Who Am I?! (Identity in Writing)

Hank Green posted an interesting video on Friday about identity. I even subconsciously stole the title! (You can watch it at this link.)

That video got me thinking, not just about my personal identity or how identity affects others, but how identity affects characters. As with real people, it's important for you to know who your characters are and who they were and who they want to be, and by extension, for your characters to know those things. The more you know about your characters, the more real they will feel and the more your audience will be able to attach to them.

Who your characters are in the sense of how they and others identify them defines everything about them as characters. If your character is a young man who believes himself to be good-looking and charming and funny, he's probably going to spend a lot of time flirting with the ladies (or men. Or both.), and if your character spends a lot of time flirting with every good-looking person he sees, people are probably going to think he's a tool. That's a classic trope, but I think it's a good example because everyone has seen how those perceptions shape interactions between the flirtee and the flirter.

Characters are basically just people, so they also have facets, meaning that perception and identity are going to be altered based on which facets are focused on. This is the basis of growth in a relationship between two characters. Over time, good and bad aspects will be revealed about people, and the same should apply to characters. The same personality traits might themselves have good and bad sides. For instance, Applejack's stubbornness means that she'll stick by her friends through thick and thin, but it can also mean that she'll refuse to back down when she's wrong. We've seen the good and the bad of this, and Applejack's friends have responded differently to her stubbornness based on context.

Lastly, I think it bears mention that your personal identity as a writer and a human being can shape how your stories unfold. What kind of writer you are will shape the story's style, and what kind of person you are will affect the tone, theme, and possibly the entire storyline. If you want to write fun, simple stories, your stories will be simple, fun, and short. If you write to preach some sort of message, the narrative is going to be shaped to better accommodate that message. If you're writing to vent, your emotions and thoughts will distort events of the story. You get the idea. Your worldview and who you are also matters, because a story can be whatever you want it to be, and the tone will be filtered through your idea of what makes that tone. Your fears will shape horror stories, your ideals will shape the events and character development of an uplifting story, and so on. Also, your message is going to be based on what message you think is important, whether that's religious, political, moral, common sense, etc.

This blog didn't go particularly in-depth, but that's because I'd prefer to stir up thought rather than rant about this. My thoughts also were disrupted partway through by everyone deciding to gather in my room, proving that it takes my entire family (plus one of our dogs) to change a light. Hopefully you found this blog interesting, and maybe I changed the way you look at character interaction. Or people interaction, since I mentioned that. If you had any further thoughts on the subject, I'd love to hear them!

Thanks for reading!