MICE Quotient - Part Three "You gotta have Character."

So far we have talked about Milieu or Setting and Inquiry or Investigation in storytelling, this time we'll dive into Character. That is what the "c" in MICE stands for. This is an absolutely critical attribute to most stories. Characters are the vehicle in which worlds are revealed, plot is moved, conflict is resolved or escalated and lessons are learned. Basically, without a character arc in your story you are paddling in your canoe around and around in circles.

You can build an amazing and/or complex and intriguing setting, but without characters to interact or be awestruck by that setting it will be like watching paint dry. you are pretty sure something is happening, but it's not very engaging. Sometimes, downright boring. You also need to have a character to really delve into any mysteries or ask the questions as a reader surrogate to figure out your who-dunit. Basically, there is no story without at least some character component.

Quite a while back I actually had a conversation with a fellow storyteller about how to compose a story and what it absolutely needed to be successful. He was telling me his plot for this sci-fi epic he wanted to write and I stopped him about half way through and aske one question. "Who is your main character?" To this he answered, "I don't have one. Everyone is important." My follow up was, "How do these characters change or grow during your story?" and he said, "They really don't." By this point I was getting a little frustrated with him and asked one last question, "How do the characters impact or change the environment they are in?" And, you guessed it, his response was, "Everything is pretty much status quo at the end of the story."

Yeah, I told him flat out that he did not in fact have "a story" at all. He had a vignette at best. Like a lot of episodic one hour TV shows, a vignette is a self contained snap shot of a moment or possibly a couple moments in time that may show you something about a place or event but really have no discernable or lasting impact on either the characters or the overall world by the time you read the last word. Everything goes right back to the way it was prior to page one. 

Lots of 70's and 80's TV shows fall into this category. It was only in the 90's or early 2000's that you really see character development and storylines run for more than a two part episode. Babylon V is a great example of a long plot arc and character development over multiple seasons. There were shows that did this prior though. In fact most soap operas, including my favorite, Dark Shadows, have long running character arcs that can span decades. Over time, the adventures or conflicts the characters are confronted with teach them lessons or force them to rethink the way they interact with the world. Sometimes for the better and sometimes not. 

But how do you build a character that resonates and has room to grow. First of all, don't over think it or over explain them when you first start out. Let your reveal of your character happen over time. Take a note from Stephen King, the world's most best selling author of all time. The Dark Tower series introduces the main protagonist and villain in one line. "The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed." That is intriguing. Who are these two people and why is one chasing the other and why don't we know their names? Throughout the Dark Tower, King masterfully reveals small bits of back story for both Roland and Martin, the Gunslinger and the Man in Black respectively, but we don't really know the whole story until the final book. I suspect even then, there is still something we don't know. King also shows the slow evolution of the Gunslinger from solitary loner to team player and back to loner, although a martyr, later on. It is a tale strong in the heroic tradition that does a great job of showing you, through conflict, events and relationships, how the characters evolve and change as well as how their actions impact their worlds(s).

That is what character does in your story. It gives your reader/audience a surrogate through whom they can learn about the world. It gives them someone to root for or against. It gives them a mirror with which to look at conflicts in their own life and see how a fictional version of themselves might handle them. It gives the reader hope that if the character can overcome, grow or change or impact their world that the reader can do the same in theirs.

Character is a big topic, because it serves so many functions in your tale. Next time we'll talk more about creating characters that have some uniqueness to them and how to slowly reveal their workings over time. Until then, keep on creating.