Post History
Q&A
Whether to describe personality of a character or let the readers deduce it based on the actions
Well, if you don't have time or space in your story to show some aspect of a character's personality, why bother with it? Does it matter if your character refuses to shop at Walmart because of thei...
Answer
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2019-12-13T12:00:22Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10752 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T03:28:46Z (over 4 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10752 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
Well, if you don't have time or space in your story to show some aspect of a character's personality, why bother with it? Does it matter if your character refuses to shop at Walmart because of their abusive business practices if the story is about how he hates strawberries? If the characteristic is that important to the story, then yes, you need to spend the time and content showing us. The other problem is that you may run into what's called an "informed characteristic," which is when the writer _tells_ us that the character is X (for example, brave and daring), and the other characters treat him like he's brave and daring, but we only _see_ the character being nervous and risk-averse.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2014-04-17T13:18:45Z (about 10 years ago)
Original score: 1