Character Development: 3 Questions to Bring a Character to Life
I love figuring out how to get the best bang for my buck when it comes to character development questions. The simple things I can flesh out in order to bring a character to life.
In this post, I’m going to examine 3 questions that will do just that.
I recently watched Netflix’s Wednesday. If you’re unfamiliar, it’s a series centered around the character Wednesday Addams, of Addams Family fame.
The show follows Wednesday as she is expelled from her school and transferred to Nevermore Academy, a place teeming with Outcasts (vampires, werewolves, sirens, and the like).
Once she arrives, she becomes the target of an attempted murder, which is only the most recent curiosity in a series of brutal murders at the hands of an unknown monster in the woods near Nevermore.
Wednesday quickly becomes an amateur sleuth, attempting to figure out who the monster is, as well as her apparent role in all of it.
Overall, I really enjoyed Wednesday! I had fun watching it, and they did so many things right.
However, in my opinion, they did one big thing wrong.
After finishing the first season, I was tempted to rewatch it. But I found myself deciding against it after I considered all of the reveals, the main villain, and the details behind the big mystery.
That said, this post will contain HEAVY SPOILERS for the first season of Wednesday. I’m going to discuss the characterization of the villain (which will include revealing who that villain was), and get into the 3 things I felt Wednesday’s villain was missing.
So, this is your warning to stop and watch Wednesday before proceeding if you don’t want to be spoiled.
Here we go.
Character Development as Foundation
I’m a sucker for teen tropes (done well). I enjoy a good love triangle. I relish angsty romance.
As such, I didn’t mind at all that Wednesday had two boys falling all over themselves in order to gain her attention (though, admittedly, I haven’t watched any other Addams Family media, so if this is too out of character for her, it wasn’t a dealbreaker for me).
BUT, for any romance to be good—I mean really good—the characterization of everyone involved needs to be fleshed out and believable.
This doesn’t just apply to romance. Good character development is an essential foundation for any tenet of a story.
This is where my main problem with Wednesday came to a head. When I considered rewatching the season, I just…didn’t want to deal with coffee house boy.
Again, spoilers, but we learn in the second to last episode that Tyler, a teenage boy who works in a coffee house and Wednesday’s main love interest, is the serial killing monster.
Yes, this was a little predictable, which was sort of disappointing. But I can deal with predictable.
Things started falling flat for me in the last episode of the season, when we learn more about how Tyler’s monster form was triggered and why he has been committing these murders.
In essence, it boils down to…he’s a lackey.
Marilyn Thornhill (who is really Laurel Gates) has come back to Nevermore to get revenge for her family. And in order to do that, she’s used Tyler as a tool to enact the curse that will free Joseph Crackstone, an outcast-hating pilgrim who made it his life mission to eliminate every non-human species.
That’s fine. Marilyn/Laurel has a clear motive, which I appreciate, but she’s been a background character up until now.
What about Tyler?
Tyler was Wednesday’s main love interest, her accomplice in her schemes and detective work, and her friend. She grew the most emotionally connected to him. And yet, when everything is revealed, we learn that he had no motivation for any of of his behavior around her, except to please his master.
What? For me, something was seriously missing here.
In pondering what the missing pieces were, I came back to 3 pillars I frequently find in great characters. If these pillars had been applied to Tyler, he might have been great, as well. (Maybe a bit boring still, but much better.)
I’m going to lay out these 3 pillars and pose them as questions you can ask to ensure that your character has life and lasting-power.
Character Development Questions
1 | Does my character have an emotionally based motivation?
I have been hard at work behind the scenes here at Project Published on a revamp of the Story Map (details to come soon). In the revised version, I focus on creating the most straightforward formula possible for a great emotional through-line for your story. In that formula, I outline 5 elements to help you find your story’s through-line.
One of those elements? Emotional motivation.
We all know that villains who do what they do simply because they crave power is…not the best way to create a compelling character.
And yet? That’s all we get in terms of Tyler as a villain. He gives one short monologue, in which his personality completely changes (more on this later) as he describes how he loves waking up covered in blood and feeling the primal fear in his victims.
Why? What’s his motivation? It’s his nature and he has to obey his master.
Zero emotional motivation. Zero background on why Tyler is the monster as opposed to anyone else (except for the fact that his mom was a Hyde monster, too. But if that’s the case, why didn’t his father (the Sheriff) immediately suspect Tyler?).
Kylo Ren is a great example of a villain with emotional motivation at play.
His emotional motivation during his character development is clear and engaging: He felt betrayed by the adults in his life (his parents, his uncle), so he turned to someone he felt he had a shot at making proud (Darth Vader).
Throughout Kylo Ren’s story, he struggles with insecurity. He wants to prove himself (desire is always a good way to develop character more fully). He wants to earn praise and respect because he felt like he was denied those things growing up.
Emotion is what hooks us in a story.
We love watching characters do crazy things because they have lost their self-worth or because they love someone or because they want revenge. Watching someone do crazy things because that’s just who they are? One dimensional.
2 | Does my character have internal conflict?
I’m certain you’re familiar with the importance of internal conflict in developing a character.
Kylo Ren is compelling because, despite all of his evil, he feels a pull to be good. He’s conflicted. He doesn’t want to hurt his family…but he also feels desperate to rid himself of the conflict and guilt he feels.
Tyler, on the other hand, did not appear to be conflicted in his actions or feelings. At all. Apparently, he developed zero real feelings for Wednesday, and therefore had no qualms whatsoever about betraying and attempting to kill her.
This would have been such an easy fix!
You don’t have to rewrite the script to discover compelling conflict for your character. You don’t have to find a dusty old thread that no one in storytelling has used in centuries. I have discovered this through the hundreds of stories I have studied.
Most often (though not always), good internal conflict comes down to love, sacrifice, or self-worth.
She loves him, but she doesn’t believe she’s good enough.
He wants the job, but he would have to sacrifice his relationship.
Etc. Etc.
If Tyler had developed real feelings for Wednesday, suddenly he feels conflicted when his master instructs him to kidnap, torture, and murder her. This engages the audience at an emotional level.
Of course, it could have gone another way. He could have been conflicted in his killing because he feels a desire to make his father proud, because he felt real friendship for the first time in his life with the Nevermore kids, because he’s disgusted by his monster form. The list could go on.
But the conflict was missing. And so was my interest in the character.
3 | Is my character consistent?
Okay, maybe we’re just getting down to my personal pet peeves here, but I hate it—HATE IT—when a character’s personality suddenly changes once their misdeeds are exposed.
Of course, there are ways to do this well. But if you’re going to include it, by this point in our storytelling culture, you have to do it really well.
First off, you must include the first 2 elements of character development that we’ve already covered (emotional motivation and internal conflict). Otherwise, it just feels like a Scooby-Doo villain.
You know what I’m talking about. The point in the story when the villain is exposed so they drop the scared/insecure/shy/sweet act and let their evil flag fly high and proud.
Tyler’s personality completely changes when Wednesday uncovers his secret. I can kind of see why Marilyn/Laurel’s personality changed. At least she was an adult, she was undercover, and she had been planning her revenge for years. She had to play the lovable, meek, insecure teacher in order to get people on her side.
But Tyler is a high school boy.
We’re supposed to believe that he can effortlessly slip in and out of different personas, manipulating everyone around him to believe whatever he wants them to believe about him? That’s some impressive acting, and some highly skilled narcissistic manipulation.
A well-developed character has to be consistent. Unless you have a really good and believable reason for why they aren’t.
There’s a difference between completing a character arc that leaves someone changed on the other side of their journey, and flipping the switch on a personality altogether.
Okay.
Once again, I actually really enjoyed Wednesday. But I found myself unwilling to revisit it because of these stumbles in the character development of Tyler specifically. I just didn’t want to watch him effortlessly manipulating every single person around him (including Wednesday) for no good reason.
Wednesday, on the other hand (as well as other characters, such as Principal Weems, Enid, Morticia, and even Sheriff Galpin) were extremely well done. My beef is with Tyler (and a bit with Xavier, as well, but they at least tried to give him some good motivation and conflict).
Who knows. Maybe I’ll do a second part to this where I dissect all the things they did right with Wednesday (besides casting Jenna Ortega, which was a slam dunk). And I’ll probably rewatch it at some point anyway.
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