Pensée: 35

Of telling and writing of stories
"On Characters"

There are, as I see it, only a finite number of characters in any work of fiction, and even perhaps in real life. To begin, there are only a specific, finite amount of character/personality traits. (e.g. Honesty, Loyalty, Deceitfulness, Malevolence, Dependability, Wile etc.) Characters are then defined by these traits. Protagonists are more often than not the embodiment of the better part of all the positive traits. Antagonists then embody all the negative of these traits, at least nominally, as the embodiment of any of these is merely how the author of the story portrays the character and how the reader perceives the character and his or her actions. As there are only a finite number of traits there can only be a finite amount of combinations of these traits. Characters are no more than collections of accentuated and expressed traits. Because of the finite number of combination, there can only be a finite number of characters. These characters may indeed have their own personal quirks, beliefs and convictions, but are technically the same as the other characters that share the specific combination of traits.