Characters are us. People, I mean. And to really understand what it means to have a good character, we need to also understand what makes an interesting person. Which is quite strange of a thought, because who in life is actually ever really boring? I'm only eighteen, but I know from the people I've met so far, that everyone has a story worth telling. Faults, guilt's, regrets, insecurities and experiences. Everyone has a few that they are constantly juggling in the back of their mind. All of which would be the start of a character in a novel, the stepping stones to a redemption arc or a deeply tragic revenge story.
But as I keep looking deeper at what it means to have an interesting character and how it compares to life, the line gets blurrier. It's a confusing task that everyone has an opinion about. Some of them thought provoking, some just plain dumb, but all of them are not without merit and also all of them are wrong.
There's no answer to what makes a good character, we can only imitate what we know. And imitation is just copying with style. We copy from life and from other works we've seen. We copy from what we like. And what we like is subjective.
I think I've known this for a while. It's the reason I took psychology. If we ever want to keep digging to understand what it means to be an interesting character, even if its a never ending journey, we need to understand the human mind.
And the human mind, well from what I've learnt, it's got layers.
I'm going to keep thinking about this.
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