Dramatis Personae

The characters of a play, novel, or narrative.

You can never write a character who will be adored by everyone, but that shouldn’t stop you writing a fully developed, multi layered being — even with your secondary characters.

Here are five theories regarding the human characteristics that we as writers can use to develop and layer our character(s). They come from different areas, eras and perspectives - business, philosophy, psychology, new-age religion, classic literature – and yet they all overlap, and they all follow a very similar hypothesis.

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The Motivational Speaker — DISC & Characters as Colours

This first section is inspired by my wife who learned about them at a corporate event in Wales and then came home to enthusiastically describe the theories to me because (1) she felt enlightened, and (2) she believed the ideas would help my own character and conflict writing.

The Acronym DISC was invented by Dr William Moulton Marston (the creator of Wonder Woman) at Harvard University. If you know anything about him, you might be as surprised as I am that he didn’t take the opportunity to call it DICS instead.

DISC theory breaks down human characteristics into the following four boxes:

Dominant — Decisive, task oriented, natural leaders.

Influential — Sociable, show-off, natural talkers.

Steady / Stable — Encouraging, team player, natural carers.

Compliant — Methodical, cautious, natural pedants.

In the corporate world, they also use colours to describe the same four personality boxes; RED, YELLOW, GREEN, & BLUE. In addition, each can be broken down into what they call “Good Day” & “Bad Day”.

The Dominant character is considered Red. On a Good Day they are competitive, determined, strong willed. On a Bad Day they are aggressive, overbearing and intolerant.

The Influencer is Yellow. On a Good Day they are sociable, enthusiastic and persuasive. On a Bad Day they are indiscreet, flamboyant and hasty.

The Steady/Stable is Green. Caring, encouraging and patient on a Good Day, and docile, plodding and stubborn on their Bad Days.

Finally, the Compliant character is Blue. Cautious, precise and deliberate on their Good Day, but stuffy, suspicious and reserved on a Bad Day.

Furthermore RED & BLUE are considered thinking. GREEN & YELLOW are Feeling. RED & YELLOW are extrovert. BLUE & GREEN are introvert. This causes character clashes between RED & GREEN and BLUE & YELLOW due to their opposing characteristics and motivations.

To put this in context, I have used the example of the four main characters from Sex in The City. These women have already caused a generation of viewers to describe themselves as a Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, or Charlotte. They could have been the sixth character study themselves.

After a little debate with my wife, we saw the characters thus:

Carrie — Influencer / Yellow — The “look-at-me” character. A socialite and columnist.

Miranda — Compliant / Blue — A cynical career driven lawyer.

Samantha — Dominant / Red — An outspoken, confident and independent businesswoman.

Charlotte — Steady/Stable / Green — A hopeless romantic who works in an art gallery.

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The Philosophical Viewpoint — Aristotle’s Character

(Aristotle, manuscript miscellany of philosophical writings, mainly texts by Aristotle (Greek) Rome, 1457. Cod. Phil. gr. 64, fol. 8v, Austrian National Library - Public Domain)

In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle discusses what he believed to be the eleven Virtues: Courage, Temperance, Generosity, Magnificence, Magnanimity, Right Ambition, Good Temper, Friendliness, Truthfulness, Wit, and Justice.

But people also have their vices and Aristotle named twice as many of these. He broke them down into two sections.

Deficiencies — Sloth, Jealousy, Cowardice, Addictiveness, Depravity, Boorishness, Argumentative, Melancholic, Stinginess, Self-deprecation, Meanness.

Excesses — Single-Minded, Retribution, Asceticism, Deference, Clowning, Brown-nosing, Boisterousness, Extravagance, Braggart, Self-Sacrificing.

All great characters have more than one of these attributes. Fiction’s great personas have many.

For example; Maximus in Gladiator shows Courage, Temperance Magnificence, Magnanimity, Friendliness, Truthfulness, Wit, and Justice. All the things to make him a great hero/protagonist. And yet it can be argued he has his deficiencies. He is boorish, argumentative and melancholic. His excesses are even more abundant. He is single minded, ascetic, retributive, boisterous, extravagant and ultimately self-sacrificing. All the things to make him a great flawed hero/protagonist.

Continuing to use the Gladiator example, we can also attribute Aristotle’s characteristics to the villain; Commodus. He is Magnificent, but that would be the only one of Aristotle’s virtues we could attribute to him (There would even be critics that would disqualify this when compared to Maximus). His vices, however, are abundant. I would suggest that he has between eighteen and twenty out of the twenty-two of Aristotle’s vices.

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The Psychologist’s View — Jungian Archetypes

(Art attributed to Barabeke via Flickr)

Carl Gustav Jung stated in his book, The Structure of the Psyche, “[That] all the most powerful ideas in history go back to archetypes”

Jung identified four major archetypes, The Self, The Shadow, The Anima/Animus, & The Persona. These are the four basic principles that make up a single human, rather than four separate ones. Simply put; Self is your conscious and unconscious thought meeting. The Shadow is the subconscious drives like sex and desires. The Anima is the female within the male and Animus is the male within the female (The combination of the both is known as the syzygy, or the divine couple. The syzygy represents completion, unification and wholeness). And, finally, the Persona is our outward projection of ourselves.

If we combine all four, it would make a fully developed and believable protagonist/antagonist filled with nuance, subtext, & the esoteric.

Jung also believed that there was no limit to the number of archetypes that may exist, and that they all can overlap and/or combine with each other. This gives writers (and actors) more depth to the roles. Here are the most common types.

The hero: Champion. Defender. Saviour.

The father: Authority figure. Stern. Powerful.

The mother: Nurturer. Comforter.

The child: Innocent. Naïve.

The wise old man: Guidance. Knowledge.

The maiden: Pure. Desirable.

The trickster: Deceiver. Liar. Troublemaker.

Those seven examples have been used in every tale I have encountered, and they always combine two or more of the roles. Ripley throughout the Alien franchise plays them all.

Why not build upon the four major archetypes of the human, and then use the character archetypes as your framework when writing specific characterisation? After all, Jung also said in The Structure of the Psyche, “…it is the function of consciousness, not only to recognize and assimilate the external world… but to translate into visible reality the world within us.”

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(Fictional) New Age Religion — Celestine Prophecy

(Cover copyright publisher. Claimed as fair use to illustrate the article discussing the book in question)

This book by James Redfield came out nearly thirty years ago and it seemed very important and significant to a great number of people at the time. Although it was presented as fiction, it created a new age religion for the acid house generation.

It included a chapter on character types but called them “energy control dramas”. These are broken down into four categories; two that are considered aggressive and two that are passive. On the aggressive side of these personalities are Intimidators who are domineering and Interrogators who are questioning.

On the passive side we have a Poor me who would take the position of the victim, and the Aloof person who keeps things hidden.

The Celestine Prophecy tells how these “psychic vampires” can suck the chi from you, but, I think, from the perspective of a non-spiritual writer, they can help you develop your characters. Plus, the fact that they are even called “dramas” already suggests this is a great way to create conflict between them. Redfield also points out that Intimidators create Poor me characters, Interrogators create Aloof characters and vice versa.

To take examples from another fictional New Age Religious text — The Matrix, we can pigeonhole the characters as such;

Morpheus is the Interrogator; he questions others constantly making them feel inferior by pointing out their faults. In contrast he molds two heroes as the Yin to his Yang. Both Neo and Trinity are Aloof, but with different aspects. Neo is clueless aloof, whilst Trinity is the “Hard to get” form of aloof.

Agent Smith is the Intimidator, stealing energy by threat and forcing the other characters to pay him attention with an aura of fear. His actions create the opposite character to himself, Cypher, the quintessential Poor Me, who only sees everything as a problem. The two become complementary and form the antagonist side of the story.

This is not to say that this will always be the case. There are many cases of the protagonist and/or antagonist fitting into all four, character definitions. EG. Rambo or Imperator Furiosa are Intimidators, John Wick or Beatrix Kiddo are Interrogators, James Bond or Lorraine Broughton are Aloof and Mark “Rent boy” Renton or Elsa from Frozen show us how a protagonist deals with a Poor Me attitude.

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Classic Literature — Winnie The Pooh

Or (The Childish Viewpoint)

(The stuffed animals depicted are the actual Harrods toys purchased for Christopher Milne in the early 1920's - Public Domain)

Each of A.A. Milne’s classic characters were based on Christopher Robin’s stuffed toys. Although his father created the stories, Christopher Robin is likely to have assigned their characteristics first. Children are very good at anthropomorphism. I love listening to mine playing, knowing exactly what each of their Lego figures, cars, or action heroes would or wouldn’t do. Children are mostly binary like that.

Pooh Bear — Despite being naïve and slow-witted, is a friendly, thoughtful and sometimes insightful character who is always willing to help his friends and try his best.

Tigger — He is best described with his own statement; “Bouncing is what Tiggers do best.”

Rabbit — Tries to be practical and the leader, but he doesn’t always achieve the desired outcome.

Piglet — Is timid but tries to overcome his fears.

Eeyore — Pessimistic, anhedonic depressive.

Owl — He is wise (obviously) and talkative. He is the eldest main character who presents himself as a mentor and teacher to the others.

I think these are some very specific traits invented by a child, a little shallower than our previous examples due to the simplistic nature of a child’s perspective.

To compare the residents of Hundred Acre Woods to popular fiction I have chosen, L’Enfant terrible of the 1990’s, Quentin Tarantino.

In Pulp Fiction there are several supporting characters who only need to be two dimensional as they only have a specific role to play/be.

Lance the heroin dealer is our Pooh Bear. He is probably slow witted due to the drugs, and his friendliness is more likely to be a client/seller relationship, but he is thoughtful enough to let Vince shoot up at his place and insightful enough to save Mia (who is even referred to as “some fucked-up pooh-bah”) from her overdose. As a metaphor, we can even consider his drug stash to be the honey pot that Pooh bear is so addicted to, getting himself into otherwise avoidable scrapes.

Fabienne, Butch’s French girlfriend, is Tigger. Not only does she literally bounce around the motel room, she causes the problem with the watch with her over excitement.

Pumpkin and Honey Bunny are Rabbit & Piglet. The descriptions are identical. Pumpkin tries to rob the diner in a practical manner and does not receive the desired outcome. Honey Bunny is filled with fear, but she goes along with the plan anyway.

Vietnam veteran, Captain Koons, is the quintessential Eeyore. In a monotone, humourless delivery he tells a long drawn out tale of harrowing hardship and human survival. Which we laugh at ironically, much like we would with Eeyore.

Owl, to me, is Winston Wolfe. He is the guy you call upon when you need someone to think straight and get the problem sorted. He is also the elder and incessantly barks instructions at the two hitmen and homeowner.

A FINAL WORD.

Remember our main characters are not one thing. For example, I’m not just a postman.

Writer’s Bio.

Kris Rickards is a postman from Lancashire who writes short stories, poems, articles, & screenplays in his spare time.