Characters You Love to Hate
While listening to Q & A by Vikas Swarup, the book that the movie Slumdog Millionaire is based on, several thoughts occurred to me. The first thought was, I don’t like the book Q & A. I dislike the writing, and most of the plot points I find clichéd. My second thought was, despite the fact that I dislike this book, I am a fan of Swarup's character Neelima Kumari, the aging Bollywood actress. I like Neelima Kumari because I hate her. I hate her because her character is consistent, not because her character is badly written. She is a self-obsessed, spoiled actress who jumps off of the page at me. Everything she does goes against what I believe and that makes her come alive.
Consistency is what makes a strong character. All too often I find myself reading about characters or watching characters who don’t make decisions that fit who they are supposed to be. Next time you read a book or watch a movie or TV show, think about what the character’s motivations are. Maybe a character only wants to get home. If the whole book is about the main character trying to get home, and suddenly she abandons her desire to get home for little to no reason, that character is not consistent, and therefore not very strong.
This is why I think I find myself partial to bad or evil characters. I have noticed that most often the most despicable characters are the strongest characters. (Characters with questionable moral compasses are often the easiest to write.) The characters we love to hate are the best. Take Scorpius (played by Wayne Pyram) from Farscape, an Australian-American science fiction TV show from the early 2000’s. Scorpius is a very bad dude. Just look at his picture. He looks like a skeleton wearing a rubber ninja mask. Scary. Even though he is the bad guy on the show, he is one of the most consistent characters on the show. He is always showing up when you don’t want him to (and in some cases when you want him to) and he is very powerful. He wants to capture the main character Crichton and essentially destroy him to get the knowledge in his brain. Scorpius will do ANYTHING to achieve his goal, and he never waivers. The audience can always count of Scorpius doing what it takes to ruin Crichton. Crichton on the other hand, the hero of the show is inconsistent. Crichton waffles in his actions and motivations. I never know what he will do, not because his character is supposed to be unpredictable, but rather because his character is poorly written. He is inconsistent.
I find, good characters are often the most inconsistent characters. I think this is because often the person writing or playing the character often doesn’t see the need to develop a good character as much as a bad character. Going back to Farscape, often other characters will tell Crichton how good of a guy he is, but he never shows it to the audience. Crichton is a weak and inconsistent character because the audience has to rely on other characters stating he is an upstanding guy, rather than learning it for themselves through Crichton’s actions. With Scorpius, however, the audience learns he is a bad guy because they see what he is capable of.
For me, the mark of truly good character development is when not only are the bad characters consistent but so are the good characters. When I like the good and bad characters almost equally (because let’s be honest, sometimes the bad characters are just more fun to like) I know I have found a good book or film.
Consistency is what makes a strong character. All too often I find myself reading about characters or watching characters who don’t make decisions that fit who they are supposed to be. Next time you read a book or watch a movie or TV show, think about what the character’s motivations are. Maybe a character only wants to get home. If the whole book is about the main character trying to get home, and suddenly she abandons her desire to get home for little to no reason, that character is not consistent, and therefore not very strong.
This is why I think I find myself partial to bad or evil characters. I have noticed that most often the most despicable characters are the strongest characters. (Characters with questionable moral compasses are often the easiest to write.) The characters we love to hate are the best. Take Scorpius (played by Wayne Pyram) from Farscape, an Australian-American science fiction TV show from the early 2000’s. Scorpius is a very bad dude. Just look at his picture. He looks like a skeleton wearing a rubber ninja mask. Scary. Even though he is the bad guy on the show, he is one of the most consistent characters on the show. He is always showing up when you don’t want him to (and in some cases when you want him to) and he is very powerful. He wants to capture the main character Crichton and essentially destroy him to get the knowledge in his brain. Scorpius will do ANYTHING to achieve his goal, and he never waivers. The audience can always count of Scorpius doing what it takes to ruin Crichton. Crichton on the other hand, the hero of the show is inconsistent. Crichton waffles in his actions and motivations. I never know what he will do, not because his character is supposed to be unpredictable, but rather because his character is poorly written. He is inconsistent.
I find, good characters are often the most inconsistent characters. I think this is because often the person writing or playing the character often doesn’t see the need to develop a good character as much as a bad character. Going back to Farscape, often other characters will tell Crichton how good of a guy he is, but he never shows it to the audience. Crichton is a weak and inconsistent character because the audience has to rely on other characters stating he is an upstanding guy, rather than learning it for themselves through Crichton’s actions. With Scorpius, however, the audience learns he is a bad guy because they see what he is capable of.
For me, the mark of truly good character development is when not only are the bad characters consistent but so are the good characters. When I like the good and bad characters almost equally (because let’s be honest, sometimes the bad characters are just more fun to like) I know I have found a good book or film.
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