When actors are asked how they avoid depicting characters as clichés, many respond, “It’s there in the story.” When writers want to develop their characters, they often reread what they've written to uncover opportunities that already exist in the work.
When I write a scene, I begin by trying to get all my thoughts onto the page. While doing this, I can’t view the scene from all perspectives at once—all the people present plus the setting, which usually functions as a character. It’s only after time has elapsed that I can go back and observe the scene from a bird's eye view. It’s like turning the cylinder of a kaleidoscope and seeing a different image, a different perspective, with every turn.
The same is true for movies. When I view a film I love but haven't seen in a while, I find elements I missed the first time. This isn’t the same as aspects of the movie I didn't remember. These are actually things I couldn’t see before because no one can see everything the first time. Only by viewing the story with the benefits of time, distance and a fresh perspective do I notice what I didn't before.
For writers, distance is important because it not only gives us time away but also an emotional buffer so that when we return to the story, we’re looking for more than what we need to fix. We’re looking for the story to speak to us, tell us what it wants to be now. In essence, we’re going back in order to discover what the story already contains so that we can use these elements to deepen individual aspects of the work and the work overall.
One way writers deepen their work is to ask questions of the characters. (I thought this was weird the first time I heard it, too.) The questions usually take three forms. What are you not telling me (the writer)? What are you not telling the other characters in the scene? What are you not telling yourself?
It’s in these liminal spaces that writers often find deep truths about the theme of a story, what it’s really about. We also discover elements of our characters that make them fully realized, individual, memorable. Similar to all conversations, an added benefit of asking questions is that we get at the underlying story elements organically, without imposing anything on the work. Rather, we enable what’s already there to speak.
This doesn't mean every character is developed to the same degree. Neither does it mean every character is good. What it means is that they’re more true to life because in getting at who they really are, we enable dimensionality and layers. This is the complexity actors aim for when portraying a character. Paraphrasing Konstantin Stanislavski, we can learn a lot from our cousins the actors, when writing, reading, or watching a film.
So the next time you go back to a novel or film you love, look for the hidden gems. Pay attention to what you're seeing. Not to what you remember. But what is actually in front of you. And don't discount those things that don't seem to fit. If they’re there, they have a place in the story, just as they do in everyday life.
Adele Annesi’s bestselling cultural heritage novel is What She Takes Away (Bordighera Press, 2023). Adele is also a curator for the Ridgefield Independent Film Festival. Her MFA in creative writing is from Fairfield University, and her long-running blog for writers is Word for Words. Adele’s podcast is Adele Annesi on Writing.
