{"id":1894,"date":"2017-01-19T08:31:40","date_gmt":"2017-01-19T16:31:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/?p=1894"},"modified":"2018-10-07T09:12:28","modified_gmt":"2018-10-07T16:12:28","slug":"characters-cogs-in-the-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/characters-cogs-in-the-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"Characters: Cogs in the Machine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Melanie Anne Phillips<\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"From a structural standpoint, characters are just cogs in the machine. \u00a0They have a job to do in the story as a protagonist, antagonist or any one of the functional roles that must be filled for the story to make sense and move forward.<\/p>\n

But characters are much more than that! They also need to be real people with their own lives, fears and desires or the readers or audience won’t be able to identify with them. So characters\u00a0have two jobs to do in every story – one professional<\/em> and the other personal<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To illustrate characters’ professional lives, \u00a0first imagine that you stepped back from your story far enough that you could no longer identify your characters by their personalities, but just by the dramatic role they are playing\u00a0in the structure of the story.<\/p>\n

Like a general on a hill watching a battle, you could only see each character by its\u00a0function in the battle: \u00a0There’s the guy leading the charge – that’s the Protagonist. His opponent is the Antagonist. There’s the strategist, working out the battle plan – he’s the Reason archetype. One soldier is shouting mindlessly at the pathos and carnage – he’s the Emotion archetype.<\/p>\n

The structure of stories deals with this\u00a0big picture in which characters are no more than cogs in the machine of story. \u00a0But at that level of appreciation, your readers or audience can’t\u00a0invest emotionally in your characters, nor can they identify with them.<\/p>\n

To overcome this, each character must be fully developed as a complete human being in their personal lives. \u00a0When developing characters at this level, you need to stand in their shoes, see what they see, think what they think, feel what they feel. \u00a0You need to make them real, and express them\u00a0passionately through each of their individual personal points of view.<\/p>\n

Taken together these two job create the\u00a0complex juxtaposition of dramatics that make stories so appealing and provide an\u00a0appreciation of characters that matches what\u00a0we all experience in real life. \u00a0We are a part of a company at work, or of a club or a class. \u00a0But we are also individuals with a unique combination of likes and dislikes, hopes and fears, dreams and goals.<\/p>\n

Read more of our articles about characters:<\/i><\/h2>\n

Your Story Will Fail (if you don\u2019t have this\u2026)<\/a><\/h2>\n

How To Create Great Characters<\/a><\/h2>\n

Character Development Tricks!<\/a><\/h2>\n

Creating Characters from Scratch<\/a><\/h2>\n

How to Grow a Sentence into a Story<\/a><\/h2>\n

Creating Characters from Plot<\/a><\/h2>\n

What Chases Your Characters?<\/a><\/h2>\n

\u201cHero\u201d is a Four Letter word<\/a><\/h2>\n

How to Write Villains<\/a><\/h2>\n

Your Characters\u2019 Personal Goals<\/a><\/h2>\n

Writing Heroes & Villains<\/a><\/h2>\n

Males vs. Female Problem Solving<\/a><\/h2>\n

Protagonist and Antagonist<\/a><\/h2>\n

Character Arc 101<\/a><\/h2>\n

Conflict Can Limit Your Characters<\/a><\/h2>\n

Love Interests and the Dramatic Triangle<\/a><\/h2>\n

Writing from a Character’s Point of View<\/a><\/h2>\n

Introducing Characters – First Impressions<\/a><\/h2>\n

Should Your Main Character Be Linear Or Holistic?<\/a><\/h2>\n

The \u201cInfluence Character\u201d in a Nut Shell<\/a><\/h2>\n

Characters – The Attributes of Age<\/a><\/h2>\n

Should Your Main Character Change or Remain Steadfast?<\/a><\/h2>\n

Should Your Main Character Start or Stop?<\/a><\/h2>\n

Create A Believable Character In 10 Easy Steps<\/a><\/h2>\n

<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Melanie Anne Phillips From a structural standpoint, characters are just cogs in the machine. \u00a0They have a job to do in the story as a protagonist, antagonist or any one of the functional roles that must be filled for the story to make sense and move forward. But characters are much more than that! […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-characters"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p36xpN-uy","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1894"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1901,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1894\/revisions\/1901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/storymind.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}