Characters, Groups and Forces
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.
Only individual people can function as characters.
The CED says a group or force can function as a character.
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.
Select all the things a character can interact with, per the CED.
The reader is outside the narrative.
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.
Whose attitude does this reveal?
Sort each detail by what it is evidence of.
An exclusion is two pieces of evidence because it shows...
How the excluded person behaves afterwards is usually more revealing.
An exclusion is two pieces of evidence. It shows the group's attitude toward the character and possibly the character's attitude toward the group — and the second, read from how they behave afterwards, is usually the more revealing of the two.
A collective rarely states its attitude; it ____ it.
An invitation withheld, a silence at a table, a subject changed.
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.
Put the interactions pass in order.
The last step is what the CED actually asks the reader to examine.
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.
The family stops asking him to Sunday dinner. Group attitude: he has been quietly written out. His attitude: he keeps the day free anyway, for two years. Nobody says anything, and the story has told you everything about both.
A group or force can function as a character. Examine how a character interacts with other characters, groups or forces — character is visible in the meeting. Inclusion or exclusion reveals the group's attitude and possibly the character's, so an exclusion is two pieces of evidence.