Creating An Authentic Character by Alan Moore September 27, 2022Zoltar The importance of making your characters three-dimensional can’t really be overstated. As an example from comics, a one-dimensional character is where… it’s either a hero or a villain. It’s a goodie or a baddie. You don’t need to know anything about them other than that. They don’t have to have motivations. They’re just a good guy or a bad guy. All of the bad guy’s schemes, they can be explained by the fact that he’s a bad guy. This is one-dimensional characterization. Sometime around the… probably early sixties, um, Stan Lee came up with a kind of formula whereby he would give a personality problem, to his good guys and his bad guys. So, now they were a good guy… but they had trouble finding a girlfriend. Or they were a good guy, but they had…a bad leg. Which apparently a bad leg is considered a character trait in that kind of comic book. So, this is a two-dimensional character. There’s really nothing to them. They don’t resemble human beings. They just have one slight cosmetic flaw to make them seem more realistic. If you want a three-dimensional character, then you have to take that much, much further. You have to have a character where… you know them from the inside out… where you know why they do things. You know all of the elements in their life that have made them the character that they are. So that they have complete agency. So that they have their own agendas. That is how three-dimensional characters behave. Share this:TweetWhatsAppTelegramEmail
