2 Ways to Create Multidimensionality in a Character
Learn how to make your characters humanlike
All great stories are about great characters. But for a character to become great, they must leave the 1-dimensional realm of the cardboard cutout character and become a humanlike character, existing in more than 2 dimensions, aided by the contradictions inherent in them. This means that he shouldn’t be all good or all bad. Nor should he stay the same forever. He can’t always be strong with no moments of weakness. She can’t be beautiful and confident with no moments of self-doubt. Why?
No species is as conflicted as Homo sapiens, which explains why we are fascinated by contradictions in characters. For this reason, we desire our characters to reveal new information to us about who they really are. Even the Pope has a side to him that we can never know unless he is forced by events to reveal it to us.
Characters who stay the same throughout the story — showing no new dimensions to their nature — will be less imprinted in our minds than multidimensional characters. Thus, learning how to create multi-dimensional characters is a great skill to possess as a storyteller because it elevates your stories to great heights.
In this article, I explain two ways you can create multidimensionality. First, let’s begin with…
