If you keep up with both of my blogs, you will see a trend for today’s topic of choice. I’m talking about characters! They can make us laugh or cry, angry or happy and sometimes they do it only with words on a page. Also actors have been incredibly good in the past few years at developing characters on screen. I want to share with you my favourite moment of character development and why I believe it to be a good example. I would also like to mention a few of the methods I use when I grow a character and which “type” I prefer personally!
Now first off I want to talk about one movie in particular that blew everyone away in recent years. The acting, screen play and directing were phenomenal and one of the characters was played perfectly while another developed so masterfully it was only overshadowed by the other’s performance. In “The Dark Knight” we watched as Heath Ledger left us with the performance of a lifetime. Nearly unrecognisable, Ledger managed to capture the insanity and lunacy of the Joker while preserving the dark side of the film and I thank him for the performance. However, I believe had Ledger not died the lime light would point to Aaron Eckhart who took on the role of Harvey Dent and then Two-Face as his character progressed throughout the film.
Eckhart had my favourite route of character progression from champion to villain as he succumbed to the madness of the world around him. Calm, confident and charming, Eckhart portrayed Harvey Dent as the future for Gotham City and a shining example at that. The world surrounding Dent is one of corruption and bribery, one that begins to take its toll on the city’s knight in shining armor. We see Dent starting to lose his cool as he interrogates a man by flipping a coin to whether or not he will shoot the man. We know the coin is double sided, but it shows how increasingly frustrated he is becoming. Finally the Joker manages to set Dent off balance by forcing Batman to make a choice between Dent and Dent’s girlfriend who is also Batman’s love interest. As Dent loses his girlfriend and half his face to the Joker, his condition worsens and finally he lets the evil take over.
Assuming the role of Two-Face, Harvey Dent then begins enacting revenge on those who had a hand in his disfiguration and the death of his girlfriend. He chooses who to attack, but lets his now scarred coin decided whether they live or die. In many of the scenes I get the chills watching him flip the coin as he allows fate to decide for him. He holds true to it, not killing one of the female officers involved proving he is true to his word. I truly believe Eckhart should have been given way more credit than he received.
So that was one incredible transformation from recent memory, but not all developments are as epic or notable. For me in my short stories I do not plan how my characters develop. In short fiction I write a page at a time with an idea in mind. After each page, I reread what I have already written and see if I still wish to continue in that direction. Sometimes from beginning to end the characters I intended for a purpose switch allegiance and become something different, much like Harvey Dent. For me in longer fiction, I prefer much more subtle changes, so that eventually you haven’t realized they changed at all but eventually everything piles up.
I quite love the underdog characters, and the characters who switch sides unpredictably. These characters have the ability to flip a story in any direction. The underdog can lose a war, only to win it in the end, but these loveable characters are cheered for in many movies. Cinderella Man, Rudy, Terminator… (Ok not Terminator, but it was definitely getting too serious in here) are shining examples of the underdog character. The switching type character has been seen in many movies and television shows, one of the most famous is Darth Vader. Started off as a Jedi, turned to the dark side for a very long time and then in the end, returned to the side of the Jedi. Whatever the case these all have great character development (although Star Wars has many cheesy lines in the early days of Anakin) and prove to be among the most popular of character development choices.
It’s hard to break away from the clichés, and the types as you write. You will find most situations have been covered at one point or another. The challenge for modern writers is the same as it always has been, but it does get tougher with more writers adding their stories to the sea of creativity. However how many times has someone written about a boy wizard, until J.K. Rowling managed to meet with incredible success? I suppose what I am trying to say is if you are a writer out there, and it may have been completed a thousand times, develop your characters however you wish and write the stories you want to write. As a writer I don’t get down by a story being similar to mine, instead it empowers me. it should push you to get your stories out there more than ever before because it means that someone else liked your idea! So get out there and write!