Character Development. Really?

They’re lying to you. Every book you’ve ever read, every teacher you’ve ever had, every workshop you’ve ever attended – they all tell you the same thing. Character Development Is Critical.

They tell you that a character can’t occupy the same space at the end of the story that they did at the beginning. The character has to undergo some type of ordeal or feel some kind of experience. They have to adjust, to see the world in a new way, to appreciate their new place in it. What’s more, the entire story must be subservient to this personal odyssey.

They call it Character Arc – and it is SO IMPORTANT.

Oh, please. If a character’s development is so critical, then why do so many great characters never develop at all?

Dirty Harry and his .44 Magnum blasted their way through five movies spanning seventeen years, and it’s debatable which one developed more.

James Bond, Jack Bauer, Batman – the same thing over and over and over. Even their names are similar.

Those crazy women on Desperate Housewives are still crazy, even after eight seasons. But we love them, because in their own soap-operatic way, they seem real to us. In fact, the more they resist learning from their mistakes, the more real they seem.

No villain, in the whole long history of story telling, has ever changed their stripes. And the villain is the most interesting character!

Character development is overrated. You know whose character I’m most concerned with? Mine. I want it to be in a different space when the story’s over. That’s it. If I can relate to a character and track my development with theirs, all the better. But it’s not an end in itself; it’s just a means to an end.