Why do some fictional characters work and other characters feel flat or fake? Why do some characters compel you to keep reading and others make you want to throw the book across the room?
The secret is depth, giving your characters more than one personality dimension. Real people are complex, contradictory, emotional bundles of matter and energy, and few people are exactly who they present to be on first blush.
So how do we give our characters multiple dimensions? By recognizing that even good characters — our “hero” protagonists, for example — have dark aspects of their personalities. And, conversely, our “anti-hero” antagonists, the “baddies” in our stories, will often have positive or “good” aspects of their personalities.
A protagonist who is always good, who always does the right thing, who’s always happy, bright, and cheery is sometimes called a Pollyanna. After about the age of six, no one likes to read about a Pollyanna. I mean, there probably are folks who do, but if they’re out there, I haven’t met them. Most adults don’t like reading about Pollyannas because they’re boring. Pollyannas never surprise us. We always know that, no matter what, the Pollyanna is going to come out at the end of the story smiling and happy. Pollyanna will always do the right thing, happily of course, never deviating from that firm line. That type of security may be comforting for some, but for me it doesn’t make very compelling fiction.
And just the same, the antagonist who is always bad, who is always evil, who is always cruel, bitter, and unforgiving, is often called a Mustache-Twirler (so-called because of the cliche of the evil mastermind twirling his mustache while maniacally laughing). Mustache-Twirlers are boring to read for the same reason: they’re predictable. We know how the Mustache-Twirler will react to any situation: with anger and malice (and more mustache-twirling). They are evil because they are evil, so isn’t that enough?
No, it’s not.
Real human beings have layered personalities, histories, and depth, that go much deeper than superficial details. In The Undiscovered Self, psychologist Carl G. Jung speaks of our twin good and evil aspects, two parts of the self that exist in all human beings. Many (perhaps most) of us only consciously acknowledge the positive aspect of our egos, our “good” natures. But each of us has an evil side, which we will often bury or suppress, for fear of what it reveals: that we’re not always the morally upright, righteous beings we take ourselves to be, and that we can be just as cruel and unforgiving as the worst humans among us.
You see this played out clearly in the U.S. political sphere. Many on the U.S. political Right are convinced that the Left is morally repugnant heathens intent on destroying conservative religious and family values, without recognizing that many of their chosen leaders have little or no such values themselves. Meanwhile, many on the U.S. political Left are guilty of the same cultism, group-think, and hypocrisy they accuse the Right of, without being able or willing to see those dark traits in themselves.
We project our dark sides onto others as a way to absolve ourselves of the self-hate and shame that acknowledging the unwanted aspects of our beings would bring. (For more on this, see For Your Own Good, by Alice Miller, which I highly recommend.)
A great example of this playing out in fiction is in The Lord of the Rings. All the heroes in the Fellowship claim to be helping Frodo bring the One Ring to Mount Doom for the greater good of Middle Earth. But the Ring brings out the repressed evil side in anyone who bears it (or even comes near it). Galadriel is the only one1 one of the few of the heroes who consciously acknowledges this.
Galadriel says to Frodo:
“In place of a Dark Lord you would have a Queen! Not dark but beautiful and terrible as the Dawn! Treacherous as the Seas! Stronger than the foundations of the Earth! All shall love me and despair!”
Galadriel, alone one of the few among the heroes helping Frodo, acknowledges her own evil side. Only Frodo, who is not strong in stature or swordplay, but in heart and mind, has the strength to bring the Ring to Mount Doom. And even then, he ultimately fails, and only succeeds in his great mission because of the love of his friend Sam.
The one exception to this metaphor is the dark lord Sauron himself, who’s unremittingly evil in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, without a corresponding “good” side. But I submit that Sauron (at least during the events of the books) isn’t a real character. He never speaks, and he only acts through avatars. Sauron is more of a destructive force, like a hurricane. Also, J.R.R. Tolkien made very clear that the Lord of the Rings was a metaphor for the encroaching industrial age that was destroying his beloved pastoral England.
Another great example in fiction — if perhaps a bit too literal — is the Force in Star Wars. Yoda is very clear when he trains Luke on Dagobah that the Dark Side of the force is always a risk for a Jedi. Its power is seductive, and Luke’s rage and fear are easy paths to take him to the Dark Side. When Luke enters the Dark Side Cave and comes upon Darth Vader himself, only to discover that it’s his own face under Vader’s helmet, the metaphor cannot be more clear. Luke’s unacknowledged dark side is his own worst enemy. He must confront his fear and hate or be controlled by it.
Conversely, Darth Vader himself still has a bit of good in him, as we see in Return of the Jedi. And we see this played out in the many Star Wars sequels when Kylo Ren and Rey struggle to reconcile their two selves — the good and the bad.
While these are all good examples of the twin aspect of our psyches, I feel Star Wars generally takes the the metaphor too far. For most characters, the split isn’t so perfectly drawn, but a more complex and crooked line that jumps around like a lightning bolt, forking this way and that, depending on circumstance. Star Wars oversimplifies a very complex human trait: the dark aspects of our psyche.
In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, William Blake writes:
“Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence. From these contraries spring what the religious call Good & Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason. Evil is the active springing from Energy. Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell.”
What Blake recognized centuries before Jung explained it in The Undiscovered Self is the twin aspect to our human psyche, and that both are necessary for human existence.
What does this have to do with creating compelling characters? If you create an all-evil, or all-good character, you’re only revealing one part of the human psyche and ignoring the other part. Without the two, you are missing the dynamism, the progressive energy Blake speaks about. Only together, by encompassing both the good and evil aspects of a character’s psyche, can you make a character seem real.
You see this played out in fiction in a thousand ways:
The detective who’s great at her job but terrible at being a parent
The hit man who is a cold-blooded killer but has a soft spot for acting
The beloved war hero who continually puts everyone he loves at risk
The world-class chess player who can’t connect socially and has a drug problem
The astrophysicist who can’t accept that science doesn’t give all the answers
The killer robot that likes to watch soap operas
Characters that are all good or all bad are boring. They don’t seem real, because they aren’t. Real people have multiple aspects to their psyche, conscious aspects that they “believe” themselves to be, their ego, and their unconscious aspects, which they often try to suppress or repress. Together, these parts brings about an energetic dynamism to characters that makes them real.
Next time you write a character, make sure you consider all aspects of their personalities — the part they consciously acknowledge, and the part they sometimes fail to repress. It will make your characters come to life.
ETA: Thanks to Angus McIntyre for reminding me that Gandalf and Elrond also recognize the danger of possessing the One Ring. But to me, Galadriel’s warning is the most powerful and terrifying, and perhaps why it was so salient in my memory.
The best characters I've come across in fiction, for precisely the reasons you cite, were found in both film versions of "Cape Fear" and the 1957 novel that inspired them, John D. MacDonald's "The Executioners."
The LotR pedant in me compels me to point out that Galadriel isn't the only one of the Wise who recognizes her own potential corruptibility. Gandalf and Elrond want nothing to do with the ring either. And Gandalf explicitly acknowledges the danger, just as Galadriel does: “I dare not take it, not even to keep it safe, unused. The wish to wield it would be too great for my strength.” ("Ch. 2: The Shadow of the Past")
Gandalf also suffers from doubt and fatigue, and admits his own fallibility, freely talking of "mistakes" that he has made. Those are useful characteristics for rounding out a character as well (particularly when the character in question is essentially a demigod). Character development doesn't need to be Manichaean: good side, evil side. There are human flaws that we're all familiar with -- pride, irascibility, overconfidence, indecisiveness, self-doubt, laziness, etc. -- that can prevent a 'good' character from being too good to be true.
I think your description of Sauron as a force of nature is insightful. But if I remember correctly, even he began as great and wise and creative, before pride turned him into an evil force (pride was a frequent candidate for the 'hamartia', the tragic flaw that undermines a good character in Greek tragedy and sets them on course for disaster). By the time of LotR, however, that's well behind him and, as you suggest, it's not relevant to his role in the story. While I think it's essential for the 'good' characters to have moral or practical weaknesses as well as strengths, bad guys, especially the Big Bosses who are only ever seen at a distance, can get away with being more one-dimensional. Hitler loved his dog, but that didn't change anything in the stories of the millions who suffered under him or fought against him. Trying to make evil characters more "balanced" by giving them redeeming qualities can feel artificial and unconvincing: "Sure, he has a genocidal plan that will kill billions, but on the plus side, he never forgets his mother's birthday." Better to focus on making them understandable, or at least consistent: "Sure, he has a genocidal plan that will kill billions, but FROM HIS POINT OF VIEW, it makes sense."