image courtesy of Novelty Revisions.

You probably remember learning about round versus flat characters way back in English class (er … maybe it wasn’t so far back for you. Lucky, lucky you). If you’ve filed that lesson away with all the other seemingly useless info you were forced to regurgitate in high school, it’s time to pull it back out.

Believe it or not, many of the things you learned in English, or language arts or whatever your education system called it, related to writing more than you realized at the time.

Characters who are “flat” are just as important to your stories as round ones. We’ll show you how—but first, let’s travel back to the basics for a second.

What Are Flat and Round Characters?

In a story, round characters are the ones that undergo significant development from the beginning of a story to the end. Your main character, for example, is usually changed somehow by events that occur or by reflecting on past events through narrative.

Flat characters, by contrast, do not change. That’s why we think of them as two-dimensional. We can also think of them as catalysts, if you’re more of a science-y thinker: while they still contribute to a story’s plotline, they aren’t changed by it. They stay the same from start to finish—someone who is cranky at the beginning of a story because of bad weather will still be just as cranky at the end.

Why Do Stories Need Both?

Think about real life. You come in contact with random people every day—sitting next to strangers on the train or subway, passing people on the street, buying coffee from a barista you only ever meet once. Not every single person you encounter in your lifetime is going to make a significant impact on the course of your future.

The same goes for stories. Main characters, whom the story focuses on, go through changes because that’s part of the story being told. The flat characters they come in contact with matter, but especially if they meet in passing, their changes occur off the page and outside the storyline. We just don’t see them. That doesn’t mean those characters aren’t still important.

We’ll go into more detail in the next section.

How Do We Create Flat Characters?

Flat characters interact with round characters in big and small ways, sometimes maybe not even directly. As we mentioned above, though, it’s just like real life. They need to exist. One way to emphasize their importance is to introduce them, leave them in the back of your readers’ minds for a while, then bring them back. Here’s an example.

Let’s go back to our cranky-about-the-weather example. We’ll call him Greg (another ancient inside joke—if you remember this one you’ve been following this blog far too long for your own good). Greg hates rain. He gripes at anyone passing by about how he hopes they have a terrible day as he wades through puddles.

Enter our MC, Larry. Larry is a very unhappy, lonely guy. When he passes Greg on his way to work, and Greg tells him to have a terrible day, Larry spins around and gets into an argument with him. Then as the story progresses, Larry becomes significantly happier and less lonely. He remembers how it feels to be sad and alone even though he isn’t anymore. So at the end of the story, he passes Greg on the street again. This time when Greg tells him to have a terrible day, he tells Greg he hopes he has an extraordinary day, and walks away. The end.

This might mean a lot to Greg. He might go on to change his attitude, too. But we don’t need to see that. Because we don’t, that makes Greg our flat character. The reason Greg is important is because, through these two interactions, we see the effects of the significant changes Larry has undergone from the beginning of the story to the end. That’s important. Without Greg, this point becomes far less significant.

This is just one way to do it. You could end up writing in a flat character that also happens to be your MC’s best friend, who is there throughout most of the book. No two stories are a like: there is no right, wrong, better or worse way to construct a flat character. It’s not the character that matters as much as their interaction with the round characters in the story.

Round and flat characters need each other. You’ve probably constructed both types in your own stories before, maybe without realizing that’s what you were doing. Now you know: the strategy makes your character development symbolize more than just an attitude adjustment. It shows your readers, without telling them, that everything your MC has gone through matters. Even passing a cranky weather-hater on the street.

Image courtesy of Novelty Revisions.

Tag: round characters

How to Construct Round Characters

How to Construct Flat Characters