One of the tools we can use to organize our plot structure is through the use of CHARACTER CONSISTENCY in our protagonist and surrounding characters.
Committing facts, football plays, lines to a screenplay, or even Bible verses to memory takes time. It also takes CONSISTENCY. One must repeat these things in their mind over and over again.
In much the same way, we have to practice and repeat our protagonist’s values and personality over and over again throughout the story. We must ‘train,’ for lack of a better word, the audience on who these characters are. They need to know because at the end of the movie when the protagonist and antagonist go head to head, the audience must be able to comprehend what is at stake for the protagonist.
If our main character is all over the map, it’ll be hard for the audience to find him.
In her book, Creating Unforgettable Characters, Linda Seger states, “Characters need to be CONSISTENT. This statement does not mean that they are predictable or stereotypical. It means that characters, like humans, have a kind of core personality that defines who they are and gives us expectations about how they will act.”
Character Consistency is just practice.
In both Logan and Star Wars, the tool the authors use to make sure we understand all their characters is consistency. Despite what you may think though, CHARACTER CONSISTENCY is not synonymous with predictability.
What Seger is talking about above is the thing that drives a character. A selfish person will always choose the selfish option. A person who loves their domineering mother will always choose the domineering mother despite their misery and other options. Tension builds around this. Will she choose her phone again or will she go with him? Will his desire for freedom lead him away from his mother, or will go back to her because it’s what he’s used to?
I like to think that predictability doesn’t come from the character but the writer. By this, I mean the character hasn’t been developed enough by the writer. As a result, the audience doesn’t know the character’s personality enough to predict their choices or understand what’s at stake. But they know what the ‘story’ will do because it’s clear the writer wants to take the audience on a specific journey.
An example of predictability.
An example of a predictable story is the 2000 movie The Contender. In it, the President of The United States is looking to appoint a new Vice President. His choice is a woman, Laine Hanson, who gets accused of participating in an orgy for money. It’s clear from the beginning that the movie will end with Laine Hanson confirmed and all of the President’s political opponents shamed.
The author created for himself a problem here. He kept some really valuable information about Laine Hanson until the end. Namely that Laine took the moral high ground in college by not participating in the orgy. He tried to make the theme about personal moral values, yet he kept the moral values of the protagonist from the audience until the end.
Throughout the movie, Laine refuses to answer any questions about the incident or her moral values. At the end of the movie, Laine states she didn’t answer the questions because she believed by answering her opponents, she was giving credibility to them. But the damage was already done. The audience wasn’t on board with Laine’s journey.
I’ll stay out of the politics here because the movie made great efforts to define all the character’s political affiliations. Something I think the author and director did intentionally and to the demise of the story.
Stunted character growth.
The main point is that the writer stunted Laine Hanson’s character development. He kept certain facts about her a secret until the end. The tension I felt throughout the movie wasn’t whether she would win, but at what point would I finally get to hear what I knew was the truth all along. It was a painful, frustrating movie to watch.
The movie would have been much better had he revealed Laurie’s secret in the beginning to show her character. The plot would have been free of the politics, and the audience would be left wondering if a good woman (or even better, a good person) could survive in The Swamp.
Character Consistency done right.
We see CHARACTER CONSISTENCY done well in Star Wars. LUKE presents himself as someone who has a lot of optimism from the beginning. As he goes through his journey, he maintains that optimism.
In ACT I, Luke has a discussion with Uncle Owen about the possibility of the droids being stolen. He also wants to find out who Ben Kenobi is. After Uncle Owen tells Luke to “forget it,” LUKE then comes back with “I think those new droids are going to work out fine. In fact, I, uh, was also thinking about our agreement about my staying on another season. And if these new droids do work out, I want to transmit my application to the Academy this year.”
Even though Luke lost the disagreement with his uncle, he’s still optimistic for the future! His attitude tells us a lot about who Luke is.
In ACT III, at the end of the mission brief, Wedge expresses his doubts about the mission because of the exhaust port they must aim at. Luke says, “It’s not impossible. I used to bull’s-eye womp rats in my T-sixteen back home. They’re not much bigger than two meters.”
It seems like an unimportant conversation, but the writer portrays to the audience that Luke is still an optimistic person. He’s still the same person he was in the beginning. But he’s learned some things about life since then, and hopefully, those things will help him win the day!!
Final Thoughts.
The audience needs to know who the characters in the story are and what they are about. It’s imperative they know so the climax of the story is fully understood and we have the audience’s full attention. We accomplish this through CONSISTENCY. All our characters need to be true to their guiding principles. If not, they are untrustworthy, and the story is undermined.
Can you say that your characters are consistent throughout your story? Does your protagonist always eat a cookie if he sees one? Does she always wear that necklace her father gave her before he died in that car accident?