on character and characterization (with a dash of feminism)

A thing writers must grasp, if they're going to tell anything like a good story, is the distinction between character and characterization. Characterization is what you put on your "character fact sheet": background, station in life, appearance, personality traits. A characterization of Virginia Ruth might be: female, mid-20s, about averagely attractive, loves books above all else, generally introverted but very open and talkative when she's comfortable with friends, nonconformist but not in an ostentatious way, works at a hospital to support her novel-writing habit. Et cetera. If you've ever done one of those "character sheets" for fiction writers, with pages and pages of details about your character's history, personality, likes and dislikes, etc... that's characterization.

Character is something very different. Character is nothing more nor less than what your character does throughout the action of the story. Character confirms, or gives the lie to, the facts of your characterization. Sometimes you can make the two things play against each other affectively: if Tom Silvertongue is a lawyer (and therefore, one would assume, fairly assertive and well-spoken), but stutters and backs away from any conflict, that's kind of interesting. If he's a very successful lawyer in spite of that, it's very interesting... provided the writer shows both how he defies the lawyer stereotype, and how he succeeds in spite of it.

A writer has got to maintain the integrity of his or her characters. If you say Sally Sharpeyes is observant and perceptive, but she routinely picks up on things only several chapters after the audience has spotted them, then she's a bad character. Reading the forums run by two of my favorite storytellers, Ted Elliot and Terry Rossio, I came across a discussion on that big three-way swordfight in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie. One of the readers was asking why, to make the plot smoother, Captain Jack (or possibly Norrington) didn't just knock Will out of the fight at one point. Ted and Terry's response: "That would violate Will's character." Will is supposed to be the best swordsman in the story, and they had to maintain his character in each fight.

Characterization doesn't count unless it's backed up by character. It just doesn't. The audience doesn't care what's on your fact sheet. They care what the character does in the course of the story. I challenge you to name any character you hate, and I bet it'll be for one of three reasons: 1) they do mean, mean things to your favorite character; 2) they're obnoxious, and meant to be, 3) the writer didn't back up the characterization.

Which brings me to feminism. I've been trying for a while now to express why I'm so dissatisfied with female characters in most mainstream movies these days. It seems to me that Golden-Age Hollywood, the age of Katharine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman, produced many more strong female characters. Why, in an era where women can be doctors and lawyers and soldiers and scientists, are women in the movies so insipid? It's not because the movie characters aren't doctors, etc... A lot of them are. You couldn't make a movie where are the women are housewives, nurses, and teachers, unless you were being deliberately ironic about it. No, the problem is that while characterizations for women have gotten stronger, characters have gotten much weaker. You don't see female characters making tough decisions, you don't see them doing things that are integral to the plot. I should say, you don't see young, attractive female characters doing these things. There are a few exceptions, but not nearly enough.

I don't know why this is. I could speculate, but I think that's best left for another post. Or the comments section... then you could speculate along with me!