דמויות, קבוצות וכוחות

A group can be a character

• A group or force can function as a character.
• A village, a family, a company, a war: each can want things, act, and be answered.
• So the tools you use on a person work on a collective, and often work better.

A village can act like one character, especially when everyone knows your news before you do.

Read a character through their interactions

• When readers consider a character, they should examine how that character interacts with other characters, groups or forces, and what those interactions may indicate about the character.
• So character is not a property held in isolation — it is visible in the meeting.
• The same person is different with a rival, a child, and a crowd.

A shift is shown by the same thing measured twice, far apart

Inclusion and exclusion cut both ways

• The relationship between a character and a group — including the inclusion or exclusion of that character — reveals the collective attitude of the group toward that character, and possibly the character's attitude toward the group.
• So an exclusion is two pieces of evidence, not one.
• How the excluded person behaves afterwards is the second, and it is usually more revealing.

A group speaks without a mouth

• A collective rarely states its attitude; it enacts it — an invitation withheld, a silence at a table, a subject changed.
• So the evidence for a group's attitude is behavioural, and often a single gesture.
• In a short story, one omitted invitation can do the work of a chapter.

An interactions pass

• List every group or force the character meets, and how each meeting goes.
• For each inclusion or exclusion, name the group's attitude and then the character's.
• Then say what all the meetings together indicate about the character.