Your characters are flat. Two-dimensional. Cardboard cutouts.
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How many times have we heard this about our work?
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How many times have we thought this about somebody else’s?
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How many times have we secretly wondered, “What in the heck is a three-dimensional character, anyway?”
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I mean, sure. We know in theory. And we know when we find one.
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It’s a character brought to life. A character that lives and breathes on the page.
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But how do we do that?
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I just finished reading this book called
Story Engineering by Larry Brooks. And he does something I haven’t seen in other craft books.
He actually defines each of the three dimensions that create a three-dimensional character.
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The first dimension is anything we can see.
The character’s looks, style choices, quirks, mannerisms, speech patterns, etc. Basically, this is how the character looks and how the character acts. It’s surface stuff. Sometimes it hints at who the character truly is. And sometimes it’s all just a smoke screen. Something to cover up what’s lurking inside.
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The second dimension is back story.
The character’s past. Family of origin. Childhood memories. Where he grew up. How he grew up. Disappointments. Failures. Accomplishments. Fears. Inner demons and insecurities. Basically, anything that happened before the story that makes your character who he is today.
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The second dimension should have a big impact on the first.
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I mean, think about it. Isn’t that how life goes?
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Our quirks, our mannerisms, our style, the things we say? Aren’t they all shaped by our experiences? Whether we’re breaking away from our past or embracing it doesn’t matter. Either way. It affects how we portray ourselves to the world.
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The third dimension is the character’s choices.
This is who the character truly is.
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Brooks writes:
Only in the third dimension do we actually see through the first-dimension facade and the second-dimension excuses to truly understand a character.
To bring some clarity, I thought it might be fun to study an example.
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Let’s look at Ivy.
Ivy is a fashion model.
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Her first dimension:
beautiful, rail-thin, tall, she wears brand-name clothing and brand-name makeup, her hair and nails are flawless, she’s unabashedly flirtatious, she exudes sex-appeal, she knows how to play coy, she carries herself with confidence and an air of aloofness
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Her second dimension:
She is the result of an affair. She was an accident. Her mother was her father’s mistress. Her father has always been ashamed of her. Her mother, who loved her, died when she was 11 and Ivy went to go live with her father and his wife. He treated her like she was invisible. At 14, she moved to New York City with her uncle/agent, who only cared about her for her looks and the money she could make him. And she was introduced to an intoxicating world of parties and men. Inside, Ivy is insecure.
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Notice how the second-dimension of character elicits the reader’s empathy.
This is what the second-dimension is supposed to do. It sheds light on the 1st dimension.
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BUT…
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While these two dimensions add depth to Ivy, we still don’t know who Ivy is.
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Does she make choices that are good for her or bad for her? Does she make choices that are good for others or bad for others? Does she let her past, her emotional scars, define her? Or does she fight against them?
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Hence, the importance of the third dimension in shaping actual character.
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Brooks writes:
True character emerges, eventually, through a character’s choices when something is at stake…..Who that person really is, at his core, is the stuff that resides at the heart of the third dimension of character.
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This reminds me of a famous Dumbledore quote: It’s our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.
And these choices should arc throughout the story. As the stakes rise and as the character changes.
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Let’s Talk: What do you think about these three dimensions? Do you think they work together to create living, breathing characters? How do you ensure you’re creating three-dimensional characters?
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