Confessions of a Flat Character

For a story to have a meaningful plot, there needs to be round characters.

My least favorite book that I had to read for English class in high school was Shakespeare's The Tempest (I disliked it even more than Kate Chopin's The Awakening. And that's saying something). I felt like the story had no real plot. Maybe this was because it was buried too deeply in Shakespearean language, or maybe it was because my 15-year-old mind wasn't developed enough to grasp it. Here's how I understood the storyline of The Tempest: people get shipwrecked on an island, they walk around for a while, and then they leave the island. No real conflict, and no real character development. It was lacking what I saw as round characters.

Round characters are essential to a good story. According to Brittanica's website, round characters are complex and undergo development, sometimes to sufficiently surprise the reader." This is in contrast to flat characters, who are "two-dimensional in that they are relatively uncomplicated and do not change throughout the course of a work." A round character is different by the end of the story than they were at the beginning, whereas a flat character is more or less the same.

I wonder what kind of character I would be. I look around at people around me, and I see a lot of round characters. I see people who are moving forward in their lives' stories--trying new things, building new relationships, going new places. And it's not just that others circumstances change; they change as well. It's like they, I don't know, grow up and become adults.

Then I look at myself, and it's hard to see much change. Granted, a lot of circumstances have changed for me in the last year. I'm living in a new city and going to a new school. But my own character is more or less the same. I've ordered double-decker tacos every time I've gone to Taco Bell every since they were added to the menu. I've been combing (or more accurately, not combing) my hair the same way since I was ten. I still wear a t-shirt and jeans every day. My humor is the same, my likes/dislikes are the same, the way I talk is the same.

That's not a good way to live a life, because it doesn't make a good story. At the end of my life, I don't want people to say about me, "He showed up, walked around for a while, and then died." I want my life in 20 years to be completely different than it is now because I had progressed over that time. (I still hope I'm eating double-decker tacos, though. Those things are delicious).

I'm not totally sure how a flat character becomes a round one. I imagine it involves such things as change, risk, and conflict. A good story requires these elements, because it's through them that a character develops.

In the end, then, I guess it comes down to a decision. A character can choose to remain sedentary, or he can choose to engage life in all of its fullness, with its accompanying conflict and danger. It makes for a scarier life, but a better one, I think. We weren't all meant to remain the same.

Still not throwing away my jean shorts, though.