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Rule 5: the Constancy of Change
Rule 5.Somehow your characters must change.
There's a lovely quote in the OED: A ship is the crucible in which morals are put to the test (St.-Pierre's Stud. Nat. 1799), which I found when I was trying to solidify a thought I had about the relationship between the character and the story. So I'll twist this a little: The story is the crucible your character has to survive.
Melodramatic, eh? I'm trying to make a point, and so I hope you'll forgive me. The idea is this: the story you construct with and for the character is something that the character must endure and (usually) survive. The character on page one is not the same person on the last page -- or if she is, if she hasn't changed at all, your story is lacking something very basic.
Change can be small and subtle or very grand. Maybe after the battle with his daughter about the color of her hair Mr. Malone now understands that he's never really been happy as a sign painter; maybe George loses faith not only in the Mariners, but himself; maybe Rose goes on to make a life for herself without connections or money, because she knows now that this is possible; maybe a little girl has a sudden and unhappy understanding of what it means to be betrayed, and is shut off from ever trusting men; maybe Juanita decides to marry Ralph, full knowing that this is the wrong thing to do. Maybe John figures out that of all the things to strive for in life, perfection is the most overrated and least rewarding.
Change can be good or ambiguous or tragic, but change always is.
October 20, 2005 12:03 AM
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Comments
This seems to depend on the prose form. Short stories don't require that the characters change; in fact, I find many shorts in which the character does experience some kind of epiphany or transformation to be rather artificial. Often the thing that changes in a short story is not the change in the main characters, but the reader's understanding of them. Consider, e.g., George Saunders's "The End of FIRPO in the World", which is a terrific story but I have a hard time isolating any change in the main character. (The main character does die, but I submit that this isn't an "interesting" kind of change.)
Posted by: Guest at October 20, 2005 10:52 AM
Guest -- I concede without any argument that there are exceptions to the generalizations I make in pursuit of... generalizations.
Also, you make an interesting point about the reader's conception changing rather than the character changing. I'll have to think about that -- and I'll look up the Saunder's story, which I haven't read.
Posted by: sara at October 20, 2005 11:36 AM