Character vs Characterization
There is an axiom in the art of storytelling — or the art of “writing fiction” — that I think is useful for us to be reminded of time and again. It’s the distinction between character and characterization.
You’ve probably heard someone said something like “That flirty uncle is an interesting character.” or “This Becky character is so basic.”. In the art of storytelling, the uses of the word “character” in those sentences are inappropriate because those sentences describe not characters, but characterizations. And confusing those two could potentially lead us to overlook the deeper and more meaningful part of humanity.
Here’s the definition of character and characteriziation from the book Story: Substance, Structure, Style, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee:
Characterization is the sum of all observable qualities of a human being, everything knowable through careful scrutiny: age and IQ, sex and sexuality, style of speech and gesture, choices of home, car, and dress; education and occupation; personality and nervosity; values and attitudes — all aspects of humanity we could know by taking notes on someone day in and day out.
… TRUE CHARACTER is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure — the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation, the truer the choice to the character’s essential nature. Beneath the surface of characterization, regardless of appearance, who is this person? At the heart of his humanity, what will we find? Is he loving or cruel? Generous or selfish? Strong or weak? Truthful or a liar? Courageous or cowardly? The only way to know the truth is to witness him make choices under pressure to take one action or another in the pursuit of his desire. As he chooses, he is.
This axiom does not only apply in the art of storytelling or the domain of fiction but also in real life. After all — to quote another line from the book — “story is metaphor for life”.
Making a disctinction between the two is important because one is deeper, more valuable, and more deserving attention than the other. We should care less about about people’s characterization because it doesn’t say much about them, and they might turn out to be a different character than you expected. So whenever we discover a quality in a person, we should carefully consider which box to put it into. Into one box we put characterizations to have good faith in and into the other we put characters to judge.
Conversely, we should not be so convinced about our true character when we haven’t put ourselves to a test. We might have some traits that we think define us as a character but really they’re just characterizations. We might be surprised to find out that when under pressure we’re not the person we thought to be.
There is more within the flirty uncle, Becky, and us.
With the definition, distinction, and how to act towards character and characterization being understood, we have a better chance to respond to a quality in a person with the more appropriate manner. But to be even wiser, we need to acknowledge the most important nature of character.
Characters change.
And it changes for better or worse. A good character can turn bad and vice versa and our moral duty is to make a good character of ourselves, regardless our characterization.
Why? Because if we don’t try to improve our character, or if we only search for superficial “improvement” in our characterization, we’ll make ourselves susceptible to nihilism and making immoral choice.
Why? Because by knowing our true character and changing the ones that are bad we’ll have a better chance at making hard choices that could benefit people around us. We’ll be consequential people who lead meaningful lives.
By believing in this duty, you’ll have the motivations to behave properly and to grow in the ways that matter. The more people do the better off we’ll be. But we can’t go around telling people to change their character because as we know now, it could take a long and winding venture for someone just to discover their true character, let alone to change it. So our best chance is to improve our own. Here are some practical ways to do it.
Be competent
By trying to be better at what we do, we push ourselves to our limit. That already reveals that we’re strong or at least willing to be.
When we’ve finally became competent the stakes will be higher for us. We can impact more people or more effectively. We might be at a position of authority. Then maybe we’ll be presented with hard choices that will reveal our character. Then we’ll take an action and discover ourselves. Maybe we don’t like it and want to change for the better.
In a civilized world, for most people, character revelation and change happens when we have competence and high stakes. Less competent people can do less good. Which is why, if we have yet to be competent at something, the moral thing to do is to strive to be.
Acknowledge we have the capacity to do bad things
If we keep telling ourselves that we’re righteous we‘ll be trapped in a bubble. We’ll think that if we’re presented with a hard situation we’ll make the moral choice and we’ll be less motivated to test our true character and improve it.
But if we’re humble enough to think that there’s a chance that when under pressure, we can do things that can harm others, we’ll be more motivated to have a stronger character and prevent ourselves and people around us to be in difficult situations.
Use rationality to serve intuition (not to silence it)
If we use rationality as a moral compass, we’ll end up defining the right things to do as things we can get away with. Our logic will find justifications that sound efficient or profitable for our bad choices. They will get in our way of seeing the weakness in our character.
If we do that long enough we can actually shut down your moral intuition for good. It sounds metaphysical but there are well known people who has developed their character to that level. Like the billionaire J Paul Getty as dramatized by the movie All the Money in the World, who famously refused to pay his grandson’s kidnapper a ransom for his release.
That’s why we need to use our moral intuition and belief system as our guide and to use logic and rationality to serve and maybe to some degree bargain with them. This way, we’ll see the right thing as things that benefit instead of harm others, and we use our intellectual strength to achieve them when we can or make the least harmful compromise when we can’t.
Now we know the definition and the distinction between character and characterization, the importance of knowing the distinction, and how it applies beyond the art of storytelling. We also know that characters change and that we should strive to make ourselves a better character and have some clues on how to do it. That covers all the case I wanna make about this topic so we’re gonna end this piece here.
If you have any questions or feedback, I welcome comments on this post. I wanna know if there’s a part I wrote that you find confusing, weak, or wrong. Who knows? Maybe after having a discussion about this, we become more competent and have our characters improved.
Finally, I will close this piece with a quote from Carl Jung that I think perfectly sums up the case I’m making about character versus characterization:
Our moral duty is to realize the archetype in the confines of our own life.
